"So I guess the fortune tellers right
Should have seen just what was there and not some holy light
To crawl beneath my veins and now I don't care,
I have no luck,
I dont miss it all that much
Theres just so many things that I cant touch,
Im torn...."-Natalie Imbruglia.
These words always make me think....and ponder over my convictions. I try to figure out whether I am religious or an atheist, I have Nihilistic tendencies or do I actually believe in something? am I superstitious? I am so torn between these questions....
I am of little faith and yet I believe there is a God.
I pray and call out to him yet I do not practice a religion.
I do not believe in rituals and ceremonies and yet I do them for the love of my loved ones!!
Does that make me a hypocrite?Do I not know my mind..yes ...I guess I dont....but I sure would like to know for once where I stand!!
That is the good thing about certain religions, Christianity or Buddhism...they have certain practices that keep them rooted and make them believe in their faith.
In Huinduism there are just too many Gods, too many legends and too many mythologies....dont know which to beleive and which God to follow!
Mine right now is a self - religious crisis...if such a thing exists!!!
All I can say is my religion is humanitarianism!!!
Should have seen just what was there and not some holy light
To crawl beneath my veins and now I don't care,
I have no luck,
I dont miss it all that much
Theres just so many things that I cant touch,
Im torn...."-Natalie Imbruglia.
These words always make me think....and ponder over my convictions. I try to figure out whether I am religious or an atheist, I have Nihilistic tendencies or do I actually believe in something? am I superstitious? I am so torn between these questions....
I am of little faith and yet I believe there is a God.
I pray and call out to him yet I do not practice a religion.
I do not believe in rituals and ceremonies and yet I do them for the love of my loved ones!!
Does that make me a hypocrite?Do I not know my mind..yes ...I guess I dont....but I sure would like to know for once where I stand!!
That is the good thing about certain religions, Christianity or Buddhism...they have certain practices that keep them rooted and make them believe in their faith.
In Huinduism there are just too many Gods, too many legends and too many mythologies....dont know which to beleive and which God to follow!
Mine right now is a self - religious crisis...if such a thing exists!!!
All I can say is my religion is humanitarianism!!!
2 comments:
yes,in hinduism we are not bound to adhere to strict rituals like in islam or sikhism-i feel they get strength and peace of mind from those practices but thendont we feel that our religion is above those coersions which may lead to fanatism-i too feel that lack of spiritual power which other religions offer but all the same we are most tolerant and broad-minded ,yes i admit that it leaves us confused but it does not compel us to follow certain practices which may leave us embarresed sometimes-
Hello.
I was just browsing through some blogs and ended up here reading a couple of your posts. I could identify with this post of yours since i have gone through this phase of confusion myself.
Please allow me to post the below long comment which is basically my experience with in the context of this blog post.
Yes...we Hindus have thousands of 'gods' and even 'godesses' unlike say Islam or Christianity. Buddhism is almost an atheist religion...Present day Buddhism tends to worship Buddha. But Buddha had himself asked his followers not to worry about understanding God but rather to focus on life, observe it keenly so as to learn from it and rectify the shortcomings in oneself. To Observe the ever changing life with its pains, sorrows, joys, trials and what not. Buddha simply says our
problems(and pleasures - need to be neutral to both and not like or hate one of them alone) are caused by our actions...actions being motivated by our desires and so the root cause is the desire. But can anyone even live without any desire and so there must be a balance when it comes to desires. Easily to say and type but far more difficult to inculcate in one's life. Omni-present Self-Introspection and discretion applied to our thoughts/actions in our life - can help the person understand himself/herself (the mental and physical weaknesses, the strengths, the natural attitude) and help one to mature so as to not get caught cluelessly in a life that randomly swings from pain to pleasure and from joy to sorrow. The first step is to accept the randomness of the happenings and the later steps are to extricate one self from the vagaries of life, after years of practise of self-introspection and listening to one's inner conscience (manasakshi).
Buddhism is itself an offshoot of Hinduism sans the rituals and other divisive idealogies. But the main concepts of Karma, Re-incarnation until moksha stay put.
