Comparing World Religions, episode 11: Hinduism

0:00All right, so before we start, I'll give a warning. Last week and the week before I knew quite a bit about Islam, though I don't pretend to be any kind of expert. And of course before that I know quite a bit about Christianity as I've dedicated a good part of my life to it. And I knew a bit about Judaism, but tonight we're stepping out of my comfort zone. Like I know so very little about Hinduism. And my studies this week only went to highlight how little I know. We were talking about the Dunning Kruger effect earlier

1:00where I kind of was starting to hit that high as I was starting to get it. And then I once you know about the Dunning Kruger effect, you can halt it and remind yourself, no, no, no. I'm not going to learn about one of the oldest religions on earth in a week. So I'm not going to be an expert on this and I don't claim to be. So isn't that just the more you know, the more you know you don't know? Yeah. I've also decided to cut back as I've been editing the Islam episodes. I realized that there were times when I probably went too deep like I probably brought too many details, even though it's all interesting. I was probably writing that more for a podcast episode. So things can listen to. I'm not going to try to go as deep tonight. So I make no attempt at a comprehensive analysis. We're going to hit some broad strokes. Okay, so tonight when we talk about Hinduism, the first thing we need to realize is that Hinduism isn't so much our religion. It's more a series of religions. All of these religions originate in the Indian subcontinent. The modern borders as you see

2:04here, that's like the subcontinent, if you want to talk geologically, it's you know millions of years ago, the subcontinent pushed up against China and that's why the Himalayas are right there because they're being jammed up into the sky. And so pretty much everything south of the Himalayas, including the Himalayas, is all called the subcontinent. And so you got Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and India, and Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, I suppose. But some people will include Afghanistan. Some people will include Tibet. All of the tribal religions that have coalesced around a certain set of beliefs that we now call Hinduism. Most of them are going to come from this area here around the Indus River Valley. So here's the Indus River. It starts up in the Himalayas and then cuts back down. It goes through Northern India and of course it gives India its name. But most of the Indus River where it's the most navigable is actually in the modern state of Pakistan. Pakistan in time became more of a Muslim area

3:06and when the British partitioned India and Pakistan at the time Bangladesh was part of Pakistan, it was a separated country. When the British partitioned India after World War II to decolonize, they just kind of said they just kind of drew some lines and said well here's your Muslim areas and right in the middle that's your Hindu area. And so a whole lot of people who lived in India moved to Pakistan, a whole lot of people who lived in Pakistan who were Hindus moved to India if they could. It's not perfect. India still has like 200 to 300 million Muslims living in the country. I mean there are minority groups, they're the largest minority group on earth. What do you mean if they could? Well not everybody can afford to move. There's money. Yeah, money or there might be health region. No, in fact that's the government was telling people to move. The British government was saying this is part of the plan. This is the Muslim side and Bangladesh. This is the Muslim side. This is the Hindu side so and they did

4:08the same thing in Israel with the West Bank, Palestine and Israel that basically told okay you live here now you go over here now you guys over here you live here now. So within the subcontinent India, Pakistan, the Paul Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka but mostly in India and Pakistan is where your Hindu religions are going to originate. The Indus River Valley is one of those rivers around which the earliest known human civilizations gathered along with the Tigris and Euphrates around Babylon, the Nile in Egypt, the Angsi and the Yellow River in East Asia. Some people would include the Mississippi River, the Mississippi in cultures, the early Native American cultures. Rivers around which the earliest civilizations coalesced and this is one of them. Some argue it's the earliest one. I think Mesopotamia is probably the better argument for the earliest human civilization but it's certainly a candidate for one of the earliest civilizations and it is from this deeply historical region that Hinduism

5:12comes from. Let's talk a little bit about etymology which is one of my favorite words. Etymology just means where does this word come from and it's so helpful on Google if you learn how to spell that because if you want to know where like squash comes from. That's a funny name for a plant. Go to Google and write two words, squash etymology and it'll take you straight to links where you can understand where words come from. So etymology just means the study of where words come from. India comes from the Sanskrit word and I forgot to give you guys an example of Sanskrit. I was going to show you what Sanskrit looks like. It's just a very very ancient language. India comes from the Sanskrit. In Sanskrit it was called Sinthu. In Persian the ancient Persians had a hard time with the S sound so for them it was Hindu. That was the name of the subcontinent. The Greeks then built off the Persians and they called them Indus. The Latins called it Indus and in English it's India. So that's our etymology for the nation of India. All

6:15right. Now there's a folk etymology for India where it comes from the Spanish Indios, particularly the Native Americans because they were supposed to be the Spaniards called them Ninos Indios which is not true. It's not that's not the actual etymology. I want to give you an example of how folk etymology could come about. So for instance most people assume male and female obviously come from the same root word. Actually they come from completely different root words and Latin male was masculas and female was femina. You can tell from the Latin they're not the same root word. It just happens to be in English that they look very similar. And of course there's a joke. I mean I kind of like it but male and then if you know your chemistry, Effie is iron so females are iron man. That's very folk etymology. Always. Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or Superhero. One of my favorite folk etymologies is woodchuck. It doesn't have

7:16anything to do with wood or chuck. It comes from the Algonquin, the Native American language, woodchuck which means digger which is exactly what a wood chuck is it digs in the ground. If you've noticed woodchuck's neither known on nor do they throw wood. So to answer the age-old question how much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood? Zero. It's not about wood or chuck. Alright so it's like driveway. You can't drive on it. I mean like through. And a parkway you can't. I think that's less folk etymology. I think that's more just irony but it's a good grab. So I've failed that to say this. Somebody's going to say well India comes from the Spanish Indios. Not only is that not true there's no significant connection between the Indian subcontinent in Spain. There's no colonial connection that I'm aware of. Since we're still on etymology what about the word Hindu? Excuse me we're past etymology we're now on to indenins. An exonym is a name for something that comes from another

8:19language. So I think most of you might be aware of the fact that Japanese people do not call their country Japan. They call their country Nippon. And Germans don't call their country Germany they call it Deutschland. Well Nippon and Deutschland are what is known as an indenim. That's a name for what they call themselves. And the indenim for India is Barra. What about France? It's close. France is what the French call. It's very close. So sometimes the indenim and exonym are different. Sometimes they're similar. What's interesting is in the Indian Constitution it's the one Constitution that I'm aware of that uses both names. Like the first words in the Indian Constitution are India comma which is Barra comma etc etc etc. The indenim for Hinduism which is why bring it up. I did misplay that. The indenim for Hinduism is a Sanata dharma. If you remember from the 90s there was the Sikham dharma and Greg. Dharma

