HINDUISM What is Hinduism? One of the oldest religions of humanity The religion of the Indian people Gave birth to Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism Tolerance and diversity: "Truth is one, paths are many" Many deities but a single, impersonal Ultimate Reality A philosophy and a way of life – focused both on this world and beyond What do Hindus believe? One impersonal Ultimate Reality – Brahman Manifest as many personal deities True essence of life – Atman, the soul, is Brahma n trapped in matter (“That art thou”) Reincarnation – atman is continually born into this world lifetime after lifetime (Samsara) Karma – spiritual impurity due to actions keeps us bound to this world (good and
bad) Ultimate goal of life – to release Atman and reunite with the divine, becoming as one with Brahman (Moksha)
According to Hinduism, man is essentially a soul that uses its bo dy and mind as instruments to gain experience. What is the nature of the soul? Hinduism maintains that the macrocosm and the microcosm are built on the same plan, and that Brahman is the soul of both. As the soul of man, Brahman is known as Paramatman. The Upanishads speak of the two souls of man dwelling, as it were, side by side, within him: the real soul (Paramatman) and the apparent soul (jivatman). The real soul is the witness consciousness, serene and detached. The apparent soul is the embodied soul, the experiencer of birth and death, and is ever in quest of freedom and eternal life. The apparent soul is the ego self--the reflection of the real soul. The real soul has been described as Self and the apparent soul as non-Self. Hinduism analyzes man in terms of three bodies, five sheaths, and three states. It says that a hu man individual has three bodies: physical body, bod y, subtle body, and causal body. The physical body is produced out of the gross forms of the five basic elements (ether, air, water, fire, and earth), and is subject to a sixfold change: birth, subsistence, growth, maturity, decay, and death. At death the physical body perishes p erishes and its five constituent
elements are dissolved. The subtle body is mad e of the subtle forms of the five basic elements that produced the physical body. It is the receptacle of thoughts and memories and continues to exist after death, serving as the vehicle of transmigration. A human individual enters this world with a bundle of thoughts in the form of his mind, and he also exits with a bundle of thoughts, some old and some new. The causal body, characterized by ego sense only, is finer than the subtle body. All three bodies are for the fulfillment of desires, gross and subtle. The soul is different from these three bodies. Hindu scriptures further describe the body-mind complex of man as consisting of five sheaths, or layers: the physical sheath, the sheath of prana (the vital air), the sheath of mind, the sheath of intellect, and the sheath of bliss. These sheaths a re located one inside the other like the segments of a collapsible telescope, with the sheath o f the physical body being the outermost and the sheath of bliss being the innermost. The sheath of the physical body is dependent on food for its sustenance and lasts as long as it can absorb nourishment. The sheath of the vital air is the manifestation of the universal vital energy. It animates the gross bod y, making it inhale and exhale, move about, take in nourishment, excrete, and reproduce. The sheath of the mind is the seedbed of all desires. It is changeful, characterized by pain and pleasure, and has a beginning and an end. The sheath of the intellect is the seat of I-consciousness. Though material and insentient by nature, it appears intelligent because it reflects the light of the Self. It is the cause of embodiment. Finer than the sheath of the intellect is the sheath of bliss, the main features of which are pleasure and rest. It, too, is material and subject to change. Th e five sheaths are the five layers of embodiment and they veil the light of the Self. The Upanishads mention that man experiences three states of existence-waking, dream, and deep sleep-and his Self within, the experiencer of the three states, is different from them. Analysis of all three states reveals the true nature of the Self. In the waking state man remains identified with his physical body, in the dream state with his subtle body, and in deep sleep with his causal body. The Atman, or Self, is the monitoring consciousness of all three states and is the basis of their unity. Hinduism contends that conclusions based onl y on an analysis of the waking state are incomplete and cannot reveal the real nature of man. In this sense, Hinduism considers the conclusions of physical science as inadequate although not incorrect.
http://www.nvcc.edu/home/lshulman/rel231/resource/hinduism.ppt http://www.ramakrishna.org/activities/message/weekly_message40.htm
BUDDHISM
What Is Buddhism? Buddhism is a religion based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, who lived about 25 centuries ago in what is now Nepal and northeastern India. He came to be called "the Buddha," which means "awakened one," after he experienced a profound realization of the nature of life, death and existence. In English, the Buddha was said to be enlightened, although in Sanskrit it is bodhi, "awakened." In the remaining years of his life, the Buddha traveled and taught. However, he didn't teach people what he had realized when he became enlightened. Instead, he taught people how to realize enlightenment for themselves. He taught that awak ening comes through one's own direct experience, not through beliefs and dogmas. In the centuries following the Buddha's life, Buddhism spread throu ghout Asia to become one of the dominant religions of the continent. Estimates of the number of Buddhists in the world today vary widely, in part because many Asians observe more than one religion, and in part because it is hard to know how many people are practicing Buddhism in Communist nations like China. The most common estimate is 350 million, which makes Buddhism the fourth largest of the world's religions. Buddhist Beliefs
All living beings have the same basic wish to be happy and avoid suffering, but very few people understand the real causes of happiness and suffering.
