"What Hinduism Means to Me" 1999 by Atanu Dey.

ABSTRACT: Due to the rich complexity of its tradition and the intellectual
depth of its philosophical basis, Hinduism is hard to define. Everyone who
has studied it has his or her own view about it. It is perhaps best to leave
it undefined since any attempt to contain it will not quite succeed. In the
end, if you look into it, you see your own understanding reflected in it as
in a perfect mirror. Ultimately, the highest understanding of the universe
is that there is no distinction between the reflection, the mirror and the
person. All distinctions are falsely imagined. Hinduism as seen from the
Vedantic position helps in that understanding.

The following is motivated by a need for me to understand what Hinduism is
from my point of view. It is not necessarily true for all times and for all
people. But that is entirely in keeping with the subject since Hinduism is
flexible and non-dogmatic.

All claims made about Hinduism are true.
In a sense, all claims made about Hinduism are true. Hinduism is a mix of
social codes, cultural trappings, philosophical notions, superstitions,
rituals and other such nonsense. Unlike the Abrahamic religions, it does not
have a book in which the basic dogma is outlined. This is its greatest
strength as a living, evolving system and also its greatest weakness in that
the superficially informed regularly miss the essential basics and get
entangled in the baggage.

To begin with, the word "Hinduism" has an interesting origin. It derives
from the name of the river Sindhu. It denotes the religious system that
existed in India before the advent of the other more recent religions such
as Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Sanatan Dharma is a more appropriate
name since it essentially summarizes what the Vedanta teaches. Philosophia
Perenis or the Eternal Law. Or it can be called Vedanta - the culmination of
the Vedas. The philosophical underpinning of the ancient religion is
contained in the Vedas.

The philosophical underpinning of the ancient religion is contained in the
Vedas and it is there that one finds the essential core of Hinduism around
which the superstructure of the popular religion has flourished. Hinduism,
like all other institutions which are old, whether cultural, political,
social or educational, has through time accumulated immense baggage much of
it unwholesome and emminently worth discarding. Fortunately, not being bound
by any single book, authority or dogma, it is a simple matter of rejecting
whatever does not appeal to one or what is seen to be contrary to an
intellectual or emotional stance.

Vedanta is an experimental and empirical system of thought.
This, then, is the most important point that one needs to understand about
Vedanta. That it is an experimental and empirical system of thought and
ultimately what you get out of it depends entirely upon you and what stage
of intellectual evolution you are presently in. Your individual condition
determines how you will find the answers that you seek and there is no
central authority dictating what you should do to find the answers. You pick
and choose what suits you best and go on from there to 'work diligently for
your salvation,' as the Buddha said on his death-bed. You are the boss, for
better or for worse. And if you cannot handle the responsibility of being
the master of your own destiny, if you cannot but be blind slaves to some
dead and atrophied dogma, then it is your destiny, your karma, that you will
wander in ignorance till you reach that state in your evolution where you
can be your own guide. Vedanta is a working philosophy and is practical in
the sense that *you* have to find out for yourself what works for you and to
use it. If you cannot use something, discard it and there is no penalty.

The notion of that which is inherent, true, and ultimately at the core of
your being is expressed by the term "dharma" in Indian philosophical
thought. It can be roughly traslated as 'law'. But this is not a law that is
imposed from without. It is something that you have to find out for
yourself. Others can at best be guides and you cannot piggy-back on others
to reach an understanding of truth. Most of all, don't cling, don't grasp.
For there is nothing to cling to, nothing needs to be grasped for
comprehension of truth.

Work diligently for your salvation.

Therefore dharma is something that you find within and not in some book. If
your philosophy does not teach wisdom, compassion, and empathy, it is
useless and you are better off without it. If it does not teach you to be
compassionate, it is worthless as a vehicle for crossing the stream. It will
sink due to its weight and the many holes that it has.