9:24means order or righteousness. And so Sanatana dharma is the eternal order and that's what the Hindus call their religion. This right here is Sanskrit. So I did give you guys an example of Sanskrit after all. Right there. All right so let's dig into the 10 questions. As I was preparing this week I was really happy. I came up with the 10 questions because it really helped me arrange my thoughts on Hinduism because they were all real scatter shot. Question number one, what is the nature of reality? Now this is tricky. You're going to notice this with Hinduism is almost every doctrine that you come up with. You're going to find other Hindus that disagree with that doctrine. So we'll start with the first one. What's the nature of reality? Well the orthodox Hindu answer is that the world is an illusion or Maya. That the spirit world, the spirit realm is more real. And of course some Hindus believe that the world is a fully an illusion. Other

10:27Hindus don't really believe that illusion is the right term at all. Much of Hinduism teaches that the world is the illusion or Maya but not all. And nearly every branch of Hinduism does believe that the physical world is real. And so usually world views that say that the world is an illusion like Christian science. They really believe that the physical world is a fiction. Hinduism as far as I can tell there's very few Hindu teachings that the physical world doesn't exist but rather that the spirit world is more real. And actually I mean Christianity kind of what does Paul say when you look through but as a glass darkly that this world we have now is a world of shifting shadows. So there's a touch of that in Christian theology as well. But in Hinduism it really hits home that the spirit realm is more real than the physical realm. Hinduism tends to teach that the world we live in is ever changing imperfect and have a veil. And that what is being veiled is the pure

11:27divine consciousness or brahmin. Like I said some interpretations are that the world is completely an illusion but that's a minority opinion. Other interpretations is that the world is somehow less real and yet other interpretations are that the real world is a manifestation of the spiritual reality. So both are real and they're directly connected. I know I didn't really answer the question. You're going to find this with Hinduism that it's not as cut and dry theologically. There's going to be a lot of sometimes even contradictory teachings in Hinduism. So it's kind of like trying to grasp sand. You're going to grab a little sand but a lot more is going to sneak through your hands. Oh yeah. We'll get to that when we talk about the destiny of humanity. We'll talk about that. Yes Hinduism and a lot of the spirit realm in Hinduism. One of the few things that all Hindus agree on unless I'm very mistaken is the concept of reincarnation. And so the heaven place and the

12:28hell place which we'll get to. They're temporary and they're part of that reincarnation such. Yes they do believe in both good and bad forms of the spiritual reality. They believe that Jan is well. Certainly they wouldn't use the same word but I think they do believe in. Well one of the things and we're going to get that in just a second. Hinduism believes in millions of deities. Not just one. They're the ultimate polytheistic religion. In fact that will go ahead and be our segway. Question number two does God exist and what is God like? The key defining feature of Hinduism is polytheism. Some interpretations are that there are as many as 330 million deities within Hinduism. I'm not entirely sure where they get that number but I know that Ravi Zacharias, one of my favorite Christian speakers before his after his death we came to realize that he was actually a bit of a he had some

13:29predatory behavior and it's unfortunate but he was a Christian from the Indian subcontinent and he would quote that all the time. He liked to point out that in Hinduism there is 330 million deities. Not all forms of Hinduism have that many. As I say here other Hindu scoff at the idea of having that many gods. Technically Hinduism does contain elements of both monotheism and pantheism because of bubble there is Brahman. Is Brahman a personal God? In other words is he a person. The majority opinion is no. The average Hindu that you talk to is going to see Brahman as more of an impersonal force without gender or form. Kind of like the Holy Spirit if the Holy Spirit was somehow superior to the father. A different entity altogether and superior to the father and the son then that's kind of what I think is our best analogy. It's not precise. There's

14:33probably not a Hindu on earth who would use the Holy Spirit as an example to describe Brahman but that's the analogy I'm going to use to try to help us understand it. What Brahman does rhyme with Brahman and it also has the word Brahman and I'm watching ice cream. Now there are other interpretations where Brahman isn't an impersonal force. The Vaishnava I'm going to butcher most of these pronunciations. The Vaishnava and other factions of Hinduism disagree. They treat Brahman as a deity with attributes and when that happens the people who treat Brahman as a person they're going to use the masculine Brahman. That's a Brahman is a gender neutral term and that's usually referring to the force. Brahma is a gender masculine term and it refers to the Creator God. To make it even more confusing as best I can tell there are some Hindus that

15:34believe that Brahman and Brahma both exist separate. Like you have the Brahma the Creator God who uses the impersonal force Brahman but as far as I can tell that's a small minority position. Usually most Hindus are either going to believe in Brahman the impersonal force, gender neutral force or Brahma the Creator God. That's where the name for the Brahma bull comes from. We're going to come to the cattle aspect later. Very good question. So let's talk about some of the key deities. We are not going to cover all three hundred and thirty-three million deities but there's certainly hierarchies. The tri-murti sometimes called the Trinity but that just gets really confusing especially for Christians. The tri-murti are Brahma the Creator and even though this kind of looks female these are all male gods. Brahma

16:34is the Creator Vishnu sometimes called Lord Vishnu and even though Brahma probably is superior a lot of Hinduism is going to be focused on Vishnu. Vishnu is going to be probably the most worshiped of all of the gods. Lord Vishnu is the preserver or the maintainer and then Shiva this gets confusing is the destroyer but not Satan. Shiva is not viewed as a negative God or like a bad guy. It's seen as a necessary part of the natural cycles. The things that life comes and then death comes and then the dead animal becomes earth and the earth becomes new plants and the life cycles continue and continue. So destruction is a healthy part of reality and so Vishnu and Shiva are not enemies they compliment each other in Hindu theology. After the three tri-murti by the way I didn't have a written up here. TRI MURTI. TRI MURTI

17:40you are TI the tri-murti if I'm pronouncing that right. The three tri-murti have consorts known as the Tri-Devi Tritvi. TRI D-E-V-I. T-R-I D-E-V-I. These are the consorts. These are all female. You've got Sattva Swati who is the goddess of knowledge, music and art. You've got Lakshmi who is the goddess of wealth and prosperity and you've got a being that's known alternatively in different sects. They would know this being as either Parvati, Shakthi or Devi and this is the supreme mother goddess, the goddess of power and love. What did I say? She's Devi. Devi. Thank you. D-E-V-I. So we're going to have to get you on and bunny guitar. And there I am. Famous chef called Lakshmi. I think Padma Lakshmi

18:40is that a thing? Padma. Yeah. Padma I recognize. I think her last name is Lakshmi. I might be wrong. Now mom said earlier I always bring in superheroes. I always try also bring in Star Wars if I can. Shakthi is a character in Star Wars. So there you go. Yay. Brought it in. And then you have the lesser gods or the next level I should say. They're not lesser. If they're really are 333 million, this is still the 18 year. You've got and I'll go through these quickly. Masaya, the fish god is not the goddess fish but he is depicted as aquatic. He incarnated to save humanity and the sacred texts from the great flood. A lot of religions have a great flood motif. Korma, the great tortoise and you probably will talk about it later than tortoise that holds up the earth. During the churning of the ocean of milk, the great tortoise supported the mountain mandara symbolically the earth. There was an ocean of milk. An ocean of milk. You can ask me about it but I don't know. It just apparently within the mythology there was a one point of ocean full of milk. But

