Bbrhaspati's 4th pilgrimage to india blog

This blog by brhaspati, who is a follower of Advaita Vedanta philosophy.  He wrote to me recently telling me of his blog. He has travelled extensively in India and this blog is about his pilgrimage  in 2010.

I have added his blog to my page listing blogs by Western converts to Hinduism.

Other news in blogs by Westerners Following Hinduism

I have removed the “inactive” flag from the Shatkona blog. There are several new posts,  one of which explains his break from blogging.

Fourth anniversary of the Shree Lakshmi Narayan Temple

This week is the fourth anniversary of the dedication (patotsava) of my local mandir, the Shree Lakshmi Narayan Temple. It doesn’t seem anything like four years since the opening of our mandir!

I attended the evening celebrations and the feeling of having hundreds of people present to worship God and the devas was incredible.

I speak virtually no Hindi, I can respond to greetings and that’s about all.  Someone asked me whether it was boring to attend when most of the speech is in Hindi. Having attended the celebration, I can say that even though I cannot understand much. I understand the names of God and the devas; (Ishvara, Shiva, Krishna, Rama, Bhagwan), and hearing the holy swamis say the sacred names in the atmosphere of dedication speaks to my heart.

Rigveda (padapatha) manuscript in Devanagari, early 19th century

I was asked about the Hindu understanding and interpretation of scriptures, and what they mean to me. I decided that I would answer this in a post rather than as a comment reply.

There are various types of Hindu scripture, the oldest of which are the Vedas. All orthodox Hindus regard the vedas as the divine word of God. The vedas are mostly songs of praise, and so are open to a number of different interpretations. Some of these are resolved by the Upanishads,  philosophical discourses on the vedas. Again these texts are regarded as sacred by all orthodox Hindus.

In addition to these  universally accepted scriptures, each sect has  agamas, which detail the worship of the deity or deities worshipped by that sect. These are regarded as sacred by the followers of the sect, though they see them as only applicable to sect members. The vedas and agamas are known as Shruti, meaning “that which is heard”.

There are also scriptures known as Smriti means “that which is remembered”. These include the Itihasas, the great epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Some sects may take these literally, others symbolically, and others as just moral stories which teach the concepts of Dharma.

Hindus are generally tolerant of differing beliefs of other sects, so even a sect which sees the Bhagavad Gita as literally true would see a Hindu from a different sect which interpreted it symbolically as valid, though maybe  they would personally think that this was not the best way to read it. Some sects allow a wide range of beliefs within the sect, for example Dr. Sara Sastra writes on Balinese Hindu philosophy:

If you say God is different from the human being, the Balinese will accept it. And if you say God is the same as human, we accept that also. All this makes Balinese very strong.

I have only just touched on the many different types of Hindu scriptures. Much more information can be found on Wikipedia, in Chapters 26 and 27 of “Dancing with Shiva”, and in ”Am I A Hindu? The Hinduism Primer” by Ed Viswanathan, and in rather less detail in his online article “What is Hinduism“.

Different understandings of the Gita

Krishna as Arjuna's charioteer.

Just to illustrate the ways that different Hindus can look at a text, I will describe the way different Hindus may look at it.

A Vaishnava Hindu may see the story as a completely true historic event, where Krishna, the eighth avatar of Vishnu really was the charioteer in a war against the Kurus. Other Vaishnavas might see it as a real event, but having happened on another plane, or maybe in a previous cycle of the universe.

A Smarta Hindu might see it as a highly esoteric symbolic story. Krishna could represent a person’s spiritual elements (Atman and Paramatman), Arjuna the intellect, and the five horses the senses. The spiritual and intellect can control the senses, pulling the chariot (person) through samsara unhindered.

A Saiva Hindu might see it as a story, with a very good explanation of dharma, samsara, karma, and reincarnation. A good Saiva Hindu would respect it as a book holy to other Hindus, and understand how for some it is the key to their beliefs.

How I see the Scriptures

As a Saiva Hindu of the Kailasa Parampara of the Nandinatha Sampradaya, I see the Vedas as the first ultimate truth. Most of my understanding of the vedas comes from the Master Course Trilogy, by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (A Satguru of the lineage), which I see as divine teachings. The Saiva Agamas and the Tamil Tirumurai and Tirukural are also divine scriptures.

