Hinduism And Religion

In Chapter ten the history of Hinduism is discussed in America and India. Instead of illustrating the religious doctrines of Hinduism. The author lists statistics about the livelihoods of Asian Indians. For example, there are eighteen different official languages in India. As the author emphasizes that doctrines have nothing to do with Hinduism, but the actions that individuals commit. The orthodoxy is a set of responsibilities that Hindus must carry out. If they wish to be reincarnated into a higher caste. In addition, the origin of Hinduism is mentioned within the chapter. That Hinduism is the only major religion that does not have a founder and has no beginning as there is not a specific known date of when it originated. Moreover, Hinduism is the oldest major religion and is the only polytheistic faith among the five popular creeds.

Before I read Stephen Prothero’s God Is Not One, I did not know much about Hinduism. For me, Hinduism conjured the images of bright colors, richly adorned statues, and jovial worship and dance. When we visited the Ganesh Temple in Flushing, that is exactly what I saw. Yet, now I know the reason for all these things. Although Hinduism is a largely varying tradition, it is namely about love and celebration. Given the evidence from Prothero’s book and my observations at the Ganesh Temple, Hinduism is a tradition that aims to gives purpose to human’s wandering souls through devote worship to deities and rituals.

India is a country full of mysteries and differences. It has a long history, a profound yet unique culture, with diversified nationalities, races, religions, languages and a huge population. The pursuit of secularism and inveteracy of sectarianism have brought huge influence to the Indian society. As the mainstream culture in India, Hinduism plays an important role in the Indian society and has dominated almost 2000 years of its history. Although in the following years since, the Indian culture gradually becomes a combination of different races, religions and languages, Hinduism still remains to be the key to dig into the development of the culture and society of India.

Imagine a place entirely made of Turkish Limestone and Italian marble, a place of worship and serenity. BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir is the full name of the Hindu Mandir I visited, it is located in Stafford also known as Houston, Texas. I visited BAPS because of the beautiful land mark it created. BAPS is a place of worship for people who practice and believe in Hinduism. Hinduism is approximately 5,000 to 10,000 years old. It is a religion that grows by enfolding new traditions. There are several field of Hinduism, but everyone picks only one. In Hinduism, the fallowers believe in the four gods and five goddesses, each one has an individual meaning and story. Causing each human individual to have a different connection with each of the gods.

Many religions offer an exact path to the afterlife; illuminated by various rules and regulations that one must follow to reach enlightenment. Hinduism, on the other hand, is much more complex, offering multiple ways to achieve moksha and providing many answers to the ancient question of “what happens after we die?” Many people think that Hindus believe in many deities, but the Hindu concept of God is much broader than that. In fact, Hinduism itself encompasses much more than just one specific set of religious beliefs. While some Hindus believe that God is a divine being with certain identifiable attributes, others believe that God cannot be defined and is an all-pervading being that extends beyond everything. Although some beliefs differ, the majority of Hindus see the concept of God in multiple ways. Among these are the concepts of God as one and many, God and the soul, God as sound, God as image, God in nature, cows, and avatara.

According to our text, “The religion of the overwhelming majority of Indians is Hinduism, the fourth largest in the world with about one billion adherents. Hinduism is both more and less than a religion as the West understands that term: It is a way of life, a philosophical system, an inspiration of art, and the basis of all Indian political theories in the past. But it is not a rigid set of theological doctrines.” (Adler & Pouwels, 2011, p. 51).

Hinduism is one of the major world religions. It has left a profound influence on many other religions because of its long, unbroken history that began 1500BC. (“Hinduism”). The devoted and committed followers of this religion also have many different outlooks and viewpoints of life because of the different gods they worship. Each of these gods stand for something different and have different principles and lessons for their followers to learn. (Doniger). Along with their many gods and beliefs, the Hindus also partake in many traditions that stretch back thousands of years. Hinduism is an ancient religion that encompasses a variety of practices and beliefs and has a rich plethora of history that is

Hindus have faith in the heavenly nature of the four Vedas, the world's most old sacred writing, and adore the Agamas as similarly uncovered. These primordial psalms are God's oath and the bedrock of Sanatana Dharma, the everlasting religion.

