GEMS FROM THE
VISION AND PRACTICE
BEACH 10: HINDUISM FOR THE
NEXT GENERATION
Wave 3: Basics of Hindu Religious Worship : Page
2
Non-violence
stems from the fact that everything is but a spark of the same divinity and so
no harm should be done to anything that is living. Detachment
is non-attachment to anything which is not ultimately permanent. What is
impermanent? Anything that is amenable to sense-perception is impermanent. What
is not amenable to sense perception? The Ultimate Reality is the
one that is not amenable to sense perception. This is the common
substratum of existence both in the microcosmic and in the macrocosmic universe.
In other words, our body, our senses, our mind, our intellect, our possessions,
our kith and kin – none of these is ultimate.
The
Ultimate Substratum is in fact the essence of everything that is amenable to
sense perception. This Reality is the supreme Godhead of
Hinduism. There is no other, no second. It is formless, nameless and totally
unaffected by anything. It just is. Brahman is the name given to this. The
naming itself is a slip of rigor though intended. Brahman comes from the word
‘to transcend’ and so it connotes that which transcends everything that we
know. But the moment we think of it as a God to be worshipped, we have already
brought, by our limited intellect, a subject-object relationship in respect of
the ultimate Godhead which has no second. We have actually violated the
uniqueness of Brahman, the moment we even think of it. If we are to cite a
parallel to this phenomenon in our present day experience, the only thing we
may cite is modern physics. The moment we observe a subatomic particle, what we
observe has already been influenced by our observation. These rules of modern
physics may not apply to Brahman. But the very definition of Brahman says that you cannot predicate
anything of it except that it is. You cannot say that it is large or small,
black or white, you cannot point it out and say it is this or that, you cannot
possess it, you cannot relate to it.
The
Upanishads get out of this bottleneck by postulating what they call a saguNa brahman,
meaning, brahman,
with attributes. This is nothing but the
Ultimate Reality viewed from our world of experience. The
other name for this is Iswara.
This is the Almighty that corresponds to the unique God of other
religions. This Almighty is the God whom
we can think of, worship, invoke, revere, relate to, pray
to and in this sense the ultimate God of the Hindus.
This has all the superhuman and superlative qualities that we can think of –
with infinite mercy, infinite compassion, infinite grace and infinite
potentialities.
But here comes a subtle point.
According to the scriptures, God is both transcendent and
immanent,
omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.
Therefore by giving it a single name or form
we are
delimiting its omnipresence and transcendence.
No name or form will exclusively describe it and by that
very reason, say the Vedas,
all names
and forms suit it. This is the thin end of the wedge.
In
other words, the totality of things that are perceptible in the universe is
permeated by God. Everything is divine. Divinity is inherent
in everything that we see, smell, hear, touch or feel. In fact it is in
every one of us. If we are not able to see it, it is because we are governed by
our sense perception. We have to transcend space and time and cease to be
ourselves in order to realize its presence.
Since
the common mind of man cannot comprehend this abstractness and transcendence of
the nameless and formless version of God, different idols, images and
concretizations enter the picture. Each one has a mythology behind it or a philosophical
esoteric interpretation as its undercurrent. These myriad symbols, images and
idols are only symbols, images and idols and they are not substitutes for God.
Important note:
At an advanced level of understanding,
the word ‘only’ in this sentence just mentioned
may rightly be questioned.
For more on this, click
here.
This
every thinking Hindu knows, though he may not know the exact mythological
context or esoteric meaning which that idol, image or symbol carries. Each one
indicates the Supreme Power inherent in every one and it is that one God which
is worshipped in the form of idols and images. These images may be just stones
or trees or other inanimate objects or they may be anthropomorphic replicas of
a certain manifestation of that Supreme Divinity. In the course of the mythological history of
India – which is actually the prehistoric period – several such manifestations
of that one Godhead has taken place, sometimes for the purpose of putting an
end to the colossal wickedness of a demon or sometimes for the purpose of showering
divine grace on a superhuman devotee of that divinity. If anyone thinks that
these different gods and goddesses are something like the Greek gods and
goddesses and they are warring for supremacy among themselves, one would
be totally mistaken. The principle that
there is only one Godhead, that Godhead is nameless
and formless and for that very reason all names and forms suit it is stated in
the vedas itself and repeated many times throughout
the vast scriptural literature.
This
fundamental point is the most important lesson that one should learn about
Hinduism, whether he grows within the environment or out of it.
It is difficult to miss this lesson if one lives in
For a
refinement of this observation go to: An
idol of a deity is the deity itself
Any
worship for that matter introduces a duality between the worshipper and the
worshipped and so is a comedown from the unique mental cognition of the
Divinity inherent in oneself. Hinduism is human enough to admit within its fold
even those ordinary mortals who cannot rise, in their understanding, above the
grossly concrete representations of God. Hinduism says, in
essence, each individual can worship God in whatever form that suits his
competence, taste and stage of spiritual evolution.
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