Whereas I acknowledge the Gita, Mahabharata, and Ramayana as a genuine source of inspiration to many Hindus, as a worshipper of Shiva I do not see them as part of my scriptural canon. I don’t view them as historical events of this world, though I am undecided on whether they may have been real events on another plane or in a previous cycle of the universe.

Images from Wikimedia, and are shared under the creative commons license.

The ardhanarishwar blog

The ardhanarishwar blog by Dhrishti clearly describes the concepts behind the non-dual Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism. He has an interesting style, not writing directly about himself but relvealing a lot indirectly by the way he describes things. He is clearly influenced by “The Seven Stars of Hinduism” by  Dileep Thatte.

I have added this blog to my list of blogs by Western followers of Hinduism.

Rajanaka Sammelana blog

Thank you to Dhyan, who left a comment, telling me about this blog.  The Rajanaka Sammelana blog is an established blog by Douglas Brooks, am a professional scholar and a teacher of the traditions of Rajanaka Yoga. He explores the path of Tanric yoga, as taught by Rajanaka Gopalaiyar Sundaramoorthy. He discusses many subjects in depth, including Sanskrit, the Gita, Kashmiri Saivism.

I have added this blog to my list of blogs by Western converts to Hinduism.

Toy dealer's pet dog 'ate Batman'

The picture to the right is from a news story about a dog, Lola,  who chewed a rare vintage Batman toy which was worth £1,000.  Lola’s owner is a  collectable toy dealer, who was valuing the toy for a client.

The story starts with the words “She is out of the doghouse and already forgiven“.  Nobody would be surprised if the Lola’s owner was initially cross, but quickly forgave her. The anger would be a typical emotional response, but forgiveness would come easily, because everyone knows that the dog did not understand what she was doing. She was left on her own with something chewable and interesting, and followed her nature. Even if she knew that she was not supposed to chew the toys, she would have had no idea of the value of them, or that she had picked the most valuable toy in the collection.

Its possible that if her owner is someone in control of his emotions and of a generous disposition that he never got angry, and that understanding the situation would see that there was nothing to forgive.

However, forgiveness is not always that easy. People may have done something deliberate to take advantage of us, or hurt us. Some people even delight in causing pain to others.

Because Hindus believe that we are all divine at heart, we believe that every transgression is ultimately caused by our ignorance of our true nature. The Tirumurai says:

Without virtue and penitence, devoid of love and learning, as a leather puppet I went around and fell. He showed me the love and the path and the way to reach the world wherefrom there is no return.

The ignorant will not see that harming others is in a very real way harming ourselves, for we are all divine. They don’t know that karma will be accrued, veiling them in more ignorance and bringing them further from God.  This means that a Hindu should ideally not be angry or hold a grudge, but should forgive if he or she does. Forgiving is necessary for us to move on spiritually. Because of this, forgiveness is embodied in the scriptures and constraints of Hinduism. One of the Hindu yamas (constraints for dharmic living) is daya or compassion. Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami wrote:

Compassion tempers all decisions, gives clemency, absolution, forgiveness as a boon even for the most heinous misdeeds. This is a quality built on steadfastness. Daya comes from deep sadhana, prolonged santosha, contentment, scriptural study and listening to the wise. It is the outgrowth of the unfolded soul, the maturing of higher consciousness. A compassionate person transcends even forgiveness by caring for the suffering of the person he has forgiven.

Similarly, the Tirukural, the Saiva book of ethics  states:

Just as the Earth bears those who dig into her,
it is best to bear with those who despise us.

It is always good to endure injuries done to you,
but to forget them is even better.

It is impoverished poverty to be inhospitable to guests.
It is stalwart strength to be patient with fools.

Desiring that greatness should never cease,
let one’s conduct foster forbearance.

Forgiveness is a universal virtue and part of dharmic living for all Hindus. The above quote was from a Saiva text, but the Vishnava’s holy book, the Bhagavad Gita also extols the virtues of forgiveness:

The Blessed Lord said: Fearlessness, purification of one’s existence, cultivation of spiritual knowledge, charity, self-control, performance of sacrifice, study of the Vedas, austerity and simplicity; nonviolence, truthfulness, freedom from anger; renunciation, tranquility, aversion to faultfinding, compassion and freedom from covetousness; gentleness, modesty and steady determination; vigor, forgiveness, fortitude, cleanliness, freedom from envy and the passion for honor–these transcendental qualities, O son of Bharata, belong to godly men endowed with divine nature.

