Hinduism Characteristics Essay

The following nine facts, though non exhaustive, offer a simple summary of Hindu uncannyity or ab step forward Hinduism.1 Hindus guess in a atomic number 53, altogether-pervasive Supreme being who is both immanent and transcendent, both Creator and Unmanifest Reality. 2 Hindus rec all told in the divinity of the quaternary Vedas, the existences most ancient scripture, and worship the Agamas as as revealed. These primordial hymns be divinity fudges news and the bedrock of Sanatana Dharma, the eternal religion. 3 Hindus believe that the universe undergoes endless cycles of creation, de outli rattling and dissolution. 4 Hindus believe in karma, the legal philosophy of cause and effect by which for each unity individual creates his own destiny by his thoughts, words and deeds. 5 Hindus believe that the soul reincarnates, evolving finished many births until all karmas have been resolved, and moksha, expelling from the cycle of rebirth, is attained. Not a single soul wil l be deprived of this destiny.6 Hindus believe that divine beings exist in undetected worlds and that temple worship, rituals, sacraments and personal piouss create a communion with these devas (divine beings) and perfection. 7 Hindus believe that an enlightened master, or satguru, is essential to know the Transcendent sheer(a), as atomic number 18 personal discipline, good conduct, purification, pilgrimage, self-inquiry, meditation and surrender in God. 8 Hindus believe that all breeding is sacred, to be loved and revered, and on that pointfore practice ahimsa, noninjury, in thought, word and deed. 9 Hindus believe that no religion teaches the only counselling to salvation above all former(a)s, and that all genuine paths atomic number 18 facets of Gods Light, deserving tolerance and understanding.GOD AND LORDS IN HINDUISMGod is a one being, yet we understand Him in lead perfections Absolute Reality, Pure Consciousness and Primal Soul. As Absolute Reality, God is unmanifes t, still and transcendent, the Self God, timeless, formless and spaceless. As Pure Consciousness, God is the manifest primitive substance, pure divine love and light flowing through and through all form, existing anywhere in time and space as place intelligence and power. God is all and in all, nifty beyond our conception, a sacred mystery that shadow be know in moderate communion.Hindus believe in one Supreme Being. In the Hindu pantheon there be said to be three hundred and thirty-three million Lords(divine beings). The plurality of Lords be perceived as divine creations of that one Being. So, Hinduism has one supreme God, just now it has an extensive hierarchy of Lords. Hinduism views globe as undisturbed of three worlds. The First homo is the physical universe the Second World is the subtle astral or mental plane of existence in which the devas, angels and spirits live and the Third World is the spiritual universe of the Mahadevas, great shining beings, our Hindu Lords. Hinduism is the harmonious working together of these three worlds.Hinduism is a family of four main denominations Saivism, Shaktism, Vaishnavism, Smartism under a divine hierarchy of Mahadevas. These keen beings have evolved through eons of time and be able to help valet de chambre without themselves having to live in a physical clay. These great Mahadevas, with their multitudes of angelic devas, live and work constantly and tirelessly for the people of our religion, protecting and guiding them, hatchway new doors and closing unused ones.TEMPLE WORSHIP IN HINDUISMIt is in the Hindu temple that the three worlds meet and devotees invoke the Lords of our religion. The temple is make as a palace in which these Lords live. It is the home of the God and Lords, a sacred place unlike both other place on the commonwealth. The Hindu must associate himself with these divine beings in a very sensitive way when he approaches the temple. Though the devotee rargonly has the psych ic vision of the deity, he is aware of the Gods divine presence. As he approaches the sanctum sanctorum, the Hindu is fully aware that an intelligent being, great and to a greater extent evolved than himself, is there. This Lord is intently aware of him, safeguarding him, fully knowing his inward thought, fully capable of coping with any situation the devotee may mentally lay at his Holy Feet. It is important that we approach the Deity in this way conscious and confident that our needs are known in the inner spiritual worlds.The physical re marchation of the God, be it a stone or metal image other sacred form, merely marks the place that the Lord will manifest in or hover over in his etheric remains. It can be conceived as an overture to receive the divine rays of the Lord or as the material body in or through which the Lord manifests in this First World. When we fartheste puja, a religious ritual, we are attracting the attention of the devas and Mahadevas in the inner wor lds.That is the blueprint of a puja it is a form of communication. To enhance this communication