In the last blog we saw the beginnings of Hinduism in the
Vedic corpus, which is really the Brahminical Hinduism. Besides the four Vedas,
the last to be included in the corpus was Upanishads, called Vedanta, meaning Ved-anta, end of Vedas. You will be
surprised to know that more than the Vedas it is from these Upanishads that we
can trace the beginnings of today’s practicing Hinduism. This is also the
Vedanta philosophy that Swami Vivekananda took to the West and gave a thrilling
address in the Parliament of World Religions in September 1893 at Chicago, USA.
So what is this Upanishads? How did that come about? What are
its main tenets? We will see these shortly. We learnt that the Brahmins had kept
for themselves the top notch in the caste system they invented, even above the
warrior kings. The reason being they had the monopoly of the Vedic mantras and
rites, and conducted the sacrifices to please their gods. Now, the kshtryas resented this and some of the
princes retired to the forests to meditate and fathom what could be the right
religion for them to follow. They were not happy with the huge sacrifices of
the animals or the chanting of Vedas, which gave the Brahmins the monopoly over
the religion, and the consequent power over the people.
We know that Prince Siddhartha, getting restless and unhappy
over the existing state of affairs, gave up his married and worldly life and
became Buddha after his enlightenment. Many others, after a lot of meditation
and thinking came to certain conclusions and collectively these are known as
Upanishads. Some fifteen or so of these Upanishads have survived and a good
reading of these will give us an understanding of it. We need to remember that
these are philosophical musings of a disgruntled princes and aristocrats to
overcome the monopoly of Brahmins in the religion. Philosophy is basically
man-made.
Upanishads’ concept of god is that it is the Supreme Self or Paramatma, the first principle. It is an
impersonal one. It is called Brahman,
and exists as an undifferentiated homogeneous mass of consciousness. It is
divine but not a personal deity. The Self or atman is the individual selves or souls. These souls, when they
apprehend the Brahman and merge with it, achieve mukti, the final liberation from life. This involves the
obliteration of all distinction as individuals. It is a merging of the
individuals in the Paramatma.
Thereafter pure oneness alone remains. It is avidhya or ignorance, maya
or illusion that makes the individual souls, the atmans to think that they are separate.
Herein lies the first difference from Christianity.
Christians know their God as a personal God, who interacts with them and with the
human history. The reality of the world, and human beings and all other
objectives are affirmed because these are reality and created by God. Even
after redemption and salvation, human beings never merge with the Creator God;
they remain as the created beings separate from the Creator God.
Because there is no distinction between Brahman the Supreme
Self and the atman the Self of the
beings, including man, Upanishads proclaim that self or atman is god. The famous statement is “Thou art that,” meaning ‘you
are that,’ ‘that’ representing Brahman or Paramatman.
The equation is Brahman=Atman. The
human beings are no different from the divine which pervades the whole world.
The world itself is seen as the extension of Brahman and not a reality. Brahman
is the only reality that is all-pervading, the source of everything into which
everything in the final act will merge. This is the understanding of religion
and existence after death by Hindus even today.
Another difference is quickly seen here with Christianity.
Christians never consider themselves as gods. They are the created beings,
created and separate from the Creator, God. God told Moses to go and tell the
Israel people under slavery in Egypt, that His name is “I AM that I AM” and
that “I AM” has sent Moses to them to deliver them from slavery.[1]
It was never ‘you are that,’ or ‘you are god,’ but I AM, a positive affirmative
proclamation of deity of God. This difference between the Creator God and the
created beings, animate or inanimate, is not there in Hinduism. That is why we
will notice even today Hindus can accept any one as god, and will build you a
temple and worship you if you have done something good for the community.
The distinction that Brahman is separate and human beings or
the world is separate from Brahman is the work of maya (illusion) or avidhya
(ignorance). Because of this ignorance, human beings think the world is real
and get involved in it and become enmeshed in samsara (life in general). They marry, give birth to children,
raise them up and are so attached to them, all because of maya. They live and die and again and again take birth and live and
enter into the never ending cycle of birth and death or the samsara. On achieving true knowledge
that the Self is the Brahman, this ignorance ceases and the Self or Atman escapes from samsara, the world cycle of repeated birth and death, and gets
absorbed in Brahman, shining as pure and effulgent as Brahman.
Well, this in nutshell
is the core of Upanishads. Because the world and its activities were considered
as not real but imaginary, the best of Hindu minds went into contemplative mode
rather than take interest in life and improve it. Objectivity was lost and
creativity got lost as well. We had no industrial revolution or great Nobel Prize
winners in our country mainly because science, physics, biology were all
neglected as being not relevant and result of maya.
This concept of samsara,
or repeated cycle of birth and death, got enmeshed with the caste system. It
became rather a tool in the hands of the clever Brahmins, who not only embraced
and incorporated Upanishad teachings within Vedic corpus, but also legitimized
caste system with this concept of samsara.
The idea of karma theory started to
develop. The soul or atman took
repeated births because of its deeds or karma.
The accumulated karma of previous births led a person to be born in a
particular caste. If the bad deeds or bad karma
were more, then the person was born in a low caste or even out of the caste or
even out of humankind, as an insect or a dog or a crow. If the good karma outweighed the bad karma, then he was born in the higher
hierarchy of caste, even as a Brahmin. Thus a person with leprosy or any such
disease or blindness or deafness was attributed to his bad karma from the precious births and lives. We see this trend even
today.
What gave the karma theory more teeth as the Kshtrya philosophers agonized over the
injustices happening in the world? How come bad things happen to good people in
this world? What could be the reason why one person is born as a leper or blind
or lame of deaf? They reasoned it out that it must be because of the person’s
previous karma or bad deeds. This
crunched the issue. A man-made reasoning, a finding that was possible with the
tiny brain that we all have within our cranium, created such a horrible system,
where people for centuries remained in a backward and low status thinking that
they are suffering so in this life, because of their bad karmas of previous lives. So instead of improving his life, he was
despondent that his fate or karma was
the reason for his state and that it can never be improved. Fatalism and
pessimism corroded the confidence of the population. It sucked the life blood
out of India and her people suffered for millennia under the yolk of caste
system and karma theory. It still continues in the rural areas in India.
On the contrary, in Christianity we see life as a gift from
God, whatever may be the difficulties, we have the confidence that we have a
prayer-answering God who knows what we go through and is concerned about our
welfare. That is because Christ came and lived as a man in this world. The goal
of religion in Christianity is not escape from the world; body is not a prison
for the soul; we believe in a life after death, a bodily resurrection and a
life lived in the glorious presence of God and Christ. Jesus died, but rose on
the third day, giving us a hope that we will do so also.
There is only one life and that is this life which we are
living. The destiny as to where we end up after death, whether in heaven with
God and Christ eternally or in hell with Satan and his minions eternally, will
be decided on what we do with this life. That is why Christ said “Repent and
return for the kingdom of God is near.” The emphasis is not on doing good karma to earn brownie points but to repent of the wrongs done and accept
Jesus Christ as God and Savior, who is able to forgive our sins and grant us
the Holy Spirit, who is able to keep us on the path of righteousness.
We do good deeds not to earn salvation, but because we have
already received salvation in Christ. Out of that gratitude and love for others
which is the flow of love from Christ and God that we warn others to repent and
accept Christ when there is still time. It is not arrogance that makes us urge
others to accept Christ as the only true God, but because we know the dire
consequences of someone who refuses so great a salvation. Will you listen my friend and act today and save
your soul? God guide you to decide on this matter of eternal consequence, so that
you don’t regret later.
God bless you and keep you.
Amen.
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