19:44aha, the boar defeated the demon. I won't try to pronounce that. He defeated a demon to rescue the goddess earth, Gaia. Gaia is a great name though. In Sanskrit, it's buddhavi. Man, everything sounds like devi. Well, it's the devi again. buddhavi is the devi. Narasimha is the half man, half lion. He destroyed it but yet another demon to protect his devotee, Pradlada. Vamanah, the dwarf, a pious sage who humbled a king to regain control of the universe. Parashurama, the warrior sage, eradicates evil warrior kings. Rama, and now Rama is going to be pretty important within Hindu theology. Rama was the king of Ayodhaya. He is the hero of the Ramayana which is one of the sacred texts. Krishna, who is also going to be very important in Hindu theology. Krishna is the divine shepherd and statesman. He

20:49is a central figure in the Bhagavad-gita which is not the primary text of Hinduism but probably the most well-known text in Hinduism. Buddha, who we will talk about later, is not up here. Buddha is the enlightened one. He is listed in the puranas as the avatar for compassion. And of course, we'll talk about Buddhism next week. Kalki, the destroyer, is the future avatar of Vishnu, has not appeared yet and he has something to do with the end time so we will come back to that. Most god figures are going to be described as having more than two arms in art or in literature at some point. The multiple arms signifies their great strength and their ability to do multiple tasks. And so, yeah, all of these figures in ours. Now, some of these figures like Krishna and Rama are supposed to have been

21:50avatars. So they were humans or at least they appeared as humans. I'm not entirely sure which is which whether it's an appearance or whether they were humans. So they are unlikely to be depicted with four arms otherwise they're not going to be very good human avatars if you have one of your teens walking around with four arms. Okay, so there are some, as far as I can tell this is some minority position, but there are some who grant avatar status to Jesus. That Jesus of Nazareth was a avatar of Vishnu. This is not a mainstream belief. Hindus do grant Jesus the status of a great teacher from another religious tradition. Hinduism is highly pluralistic. There's the word I'm looking for. And so, most forms of Hinduism are going to have a place for Judaism, Christianity. Islam is a little bit tricky because of the political situation in India, Hindus and Muslims don't necessarily hate each other but they

22:55often represent opposite sides on issues. Pakistan is the second most populous Muslim nation on earth and Indonesia being the most populous Muslim nation on earth. And honestly, if I were to sit down and crunch the numbers, I wouldn't be surprised if more Muslims live in Pakistan than in Indonesia. Because Indonesia is going to be more diverse. Whereas most Pakistanis are going to be Muslim. And so, if that's the case, it's going to be the largest Muslim majority population in the world. And so, now, if it were more centrally located, it's kind of on the edge of the Middle East. It was more centrally located. I think it would have much more of a greater power in Muslim political dynamics. Whereas Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Iran tend to be more centrally located. Did any of the apostles tread that bar? According to Christian tradition, Thomas went to India and made it at least

24:02as far as the Indus River. It might have been a different river, but I think it's as far as the Indus River. And according to your tradition, he was speared while trying to evangelize in India. Indian Christians, and there are Indian Christians. There are minority groups, but there's millions of them. Believe that. I mean, totally. They want to have that connection to the apostle. In the same way that Scotland claims the apostle Andrew, even though I would be really surprised if Andrew went to Scotland. I don't see any evidence that that was even really possible. Now, while some will claim that Jesus is an Avatar of Vishnu, and even less common, thing is for somebody to grant the same Avatar status to Muhammad or founders of other faiths. Very uncommon, but it does happen. But like I said earlier, Hinduism is so diverse that these interpretations can be found. Amongst those who grant a role for Muhammad, some of them try to tie Muhammad to Kalki, the final Avatar of Vishnu that will come at the end of days, although it's been almost

25:081500 years since the end of day started, because Islam has been around for that long. Other major deities, we're not going to cover them all. We're not going to cover even all of this screen. You've got Kali, K-A-L-I, the goddess of time. You've got Ganesha, the remover of obstacles. This is going to be the most animalistic one that you probably have seen a statue of. He's got a great elephant head. Here's Kali. You see, I mentioned Kali is kind of a dark figure, but like I said, not an evil figure. A figure of night and death. And here's Ganesha, the great elephant-headed god. Indra, the god of weather. Then you have just the generic goddess, the goddess, representing either a specific female deity or a collection of female deities or representing the feminine energy of the divine. Unless I'm mistaken, most Hindus would probably associate this goddess figure with Durga, the primordial power. While the top three gods, I'll go back to show you

26:15who the top three are. While the top three gods in Hinduism are male, most of the top 33 are actually female. So females dominate the highest level of the pantheon. Also, and the pantheon is the river of the Ganges. The Ganges is a god within this polytheistic structure. Part of the creation myth, we're going to get to creation later, but there are multiple Hindu creation myths. And one of them is that the Milky Way, we don't really see the Milky Way around here because of light pollution, but if you were in a place with no light pollution, you could see the center of the galaxy at a kind of an angle. We're not exactly lined up with the Milky Way. Well, Hinduism as well as a whole lot of religions had a role for that. In that Ganga, if I'm pronouncing that right, the great river, part of the creation myth was Brahman directing that river to earth. And it was going to flood the

27:19whole earth. So Vishnu directed it into the Ganges river. And so the Milky Way, according to Hindu theology, is the Ganges. That the Lord Vishnu forced it into the banks of the Ganges, so it wouldn't flood the whole earth. But yes, the river is a god within that pantheon. And this is what I said earlier. So while Hinduism is the the premier polytheistic religion, it also has elements of monotheism with Brahman as the one god above all. And it's got elements of pantheism with the river being treated as a god. In fact, multiple things will, I'm not familiar with a whole lot of them, but like individual mountains or the Himalayas themselves, will be treated with similar reverences, treated as kind of a god status, which really feels a lot like pantheism that the earth is god. All right, what are the gods like? The pantheon within Hinduism is very diverse. So there are no

28:21attributes or at least very few attributes that describe them all. They're a vast community. And in fact, if there really are 333 million, then there's a community as big as the population of the United States within this pantheon. But there are some themes. Many deities in Hinduism are depicted in forms that imply a connection between the wildness of nature and the intelligence of humanity. So most of these deities are going to have some animalistic features and some human like features. The many arms that you see in some of these deities, sometimes depicted as four, sometimes depicted as a lot more than four. The many arms represent great strength and the ability to accomplish multiple tasks at once. The deities are often depicted as both ferocious and gentle. Now that probably has a little bit to do with the animalistic, the mixed animal and human features. But the ferocity and the gentleness, that's not an accident. The deities

