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. 

The role of organized religion

In 2009 when I was thinking a lot about religion and our place in the world, I wrote these

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..

And 

All these things (castes and rules)  make me feel these things were only created for manipulation and power-grabbing. 

After that I argued that I didn't need someone else to set the rules and that we ourselves can make our own rules for life. 

I found a different perspective regarding organized religion in Sebastian's blog. 

because people attribute things like discrimination or war to religion, but I think that’s mistaken. We naturally draw lines as humans, and support the people on our side of the line. Sure, religious groups often promote themselves at the expense of other groups. But so do trade organizations, national organizations, race-based organizations, and so on, and so on. Humans naturally divide themselves into groups, support people in their group, and oppose people outside of it.
So I’d say, even the worst implementations of religion tend to get 80% of things correct. They all pretty much say don’t steal, don’t kill, do charitable and good deeds, be hospitable, purify and master yourself, serve and do good works…
If you belong to an organized religion, you know how people are generally expected to act, you know it’s pretty good, and you know everyone’s consistent about it. You have some people that you know are going to back you up if times get tough, and you’ve got common ground to connect on and work together, socialize together, and build families together.
Y’know, a hardcore athiest that focuses on the mystical side of religion and says it’s ridiculous is kind of missing the point. Organized religion greatly simplifies people’s lives by giving them a reasonably good belief structure and standardizing a large group of people’s customs, culture, and expected conduct. It makes life easier and allows for strong connections and alliances and agreements.

 So he says, religion has made life easier by giving us a culture and standard beliefs. This helps in creating and maintaining relations and being together amicably. Though I argue that if we are all intelligent, we can think about and form our own beliefs and understand that our well-being lies in live and let living, I will not.  Because, 

guy that can research, strive, examine, think, brainstorm, and scratch and claw your way towards having a uniquely developed, cohesive, powerful set of ethics.
Most people can’t, and don’t want to do that. It’s a lot of work, and it leads to a lot of doubt and confusion and then no one understands you. Having your own ethics is lonely. Very lonely.

Hence religions have spread and established with the help of the charisma of the people spreading them. But I think his perspective is very useful to understand religions influence in the world. His blog is very good and he writes really interesting stuff. You can read it here

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?

Waking up to a dream

Everyone at some point or the other questions what is real in this world. Why things dont work as we expect? How to achieve everlasting happiness? What is the goal of our life on earth? As I was plagued by these questions, I began reading everything I could lay my hands on which remotely covered this topic. 

I have read about the three different schools of thought dvaita (duality), advaita (non-duality), vishishta dvaita ( qualified non-duality) 

Qualified non-duality says that living beings are different from non-living beings and both are different from God and the ultimate aim of human life is to attain Moksha...  I reject this as it is not giving me any other opportunity rather than spending my life in service of God. 

Duality says that each one is different from other God from humans, human from another human, human from non-living beings(matter),  God and matter, between matter and says that each of them depend on God for their existence. It says that humans are bound by Maya and sadhana through Vishnu Bhakti is only way out of it. I reject it due to the same reason as Vishishta Dvaita

Non-Duality doesnt differentiate between anything as says that we are God and everything else is an illusion. Till here it is empowering but it also says that we should understand that the nature of world is misery and we should have eternal longing for Moksha. This  theory was good and empowering but that final line that life on earth is miserable and hence we should long for Moksha makes it unusable in this world. 

(Source: Wikipedia)

After reading all these, I felt that nothing has a rational framework of living on earth, all that they say is that we should always work to attain Moksha.. 

Then I had a chance of going through all the ways of attaining Moksha.. I read the books by Vivekananda about Karma Yoga, Gyana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga and Raja Yoga...Each one says it as 

Karma Yoga: If we do our work without any expectation or attachements with the results, we will ulitmately reach Moksha (taught by Krishna to Arjuna in Bhagavat Gita). It looks good but very difficult to follow as we always tend to associate with the results. 

Bhakti Yoga: If we just surrender to God and love him with all we have, then we will get Mukti.. This path is followed by lot of people like Annamayya, Meera bai etc.. but it doesnt have worldly relevance to me. 

Raja Yoga: Its source is from Patanjali's Ashtanga yoga. 

The eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga are:

• Yama - code of conduct, self-restraint
• Niyama - religious observances, commitments to practice, such as study and devotion
• Āsana - integration of mind and body through physical activity
• Pranayama - regulation of breath leading to integration of mind and body
• Pratyahara - abstraction of the senses, withdrawal of the senses of perception from their objects
• Dharana - concentration, one-pointedness of mind
• Dhyana - meditation (quiet activity that leads to samadhi)
• Samādhi - the quiet state of blissful awareness, superconscious state.

(Source: Wikipedia). 

This looks like a good way to go, if we have a good guru and we leave everything in the world to work on it. 

Gyana Yoga: It says by observation you will know what is true and what is untrue and you will attain the knowledge to live in this world and attain Moksha.. As seen it doesnt tell anything but asks you to find out based on observation and thought.. And I went ahead with this way....

I didnt find anything which answered this question and I found that I was looking through the lens of objective reality. When I became of aware of the concepts of subjective reality . It says that we are living in a dream world which is created by us and us only. My world is created by me. You are also part of my creation only, you dont exist by yourself but you are part of my consciousness and hence if I want you to exist and if I wish otherwise you will not... I am not my body but something greater than that and if I raise my consciousness to that level, then I will understand that I am in a dream and it is through my body that I am acting in the dream. The dream may end at any time but I will be there. Hence I need not be afraid of anything. Everything is my creation and hence with my thought I have the power to change it.  This is the thing proposed by Buddha. This looks like an empowering model but if we truly believe it then I was thinking of applying it in this world to achieve what I want looks so ridiculously simple as just having a thought about this. I am going to explore this thinking for a while and let you know of the results. 

All we have to do to get that power to is wake up from the dream and understand...