This is the PowerPoint presentation we covered Wed and Friday August 22 and 24. Please note: the video and audio components will not function in this format.

1. Hindu Traditions
"It is the same India which has withstood the shocks of centuries, of
hundreds of foreign invasions, of hundreds of upheavals of manners
and customs. It is the same land, which stands firmer than any rock
in the world, with its undying vigour, indestructible life. Its life is of
the same nature as the soul, without beginning and without end,
immortal;
and we are the children of such a country."
Swami Vivekananda
Representative of Hindus
Parliament of Religions
Columbian Exposition, Chicago World Fair
11 September 1893

2. Hindu Traditions
"It is the same India which has withstood the shocks of centuries, of
hundreds of foreign invasions, of hundreds of upheavals of manners
and customs. It is the same land, which stands firmer than any rock
in the world, with its undying vigour, indestructible life. Its life is of
the same nature as the soul, without beginning and without end,
immortal; QuickTime™ and a
YUV420 codec decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
and we are the children of such a country."
Swami Vivekananda
Representative of Hindus
Parliament of Religions
Columbian Exposition, Chicago World Fair
11 September 1893

3. Hinduism 1: Concepts
• Geography and History
• Vedas
• Upanishads
• Karma
• Samsara
• Moksha
• Atman
• Brahman

4. India and
Mother Ganges
Mother Ganges
• an isolated land and also a fascinating
cultural breeding ground
• Ganga Ma: the
child is like its mother

5. Hindu:
A Name With Issues
A Name With Issues
• colonial name
• BUT: a colonial name that hides the many
traditions that make up Indian religion

6. Multiplicity
• a plurality of traditions, a family of beliefs
• like a palace that was once a two-room
cottage

7. The Sacred
• dharma? not really
• the essentials of practice:
may look different
from what is generally thought of as “religion”

8. Origins: Indian or
Indo-European?
Indo-European?
• Indian: the Harappa culture
• Indo-European: the Aryans

9. Origin:
Harappa Culture
Harappa Culturetwo
• archaeological excavations revealed
ancient towns in northwestern part of India
• a culture dating
to 2000 BCE or
before

10. Origin:
Harappa Culture
Harappa Culture
• had a written language
• examples of mother goddess, pipal tree and
seven-being image: will all be important in
later Hinduism

11. Origin:
Indo-European
Indo-European
• Sanskrit: the godslinguistic similarities with
reveals
• Greekof Latin mentioned in the early
many and
Hindu writings were the same gods who had
been worshiped by the Greeks and Romans
and there were similar gods in Iranian
literature

12. Origin:
Indo-European
Indo-European
• one theory: Aryan Invasion
• another theory: Aryan Migration

13. Origins:
This Matters . . . Why?
This Matters . . . Why?
• taps into much larger issues of Western
imperialism
• This was ours before you got here.

14. QuickTime™ and a
YUV420 codec decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

15. Origins: Worship
• all agree: essential to the early worship of
the gods were sacred chants, which the
priests knew from memory
• the priests believed these chants had power
of their own, and they passed them orally
from father to son

16. Vedic Period:
circa 2000-500 BCE
circa of the priests, in written form,
• the chants 2000-500 BCE
make up the core of the earliest Hindu
sacred literature: the Vedas
•,
• (this we know; but where it all came from?
see debate above)

17. the Vedas
• Veda comes from the Sanskrit word for
sacred lore or knowledge: related to the
English words vision and wisdom
• scholars date their composition to
between1500 and 600 BCE, but . . .

