Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
^ yup..happens in all all religions.
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
Then why you have so many then?
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/161/story_16115_1.html
Is Hinduism Polytheistic or Monotheistic? Both–and Neither
The Hinduism I know is not as easily explained as the binary-inclined Western world would like.
By V.V. Ganeshananthan
In Bethesda, Maryland, where I grew up, the local Sri Lankan Hindu community convened at someone’s house once a week to worship. We sang traditional thevaram, prayers in Tamil and Sanskrit, and listened to legends of the gods recounted in English. For the children, the stories were the best part; we sat through an hour of prayers that most of us did not understand in order to hear them. Cross-legged on someone’s living room carpet, we passed the time by studying the pictures of various gods—Shiva, Murugan, Ganesh—propped up against a fireplace, with flowers, incense, and prasatham, an offering of food, before them. To some, the scene might have looked like a conflict: prayers and thoughts directed to (essentially) one God; pictures of many.
To an outsider, it would have looked like we were praying to those pictures. If we were in a temple, we would have been praying to statues. To some old-school Western minds, that’s straight-up idol worship—pretty obvious paganism and polytheism. And when I went to school, that’s what my textbooks said—Hindus were polytheists. Teachers and textbooks felt the need to categorize, but the categories offered as options did not suit the religion I knew from my Friday afternoon worship.
As far as I could tell, I was more monotheist than polytheist. But the problem wasn’t in figuring out which one I was—the problem was my discomfort at the need to put Hinduism, or any religion, in one box or another. Every Friday, I prayed in many ways, and directed my prayers through many routes—one divine face or another. Every Friday, I listened to fables intended to teach me something about how to act and what to respect. I saw no conflict between the fables, the images, and the idea of an all-encompassing divine presence.
Attendance at that Friday afternoon ritual helped to form one of my basic philosophies of being: everything in this world is a version of something else, and everything in this world is part of the same thing. This philosophy is as practical as it is spiritual, and it follows me into both professional and personal life. Over the years, it has made me something of a diplomat, a mediator. I can feel sympathy for virtually any side of an argument, as long as it is constructed with an internal logic. Sometimes, this willingness to accept many sides of an issue is an advantage. In a world that favors yes/no answers, however, it can also be a detriment, making me appear indecisive. In any case, it is a philosophy deeply rooted in the idea that very few things can be answered with a yes or no, and that generally, things that ostensibly contradict each other can actually be simultaneously true.
It is a philosophy that belongs to neither monotheism nor polytheism, that is unaware of those categories. It is a philosophy that made me stammer when my peers asked me what kind of religion Hinduism was or how many gods I worshiped. Nor did I see the use of an answer.
Polytheism and monotheism are the religious categories that everyone knows, the ones everyone thinks matter. But there are religions that are neither, and to me, Hinduism is one of them—not as easily explained, perhaps, as the binary-inclined Western world would like it to be.
Hinduism is not unique in falling outside of the polytheistic/monotheistic binary model that most people and textbooks use. I have Buddhist friends who are irritated by the idea of even being classified as a religion—they consider Buddhism a philosophy, not a religion. But Hinduism is unique, at least in the scope of my own knowledge about religion, in the way it presents its “monotheistic” and “polytheistic” facets. One enfolds the other. A prayer directed to Ganesh often asks for welcome—at other times, it requests blessings on studies. To process a world in which everything is one, a Hindu separates out parts of God for different purposes.
We see this in Hinduism’s myths. Unlike virtually any other mainstream religion in the world, Hinduism remains attached to an active mythology that perhaps shares more with ancient Greek and Norse myths than anything else. Why are we telling stories about Shiva, his consort Parvati, and their two sons, Ganesh and Murugan? What about the hosts of minor demons, gods, and goddesses? A Hindu in northern India might worship a household god of whom a Sri Lankan Hindu knows nothing. But in Hinduism as I understand it, it does not matter. Those gods are really two manifestations of the same thing, and the plane upon which those gods, like the Greek gods, enact human-like drama and make human-like mistakes, is a different plane than from the one on which we worship. One is a cultural legacy, and the other is a spiritual one. However, they cannot be easily separated. Those planes intersect—in the language of math, they skew. One Beliefnet member offered another view on the message boards: “Hinduism is not algebra. Hinduism is quantum physics, the byte representing both 1 and 0 at the same time.”
This multiplicity of truth is a pillar of the Hinduism I know. To categorize is not just impossible, it’s irrelevant. Just as, throughout life, we discover parts of ourselves we had not known, we discover more faces of God. Just as a mother is also a daughter, God will always exist both in one face and beyond that face. A Hindu praying for something specific simply underlines the request by directing it to the facet of the deity whose business that is. My God has different faces; he does not explain them. He simply has the ability to be both One and Many.
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
what does hinduism say about economic policies or does it have a complete ruling system?
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
^ I don't think it says anything about ANY policies.
It's not a book of rules or SOPs. The best I can describe it as is it helps you find yourself, how you connect with other things and people around you, how to discriminate between good and bad, how to then unify with the Supreme. It is so individualistic, some of you may mistake Hindu philosophy for democracy or J2EE
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
ak47, the following is just my own theory, to address your question about where it starts.
Say, you can jump 6 feet. someone else can jump 7 and so on.
Or, you can eat 3 parattas, someone else can eat 5.
or you can run 5 miles, someone else can run only 4.
Every faculty has a limit. That limit is not universal - it is for an individual.
So what is the faculty you use to understand the concept of time? And why would we not think there is a limit to our ability to understand time? And why wouldn't that limit be individual specific also? Just like the 3 or 4 paratta appetite or the 4 or 5 mile jog?
