Hinduism (1500 BC – ) is the main religion of India. It is a religion of temples, gods with many arms, holy cows, Untouchables, karma and reincarnation. It gave us two other religions, Buddhism and Jainism.
Hinduism is not the same all over India. It is more like a huge family of religions which hold certain ideas in common:
- Reincarnation: After we die we will be born again on this earth: same soul, different body. This happens over and over again. Forever. Our aim is to escape from this endless wheel of reincarnation and become one with Brahman:
- Brahman is everywhere and in everything, even in us. Brahman is the soul of the world. To escape this world of life and death and become one with Brahman, we must live according to its principles, not according to money or the other things of this world that would lead us in the wrong direction.
- Karma rules the world, not fate or chance or even the gods themselves. If we do bad things, we will be punished, sooner or later, one way or another; but if we do good things, then we will be rewarded, sooner or later, one way or another. That is karma. The reward or punishment may happen in this life or in the next. Some people seem to live a charmed life while others have the worst luck not because of anything they did in this life, but because of what they did in the last! The Buddhists and Jains also believe in karma.
- Caste: Society is divided into castes: at the top are the Brahmans, the priestly caste, then the princes and soldiers, then businessmen and farmers, then the masses and then, at the very bottom, the Untouchables. There is no moving up or down in this life. That is done between lives as determined by our karma. If you do good things in this life, then your next life will be better.
Hinduism has hundreds of gods, but three stand out: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Both Vishnu and Siva are pictured as having many arms and both have large followings in India. From Brahman sprang Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.
Vishnu has appeared on earth nine times and will appear again. Once he appeared as the hero Rama, another time as Krishna, that blue man in the Bhagavadgita. Krishna tells Arjuna the ways of the world, giving him the Hindu answers to the deep questions of life. The Bhagavadgita, which is part of an extremely long story called the Mahabharata, is the single best book an ordinary person can read to learn about Hinduism.
To learn more you can study the ancient Vedas. Not by reading them by yourself but by studying them at the feet of a guru. Work for him and he will teach you part of them. The two most famous parts are the Rig Veda and the Upanishads. The 108 Upanishads are about the nature of Brahman.
See also:
Oh no. This.
Sometimes, Legion, I can’t tell even express how I feel about this kind of thing There are moments, long moments, when I just can’t talk about white people.
Most of the time I’m struggling even to get a proper sentence out, damn it, that a reader can understand…
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@ Legion, when you were SW6, you said: “No one ever commented on this post and I feel a little sad about that.”
Do you have any theories about why that was?
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😀
Reminds me of of when I used to say that I didn’t want to know about things that I didn’t already know about.
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AUM (OM) is a hindu sacred sound that is considered the greatest of all mantras.
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For hundreds of years, the veda teaching were never written down they were only spoken or sang. The Upanishads were written down maybe 500 to 1000 years after thevedass and contain most of the ideas about Hinduism.
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@ Bulanik
Intuitively speaking without thinking too much about it where would you say unresolved emotions, in the body, get stored? If you think it’s more than one place please don’t feel constrained to only give one.
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Of course, I’m assuming you agree with the question’s assumption, that emotions are stored in the body. Safe for me to assume that, I hope.
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@ Legion — stomach and bowels. This part of the body has it’s own “character”. It’s where life and reactions to it are “digested”. It’s where a person can hang on or release, absorb or eliminate.
That is precisely the digestive process: to extract goodness and pass out waste. In some ways that’s the test of how successfully a person can manage life.
Neck and shoulders. The place of anger and frustartion.
Heart. Connection, and forgiveness.
I absolutely believe emoitons are stored in the body. They live in the tissues and have direct control on the size of arteries and blood circulation, and even how much air we let into our lungs.
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And of course Bulanik you are completely correct!
This is why organ transplants are wrought with problems. They are more than just unconscious blocks of flesh. They carry and store the genetic memories and emotions of the donor.
The film “21 grams” beautifully illustrated this not so well appreciated FACT.
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I missed that film, and I don’t like to miss Benicio del Toro in anything!
My mother (a medical person) used to have to weigh bodies pre and post death and always remarked on the weight differential.
As for the soul, I feel (and was taught) that the vestiges of emotions sits in the throat and thymus, and is said to vibrate depending on emotional state.
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@ Bulanik
Thank you for your response. I agree with you wholeheartedly🙂 .
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To respond to your original question Bulanik (and Legion’s) at the top of this post.about why no one ever really commented about this topic…
The US is seeped in the Christian religious tradition and this is reflected deeply in the majority of Americans. Never more so than African-Americans.
Its already acknowledged as a part of this author’s (Abgond’s) convictions so it should be equally no surprise to find no real discussion here.
The real post, discussion, debate should be about Religion (All Religions not just Christianity) its necessity and the role it plays within our secular societies.
Then perhaps there could be some meaningful discussion about “the Soul”, “Spirit”, “Emotions” and our “multii-ethinical generational” and “Genetically inherited Memories”…….
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“stomach and bowels. This part of the body has it’s own “character”. It’s where life and reactions to it are “digested”. It’s where a person can hang on or release, absorb or eliminate.