Indeed, even as a worthy vehicle, it is also of limited use. Once you reach
the other shore, you have to discard it too. For it is a foolish traveler
who insists upon dragging a boat across dry land after having crossed a
stream in it. All philosophical systems are just training wheels and the
sooner you find that you can discard them, the better you are likely to
travel.

So therefore, it is just a vehicle, a tool with limited use. And once the
purpose is served, it should be left behind. But, then, what is the purpose?

Self-actualization, self-realization. What the heck does that mean?

Vedanta is a working philosophy.
To understand what the self is: that's all. Everything that we do has as its
ultimate purpose an exploration of the self. Who we are and what is our
nature is the ultimate understanding towards which we are striving every
hour of our existence whatever we are doing. All the other steps are just
intermediate and a means to reach the end which the Buddha called
enlightenment or nirvana or moksha or liberation or whatever.

Everything that we do, it is all an intermediate step. We learn the
alphabet, so that we can comprehend words, so that we can read sentences, so
that we can communicate ideas, so that we can build and maintain stable
human societies, so that we can have the time to devote to other pursuits
which are more enjoyable than struggling for an existence, so that we can be
comfortable, so that we can be happy, so that ...

Just like I started off with 'learning the alphabet' and followed a chain of
links to an intermediate goal of being 'happy,' so also any activity is the
beginning of an unending chain of intermediates. Whether it is going to
school, falling in love, mowing the lawn or playing the stock market: it is
all a means and not an end.

The methods of science are eminently suited to helping us reach across all
the intermediate steps that we need to go through till we come to the state
where we sit face to face with that ultimate mystery which is oneself.
Science is the filter, the sieve, through which we need to send the stream
of all our philosophical musings so that we can collect the gold that we are
panning for. The finer the sieve, that is, the more advanced the science,
the better the collection of fine gold particles. But even with a very broad
and not necessarily deep understanding of nature given by ordinary science,
some nuggets of truth are large enough to be caught without difficulty.

Dharma is something that you find within.

Such as the truth of ceaseless change and impermanence. It just appears to
be that somethings are permanent while in truth they are not. Mountains wash
down into the sea, continents drift, solar systems form, stars become
supernova, the local cluster moves closer to Virgo, atoms decay, even
protons decay although after a few gazillion trillion years. Indeed, if it
were not for the change there would be no one to inquire into the nature of
the self at all. The universe, if changeless, would be sterile if it existed
at all. In fact, if something is immutable, can it be said to exist at all?
It appears to me that if it exists, it should change and change implies
coming into existence and therefore an end to existence. Therefore, purely
as an aside, God cannot exist since existence implies change and death and
that is not what God is supposed to do.

Another very large nugget of truth uncovered by science is that the universe
appears to be a unity. It is made up of a basic set of building blocks and
very ingenious combinations of these is sufficient to create everything from
bacteria to superclusters and everything in between. So depending upon what
you consider the basic blocks, it is all very simple. The 100-odd elements
in the periodic table, or more fundamentally, the fewer particles that go to
make them up, or even fewer quarks and on to super strings, ultimately the
book of the universe is written in a language with a limited alphabet.

So therefore, everything under the sun (and beyond, for that matter) is made
up of the same stuff. Even life. And moreover, life itself pretty much
restricts itself to a simple 4-letter code to provide for an infinite
possibility of living forms. I will quickly pass over the obvious and come
to the obvious conclusion that all - you, the trees, the slime-mould, the
stars - is pretty much made up of the same stuff and therefore share a
common origin and ultimately the same fate.

The duality of you and not-you is an illusion.
That kernel of truth is expressed succinctly in the terse Vedic sentence
"Tat tvam asi" - That thou art. You are that - that is you. There is no
distinction between you and the not-you. It is just 'maya' or illusion which
you entertain in your ignorance that says that you are distinct from the
universe that you see around you. In fact, it was not too many years ago
that you were not there at all and it will not be too many years before you
will return to the undifferentiated universe to be incorporated in other
'things' of the universe out there.