We generally believe that external conditions such as food, friends, cars, and mone y are the real causes of happiness, and as a result we devote nearly all our time and energy to acquiring these. Superficially it seems that these things can make u s happy, but if we look more deeply we shall see that they also bring us a lot of suffering and problems.
Happiness and suffering are opposites, so if something is a real cause of happiness it cannot give rise to suffering. If food, money, and so forth really are causes of happiness, they can never be causes of suffering; yet we know from our own experience that they often do cause suffering. For example, one of our main interests is food, but the food we eat is also the principal cause of most of our ill health and sickness.
In the process of producing the things we feel will make us happy, we have polluted our environment to such an extent that the very air we breathe and the water we drink now threaten our health and well-being. We love the freedom and independence a car can give us, but the cost in accidents and environmental destruction is eno rmous.
We feel that money is essential for us to enjo y life, but the pursuit of money also causes immense problems and anxiety. Even our family and friends, with whom we enjoy so many happy moments, can also bring us a lot of worry and heartache.
In recent years our understanding and control of the external world have increased considerably, and as a result we have witnessed remarkable material progress; but there has not been a corresponding increase in human happiness.
There is no less suffering in the world today, and there are no fewer problems. Indeed, it could be said that there are now more problems and greater unhappiness than ever before. This shows that the solution to our problems, and to those of society as a whole, does not lie in knowledge or control of the external world.
Why is this? Happiness and suffering are states of mind, and so their main causes cannot be found outside the mind. The real source of happiness is inner peace. If our mind is peaceful, we shall be happy all the time, regardless of external conditions, but if it is disturbed or troubled in any way, we shall never be happy, no matter how good our external conditions may be.
External conditions can only make us happy if our mind is peaceful. We can understand this through our own experience. For instance, even if we are in the most beautiful surroundings and have everything we need, the moment we get angry any happiness we may have disappears. This is because anger has destroyed our inner peace.
We can see from this that if we want true, lasting happiness we need to develop and maintain a special experience of inner peace. The only way to do this is by training our mind through spiritual practice – gradually reducing and eliminating our negative, disturbed states of mind and replacing them with positive, peaceful states.
Eventually, through continuing to improve our inner peace we shall experience permanent inner peace, or ‘nirvana’. Once we have attained nirvana we shall be happy throughout our life, and in life after life. We shall have solved all our problems and accomplished the true meaning of our human life. PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN PERSON In Hinduism, the soul, or atman, is an eternally existing spiritual substance or being and the abiding self that moves from one body to the next at rebirth. The Buddha rejected this concept. He taught that everything is impermanent (anicca), and this includes everything that we associate with being human: sensations, feelings, thoughts and consciousness. This is the doctrine of anatta, "no-soul," a central concept of Buddhism.
Human existence, in the Buddha's view, is nothing more than a composite of five aggregates (khandas):
Physical forms (rupa) Feelings or sensations (vedana) Ideations (sanna) Mental formations or dispositions (sankhara) Consciousness (vinnana) These khandas come together at birth to form a human person. A person is a "self" in that he or she is a true subject of moral action and karmic accumulation, but not in the sense that he or she has an enduring or unchanging soul.
The doctrine of anatta, when combined with Buddhist beliefs in reincarnation and karma, presents an interesting difficulty. If humans have no soul or enduring self, what is it that reincarnates? The Buddha was characteristically resistant to dwelling on such speculative matters, and early opponents of Buddhism were quick to point out this apparent vulnerability in Buddhist thought.
Buddhists explain the difficulty using the analog y of fire: When one candle is used to light another, the new flame is not the same as the old flame, and yet the first flame directly causes the second. In the same way, one human life, with its particular accumulation of karma, gives rise to the next life, even though no permanent soul passes from one to the other. http://kadampa.org/en/reference/buddhist-beliefs http://www.religionfacts.com/buddhism/beliefs/human.htm