29:24you're expected to treat them as worthy of fear, not hatred. You don't hate the deities. And you're not actually, you don't actually think they're going to hurt you. But if you do wrong, then yes, you should have that fear that the gods are strong and they will punish evil doers. So they are worthy of your fear and respect. I don't think I would have that with the elephant in a china store. Well, as the remover of obstacles, Ganesha is going to be one of your more beloved Hindu gods. But yeah, probably pretty big for a China closet. There are bold deities, I guess you would want less in a China closet. Okay, so the deities are described as worthy of fear, but they're also described as good. And so you fear what they can do, but you trust in their goodness. Hindu deities are often described as fallible, making mistakes, but rarely are they described as evil. They are a danger to evil doers. There are in Hinduism demons. These beings

30:29are called asuras or rakshasas. The asuras are power-seeking beings and the rakshasas are flesh-eating demons. And so the ones that represent greed and power and the ones that just represent destruction, evil destruction. But even some of these figures are sometimes described as doing good, but all of these figures, all the asuras and rakshasas, are accountable to the rules of karma, just like humans. What are the particular rules regarding the worship of God or the gods? Worship in Hinduism is highly individualistic. Temples do exist and we'll talk about a few of them, but most Hindus visit temples infrequently. It's rare to find a Hindu that never goes to the temple, but it's also kind of rare to find a Hindu that goes all the time, unless they're

31:34studying or something, unless they're part of the clergy. And I'm not sure clergy is the right word to use here. Worship in one's home is more common to set up a shrine for daily or at least semi-daily worship. The deity or deities, sometimes it's dedicated to just one deity, sometimes to a multitude of them. The deity or deities are treated as honored guests within your home. There is a complex individualized 16-step ritual called a puja, PUJA. Part of this ritual is offering food, and the food is often returned to the one who provided as a blessing. This is true whether it's in your home, which obviously you control, you know, since it's your home. I think it's also true within the temples that you offer the food to the deities, and obviously, I say obviously as a skeptic, the statues aren't going to eat your food, so it would be returned to you as a blessing.

32:36It seems like a tiny ship. Yeah, a tiny ship. Well, there's those cigarettes that have been there for 10 years at the base of the, somebody's offering cigarettes to, and I think that character is Buda, because Budaism is going to be much more common in China than Hinduism. Hinduism now is mostly confined to India, though you're going to find Hindus in all the major cities around the world. You're right. They're going to be immigrants. Well, Budaism and Hinduism are very tied together. Budaism comes directly out of Hinduism, and Hinduism often regards Buda as one of the avatars of Vishnu, so they're still very connected. Hinduism, for the most part, is going to be limited today to the country of India. Oh, very much, yes. But historically, Hindus range from Afghanistan to Vietnam, and so you're going to have Hindus throughout Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka,

33:38Indonesia, all the way up into Afghanistan. So, for instance, the Taliban destroyed one of the largest Buda statues, which since I'm pulling it out of memory, I don't know if that Buda statue was tied more to Buddhism or to Hinduism, but I do know that both religions historically have been up in Afghanistan. Indonesia, before it was majority Muslim, was majority Hindu. The largest still standing Hindu temple on earth is Angkor Wat in Cambodia, which is not a Hindu country today. In fact, one of the defining characteristics of Hinduism is that it's really very much tied to one country, one culture, very similar to how Judaism is very much tied to one ethnic group, the Jewish people. There are Jews, religiously speaking, there are Jews who aren't ethnic Jews. Sammy Davis, Jr., being probably the example that comes to most of our minds. And likewise, within Hinduism, you're going to find a lot of converts amongst white, black, East Asian, etc., etc.

34:41But typically speaking, there's a deep ethnic connection between Hinduism and the Indian people. Yeah, it wasn't there at the lower immigration from India, come to America in the 60s. Yes, as well. And actually, for all the, they should do it the right way, people who want to restrict immigration. If you are in India, and we're not talking about the fiancee visa process, or specialized visa process, if you just say, I would very much like to move to the United States of America and become a common labor. And you put in your application, the waiting list right now is about 60 years. Sixty. So that's what it means to do it the right way, if you're from India, because there's just a backlog. It seems like that during that thing, there was a lot of doctors that came. Medical? There's a different route for them. Yeah, they must say, they're a specialized immigration process, depending on what skills you bring with you, including doctors. There are a lot of doctors from India in the United States and Canada today. Just like if you're a baseball

35:45player in the Dominican Republic, you're much more likely to get your immigration approved based on your skillset and what you bring to the table. Let's see, part of the worship ceremony, whether in the temple or at your shrine, is the waving of a lamp or a light representing knowledge. And also the speaking of mantras. An example, oh, here's another shrine photo. Okay, here's examples of mantras. Probably the most well-known one is om namashivaya. Translated as I bow to Shiva. Shiva being the destroyer, because you have Vishnu as the sustainer. The om namashivaya, translated as I bow to Shiva, begins with om and om has so much importance in Hindu theology. Like I know it, but I don't really understand it. I don't know why a syllable is so important to their theology, but it is. It's very important. It is considered the primal sound of the universe.

36:51And so when this mantra is chanted, it often comes out like this. It goes, om namashivaya, om you stick to that syllable om namashivaya, you go quicker through the other syllables. The five syllables other than om, the five syllables are often thought to represent the five elements of the earth of the world. Earth, water, fire, air, and the ether, the thing that binds all of the universe together, which scientifically speaking, we no longer believe that ether is the thing. I think they're talking about frequency that we're connected with the universe or the vibrations of the universe. That probably would be a modern understanding of the ether today. Hinduism is remarkably willing to meld itself with scientific discoveries. It's rare to find hardliner Hindus when it comes to doctrine. Usually if you describe a hard

37:55lighter Hindu, those are the ones that are resisting Islam, Christianity, or atheism. They're not necessarily hardliner on a specific doctrine because Hinduism is so diverse, doctrinally speaking, that you can just adjust your doctrine to fit new information. I think this is of your new age. I think this is the start of it, right here, because it's a modest, similar thing to that. Well, Hari Krishna is the intersection between the new age movement and Hinduism. I do know that there are some Hindus that consider Hari Krishna a cult, but it's my understanding that generally speaking, it's accepted as yet another diverse form of Hinduism. And the Hari Krishna mantra goes like this. Hari Krishna, Hari Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Krishna, Hari Hari, Hari Rama, Hari Rama, Rama Rama, Hari Hari. I think you're supposed to kind of

38:55sing it and move around. You are. Do this. Do that. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, Hari Krishna. What's you're not trying very hard? What I said, the rough translation is O Lord, O energy of the Lord. Please engage me in your service. And they use the word Lord. In fact, George Harrison uses the word Lord. Yes, that's where most Western people who have said this don't realize they're saying it because it's the background vocals in My Sweet Lord. In the second half of the song, I like Hari Krishna, and I get rid of it. Yeah, be wary of doing that. Just speaking as a pastor. Yes, be wary as a pastor. Another one would be a hallelujah by the one from Shrek. Anyway, great song. I think it's one of the top 50 American songs ever written, but it's not a worship song. It's about youthful, angst and sexual tension. Yes, it is. And so you could