Coming to relevant portions of my comment with respect to your blog post. Hinduism or rather Sanatana Dharma actually states the existence of only one supreme being or god...termed 'Brahman'. The Gita explains a lot about this aspect of 'Brahman' in the form of Krishna's discourse to Arjuna and written by Veda Vyasar or Krishna Dwaipanya (technically a 'Shudra' because he
was son of a sage and 'lower society' fisher's daughter - but rather finally and most importantly a great man of immense intellect and spiritual insight). Numerous Hindu philosophies state that nothing much is known about whether god is male/female or even a human being. There is no straight forward description of the Supreme Being. They wonder basically about whose Divine Thought it was to create this world i.e. the universe and all the life in it. They say the God exists through all his creations whether animate or inanimate. The 'Brahman' is described in the Vedas by using a Word and the opposite of that word too. Like they say ..god is formless and yet is present in any conceivable form. God is infinite and yet at the same time encompasses all the possible expressions of anything finite. In a different way - God is described by stating God is NOT just this, God is NOT just that and so on by using the aspect of negative expressions because the perceptory/sensory powers of the common man (with his negligible powers of concentration and short attention span) was not enough to comprehend god in a complete way.
In Hinduism - each of the appreciated, cherished and sought after aspects of life and aspects of this world have been consciously
potrayed to the common man by associating a god with them. Ancient Hindu sages, basically, 'customized' God to the requirements of the common man (taking into mind an average power of reasoning and logic) for each stage of his/her life - so that the man/woman can lead a proper and purposeful life .
Now - wouldn't a common Fisherman like to pray to his god by regarding him as a Fisherman rather than say some Formless, Infinite entity which a common man may have difficulties perceiving. Does not a student want to pray to the God/Goddess of Education when he is in his phase of education ?.
Does not a physician want to look upon his God based on the aspects of his work/profession ?.
Hindu saints and sages felt that this is a better way of helping the common man - who is enagaged in his studies/profession - to understand
the God, by giving the One Infinite formless Supreme being - numerous finite perceivable and understandable forms, for each
man/woman according to his/her liking, his/her intellect and sometimes even according to his/her geography of living.
So thus we have...individual (and customized, if i may use) gods/goddesses..derived as a child-class from the base-class
Brahman/Supreme God (pardon my usage of C++ concepts for analogy here) . For example
-: Lord Dakshinamoorthy or Guru Bhagavan - god of Wisdom and rationalism.
-: Goddess Saraswathi - Lord of worldly education
-: Goddess Lakshmi - Lord of material wealth.
-: Goddess Annapurani - of Food and cooking
-: Dhanvantri - Physician for 'Gods'
-: Hanuman - Lord of Brahmacharya , power and unwavering devotion.
-: Goddess Kanyakumari - The Virgin mother.
-: Lord Murugan/Karthikeyan - Warrior god who lead the devas against some asuras.
-: Lord Ganesha - Lord of obstacles and the remover of the same
-: Lord Rama - The quintessential human being who was a prince and later a king, after he faced the trials and tribulations of
life in this world as a forest wandering person, as a person who had to fight to get his wife back and etc.
Similarly one can find Lord Agni, Vayu, Yama, Lord Surya, The Moon god, the planetary gods and numerous other gods who all are but finally the individualized manifestations of the one and only Supreme Being. Also interesting are the body and hand postures shown by each of these gods/goddesses, their partners and their potrayal, their vahans (like the Garuda, Adhisesha,
Ganesha's mouse, Murugan's Peacock and etc), their implements and 'weapons'. There are deeper meaning behind why there is so rich a potrayal of each of the single god/goddess but then it gets revealed only for the people who seek to know more about them and who for, perfunctory reasons , just do not worship them and seek favours for more money/comfort/exam
results or less pain/sorrow.
The Five aspects of nature (Pancha-bhootas) namely Fire, Ether, Air, Earth and Water are represented by & worshipped as
five forms of Shiva in their respective big Shiva Temples in Tamilnadu (Tiruvannamalai, Chidambaram, Tiruvanaikkaval &
Kanchipuram) and Sri Kalahasti in Andhra Pradesh. Can life even exist or go on without any of the above 5 entities nor can this universe have been created without the combination of these entities?