So if your faculty to understand time is 4 era's, whether time STARTED 4 era's ago or not, you won't be able to comprehend any more. Yet, at that flicker of the starting moment when your comprehension starts, you find in amazement that something has already DEVELOPED. So you INFER that it came from BEFORE. (THIS IS THE TRICKIEST PART, LISTEN CLOSELY).
The moment you inferred of something BEFORE the 4 eras, suddenly your faculty expanded beyond 4 eras to 4-eras + 1 moment. This is very difficult to comprehend in terms of serial computing but thankfully our minds (not brains) are different. Just like running 4 miles a few times make it possible to do 5 the next time, you RECURSE between testing your limit and expanding your limit. You then discover the beaty vastness unity and patterns of the timelessness. At some point when the meaning of Ksheerasgar hits you, that's when you wake up with a jar and start wanting to be part of that unity. Because it is so vast, limitless, silent, sweet and peaceful. That then sets in motion the next iteration.....
(Except, Hindus give all these facets names, personalities, relationships and several human dimensions. That's what makes Ramayana and the Mahabharata so enchanting even as a story.)
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
Hindu religion does not depend on definitions. It does not divert your attention thru proper or improper contexts. It does not look for excuses.
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
Pray Brahma to the extent that you become one with Brahma. This is 'ahambrhamasmi'
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
I am not convinced by hindusim, i am not getting no answers just confusion.
You have many spiritual beliefs hindusim, buddism etc maybe they can satisfy the spirtitual instinct within man but its not complete unless it satisfies mans entire needs including the life on this earth the interactions and the way we live our life in terms of economics, the way we establish relations with foriegn nations, the way ruling system works, the way we judge people in terms of judiciary and the social system that people live by. If a system does not have both these spiritual and political aspects then it is not the correct system because it is incomplete in satisfying mans needs.
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
ak-47 how pakistani economic system of land owning and economy is different
since becoming islamic ? actualy east punjab is better than west punjab in terms of land distribution .
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
LOL@ that …How can u say that ?.. 
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
Better not to muddle man’s thinking by keeping religion to spirituality rather than putting forth silly and static ideas. Religions that put forth economic models and ruling systems are actually more incomplete because:
a) they limit innovation (the fundamental basis for human growth) Key example is Islam
b) Their economic systems are actually based on anachronistic systmes which do not take into account the concept of cost of capital and instruments that can be developed to create new markets. If it was up to these relgiions (read islam) we would all be trading shoe polish for chicken.
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
plz give examples of how Islam limits innovation…
if it were not due to the advances brought to the world by the Islamic civilization and Islamic research we wud still be in the dark ages…
the extent to which Islam has described laws of economics, I am sure no other book yet exists, based on any economic system, that explains things so well and good…
plz show us how exactly has Islamic economy been declared as a failure by u…
P.S. if due to ur limited brain and thinking prowess u cud never understand what Islam meant as a religion and a way of life, plz do state so openly so we know that next time u come up with such a baseless comment, we can simply ignore ur foolishness and not bother to try to explain something sensible to u…
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
I am not mentioning Pakistani economics because pakistan does not implement the islamic economic system so your question is for another subject matter.
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
Dear Armugal, you are off the topic. I can only add that if out of 50+ Islamic states, you have no ideal example, it means a total faliur of the base theory.
Yes, Hindu religion does talk on economics and politics, even in much broader way. For that you have to go thru the evolution of mankind in Indian subcontinent. Vedas are best sources of politics. Chanakkya wrote the first book on economics.
Shall we follow the Veda period politics and economics today?
Today, we know it as Hindu religion, though in earlier period it was known as just religion, Dharma, path (of life).
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
ak47 - Matsui said it succinctly, but I'll elaborate just a bit more.
Say you own a business that makes shirts. The people at the lower levels are given exact instructions (SOP) how to do their jobs. They are compensated on how well they adhere to those instructions. Variations are deemed DEFECTS.
But the folks in product marketing, researh & development - they are given goals, and may be strategem but not instructions - not even what to do or how to do it. They are compensated for novelty and their variations are deemed IDEAS and INNOVATIONS.
If you keep looking for complete instructions how will you ever progress from the low to higher levels?
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
I don’t know Islam limits innovation or not but if the objection to tv, music and wearing shorts is any indication, it does seem stuffy.
How are you sure no other book exists that explain things so well as islam explains eonomics? Quite frankly, mandates such as interest is bad seem to indicate islamic theories of eonomics are irrelevant today or for the past several centuries
Today Islamic economies have failed almost 100%. Saudi Arabia has the rishest oil deposits, yet their people live either as wahhabi terrorists or slaves of the state. The state of affairs in Iraq, Iran, Emirates etc are pretty obvious - they manufacture little at home, have no major captive skills to export and live in fear of exhaution of fossil deposits. Even that they do not know how to mine and need Texans to come and explore, drill and cap. Pakistan’s eonomny should be familiar to you.
So what the heck are you defending? I hope you will allow for bringing this thread back to what the title says - crash course about Hinduism, instead of letting it become a comparison to other religions in a way that is antogonistic.
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
Ok people are not answering the questions they are diverting and giving soundbites.
People claiming Hinduism has an economic system ok if it has economic system what does hinduism say about private ownership, the types of ownerships, Hiring of employees, definition of work, estimating employees wages, companies, companies of bodies, company of capital, dissolving companies, public property, state property these are just as a small example from economic system bottom line does Hindusim have complete system and ruling for these examples because if it does'nt its false to claim it is a system at all.
By the way just for your information islam has rulings for the examples i just typed so its open challenge.
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
sigh! so you’re destined to be in the lower rungs following standard operating procedure and instruction manuals.
Re: Hinduism 101: A crash course in the ancient faith
AK, you are more interested in propagating Islam. No problem, before I accept your challange, kindly make it clear if your complete system gives me total freedom to talk.