Thoughts on Hinduism

In the role of organized religion, I argued that religion 

• gives us hope about problems we cannot solve ourselves.
• provides some social mores to stop society for degrading
• Provides a set of common cultural values, rituals and expected conduct.

Initially I argued a reasonably intelligent man can form his own beliefs but I realized that it is not everyone's interest and not everyone has the patience to think through all the beliefs and understand them and religion provides some sensible defaults which people can follow. 

In Why I prefer to be an atheist, I argued against the beliefs that we are born with some karma and we need to work towards attaining moksha and stuff like that. 

In my evolving understanding of it, it seems that whatever is being said in Hindu philosophy has two layers to it. 

On the outer layer it just lays down some cultural values, rituals and expected conduct so that people can live their lives without much confrontation. Historically when these communication methods were not available, religion was one of the way in which law and order was maintained in the society. So some of the customs and rituals were created and used which were suited to that time. Even the karma philosophy was created to create the feeling that being good will bring outcomes and being bad (sins) will create negative outcomes and exaggerated it saying if you do something bad, it will haunt you for multiple incarnations. 

But for a discerning mind, there is an inner layer of the philosophy which was always available to the learned. I particularly like the 'Tat twam asi' principle which says 'You are that' where that refers to God or divine. It doesn't constrain us with the Karma philosophy or anything else. It says that you have divinity in you. You have all that is needed at this time. It is upto you to recognize this and live accordingly. This is the central tenet of the 'Advaita' philosophy expounded by Sri Shankaracharya.

So previously I was looking at the different philosophies literally and was only looking at the outer layer and now I also see the inner layer about the truth that was already known and evident but only available to the discerning mind. 

So a lot of customs and rituals we follow were mostly created for the times they were created for. It is for us to examine those rituals and decide what to keep and what to ignore. 

It would have been great to know why a custom was created and how it has morphed into. But unfortunately most of our history is not written as we didn't good means of writing and storing info. The writings on leaves didn't survive our tropical climate. Lacking good means of communication and writing all they could do was to create poems for people to remember and spread it orally and that is what is available today. Sure someone who created something might have known why he created it, but not everyone has the patience to understand why it was created and the creator might not have had the patience/time to explain it to everyone, so it might have been reduced finally to just a rule to follow. 

Now the customs we follow have become like puzzles for us to figure out the reason for that and thats really interesting to me.. 

Thanks to Balaji Viswanathan on Quora for sharing his excellent thoughts on Hinduism 

He writes more eloquently than me and trust me, you wont be disappointed.

Start with this. 

Why I prefer to be an atheist?

What does following a religion give us?

Following a religion gives us hope, faith and confidence about problems which we cannot solve ourselves...and a sense of humility which is very necessary in this random world.

It also is used to give some sort of stability, checks and balances in the society so that it will not degrade..

But with extreme religion people get carried away to think that things can happen without their working, and making each and every thing in scriptures as absolute law even if it is not at all logical are the ill effects of religion. I know that there are some things which might seem illogical at this level of consciousness, but may make sense if we know more things.. Especially in the hindu culture, most of the rituals have some inner meaning which we may not decipher for some things but they do have some significance...

If we can understand that it not all necessary to follow everything which is said and follow only those that make sense to us and remember the first line..(courage, faith, hope and humility) we can have them ourselves without attributing them to a superpower.. and in that way we can even avoid the ill effects of religion.

So why atheism?

If you think closely, you can understand that what the world runs on is the survival of the fittest. You can see lot of people committing lot of sins to earn money and power. People often tell that 'God sees the truth but waits.' But nothing happens. You know lot of people who have committed sins and still go scot free in the world. And people who haven't committed any sins but are powerless suffering. I am not advocating that we do illegal and immoral things and get away with it, I say exactly otherwise. It is up to you to determine what is really illegal and what is really immoral and not depend on a religion on a text to tell you what is it. This way you will be more in control of outcomes in your life and there will be no false hope for miracles.

I know I am treading a dangerous path here, because life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And by saying I don't believe in miracles, I am setting myself in a path where I will never see miracles. Okay so how many of you readers have seen something extraordinary, something unnatural or something miraculous, not which was told to you.. something which you have personally experienced? I haven't experienced any such thing from my childhood till now. So I have decided that there is nothing like that until proved otherwise. If it has to come with belief, then I choose not to believe because things that I have to do something to be happy in afterlife doesn't make sense to me. The fact that we have to repent for our sins committed in previous life doesn't make sense to me. The fact that I am reborn also doesn't make sense to me.. what the heck.. if I am meant to improve and reach God, why should I forget what I learnt in the last life... why cant I remember it so that I can make better progress?

I feel it is up to us to live and let live. I don't need to do that with a fear of some power overlooking me.