There is this aspect of looking at the God through the feminine aspects of this world and life. This is visible in the worship of the god as 'Shakti' - Divine energy. The idea here is to potray the universe and the life in it as being 2 seperate entities akin to how a computer by itself is of little use with out the flow of electricity in them. So Shiva (material universe/creation) and Shakti (life force/energy) , by themselves - seperate entities combine to create and sustain this lively world and the object of worship here is the Shakti aspect of the world and life. Goddesses like Kali, Durga, Parvati & various devis are the result of this Shakti way of worshipping god.
Similarly the very interesting Ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu (dasavtharam) where the manifestations starts from the form
of a Fish, through Tortoise, Boar, dwarf person(Vamana) to Parasuram, Rama, Krishna/Balarama and the futuristic Kalki. One way of perceiving this is that the 10 progressive forms of Vishnu mirror the evolution of life in the earth from the basic forms of life to the more sophisticated animals/human beings. Again lots of hidden insights on life and similar knowledge to be obtained for the seeker.
Thus by giving us these gods and by presenting many other interesting aspects,rituals, philosophies, poems(like Yoga, Ayurveda, Astrology, Vasthu, Vedanta, Ramayana, Mahabharata & etc) - the Hindu saints and ancient sages have tried to explain - the aspects of this world and the life in it - to us laymen so that we try to understand this uncertain life, its reasons and about ways to lead a purposeful and proper life (where basically we , at the least, are not a source of pain, anguish or burden to the people and the
environment around us) and through their deeper treatises and epics - go on to provide answers for very fundamental questions like
--: (For people who decide to live in the material world to satisfy some of their leftover acceptable but moderated desires)
How to live a less burdened, proper and purposeful life in this very tempting and fleeting world ?.
--: (For people who are less interested in worldly material life) Why should i or anybody, any animal, any plant exist in
this world ?. What is the meaning of life ?.
Now, I am born (i have no control on where i am born, how i am born, to whom i am born & etc. It all seems like a lottery) - then, I grow - I eat - I experience heat,cold,pain,pleasure,comfort,harshness,joy,sorrow,laziness etc but most of the times its a bit
confusing and finally, I can die at any moment and most often i don't have control over that too and i don't have any clue as to how it happens and when it will happen (unless i want to commit suicide or if i am a convict in jail with a death sentence or unless i am haplessly diseased & beyond recovery)
--: why should a world even exist and on top of that, have life teeming in it ?
--: What is the purpose behind all this ?. Is there any other entity (like God) that is gaining something out of this world and its life?.
Metaphysical Questions - Most of the above.
< A bit like the film The Matrix - evidently inspired from the Hindu & Buddhist philosophies like Advaita Vedanta and Dwaita Vedanta>
For a person who goes through these philosophical thoughts in Hinduism and Buddhism - there is so much thrill in getting to know for the first time, the deeper insights they carry & later in learning from them and in inculcating & trying to approach these fundamental questions of life even while still taking part in the worldly life. Many of the rituals start making sense and life is a lot more meaningful. But it takes time to overcome the inertia of the upto-now-lead life where these aspects of Hinduism/spirituality didn't show up in front of us or rather we didnt care for them since we were mostly involved in the more worldly and fleeting aspects of life.
Unlike Islam and Christianity which have rigid ideas and often divide the people of their faith and other faith by terming others as pagans/kafirs & etc - Hindusim/Buddhism has a liberal, flexible and a more open interpretation of this world, life and aspects of god, where differences are accepted, religious beliefs are mostly kept in the personal domain away from the public life, every individual as
well as collective action is uniformly accounted for by the principles of karma and desires are encouraged to be satisfied but within the acceptable limits and through proper means of attainment.
I am still learning from the deep fountains of Hinduism and the above are simple ideas of Hinduism that i have been able to understand. Unfortunately all my learning/re-discovering has been due to my own curiosity and not really with support from any of my elders. I will take care to let my children and the younger generation know about these things from me rather than drift away in confusion either due to apathy or lack of knowledge among the elders.
As to why i took my time to write this much of a long 'comment' - i found hints of confusion through your question regarding the reasons for the multitude of gods in Hinduism and there was also a comment to your post from another person and I wanted to add my experiences that have given me some clarity regarding Hinduism and my appreciation of the same. I hope this comment, though unsolicited, may stay in this blog - otherwise please do the necessary.
Now if you have taken your time to read until this line - Thanks a lot for that and wishing you interesting and introspective times.
Loka Samastha Sukhino Bhavanthu.
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