18. the Vedas
• Hindus consider them to be much more
ancient: they are revealed scripture (in
other words, “we didn’t make this up.”)
• the Vedas are shruti, revealed to rishis

19. 4 Vedic Collections
• the Rig Veda:
Rig meaning hymn,
Veda meaning knowledge =
hymn knowledge

20. 4 Vedic Collections:
• Sama Veda: chant knowledge
• Yajur Veda: ceremonial knowledge

21. 4 Vedic Collections:
• Atharva Veda:
“knowledge from the teacher Atharva”
and a little different . . .
• Helpful when playing the Lottery

22. 4 Divisions of Vedic Collections
• Samhitas: hymns-earliest parts
• Brahmanas: detailed ceremonial rules, added later

23. 4 Divisions of Vedic Collections
• Aranyakas: “forest books”
additions to make rituals nonliteral and symbolic
• Upanishads: “sitting near the teacher”
philosophical works-most recent, composed
around 600 BCE

24. For example . . .
• the Rig Veda has 1028 Samhitas
• See? Easy!

25. Sacred but Unfamiliar
• the Vedas are considered the most sacred
text by most educated Hindus
• . . . even though they are not books kept in
the home, most Hindus would not recognize
their contents, and the majority of the texts
are only known to specialists and scholars

26. Sacred Sound
• the Vedas instead are understood to be
texts that represent eternal sound, eternal
words
• these sacred sounds are believed to have
been passed down from generation to
generation without change

27. Sacred and Restricted
• want to be a true Hindu? venerate the
Vedas
• Brahmins only

28. Sacred and Debated
• several philosophical schools have debated
the origins of the Vedas, but all agree the
Vedas are the most sacred works in
Hinduism

29. Sacred.
• some parts of the Vedic collections have
been recited for at least 2000 years without
significant change: amazing.

30. Early Vedic Religion
(1500-500 BCE)
(1500-500 BCE)
• the religion of the Vedas seems to have
consisted of the worship of mainly male
gods
• many of the gods of the early Vedic period
showed European influence

31. Sounds Familiar...
• Agni, Hindu god of fire= Latin
word for fire, ignis
• Soma= god of the moon and “expanded
consciousness” brought on by ritual drink

32. old-fashioned gods
• the gods most Hindus recognize today
(Sri, Vishnu) are rarely mentioned in early Vedic
hymns (samhitas)
• Indus, Rudra, Surya, and Ushas were gods
(and one goddess) who apparently didn’t last
in popularity

33. Rig Veda: Most Important Veda
• composed circa 1000 BCE
• hymns in the Rig Veda contain accounts of
the creation of the universe

34. • is still important today, and has been for
three thousand years
• the universe arose from the division and
cosmic sacrifice of a primeval superperson

35. Divided Super Person:
Divided People
Divided People
• contains within it the first explicit reference
to the varnas, or classes of Hindu society
• this understanding of creation set in place the
religious and social countenance of the Hindu
tradition

36. divided body:
divided classes
divided classes
“From his mouth came the priestly class
from his arms, the rulers.
The producers came from his legs;
from his feet came the servant class.”

37. The Upanishads
and the Axis Age
and the Axis Age
• ritual sacrifice gives way to philosophical inquiry
• around 500 BCE, Indian civilization began to
turn a different direction-this is an Axis Age

38. something must be in
the water . . .
• this was a period of intellectual ferment and
questioning
• it was the time of Guatama Buddha, the Jaina
prophet Mahavira, Confucius, the major
Hebrew prophets, and early Greek
philosophers,

39. questioning
• after many centuries, there began to be
rejection and reformulation of Vedic beliefs and
practices
• may have been connected with resentment
of the priestly class . . .

40. quest
• some thinkers began to question the belief in
many gods and began to search for a single
divine reality

41. and not just the
Brahmins, either!
• the Upanishads record the evidence of this
time of intellectual ferment and spiritual
disciplines-often in the form of conversations
• plus-in the Upanishads, these religious quests
were not just for the hereditary priestly class
(unlike earlier Vedic material), but anyone with
the necessary experience can be a spiritual
master

42. Upanishads:
Karma and Samsara
Karma and Samsara
• karma and samsara are two central concepts of
Hinduism, and they appear for the first time in
the Upanishads

43. karma
• literally, “action”
• basically, “What comes around, goes around.”