40:01change some words, but don't do that. Just sing amazing grace. But yeah, in My Sweet Lord, George Harrison was a devotee of the Hari Krishna, though he never was a monk of the religion. As you listen to My Sweet Lord, the background vocals switch from hallelujah to the Hari Krishna chant. And the first time I heard that, because I'm sure I heard My Sweet Lord before and just didn't register it, but I'm a big fan of the superheroes. And My Sweet Lord is this central musical element, besides Brandy, which is another great song from the 70s, is the central musical element in Guardians of the Galaxy 2, when the Guardians go to the Living Planet. Brandy. Brandy, you're a fine girl. What a good wife you want me from. The 70s, right? Around or yearly, yeah. You're right. The song or singer? The song. Okay. Both Brandy and

41:01My Sweet Lord are central musical elements of Guardians of the Galaxy 2. So I was listening to it in the car one day, and then I had a pretty good sound. It's now Regions car, but Regions car has a Bose sound system. So I've heard of the background. I was like, oh my gosh, they're doing the Hari Krishna chant. I hadn't realized that. There are some people, by the way, here's a good, let me take off the professor had put on the pastor had for a little bit. There's some people that think that I just cursed myself by saying all these words, because it's the mantra of a different religion. Please don't do that. You cannot accidentally worship a false god. You can choose to worship a false god. You can't accidentally worship a false god. Just like when we talk about the end times, I hold my end times theology very loosely, because there's a lot of area to some of you took my revelation class. You know, hold it loosely, because we don't know everything yet. One of the things that I hold very tightly is you cannot accidentally get the mark of the beast. You're not going to accidentally get the mark of the beast from a vaccine or a credit card. It's not going to

42:02happen. You cannot accidentally worship the devil. And so likewise, you can't accidentally worship Lord Rama, which is one of the avatars of Vishnu. So you can't accidentally worship a Hindu god. How about these songs today that kids are getting really connected to in my saying that a lot of these singers have sold their soul to the devil. You know, I wonder about that. Oh, perhaps. But I think the pathway isn't see George Harrison apparently thought he was being tricky. He thought he was going to trick people into saying this, which would open them up to the spiritual influence. But I just don't believe that's a thing. You cannot accidentally worship the devil. I just don't think that's possible. What can happen though is somebody who can love the Beatles and therefore like George Harrison, oh, hey, George Harrison likes this stuff. Let me research that stuff. So it can be a logical progression towards switching to a different religion. But I don't think anybody accidentally sang along to my sweet Lord and all of a sudden they're a hypocrite.

43:05Are you saying it in a bad discharge? Well, certainly you weren't singing the background vocals. All right, so temple practices. It's great. It's paying. You can visit that. That's Shani Kansas. Temple practices include the removing of your shoes, the ringing of bells and circumambulating walking around the shrine. So there's going to be stations usually in these shrines. And that's about as far as my knowledge goes. To be honest with you, I don't know a whole lot more about Hindu worship. There's women L.A. here, what, 20, 30, one in L.A. There's probably a hundred. About one that somebody came in and they were doing the serve and they were murdered. Oh, wow. Was that part of the Manson? No, it was about the same time. But yeah, they there was a lot of people. Well, in Pasadena there's one and it actually shows up in one episode of

44:06The Big Bang Fair, where Rajesh was worried. So he went to the temple even though he wasn't really that religious. The closest Hindu shrine to us according to Google is in Shani. And this is it. This is the one in Shani right here. The other ones close to us. There's two in Wichita, two in Northwest Arkansas, one in Topeka. I didn't write it here, but there were two or three in Tulsa. And then there are between four and ten in Kansas City, depending on how you count them. There certainly are four in Kansas City, including this one in Shani. But there's also as I was going through the list, there's like some that I think are more like community offices, like a community Hindu group, like maybe an immigrant group. And it counts as a Hindu establishment, but I doubt it would count as a temple. So between four and ten, Hindu, temples in Kansas City, depending on how you count it. The largest temple in the United States of America is in New Jersey. It is the swaminarion oxshardhum in Robbinsville, New Jersey. Notice how

45:14I had a lot easier time with Robbinsville. This is actually really new. This building was inaugurated in October 2023. This is a massive 183 acre campus and is considered the second largest temple on earth. As I was going through the large temples, some of them are actually not as big, but they're on much bigger properties. And a lot of these temples will use all of the property for spiritual purposes, like a retreat, like a church camp, I suppose. So sometimes there'll be big buildings on small lands. Sometimes there's not as big buildings, but it's on a much bigger land. This one's both big building, big land. I did notice that. I think they are swimples. So it's probably, as far as I can tell, Hinduism has a little bit more of a carefree attitude towards things. Chances are that Hindus in suburban New Jersey, they wanted it to be like a community center as much. And Christians do the same thing. We put Maribor rounds of swing sets on churches. So can Christians go in here? As far as I can tell,

46:18there's not the same kind of restriction as you would have, like on Muslim, like we can't even go into the city of Mecca. I wouldn't, as a Christian, go for a worship service. But I'm for like a cultural exchange. Go swimming, sure. And invite them to our church. Talk about Jesus. That's what I do. Kind of a cultural exchange. What state did you say it is? New Jersey. So there's a big amount of those. The bigger the city, the more diversity I'm going to have, so you're more likely to have these kind of. Okay, this is Angkor Wat here. The largest Hindu temple in the world is right here. Angkor Wat. I always thought it was Angkor, but there's no P. Angkor. Angkor, A-N-G-K-O-R. Second word, W-A-T. Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat. And Cambodia. It's the

47:20largest Hindu complex in the world covering over 400 acres. It was originally built in the 12th century, so the 1100s. It's not exactly an active temple. There are worship services that happen here, but it's more like an event. That's in Cambodia. Which is a majority Buddhist nation, as you can see with the Buddhist monks. The lotus plants. The lotus plants in water. The lotus is very important to Hindu culture. Another candidate for the largest in the world. Like I said, big building, maybe not as big of a land, is the three wrong guy Yathaswami temple in Tuduru, Shirapali, India. And it's very colorful. Okay, so here's some interesting. If you've taken my World War II class, we've talked about this. The Shwastika is not original to the Nazis.