Let us not talk about the caste system. If such a system is proclaimed by God who chooses to distinguish between people based on birth, I don't believe him. Ok let us leave hinduism... If there is a religion which proclaims there God is true blue God and others are not, then how can you accept such God? All these things make me feel these things were only created for manipulation and power-grabbing. Hence I reject them.

Other Religions and Philosophies :

I have written previously on aim of life here,

If the sole aim of a human is to reach God or salvation or mukti whatever we call it and there is nothing else for humans to do here except worshipping God, then why should he create people at all? If God is the one who created us and wants us to reach him, then why should he create us at all? Here people talk about karma siddhanta that we are born because of the papa/punya phalas of our previous birth. Then I ask how did it accumulate its papa and punya, Initally it should have been a blank slate right? Why is he created then? Is it just that Gods wanted to see a game? Doesnt it look strange to be born freely, do what ever we want but being awarded points for being good or bad respectively, and again being born, not freely but with the points we accumulated in the previous game, and this happens cyclically till our good overwhelms the bad and we reach God. Doesnt it seem like a game and we are just coins in His hands? This is the limiting point of the theory. People argue this way too - why do you argue about where you came from, as you know the end point try to reach the end point of salvation. But when I am not convinced of the starting point, how can I be convinced of the end point?

Thus I rejected this philosophy.. 

Christian philosophy is a lot better in that sense... It doesn't bind you saying, you have to bide your time for previous sins. It just says - 'acknowledge your sins, and leave them to God and you are free.' If you are a believer, this is a lot better because you are free. What I argue is what you are technically doing is letting go of your sins, that you can do without imagining that you are giving it to a God. And it has its own misgivings.. 

If you think about what you get from religion, you will easily understand that all the good in religion can be incorporated in our life without the need for a super human being and if we reject the religion, all the unnecessary parts can also be left out.

Finally, now I don't believe in a super human being and automatically which disqualifies me from all the famous religions. Now my view of the world is something very rational (Darwinian view) to a different kind (subjective view) as explained by Buddha. Darwinian theory is a proved and very rational theory and it is true by default and I need not prove this. But I also want to explore the subjective view more to see if it is true or not.

What is my world-view?

Now, as you know our life is mostly meaningless. Don't misunderstand me.What I am trying to tell is it doesn't matter in the long run. And we always try to assign meaning to whatever we are doing as if it really matters. Yes, that is the only way we can live life, otherwise there is nothing to look forward to. But the fact that life is essentially meaningless, and it is in fact ourselves that assign meaning to it should never be forgotten. Anyway you all know that you cannot take the wealth you create or any of your possessions when you die. So what is the best way to live.. I feel that to recognize the fact that we should understand the futility of trying to living up certain standards but do what makes us happy but in the end, it doesn't matter what you did. I don't feel right cheating others to get what I want, so my philosophy is to live and let live. I don't need a religion to tell me that.

This topic has received a lot of interest in this blog. All the posts in this series

1. Aim of Life

2. Karma Yoga & Advaita vedanta

3. Waking up to a Dream - Subjective Reality

I know this is a topic which can be quite divisive, for it is concerned with beliefs and it takes a lot of questioning to reject a strongly held belief. So what do you think about this?

Karma Yoga -Advaita Vedanta

I have been reading about Advaita Vedanta from some time of the last year.Recently I read a book called 'Karma Yoga' by Swami Vivekananda, which lays before us, the way of attaining Moksha by doing the right work. What it says is
> No work is superior or inferior. Every work should be done with utmost devotion but without identifying that you are doing.
"Karmanye vadhikaraste,
Maa phaleshu kadachana,
Maa karma phala heturbhu,
maate sangostva karmani."
It means that, you have the right to do work, but not on the results of the work, you are not the reason for the results of your work, and that doesnt mean you should stop working.

which indirectly means that you should do the work which is destined to you... More on this in the next paras.


> You may feel that you are helping the world, but actually in helping the world, you are actually helping yourself.
> All Hindu scriptures, end saying that the whole world is just maya and our aim is to get out of this world. Same with karma yoga. they say that if we do our work without attachments, we will realise that our aim is attaining Moksha itself and you will reach it.

I thought that if attaining Moksha was the only aim of life, then what sense does it do all this work without going through the direct path for Moksha? i.e Jnana Yoga , by doing tapas.. I discussed the same with one of my friend who claimed he has a different understanding of how to interpret that. After lot of discussion we came at this conclusion:

The world is destined to be something. Similarly we are also destined to do something and we cannot change that. But advaita says 'You are that'. How is that? We have to attain the end goal of Moksha only if we do whatever we are supposed to do, i.e we complete the task destined to us. The problem is that we dont know what is that? We dont know what is our destiny. Now he is where, 'You are all powerful' concept comes - You can decide what you want to become and trying taking steps towards going there. You will get omens either validating you and you will feel motivated to continue on that path and reach your destiny or you will get omens indicating you what you are doing is not right... Then you have to understand the cause- effect relationship and correct the cause which caused this effect and you are ready to go further to your destiny. If you cant pick up the omens and correct them soon, then you will even get further omens and you will feel like you are not able to do what you wanted to do. But actually you are not able to read the omens and hence you are feeling that. This will make you feel lost and out of control because if you realise it soon, you will correct it soon. You will ultimately realise the mistake, correct it and then only you will go forward to reach your destiny.