we establish an communion table in the temple or in the home. This becomes charged or magnetise through our devotional thoughts and feelings which radiate out and affect the surrounding environment. You can feel the presence of these divine beings, and this radiation from them is known as shakti. It is a communication more real than the communication of language that you experience each day.Finally, it must be clearly understood that God and the Lords are not a psychological product of the Hindu religious mind. They are far older than the universe and are the fountainheads of its galactic energies, shining stars and sunlit planets. They are loving overseers and custodians of the cosmos, country and mankind. The Hindu cosmological terrain envelopes all of humanity.HINDU sanctum sanctorum BOOKThe Veda is the Hindu holy book. The four books of the VedasRig, Yajur, Sama and Atharvainclud e over 100,000 verses. The association imparted by the Vedas ranges from realityy devotion to high philosophy. Their words and wisdom circulate Hindu thought, ritual and meditation.The Vedas are the ultimate scriptural authority for Hindus. Their oldest portions are said by some to date subscribe as far as 6,000 bce, orally transmitted for most of history and written mass in Sanskrit in the last few millennia, making them the worlds longest and most ancient scripture. The Vedas open a rare window into ancient Indian society, proclaiming looks sacredness and the way to oneness with God.For much(prenominal) centuries unto today, the Vedas have remained the sustaining force and authoritative doctrine, guiding followers in shipway of worship, duty and enlightenment. The Vedas are the meditative and philosophic focus for millions of monks and a one thousand million seekers. Their stanzas are chanted from reminiscence by priests and laymen daily as sacrament of the Eucharist in temple worship and domestic help ritual. All Hindus wholeheartedly require the Vedas, yet each draws selectively, interprets freely and amplifies abundantly. Over time, this tolerant allegiance has twist the varied tapestry of Indian Hindu Dharma. Each of the four Vedas has four sections Samhitas (hymn collections), Brahmanas (priestly manuals), Aranyakas (forest treatises) and Upanishads (enlightened discourses).The Samhitas and Brahmanas affirm that God is immanent and transcendent and prescribe ritual worship, mantra and devotional hymns to establish communication with the spiritual worlds. The hymns are invocations to the One Divine and to the Divinities of nature, such as the Sun, the Rain, the Wind, the Fire and the Dawn as well as prayers for matrimony, progeny, prosperity, concord, protection, domestic rites and more. The Aranyakas and Upanishads outline the souls evolutionary journey, provide yogic philosophical training and propound realization of mans oneness with Go d as the destiny of all souls. Today, the Vedas are published in Sanskrit, English, French, German and other languages. But it is the popular, metaphysical Upanishads that have been most amply and ably translated.KARMA AND REINCARNATION IN HINDUISMKarmaKarma literally means deed or act, but more broadly describes the principle of cause and effect. Simply stated, karma is the law of implement and re save which governs consciousness. In physics-the study of energy and matter-Sir Isaac Newton postulated that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Push against a wall. Its material is molecularly push button back with a force exactly equal to yours. In metaphysics, karma is the law that states that every mental, emotional and physical act, no matter how insignificant, is projected out into the psychic mind substance and eventually returns to the individual with equal impact.The akashic memory in our higher chakras faithfully records the souls impressions during its series of worldly lives, and in the astral/mental worlds in-between earth existences. Ancient yogis, in psychically studying the time line of cause/effect, assigned three categories to karma. The first is sanchita, the sum total of past karma yet to be resolved. The wink category is prarabdha, that portion of sanchita karma being experienced in the present life. Kriyamana, the tercet type, is karma you are presently creating. However, it must be understood that your past ostracise karma can be altered into a smoother, easier state through the loving, heart-chakra nature, through dharma and sadhana. That is the key of karmic wisdom. Live religiously well and you will create ordained karma for the future and soften negative karma of the past.Truths and Myths About KarmaKarma operates not only individually, but also in ever-enlarging circles of group karma where we participate in the sum karma of quintuple souls. This includes family, community, nation, race and religion, even pl anetary group karma. So if we, individually or collectively, unconditionally love and give, we will be loved and given to. The individuals or groups who act soulfully or maliciously