48:25The Shwastika is an important symbol within Hinduism, so let's talk a little bit about the symbols, even though we're really not going to talk. I told you the lotus isn't very important, but the only two I'm going to talk about right now are the first two. How do you think they got the Shwastika in Germany from this situation? Remember what I said about folk etymology? The Nazis just did folk their entire academic. They just absconded from the word Aryan, by the way, they just stole also. Iran means the land of the Aryans. The Aryans were an ancient people group and language family in like Persia, Pakistan, Afghanistan area. And the Nazi scholars put quotation marks around the word scholars. They noticed the same thing, other scholars were noticing that all the languages from Iceland to Sri Lanka are connected, not all the languages, but many of the languages in that swath are connected in something called Proto-Indo-European. And for instance Sanskrit and modern Hindi have a lot of similar words

49:33to Latin, Greek, German, English. More than you would expect for such a different part of the world, parts of the world that are so distinct culturally speaking. And so the Nazi scholars would go and they took the word Aryan and they said, well the Indians don't know what they're talking about. The Aryans are actually this master race of people. Because after all, if there's one language that's spread from Iceland to Sri Lanka, well then it has to be us, the blonde-haired blue-eyed, even though Hitler was neither of those things. The blonde-haired blue-eyed perfect master race, so we must be the Aryans. We're the one our culture and our language is so strong that it's spread from us, which doesn't seem to be the case. It seems to have spread from the like Caspian sea region, maybe Turkmenistan or Armenia or Ukraine, maybe Turkey, somewhere in that range. So not Germany. And they also took the Shwowsika as their symbol that they said that the other Hindus don't know what they're doing either. We're going to fix that. Turn it at a 45-degree angle and it's the

50:37sun. Similar actually I just put this two together. Japan has, in theory, has the same symbol. Japan has the red sun on their flag. And the Nazi Germany had their symbol, the sun-based Shwowsika symbol in the middle of their flag. The German E.D. they just took the air rings off. No, actually, no, you're right. You're right. But I've actually went down this hole and I can't. I haven't yet come up with a significant answer. Whether the flare is something that was added later by modern Hindus to differentiate it from the evil Shwowsika that the Nazis use. Because if you go to an old temple, the predates Nazis. So like in India, if you go to a temple that's 100 or 150 years old, you'll see the Shwowsika symbol, which is a perfect square symbol just like the Nazis except it's not at that 45-degree angle. It's said as a square. But it's got angular blocky features without the flare to it. Whereas today, especially on the internet,

51:39if you search for the Hindu Shwowsika, it's going to have like a tail on the end of the arms and it's going to be rounded off and it's going to have all these little flare to it. I think to differentiate it from the Nazis perversion of their symbol. But I haven't been able to confirm that. I've gone down the rabbit hole. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this version of the Shwowsika with all the flare and the tail on the end of the Shwowsika. Maybe that's also ancient as well and I just haven't confirmed that yet. Like I said, I'm owning my ignorance on this one. Most of what we're doing tonight is stuff I've learned in the last two or three weeks. Symbols. The Shwowsika originated in Hinduism. It is associated with the sun god Surya, S-U-R-Y-A, who we have not discussed yet and we're done discussing. The backward Shwowsika, now in our World War II class I hadn't we had brought up that. It's like, hey, why are some of them backwards? The backward Shwowsika in Hinduism represents the opposite. So if this is the sun, the backward Shwowsika is the moon.

52:45And so it represents darkness and is associated with the goddess Kali. So I'll show you the darkness of Kali right here. See? Kali is seen as like a dark night figure. And so, but not evil. Even though it's got the skulls I think are just for this comic book series. Kali, I don't think, has the skull motif going on. So like you said, the backwards Shwowsika. Here's the backwards one and it represents the moon. But here are some other versions of the Shwowsika. And this is what I've said with the flair. See how there's a little flair on the end of the Shwowsika. Now, what is the meaning of the Shwowsika? Well, for all of us, the meaning of the Shwowsika is evil racists, jerks. But Nazis are awful. They're the worst thing that came out of the 20th century. So, yes, jerks. How about jerks? Are we okay with jerks? Nazi, Nazi racist jerks. And the Nazis do suck.

53:53The best one ever was we were talking about Abraham. And we were doing a, I was preaching from Genesis to Revelation through the year. And I was talking about Abraham. And I had this thing, I was like, why is circumcision a symbol for your devotion to Yahweh? How's anybody going to know? Is it going to go up like, hello, my name is Abraham? As you can see, I love the Lord. And that went over well. You know, I thought of that. It's just like, yeah, I'm glad that my mom just about as proud as every time the sermon had the chiefs in the middle of it. I try to, hey, hey, Starbucks, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, chiefs, royals sometimes. I'll work in all my stuff. Okay. In Hinduism, the Shwaska doesn't have that tie to racist German nationalism. It means positivity. Or it's associated with positivity, that all as well. The most common symbol in Hinduism though, if Shwaska is probably the second or

54:56third or fourth most common, I'd say probably Lotus is number two. The Lotus is probably number two. The most common is the old symbol. And so if you go to Google right now and you look up Hinduism, this is the symbol it's going to show you as the primary picture for Hinduism. I got seen that before, but I could realize that. Yeah, that's the old symbol. I'll come back to home here in a second when we talk about creation. What about the scriptures? The scriptures of Hinduism. The primary ones are the Vedas. There are four Vedas. The Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Samaveda, and the Atharva Veda. I'm not going to repeat those words. Each Veda has four subdivisions. The Samhitas are the mantras or the benedictions. And so that's going to be the core of each Veda. The Brahmanas are commentaries on or explanation of rituals, ceremonies, and sacrifices. The sacrifices are also known as Yashnyas. The Aranyakas, those are texts about the rituals,

56:05ceremonies, and sacrifices. The Upanishads are texts that discuss meditation, philosophy, and spiritual knowledge. Chances are if any Hindu, common Hindu, not like a guru or scholar, chances are if they've read any of them, it's going to be the Upanishads. The Vedas are considered really dense, deep, hard reading, like they're hard to really grasp. When you combine all of these, including the commentaries, which the commentaries are considered part of the core text of the Vedas, as opposed to Christianity, we've got lots of commentaries and no Christian considers a commentary on the Book of Romans to be the Book of Romans. It's considered a whole different thing. When you consider all of this together, the Vedas are considerably longer than the Bible, which is something I was wrong about. I had thought that the Vedas were a lot shorter. No, no, no. There's hundreds of

57:05thousands of verses in the Vedas. In Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, commentaries are important, but they're rarely packaged with the core text. And so Judaism famously has the mission on the Talmud, but Jews don't believe that the mission on the Talmud are their scriptures, they're supplementary. Islam has the, oh, the words escape to me, the text about Muhammad. Did you delete or something? I remember that word. Hadith. Very good. Thanks. You at least read one syllable, but you got it there. The Hadith are considered important, but they're not the Quran. And Christianity's yet another step forward. I'm not aware of any Christian commentary that's considered even that level, that second level. The closest I could think of is when John Wesley was saved, he was saved because a preacher was reading from Martin Luther's commentary on Romans.

