My exploration with religion and what is my Hinduism?
I am often asked if I am religious. This is my attempt to explain what Hinduism is to me, and my version of what it means to me. The beauty of Hinduism is that I have my own personal version of the faith, just like crores of other self proclaimed Hindus who have a custom version for themselves. In many ways it’s like an open source repository, where the code can be used and reused by anyone, adding to it, subtracting from it, and creating multiple versions of it. There is no authoritative body governing it, and no authoritative single source of truth. Some of us pray once a day, some of us pray occasionally, and some of us have probably not even visited a temple in years, and yet we claim to be Hindus. Until the age of 12, I had not even looked at the Bhagavad Gita. Interestingly enough, the first holy book I picked up and tried to read was the Bible at the age of 12.
I studied in a Convent school. I sang in the school choir, loved and still love Christmas carols, prayed to Mother Mary, and placed candles at the altar of Lord Jesus. One of my mom’s friends was Koshi Aunty. I liked Koshi Aunty and whenever we visited her, she had cakes and goodies in store for me. One Christmas evening, she enthusiastically inquired if I would like to try some rum balls. For the first time in my life, I ate rum balls on Christmas day at Aunty’s house, and I was elated at the fact that I had a hint of alcohol in me at the age of 12. She was the one who also gifted me my first Bible. It was small, enveloped with a brown leather jacket and fit in the size of my two palms. A red satin thread loosely hugged its spine as a bookmark. I remember keeping a pressed rose inside for years, until I could see the dry and wrinkled plant veins peeping through the transparent petals.
Exploring my natural curiosity towards the Christian faith, I urged my mother to buy me an abridged set of books called the ‘Stories from the Gospel of Truth’ and devoured them one by one. One Sunday morning, I asked my father to drop me at the local church near my school, which Koshi Aunty also visited. Church became a Sunday ritual for me. I looked forward to attending service, singing hymns, listening to sermons, and reciting verses from the Book of Psalms. One of the volunteers suggested I attend Sunday School after the service, and so I did just that. I completed activity learning workbooks, learnt all I was taught about the Lord, and asked loads of questions to the instructors. I was a curious learner. I remember asking the teacher, who made us and the world, and I got God as an answer. If I remember clearly, I followed that up with who then made God?
Meanwhile my parents were encouraging of the fact that their child was learning something new, and telling them stories they did not know. At home, I discussed Mahabharata and the justification of the Kurukshetra war with my mother. We spoke for hours at length understanding mythology and stories in the Hindu context. We spoke about culture, what is righteousness and Dharma, how the Mahabharata provides a backdrop for lessons that can be applied in life on decision making, why was it right of Krishna to support Arjuna in waging a war against his own kin, what the concept of Dharma is, whether certain actions were moral or righteous, and if so what justified those actions. We discussed and debated on Ramayana and concepts from Mahabharata. Ours was a dialogue which delved into the dilemmas we faced in everyday life, conversations where I was free to make my opinions on the actions of the deities, and responses which almost always led to more questions.
This free spirited atmosphere that my mother cultivated, where I could question, and make my own opinions without judgment, further led me to exploring these texts. It led me to trying to understand Hindu philosophy, and slowly paving my way into Western philosophers and their works.
The story of creation is often the first thing that crosses one’s mind when we look to religion for answers because what bigger paradox than who are we, what’s our purpose on earth, and where did we come from? The 12 year old me had those questions on who made the Lord, and here she was googling ferociously to find her answers. I stumbled upon a Rig Veda verse on creation. I will not quote the entire hymn but the following phrases left me stunned at that age:
Who really knows?
Who will here proclaim it?
Whence was it produced?
Whence is this creation?
The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe.
Who then knows whence it has arisen?
Whence this creation has arisen
- perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not —
the One who looks down on it,
in the highest heaven, only He knows
or perhaps even He does not know.
The refreshing tone of inquisitiveness, of trying to reason, an attempt to understand, and to finally conclude that even the ultimate power may not know urged me to explore these further.