That is precisely the digestive process: to extract goodness and pass out waste. In some ways that’s the test of how successfully a person can manage life.
Neck and shoulders. The place of anger and frustartion.
Heart. Connection, and forgiveness.
I absolutely believe emoitons are stored in the body. They live in the tissues and have direct control on the size of arteries and blood circulation, and even how much air we let into our lungs.”
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I never really thought about these things much, ma’am. But I recognize the TRUTH (at least this one) when I hear it and see it! Our cells, molecules, atoms, organs – every part of us all respond to our thoughts and feelings.
Thank you for sharing this, and to Legion for asking the question.
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I don’t know much about the Hindu religion, but I believe that negative emotions/energy affect the physical body. I believe negative emotions are the root of many diseases, in addition to neglect and bad dietary habits. Even the Christian bible states that “A merry heart is a good medicine; A boken spirit dries the bones. Proverbs:17:22.
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My pleasure Matari. I’m glad you find the subject intriguing. I would not be surprised at all if Bulanik had references she could recommend to you, if you wished to pursue the topic a little further.
And thank you for the mention.
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@ Kwamla, you said on why no one ever really commented about this topic:
.
You said it.
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Neck and shoulders. The place of anger and frustartion.
Shame too, I believe.
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That’s interesting, Legion. Personally, I’d always believed shame was wrapped up in over-eating and purging, or sometimes held as tension in the genitals.
But, a teacher of mine (Naturopathy) used to say that the jaw, neck and upper back was tightened and painful in persons with strong need to blame, and that as shamed children they learned to watch, holding that tension in this part of the body.
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Well, these things don’t necessarily have sharp demarcations like the location and position of one’s fingernails. So, yeah, shame could, I’m sure show up elsewhere in the body. Just so you’re understanding me, for the moment I’m speaking from my own musings informed by loosely remembered Eastern tenets and personal observations/experience. (I feel like picking up one of my books in a little while though, I have a good one with speeches and lectures by Swami Vivekananda called Pathways to Joy. Not sure if there’s any Chakra specific discussion in the book but there is plenty on various workings and manifestations of the mind and cautions to take.)
Onto my semi informed musings 🙂 :
Shame at the genitals. Hmm, I’d say the shame would not be of a general type but would be sexually related. The shoulders and neck seem to me to have something to do with shame: slouching, slumped over shoulders, those are things we do when we are feeling the oposite of pride/accomplishment. I nearly heard your voice on the “How daily life has changed in the last 30 years” thread, when you said, “a man should stand tall and erect” or equivalent words. It is obvious what that means on a purely physical basis. But I automatically thought then as I do now that a man must have the proper psyche and emotional health to carry himself so, along with the ‘bread and butter’ bones and sinew. He must have an integrity of the intangible sort along with the physical sort.
Personally, I’d always believed shame was wrapped up in over-eating and purging, or sometimes held as tension in the genitals.
Indeed. I think that could all be included Bulanik.
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Bulanik said:
But, a teacher of mine (Naturopathy) used to say that the jaw, neck and upper back was tightened and painful in persons with strong need to blame, and that as shamed children they learned to watch, holding that tension in this part of the body.
The nervous system is an utter marvel.
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Karma rules the world…
I thought about this, pretty much all day.
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Warning: Very boring post ahead because what would make it interesting are details. Alas, I must omit the details because they are too personal. I would also have to provide immense back story, uh, I’m totally not gonna do that. Now that you’re properly excited to read a boring post, *hahahaha*, let’s get to it.
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Karma
I must have felt this thing coming, hence that post above. A wave, a powerful wave. A moment where a lot of karma arrives in a short space of time. That is what happened today. It was so powerful I was able to forget about “me” to an extent. You know, the “me”, the “I” that is a construct of the experiences we’ve had and so technically is not real. In Buddhist jargon (on topic as it is a close cousin to Hinduism) it is said that: “things do not exist from they’re own side.” Which means the same thing, that there is no inherent existence to anything you can imagine or any of the things that you see around you and experience. Everything that is relies on an antecedent to have come into being and so that is why ultimately there is no concrete existence to anything – and I mean ANYTHING!
In Buddhism this theory of reality is called Dependent Origination, some equivalent exists in Hinduism, I think. You can easily google search, to see if that is so and what it is called in Hinduism.
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Okay, that concludes boring post. 😛
Sorry kids, I’m too shy about the gory details. But maybe what I’ve said above will be recognizable to you in regard to your own stuff that you’re going through. Has anyone else had a day of condensed Karma, where just couldn’t ignore it’s operation in your life?
(cricket chirping time now, i suppose. Arhahaha! 😀 )
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*where you just couldn’t ignore …
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Jainism and Buddhism did not grow out of Hinduism, they stood in opposition to Brahmanism Jainism is older than Buddhism and pre-dates the Vedic religion of the Hindus.
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* their own side…
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http://online.wsj.com/articles/in-india-hindu-gods-get-a-muscular-makeover-1405996202
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CRAVING!!! LOL!
(http://youtu.be/84DLT4yRcy4)
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^ perhaps “Attachment” is the more oft used term in Hinduism…
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Reblogged this on Project ENGAGE.
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