58:07That's as close as I ever remember any commentary being treated as scripture in Christian history. I'm not familiar with the songs. I'm going to just have to say I don't know. I can't believe you don't know this song is drunk. I might if I heard it. Was it Santana? Yeah. Well, I don't know. No. We'll look at one of them. Okay. I don't better fly sing. That's it. I don't better fly sing a song. Okay. You know, God had to beat us. Yeah. Maybe. That's definitely minutes long. It's really long. But is it Indian? It's the very popular. So while you looked up that song. Okay. So the oldest part of the Vedas. So all the Vedas aren't the same age. Like the Quran was all written within a generation. The New Testament was all written probably within two or two and a half generations. The Old Testament covers many centuries. Similarly, the Vedos were written over centuries. The oldest of

59:10the Vedas are the oldest extant religious texts for an active religion. Now there are some older texts from Mesopotamian. There are older religious texts in Babylonian or Mesopotamian and Egyptian context. But none of those really, really ancient texts are considered active scripture. Like there's nobody that's reading those as like their common worship. The Vedas are that way. Extant. Do we have access to them? Okay. So when you're talking about really, really ancient stuff. So a good example would be there are no extant works from Socrates. Yes, Socrates. Because we do have works from Plato and Aristotle. And we know that Socrates was the person who taught Plato. And we know that Socrates did write stuff. But we don't have any of his works left. So there's no extant. There's no available material. So the Vedas are the oldest

1:00:10of these texts for a religion that's active today. All of the Vedas started as oral tradition. So some of the Vedas probably predate all written history. Key texts beyond the Vedas. Because while the Vedas are super important, they're the foundation. Most Hindus haven't read the Vedas as far as I can tell. They're not widely read. They're more like specialist literature. Key texts beyond the Vedas would be the itahasas, the epics. These are probably going to be your most popular. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata. And within that last word, which I'm not going to repeat, is the Bhagavad Gita, which is probably the most widely read Hindu text. It is an epic. So it's a story. The Bhagavad Gita, as I said, is probably the most well-known and well-read Hindu scripture. It literally means the song of God. The Vedas are typically considered more for specialists,

1:01:12while the Bhagavad Gita is considered more accessible. If you watch the Oppenheimer movie recently, J. Robert Oppenheimer famously quotes chapter 11 verse 32 of the Bhagavad Gita on July 16, 1945, after the very first atomic bomb went off the Trinity test, he said, I am now become death, the destroyer of worlds, which as I said is chapter 11 verse 32 of the Bhagavad Gita. The Puranas, which are the lore. They're 18 major Puranas, not to be confused with the fish. The Dharma Shastras and the Simrithis are laws and ethics codes, I guess similar to Leviticus. The Agamas are Tantric and temple-related text-outlining rituals, meditation, and philosophy. The Veddangas are treatises on things like grammar, astronomy, and other rituals. And then you have the Sutras, also known as

1:02:17Darshanas. And yes, we'll come to what you're thinking of when you hear the word Sutra. Give me about 30 seconds. The Sutras are works of Hindu philosophy, such as the Yoga Sutras. Oh, yeah, I want to hear his knowledge on the Kama Sutra. I have very little knowledge on the Kama Sutra. The Kama Sutra is considered one of these Darshanas. However, since it's such a worldly text, it is often not considered a religious text, it's considered something similar. But of course, with Hinduism, there's such diversity of theology. I'm sure there are Hindus that consider the Kama Sutra religious knowledge. No, I'm not going to go there. I don't know anything about the Kama Sutra. When I was in high school, we went to a bookstore during a debate trip to Kansas City or to Pika. Lawrence. One of them cities. It was in Lawrence. And we went there and I was just kind of searching. And I noticed they had a religious section. I was just kind of browsing. And one of them was an illustrated, not illustrated, photo photography. They used photos.

1:03:24Kama Sutra. And it's like, oh, that's interesting. I started opening up straight pornography. Like it was all the positions. Photographs. I was like, what the world? 16-year-old boy. I didn't. I did not. Listen, you were 16-year-old boy. I agree with you the way what in the world. But I think you probably went more like. No, probably more like. Probably more like. Oh, what in the world? Does he have a Jewish mind? Do you have a little Jewish mind? Do I? What? Photogenic memory? No. No, I will remember very random things. So like, I remember the words to Ukrainian song from 2008 when I went there. I don't know why I can remember the words to Ukrainian song, but I do. I can remember random things, but I don't have a photogenic memory where I can remember like, what I ate for lunch on August 20th, 2018. I can't do that. So, okay. What about clergy? Within what? I can tell you the truth that I wore red dress on October 25th, 1965.

1:04:33Is it your wedding day? No, I think you wore red. My dad kept on calling me a red bird. But you know the exact day? Was it like a problem? October 25th, 1965, because Pleasanton was honoring their hundredth year of bleeding cans, just like they had to get wore over their land county. Oh, yeah. That's the, um, not the Meridazine is Pleasanton. No, it's the one with the black troops, right? That's also okay. Yeah, the Buffalo soldiers and it was it's between Pleasanton and Butler, right? Am I saying that right? And it's alongside of the road? Anyway. Well, it's in my county. Well, I can't remember. I wore a pulpit on a red dress on Easter from a day at church when I was eight years old. My sister had a black one. She was 10. Yeah. I don't know if I did yesterday. I remember wearing a white hull for dress with no bra on May 10th, 1980.

1:05:33I do know that's how you got married. I didn't need to know. I didn't need to know that you married with a bra on. I didn't need to know that. Gracier grandma's weird. What about the clergy in Hinduism? I put clergy. I put clergy in quotation marks because I'm not entirely sure. I'm going to have a hard time editing this. I'm sorry. I'm not entirely sure if clergy is the right term, but I'm not sure we have a better one. It's kind of like using the word denomination to describe Muslims or Hindus. I don't think that's an accurate term either. Anyway, Hindu clergy, there are priests in Hinduism. They are known as the Archakas or the Pujadas. Traditionally, these priests belong to the Brahman caste, the highest caste system. We'll discuss the caste system in a bit. Modern Hinduism has a lot of allowances

1:06:34for those outside of the typical Brahman caste, including women. It is not uncommon in certain Hindu temples for women to be allowed to be clergy, though there are some Hindu communities that do not allow women to serve in this role. Besides the priests, you have the gurus which are masters. I was debating whether I needed to even put this here because guru has come down into English. We'll use the word guru to talk about maybe like somebody on the chiefs offensive staff who really knows how to organize a game plan. We'll call them a guru. So it's kind of like a master. A guru often had studied under another guru. The gurus undergo intense study and show great piety, religious dedication, and qualifications to become a guru very depending on the sex. There are also monks known as thongyasis. The monks renounce worldly life focusing on teaching, meditation, and scripture. Before main branches of Hinduism are, and I will probably not pronounce

1:07:40these correctly. Vaishnavism, this branch focuses on Vishnu, and if I'm not mistaken, is the majority set within Hinduism. They see gods as personal beings, and they are typically more conservative. Shaivism, they focus on Shiva, the destroyer, and it tends to be more mystical. Shaivism focuses on the divine female deities, and smartism, which I don't think smart is the keyword. I think smart is the keyword, but smartism is the more diverse and liberal branch. Most Hindus do not actually consider themselves to belong to any particular branch. They will see these more as schools of thought, and your average Hindu who is not a scholar or clergy will consider themselves to have their foot in multiple sex of Hinduism or no sect in particular. Okay, we spent most of our time on question number three. Any questions about