44. karma: it is what it is
• karma does not work because it is the will of
God or Brahman, but simply because it is an
essential part of nature
• some teachers say: karma
is neither intrinsically bad
or good . . . just like rain

45. karma implies samsara
• samsara: a continuing cycle of death and
rebirth or reincarnation
• the wheel of life: a circle of constant rebirth
in a world full of change as well as struggle
and suffering

46. samsara
• Western thought: “You only live once.”
• Hindu thought: an individual is constantly
being reborn

47. stop the merry-go-round, please
• samsara (rebirth) might seem attractive at first,
because our life is so short
• eventually, we might
want to stop the wheel

48. moksha: freedom
• from root word that means “to be released:”
karma implies samsara, and moksha releases
one from samsara
• in the Upanishads moksha is the ultimate
human goal

49. moksha: freedom from
• freedom from the limitations of individuality
(VERY non-Western thought)
• freedom from grants perspective, kindness,
release from egotism, and ultimately wisdom
that releases the individual

50. moksha: liberation
• in moksha, the pain of rebirth ends and the
limits of individuality are overcome
• this experiential wisdom allows the individual
to become a-mrta: immortal, “without
death”

51. Higher Knowledge
• the Upanishads frequently explore the quest for
a unifying truth
• this is considered “higher knowledge,” which
can only be evoked, not expressed in words
(“lower knowledge”)

52. the quest for
enlightenment
• “What is it that, being known, all else becomes known?”
- Mundaka Upanishad 1.1.3
• this is what it is: experiential knowledge of
the relationship between Atman and
Brahman (and it’s not connected with Vedic
or book learnin’)

53. Atman
• some translate “Atman” as “soul” or “self”
• but the notion of Atman is not an exact
corollary to the notion of a soul . . . perhaps
a better translation might be “deepest self”

54. What am I?
• Hinduism does have the concept of an
individual soul (jiva) that confers uniqueness and
personality
• but at the deepest level, Hinduism asks:
Isn’t there more to me than this?

55. I am god.
• the Upanishads teach that at the deepest reality
of “what I am” is a divine reality, a divine spirit
everything shares
• so, the Upanishads teach that it is ok to say
“I am god,” because at its deepest level, the
reality is that everything is god.

56. and what is god?
Brahman.
• Brahman cannot be described any more than
infinity can be contained
• it pervades and yet transcends not only
human thought but the universe itself

57. that’s helpful.
• the word is Sanskrit and comes from a stem
meaning “to be great”
• “Brahman” originally stood for the cosmic
power present in the Vedic sacrifices and chants
which were controlled by the priests;
Upanishads expanded this concept

58. it’s hard to explain . . .
• Brahman as the frame of
the universe
• it can be experienced in time and space, but
those who do experience it say it is beyond
time and space

59. hints.
• what is it to know Brahman? The Upanishads
insist it cannot be fully put into words, but do
give hints . . .
• Brahman is the lived experience that all
things are in some way holy because they
come from the same sacred source

60. hints.
• Brahman is the lived experience that all things
are one
• this experience of Brahman
seems to defy common sense-
the world is divided . . . or is
it?

61. -According to the Upanishads, Brahman is
-“the sun, the moon and the stars.
-He is the fire, the waters, and the wind.”
-Brahman is “the God who appears in forms infinite.”
-- Shvetasvatara Upanishad

62. and now:
Atman and Brahman
Brahman
• many passages of the Upanishads discuss the
relationship between Atman and Brahman
• most famous is found in the Chandogya
Upanishad

63. You Are That.
• You= Atman; That=Brahman
• the Upanishads insist that Brahman is
something that can be known, not simply
believed in

64. You Are That.
(you’d think that would settle it)
(you’d think that would settle it)
• the statement became the source of great
philosophical debate for thousands of years
• the Upanishads represent the beginning of
Hindu philosophical thought-its best, in the
opinion of some

65. But how?
• the Upanishads are devoted to promoting an
insight into ultimate oneness
• how to achieve that insight or live it out in
the everyday world? they don’t have much
to say . . . it will be later Hindu
commentators and practitioners who will
develop those instructions