The Hindu faith is the faith of the people settled on the banks of the Sindhu/Indus river. The roots have been geographical in nature, and there are a multitude of sects and subsections within the Sanatana Dharma. Hinduism is not even a self coined word by the Hindus, but something conferred upon us owing to colonialism. It is like a system of rivers with each one branching off into tributaries and streams. Each one corresponds to a different philosophical thought with varying rituals of worship, way of living, and culture. For thousands of years these thoughts have co-existed without impinging on the other’s right to practice their own customs or rituals. However, it would also be fair to say that ritualistic frameworks have survived more than than the underlying philosophical thought behind these practices and customs.
My mother often repeats the statement ‘Mat bhed ho sakte hain, man bhed nahi’ which means it is okay to have differences of opinion but not of the heart’. Hinduism encompasses within itself varying degrees of thought processes and ways of living. A Hindu can choose to adopt different schools of thought within the Hindu philosophy, which can be pantheistic, polytheistic, pan deistic, monotheistic, henotheistic, agnostic, or atheistic. Individuals may collide and collude, but ideas are the ones that remain cohesive. Upon difference of opinion, it is not fair to attack the individual, instead one must address the key differences in ideas. Arguments must always be for and against an idea. The art of argument is found in various ancient Hindu texts. The Bhrihadarnayka Upanishad recounts an episode about Gargi, a female philosopher engaging in a philosophical debate alongside prominent sages with the renowned rishi Yajanvalkya on the nature of creation and the universe.
The Bhramasutra serves as a logical guide to the Vedanta philosophy, is written in a four chapter format. Here the first chapter states the philosophy, with the second chapter dedicated to playing devil’s advocate against the author’s own ideas and discussing and addressing any objections that may arise to them.
A prominent debate was held between Adi Shankarcharya and Mandan Mishra. Sri Adi Shankaracharya was one of the greatest exponents of Hinduism and the non-dualistic Advaita Vedanta philosophy. He was a poet, saint, reformer, debater, seer, and philosopher. Adi Shankaracharya debated against karmakand or ritualistic worship with Mandan Mishra which finally concluded with Mandan Mishra conceding, and becoming one of his chief disciples and later the Shankaracharya of the Sringeri Math. The inadequacy of ritualistic worship is questioned in Shankaracharya’s Atma Bodha. However, the compendium still explains how having a God in the image of the self, also termed as ‘Personal God’ can be helpful to most individuals who are beginners in the spiritual path. For the ones who are more spiritually inclined, and who have attained the knowledge of the Bhraman or the Ultimate Reality, there is no distinction between the Bhraman or the Ultimate Truth, the self or a Personal God. In this non dualistic view, there is no place for ritualistic worship or the need for designation of a Personal God. The term Bhraman must not be confused with the colloquially used definition of a priest or a community. Bhraman here stands for a concept. It is attribute less, and can only be defined by negation. By negating everything that it is not, can one arrive at the conceptual meaning of Bhraman. (Explaining Bhraman is an arduous task and multiple Upanishads address the definition of what it means, I will refrain from expanding on it here.)
A widespread thought that is prevalent especially in the West, is of Hindu religion having multiple gods. In the form of knowledge we worship the Goddess Saraswati, in the form of food it is Annapurna, in prosperity its Lakshmi, in health it is Dhanvantari and so on. Most venerated deities are the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva who have been designated as the created, preserver and destroyer of the worlds. The deities are not above the laws of nature, they cannot escape the vagaries of human life. In myths and fables, we find them going through the illusory nature of life, tackling issues, and contemplating answers to questions similar to what plague you and me. Deities are fallible, and they learn from their experiences. They are on a progressive journey of self discovery, triumphs and sorrows, and to me this was beautiful. This is also because ultimately the highest goal in the Hindu philosophy is something which can only be experienced by a self, and which is to be the Ultimate Reality or Bhraman, which is an experiential reality.
My relationship with the creation/Almighty/Lord/Bhraman… is a personal journey of exploration, of spiritual growth and awareness. It is the journey of the 12 yr old girl seeking answers, who still prays with as much zest to Lord Jesus, as she does to Lord Krishna, and who bows down in gratitude of the presence of this magnificent existence, the glory of which cannot be contained in any written texts, but can only experienced, conscious of the beauty of life and this expanse.