It is interesting that both passages extol forbearance as the first call. If we can avoid losing our temper and forgetting compassion, all the better. If we cannot then the remedy is forgiveness.

So, ideally we should remain full of compassion, and not lose our temper or hold a grudge, acting in accordance with the divine within. Since all but the most perfect of us do become angry or resentful, Hinduism teaches us that to uphold dharma we should forgive. Forgiveness is human, a way of keeping on the path to the divine.

Picture is a low-resolution screenshot from a BBC news video, which is considered fair use.

Lord Shiva bestows blessings on a devotee

Since God is within us all, he cannot help but show us mercy. When we are devoted to God we are rewarded by kripa (IAST: kṛpā), which can be translated as grace, or kindness. This amounts to removing karma that we have accrued, so that we do not have to face the consequences.

The interplay between karma and kripa can be looked at as a river.  The flow of the river is caused by our adharma (wrong actions). This flow takes us further from the source, God. When we worship God, his kripa will bring us back to the source, but if we are still living adharmically we will quickly washed away again. How many times have we felt the presence of God during worship or at the temple, but an hour later we feel distant again!

Karma, the world (maya) and anava (our ignorance) are also a gift from God, the environment where we can grow spiritually. This may seem strange at first, as many of our experiences don’t feel like gifts at the time, but ultimately they are. In Saiva Siddhanta we use the analogy of Pati-pashu-pasha, which is Tamil for master, cow, and tether, representing God, the soul, and the world. God guides the soul, using the world (karma, maya, and anava) to do so.

Is this divine grace and guidance a form of divine forgiveness for our transgressions? I have been contemplating this and I believe the answer is no, there is no divine forgiveness in Hinduism.

Forgiveness implies taking offence or being angry. God in Hinduism is all knowing and perfect. Since he never takes offence there is never a need to forgive, unless you look at it as everything being immediately forgiven. This may seem strange, as at times Hindus certainly ask for forgiveness, but I believe that it is really asking for help to move on from where we are and to learn. I see God as a parent, allowing a child to learn by their mistakes – having been told that if they don’t eat tea they will be hungry the parents may let them go hungry for an evening, but they don’t do this through anger or hatred but as part of guiding the child and helping them grow.

Several fellow Hindus have pointed out that this “asking for forgiveness” is part of forgiving ourselves. It is also a way to show remorse for wrong deeds, which is an essential part of hri, one of the essential rules of Hindu dharma. Knowing that God never holds a grudge, judges and is always with us is a great comfort to devotees. One convert to Hinduism writes:

This is the thing that keeps me affixed to this path. I had dealt with a lot of guilt and shame before finding sanatana dharma, and now I think I have a much healthier way to look at and deal with the “mistakes” I make in my life. It’s a wonderfully freeing feeling, to leave a tradition that tells me I’m inherently bad, and go to one that tells me that I’m inherently good, and that missteps are just the ways in which we learn.

In short, God is above forgiveness, and is constantly with us and supporting us. Not just by our side but at the centre of our souls, he bestows gifts on us all. Being loved by God means never having to say you’re sorry, but loving God means that you want to anyway.

I would appreciate any feedback on the above. I am personally convinced that it is right. I am also sure it is in line with the teachings of Saiva Siddhanta, theshiva.net says:

Lord shiva is the God of all. Like the mother He showers the grace for all the children, but the misusing children get punished. This Supreme Lord better than a mother does not withhold the grace, He is our beloved pashupati.

Is this also common to other branches of Hinduism? In the final post in this series I look at a Hindu’s obligations and attitudes to forgiveness.

Image “Lord Shiva bestows blessings on a devotee” is in the public domain, available from many sites but downloaded from shirdisaibaba100.blogspot.com.

