LEARNING HINDU DHARMA / HINDUISM
LESSON : 1
HINDU POPULATION: It Is learned that there are nine religions world over. In 122 countries the national religion is Christianity, in 68 countries the national religion is Islam, in 8 countries (?) the national religion is Buddhism / Jainism, in none of the countries in the world HINDUISM is a national religion including in India. Still there are 100 crore / 1 billion Hindus in the world. One out of every seven individuals in the world one is a Hindu.
THE FOUNDERS OF HINDU DHARMA: . Generally religions are founded by individuals / holy men / prophets /….. The Hindu dharma which is not a religion, but a way of life, was evolved through the teachings of thousands of Rushies their knowledge has been given in thousands of books. There are thousands of literature written during many thousand years. Always new literature are being written by the process of addition, deletion, modification and correction of the existing literature or the extension of existing literature, in Sanskrit and also in various other languages.
WHY SO MANY LITERATURE AND FOUNDERS ? This is a question asked by many. The answer is very simple, scientific, logical and rational. No scholar / expert / god man can give all the knowledge needed for human beings. It cannot be given in one book as one subject that too during a particular period time. Human beings always cherish the diversity in each and every aspect of their life. Hence one book, written by one scholar, during a particular period of time CAN NEVER cater the FULL / INTEGRATED need of human beings in the world. Hence Hindus knew pretty well that diversified knowledge, in diversified literature on diversified subjects are to be written, refined, edited, updated always when the human culture and civilization progress. That is why Hindus have more than 2000 foundation literature. More than 10,000 commentaries having quality equal to the foundation literature and more than one lakh sub commentaries in various languages. (Where as Muslims, Christians and others have only one. More than one is not permitted, nor permission given for addition, deletion, modification and correction. Even improvement is not permitted. (More than one is strictly prohibited)
WHAT ARE THE SPECIALITIES OF HINDUS: Thousands of specialties are there for Hindus and for Hindu dharma. Hindus have never claimed that their literature / gods/ methods of worship / pathways /knowledge / saints ….. are the only ONES which/ who is/ are true and perfect. They have never claimed that only through their pathway one can attain heaven. They have never converted people from other religion to Hinduism for giving them salvation. They have never said that the god will punish those who follow other religions. They have never said the god will sent people with other type of belief to hell on the final day of verdict……. Hindus have specifically declared that god is only one and one can worship through any pathway. They have never said one 'god' is superior or other 'inferior' 'better' or 'bad'. They have said that the concept of god means a great omnipotent omnipresent natural phenomena with out any negatives like revenging/ anger / enmity / ego / jealousy / etc. All the sin and glory (papa and punya are not contributed / given / bestowed by the 'god' but they are the karma phala / result of the bad and good actions of human beings. According to Hindus, god is not a judge to evaluate human actions. The concept of god itself is different in Puranaas, Itihasaas, Vedas and in Upanishads, even though the ultimate aims of all these concepts are elevating human body, mind and soul from lower level to higher level. The knowledge about god is disseminated depending upon the intellectual capacity to digest it. The Upanishadic level of god is the highest and from there the level can be brought down.
Ultimate aim of Hindu dharma is to experience the bad and good of life through four purushaarthas known as 1. dharma ( living a dharmic life) 2. Artha ( prospering through dharmic pathway) 3. Kaama ( enjoying the life in a dharmic pathway) and 4. Moksha (relinquishing from the desires / attractions / cravings, etc of the normal life. So the ultimate aim of life is to experience the life, doing good and elevating the Body through saathwic food, elevating the mind through saatwic thoughts, elevating the soul through saatwic karma / actions. Will continue…
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