Hinduism is large and complex religious institute that reflects the religious belief of a rich society, the Indian people. It origins, just as the religion are intermingled in the Aryans system of belief and early Indian system of belief which merged to give what is now Hinduism. The Aryan system of belief came to exist in India when the Aryans from eastern Europe invaded India around 1500 B.C. It is believed that many of the rituals and gods of now, Hindu are derivative of their faiths. They came to India which what would later be adopted by hindus as the cast system, but theirs was composed of hierarchically of three entity; the warriors whom were the most important, the priest which direct any rituals and retain knowledge of the vedas and the servants which looked at the cattles. The accentuation of nature is also a product of the Aryan faith system which is reconstructed to or at least reused in the idea of oneness with nature and Brahman which is the hindu supreme God. The Rig Veda which contains thousands of hymns in the sanskrit are also Aryans (Phil.108, notes).

The Vedas teachings were preserved only in oral form for numerous years, but at a later point were transcribed down, so they could be passed down to others generations. The Vedas are the earliest sacred texts of Hinduism and it means “knowledge” or “sacred lore”. There are four basic sacred books: 1. Rig veda is basically a collection of at least one thousand chants that were used for the Aryan gods. 2. The Yajur Veda contains detail instructions for recitation to be done during a sacrifice. 3. The Soma Veda is basically music used during the vedic chants. 4. The Atharva Veda is prayers and charms. Now there is one more called The Rig Veda and according to our text book “it has an account of the origin of the universe. The universe is said to have

Since the dawn of religion, the perception of divine beings in human forms have been a prevalent belief. Most religions represent gods and goddesses as having human qualities and behaviors as well as humanoid forms. This is called anthropotheism, or the assigning of human qualities to deities. However, Hinduism is unusual in that followers identify their divine beings with physical qualities that are not humanoid. The major images of gods and goddess of Hinduism are studded with blue skin, animalistic features, multiple arms and eyes and elongated earlobes. While Hindus believe that Brahman, the principle god is formless, they accept that the majority of people cannot fathom a god without a form. As a result, intellectuals of the religion chose

A thorough and often-assigned work, Klostermaier 2007, understands four different elements of Hinduism: indigenous, Indus Valley, North Indian “Aryan,” and South Indian “Dravidian” perspectives. Klostermaier 2007 also focuses on the change, development, and conflict within Hinduism, arguing that, in addition to sectarian debates, the colonial and postcolonial worlds gave rise to various attempts to extract certain “essences” out of Hindu ideas and discard the rest as either “corrupt” or not “original.”

Hinduism is considered to be more than a religion. It is a culture, a way of life and a code of behavior (Khan, 2016) Although modern day clothes are worn by Hindu women it is custom to wear tradition garments such as the sari in everyday life including the work place (HAF, 2016). Therefor the employer must accommodate the employee’s rights to wear the clothing which customary the Hindu religion (HAF, 2016). Hindus are vegetarian therefor if a staff meeting of any kind their diets of choice should be accommodated. It would be considered discrimination to provide a verity of food for the other employees and not have some vegetarian options ion for the Hindu employees (HAF, 2016)

The practice Hinduism poses some interesting questions for anthropologists, its is fairly unique in comparison to the other worlds religions, and interestingly there is no founding fire. Furthermore, there is no single religious text or scripture and its dogma is not centered around one singular omnipotent deity. Hinduism does not subscribe to a singular moral code and there is no internal structure or centralized institutions. Because of this, anthropologists,and the general public alike, have a hard time imagining Hinduism as a religious system. In order to gain a better understanding of Hinduism, scholars have relied on a wide variety of texts and historical events from the South Asian cultures. It has become necessary to engage in

The statement "everyone is a Hindu" is an extremely broad one that is open to much interpretation. This owes partly to the fact that Hinduism itself is a broad and vast religion with many ways of following. In this paper I seek to explain that the statement "everyone is a Hindu" is a worthy one because Hindus have a sense of interconnectedness in all organisms and life on earth, and that the ultimate goal of a person is to join the rest of the universe in "moksha." Additionally, the attribute of the Hinduism that lends well to the statement is that Hinduism is a very hospitable religion that not only requires no specific adherence or conversion, it stresses the understanding of other religions as well.