So, this is essentially the core of Vedanta. YOU ARE THAT. There is no
'other.' The duality of you and not-you is an illusion. Nonduality is the
basic nature of the universe. The reality is that what exists within you,
exists within everything. Including God, if you are inclined to believe in
one. Therefore, if one posits the existence of a god, then that god has to
be within one as well and the god-within and the god-without have to be
identical. The statement "Aham Bramhosmi" expresses that notion exactly: I
am the God.

Vedanta describes the nature of reality to be Sat-chit-ananda:

sat - existence
chit - consciousness
ananda - peace or bliss
It insists that what we perceive through our senses is only appearance and
therefore not the essential nature of the thing perceived. You take your
ordinary matter, magnify it and it looks bumpy and further magnify it and it
looks like atoms with lots of space in it and then you see some fundamental
particle and find that it is a bundle of energy and form and no content.
Chinese boxes within boxes and nothing at all inside. All packaging and no
content. Something like American TV. It is all emptiness and form. Like the
message in the Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya Sutra says: "Form is emptiness;
emptiness is also form."

Don't confuse the word for the thing.
The Vedanta teaches that beyond the reality that we perceive is the ultimate
reality which it calls the Bramhan. Now it must be understood that the word
'Bramhan' is just a label and not the thing that it stands for. Since the
ultimate reality beyond the phenomenal reality we perceive is beyond all
attributes, the name itself is just a symbol. Don't confuse the word for the
thing. Attaching too much meaning to words has the unfortunate consequence
of wanting to attack people who are disrespectful of your sacred words. OK,
so the label Bramhan is used for that which exists. So therefore, Bramhan
does not exist but is existence itself; it is not conscious, but is
consciousness itself. And the manifestation of Bramhan within a human is
called the Atman. The former the god transcendent and the latter the god
immanent.

At the highest philosophic level, Vedanta is Atheistic. There is no God,
unlike the case in most other religions. There is only the impersonal
Bramhan which has an infinite set of attributes, and these attributes are
coincidental with the attributes of the natural universe, including the
various stages of human development. Some of these attributes are
symbolically represented by gods and goddesses which can then be worshipped
by individuals, depending upon their needs and state of development. These
gods and godesses are symbols and therefore only of limited utility. They
are hooks that you can hang your concepts on. No one with any degree of
intellectual sophistication really believes that there are gods and
goddesses.

Symbolism is comprehensible to intellectually sophisticated people.

Since they are symbols, they are 'used' and once they have served their
purpose, they are discarded. That is why after any festival, the idols are
taken to the river and ritually given back to the earth which was used to
make them. Notice how an earthen pot with some leaves would serve the
purpose of symbolizing the god worshiped. These symbols are sacred in as
much as the ideas they represent are sacred. Far more important, Hinduism
has the flexibility to permit individuals, as they develop intellectually,
to discard those symbols that have outlived their utility.

Symbolism is comprehensible to intellectually sophisticated people. The
theologically unsophisticated can, nonetheless, benefit from the wisdom of
Vedanta by actually beleiving in the millions of gods and goddesses of
Hinduism. Vedanta also has a monistic interpretaion, and it this philosophy
which is the basis of the ancient religion of India from which all the later
ones evolved. Buddhism is another evolutionary step which has refined some
bits of the Vedantic philosophy and spread it all over the world. But that
is entirely another kettle of fish.

Truth alone prevails.
The search for truth and the meaning of existence is a journey that one
embarks upon after having conquered lesser battles of survival. The world
has yet to evolve to that stage. But when it does, as it surely will, it
will have the great fortune to turn to Indian thought to guide it to its
destiny. What is now just a stream of evolved people discovering the
priceless gem of Indian thought will then be the flood that will wash away
the debris of human battles on this lesser plain. Afterall, "Satyameva
jayate" - Truth Alone Prevails!



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