toward us are the fomite of our own karmic creation. The people who manifest your karma are also living through past karma and simultaneously creating future karma. For example, if their karmic pattern did not include miserliness, they would not be involved in your karma of selfishness. Another person may let out some generosity toward you, fulfilling the gifting karma of your past experience. Imagine how intricately interconnected all the cycles of karma are for our planets life forms.ReincarnationThe soul functions with pure(a) continuity in its astral/mental bodies. It is with these sensitive vehicles that we experience ambitiousness or astral worlds during sleep every night. The astral world is equally as solid and beautiful, as varied and comprehensive as the earth dimension-if not much more so. Spiritual growth, psychic development, guidance in matters of governance and commerce, artistic cultivation, inventions and discoveries of medicine, science and technology all continue by astral people who are in-between earthly lives. Many of the Veda hymns compress the assistance of devas advanced astral or mental people. Yet, also in the grey, lower regions of this vast, invisible dimension exist astral people whose present pursuits are base, selfish, even sadistic. Where the person goes in the astral plane at sleep or death is dependent upon his earthly pursuits and the quality of his mind.Because certain(p) root karmas can only be resolved in earth consciousness and because the souls initial realizations of Absolute Reality are only achieved in a physical body, our soul joyously enters other biological body. At the effective time, it is reborn into a flesh body that will best fulfill its karmic pattern. In this process, the current astral body-which is a duplicate of the la st physical form-is sluffed off as a dead shell that in due course disintegrates, and a new astral body develops as the new physical body grows.This entering into some other body is called reincarnation re-occupying the flesh. During our thousands of earth lives, a remarkable variety of life patterns are experienced. We exist as male and female, often switching back and forth from life to life as the nature becomes more sympathetic into a person exhibiting both feminine nurturing and masculine intrepidness. We come to earth as princesses and presidents, as paupers and pirates, as tribals and scientists, as murderers and healers, as atheists and, ultimately, God-Realized sages. We take bodies of every race and live the many religions, faiths and philosophies as the soul gains more noesis and evolutionary experience.Therefore, the Hindu knows that the belief in a single life on earth, followed by eternal joy or pain is dead wrong and causes great anxiety, confusion and fear. Hind us know that all souls reincarnate, take one body and then another, evolving through experience over long periods of time. give care the caterpillars metamorphosis into the butterfly, death doesnt end our existence but frees us to pursue an even greater development.DharmaDharma yields Heavens honor and Earths wealth. What is there then that is more reproductive for a man? There is nothing more rewarding than dharma, nor anything more ruinous than its neglect.When God created the universe, He endowed it with order, with the laws to govern creation. Dharma is Gods divine law prevailing on every level of existence, from the sustaining cosmic order to religious and moral laws which bind us in congruity with that order. Related to the soul, dharma is the mode of conduct most conducive to spiritual advancement, the right and righteous path. It is piety and ethical practice, duty and ob ligation. When we follow dharma, we are in conformity with the Truth that inheres and instructs the u niverse, and we naturally abide in familiarity to God. Adharma is opposition to divine law. Dharma is to the individual what its normal development is to a seedthe orderly fulfillment of an inherent nature and destiny.SIGNIFICANCE OF HINDUISMHinduism is unique among the worlds religions. I boldly proclaim it the oldest religion in the world. To amaze with, it is mankinds oldest spiritual declaration, the very fountainhead of faith on the planet. Hinduisms venerable age has seasoned it to maturity. It is the only religion, to my knowledge, which is not founded in a single historic event or prophet, but which itself issuing recorded history.Hinduism has been called the cradle of spirituality, and the mother of all religions, partially because it has influenced virtually every major religion and partly because it can absorb all other religions, honor and embraces their scriptures, their saints, and their philosophy. This is possible because Hinduism looks compassionately on all genu ine spiritual effort and knows unmistakably that all souls are evolving toward union with the Divine, and all are destined, without exception, to achieve spiritual enlightenment and liberation in this or a future life. Please visit, if you wish to seek further