Shiva the creator

Hinduism teaches that  the past is infinite, as is the future. Though there was a creation of the universe and there will be an ultimate destruction, these mark one of many cycles. Many Hindus also believe that there are other parallel physical universes, though Hindu texts are largely agnostic on this. The duration of each cycle is measured in billions of years. The late Carl Sagan, an agnostic astronomer and astrophysicist commented:

But the main reason that we oriented this episode of COSMOS towards India is because of that wonderful aspect of Hindu cosmology which first of all gives a time-scale for the Earth and the universe — a time-scale which is consonant with that of modern scientific cosmology. We know that the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, and the cosmos, or at least its present incarnation, is something like 10 or 20 billion years old. The Hindu tradition has a day and night of Brahma in this range, somewhere in the region of 8.4 billion years.

As far as I know. It is the only ancient religious tradition on the Earth which talks about the right time-scale. We want to get across the concept of the right time-scale, and to show that it is not unnatural. In the West, people have the sense that what is natural is for the universe to be a few thousand years old, and that billions is indwelling, and no one can understand it. The Hindu concept is very clear. Here is a great world culture which has always talked about billions of years.

This cycle of the physical universe itself repeats as part of a larger cycle, which in turn is in a further cycle. Different lineages may differ in the details of these cycles, but the gist is the same. Every 994 cycles of the universe a greater distruction occurs where the subtle plane  (also known as the astral plane) is also destroyed, and after 36,000 of these cycles all three worlds (physical, astral, and causal plane or God’s abode) and all of  space, and time are withdrawn into Shiva.

The above description is the beliefs of the Saiva Siddhanta church, which is classed as Advaita Ishvaravada. This contrasts with the beliefs of dualistic saiva sects and most vishnavas, who believe that the souls and God are eternally separate. During mahapralaya (the greatest destruction) souls continue to exist separate from God in a potential form. It is also different from the beliefs of the followers of Advaita Vedanta, who say that only the formless, impersonal Brahman exist after mahapralaya.

How does a human life fit in to this? At first thought it might seem that on this scale the soul of an individual is insignificant. This is not the case, however, as h the Mundaka Upanishad reveals the significance of the soul:

This is the truth:
as from a blazing fire
thousands of flaming sparks come forth,
so from the imperishable, my friend,
various beings come forth and return there also.

The atman is a divine spark of God. As Yogaswami of Jafna said “The one act God cannot do is to separate Himself from us even for a moment”. I believe that followers of Kabbalistic Judaism have a similar view of God. God by his very nature must be intimately concerned with us.

In the next section, “Kripa, divine mercy, and why forgiveness is not divine” I discuss how God helps us on our spiritual journey

Image “Shiva the creator” made by combining the Wikimedia image “lord Nataraja”  with the NASA image “Spiral Galaxy M81“. Both of these are available for non-commercial use with attribution. The combined image is available for non-commercial use under the Western Hindu blog’s license terms, as is the rest of this article.

Volara blog

Allegra contacted me and told me about her blog, volara. She  is a student at Princeton University and a follower of Gaudiya Vaishnavism.  Gaudiya Vaishnavism is usually associated with ISKCON, and Allegra’s path has taken that direction so far, though there are other linages within this tradition.   She writes about both about her studies and her personal spiritual journey.

She also feels sympathy for Muslims in America and writes about Islam. I know that this is likely to be controversial, but it seems to me that even if Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims victimise Hindus, it does not mean that it is right for Hindus in America  not to be treated equally.

I have added her blog to my list of blogs by Western followers of Hinduism.

Sparks from a fire

Yesterday on the way to work, I listened to the “Thought for the day” on Radio 4. This program allows people with a variety of beliefs to give a three or four minute talk on a subject of their choosing.  This particular talk was by the Rabbi Lionel Blue, and he talked about what a Kabbalist had told him about his view of God. The image he used was of God being nothing in the beginning, then withdrawing part of himself to leave a void. Into this void he sent divine sparks of himself.

According to the Kabbalist, the purpose of our creation is to allow these divine sparks to find their way back to God, to make him whole again.

It struck me how similar this is to the symbolism of the Mundaka Upanishad:

“This is the truth:
as from a blazing fire
thousands of flaming sparks come forth,
so from the imperishable, my friend,
various beings come forth and return there also.

There are many things that we would see differently, I certainly have trouble with the idea that God needs to be made whole. Even so this seems to be one of the occasions when truth is expressed by two ancient religions using the same picture and metaphore.

Image from Wikimedia Commons, and is reusable with attribution.

Mahasivaratri, Shiva’s Great Night