To put it in an another way, you will anyway reach and do what you are destined to do. If you understand and work towards reaching it reading the omens and adjusted our work to that, we will feel that we are in control of what we are doing and we will reach our destiny on a flowery path. If we dont understand the omens and are not going on the right path, we will get thorns on our way which will make us understand and again put us on the path to reach our destiny. You will encounter as many thorns as you are willing to take, i.e how soon you understand the lessons given by that thorn. If you dont take the lesson from that thorn, another thorn will come to teach that lesson and we feel miserable. So we examine each thorn carefully for cause effect relationships and set ourselves right for reaching our destiny on path of least resistance.

The Aim Of Life

I have wondered many times what is the aim of life? I think everybody would have wondered about this at some or the other point of their life... I turned to our scriptures to find the answers for this question. Eventhough every book talks about 'mukti' or salvation as the ultimate goal of the life of a hindu, I am not satisfied with that.
But for sometime let us accept that it is the aim of life. Then what is the most direct way of reaching god. Let us say that we have to reach God as early as possible. Then if we look at people who have attained moksha, Dhruva is the youngest person. He did it by doing narayana japa. Even 'Bhaja Govindam' written by Shankaracharya was written advising a very old person trying to learn sanskrit to stop doing that and think of God and do his bhajans (Bhaja Govindam). So the fastest and easiest way to attain moksha is utmost dedication to and worship of God. Then why should we go through the usual shodhasa samskaras(birth,...,education..., marriage,... death) in our life? They say that because it is not possible for everyone to give the utmost dedication to God so early in life, hence we need to go through the shodasha samskaras they will understand life and hence they will walk on this path. But if we know the direct path to our destination, why will we choose the other path? We may even argue that the direct path is a difficult path, and that the indirect path is little easier. But the person who marries cannot understand that he is getting attached to one person and is ready to create a web of attachments around himself which will take a lifetime to untangle. So this proves that even this is not an easy path owing to the attachments we will have if we go in this path. Hence it makes sense for us to take the first path only though it feels as if we are losing a lot.

I have said that I am not satisfied with the theory. If the sole aim of a human is to reach God or salvation or mukti whatever we call it and there is nothing else for humans to do here except worshipping God, then why should he create people at all? If God is the one who created us and wants us to reach him, then why should he create us at all? Here people talk about karma siddhanta that we are born because of the papa/punya phalas of our previous birth. Then I ask how did it accumulate its papa and punya, Initally it should have been a blank slate right? Why is he created then? Is it just that Gods wanted to see a game? Doesnt it look strange to be born freely, do what ever we want but being awarded points for being good or bad respectively, and again being born, not freely but with the points we accumulated in the previous game, and this happens cyclically till our good overwhelms the bad and we reach God. Doesnt it seem like a game and we are just coins in His hands? This is the limiting point of the theory. People argue this way too - why do you argue about where you came from, as you know the end point try to reach the end point of salvation. But when I am not convinced of the starting point, how can I be convinced of the end point? Hence I feel that acheving moksha is not the real aim of our life.

Hence I have rejected the claim the aim of our life to do something in other world, which brings us to the logical conclusion of doing something in this world. So what should we do?
we can aspire to become many things. I believe in atleast basic humanity and hence my aim atleast should be -
"In the time of your life, live - so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite variety and mystery of it." This is the least we can do. But the higher thing is leaving the earth better than how we have come here. So we have to do something which adds value to the world, something which can help humanity outside our family, which is service to mankind in our own small way we can. But lets not forget the duty we have to our parents, siblings, spouse and children. We should understand that we should not be just bound by the duty to our parents, siblings, spouse and children, but to venture out and do something so that we can say ' I have helped in making earth better than the way it was when I came into it'
Let me end it with Ravindranath Tagore's quote
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.
and Gandhi's quote
Service to man is service to God.

Robert Frost says
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.


which gives advice on acheiving it the best way that is uniting what we do to satisfy the duty to our family and that which adds value to the mankind doing what we love to do.

This brings us to the point where we can ask
> What are we doing as a vocation? - this you might get an answer easily as you might be earning somehow
> What are we doing as a avocation? - what is the thing that you love to do? and doing you might answer this easily too...
> How to unite them together to add value to mankind? Answer this and our life is solved. :)