1:08:44how Hindus worship the gods? Question number four, what is the origin of the universe? Most religions have a single creation story. Hinduism has many. This is because for Hindus there is no single creation, but periodic cycles of creation. The universe we live in is one of innumerable universes. The story of our universe begins for the vast ocean, a serpent, an antoshash floats on his surface. Vishnu is asleep in its coils. A lotus sprouts from his navel. On top sits the foreheaded demigod Brahma. At first Brahma can't tell who he is or what he should do. Vishnu encourages Brahma to create the world from the material he has provided. After eons of meditation Brahma hears a sound arising from the depths of the ocean, a humming that increases in volume, the sacred arm. Brahma splits the

1:09:47lotus into three parts. One becomes the heavens, another the sky, the third the earth. He creates grass, flowers, trees, birds, fish and other animals. The world fills with living breathing things. Regularly within the cycles of creation Brahma wants to produce more species or to increase the population of the universe. One time he produced two forms, a male and female and they combined to give birth to sons. Another time he divided in two becoming male and female. The female part became a cow and the male part a bull. They give birth to calves. Then she became a man and he became a horse. They have falls and so the process continued to expand the living world. So do they believe in the last human day? There are conservative Hindus that would not believe in that. But like I said, Hinduism is very diverse. So yeah, I'm assuming

1:10:48that there's a lot of versions of Hinduism that would be okay with the LGBT lifestyle and then some that are very much not the current political situation in India is kind of hardline conservative right now. So my assumption is India is going to be less LGBTQ friendly right now than it might of otherwise been at various other points. Well, they have a half man and a half woman. So like his yeah, that's why I say if I understand them correctly Brahma gave birth to all of our stuff like humans, cows, chickens, snakes, all of it came from him because he divided into the male and the female if I understand that correctly. Okay, creation is cyclical in Hinduism with endless cycles of birth, death and rebirth. This is true not only of persons but of pretty much everything with Brahma creating Vishnu sustaining and Shiva destroying in a never ending cycle. There are also verses in the Vedas that suggest a multiverse that there are multiple universes

1:11:52coexisting in each with their own Brahma. Creation is sometimes described as coming from the sound Om, which is a mystery that not even the gods fully understand. Creation is sometimes as described as hatching from a golden egg. Or as we saw in the video, the dream of Vishnu that manifests itself as he sleeps. The Rig Veda describes the universe as the result of a sacrifice of a primordial being Purusha, PU, R-U-S-H-A. These stories are not exactly compatible. In fact, sometimes they are just contradictory. But Hinduism employs a both-hand paradigm where contradictory teachings are often both considered true, which I gave some more thought to that today. And I think whenever you employ that both-hand paradigm, what you're really saying is that you think it's fiction. It's kind of like coming back to Star Wars so the mom can grow. Is C-3PO the character from

1:12:55the original Star Wars? Is he over 200 years old or was he created by a young Darth Vader? The answer is both depending on whether you're reading or watching episode one. The real answer is who cares? It's all fiction. And to me, the both-hand paradigm implies, even if the person doesn't realize that's what it implies, that you don't really believe all this stuff. I'm having a little trouble with the flower to grow out of it. How long was that nap? How long was he naphing? I'm telling you about that on that flower. Speaking of being over-smilled at a young age, he thought about it for a while. Yeah, so there's a long nap. Speaking of Vishnu, one of his avatars is the Great Turtle Kerma, K-U-R-M-A. As a regular turtle, as you see upon, as it rises with its head out of the water, and its shell will expose, and you can see the shell coming up in the water expanding as the turtle comes up. Likewise, the world turtle, as he rose, he rose with a great mountain which symbolizes the world. Sometimes the depiction, as you see here,

1:14:01is that not only does the Great Turtle support the world, but that there are elephants that are being supported by the turtle and the elephants uphold the world. Yes, but it's been so long I don't recall any of it. But there was the Great Turtle. Now that is the Native American, they think that is it in the United States? Is it Turtle Island? You haven't heard that one. Well, there's a Turtle Island off of Hawaii. The Hopi have a creation myth similar, but it's not the Turtle. It's the beetle I think that descends on the reed from one world into another from the third world into the fourth. This is what the turtle said. Now, if you ask a Hindu whether they really think that like Artemis II right now can see the world turtle under the earth, you're going to find very few Hindus that are going to say yes. Most Hindus are going to say that this is obviously symbolic,

1:15:06that it's symbolic for stability, that the Lord Vishnu maintains and sustains the world and allows it to be suspended in the heavens. Question number five, what's the origin of humanity? For the purpose of the podcast, I'll read this picture, who is Manu, M-A-N-U, the first man who is a law giver and the symbol of civilization? Humans are seen as eternal souls known as Ataman. Essentially, we are Ataman. We are eternal souls that are temporarily embodied. So, this right here is just temporary. We are created by the Lord Brahma or Brahma, depending on whether you believe it's an impersonal force or a personal being. We are created by the Lord Brahma, or depending on how it's taught, we emerge through a process of cosmic evolution known as Dasha Vatara. Humans are seen as fundamentally divine. There are two contradictory views here.

1:16:10One view is that we devolved from the pure spirit creatures that we are into the beings we are now, so we're going the wrong way. The other view is evolution, Dasha Vatara. So, the people who buy into this believe that Darwinian evolution is fundamentally true and that the avatars of Vishnu indicate evolution. The earliest avatars are more animal-like, and as the closer you get to the later avatars, they become more human-like, and so that indicates a evolutionary path for humanity. In many stories, humanity is traced back to Manu, the progenitor of all mankind. Manu, I suppose, would be Adam in that story. Hinduism doesn't quite handle sin the same way. Sin has seen more as a balance issue, a great balance in the universe, which is a great segue yet again. I think that's your third

1:17:10great segue today. Great segue into question number six. What is salvation and how can it be achieved? Salvation, which I've really messed up the fonts here, Netmayan. A little bit of yes in salvation. Salvation in Hinduism is known as moksha or mukti, but here we're just going to go with moksha. This is very similar. In fact, I don't really see a difference. In Buddhism, it's known as nirvana. So in Hinduism, it's known as moksha. The ultimate liberation of the soul of the Ottoman from the endless cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth, also known as samsara. Who has control of this? The universe. Actually, I guess Vishnu, because Vishnu is the sustainer. So the Lord Vishnu is probably the one sustaining the cycles. So moksha signifies realizing the one's true divine nature and uniting the individual soul with the supreme reality,

1:18:15which is Brahman. What does salvation look like? Okay, I'll go through these quickly. So loquia, which does not sound like Sanskrit, it sounds like Russian. So loquia is residing in the same sphere as the divine. So that's part of what salvation looks like. Samitya, being close to the divine, sarupya, having a form similar to the divine, sharshti, possessing divine powers, and sayujya, merging with the divine or the complete unification of oneself with God. Probably none of them. This is the second one. No, being milder to the divine if in the Christian. In Christian circles, this would probably be the closest. Now, there is some stuff in the Bible about us being made in the image of God. Mormons would agree even more since Mormonism believes that we become gods. But yeah, probably this one is going to be closest to Christian theology.

1:19:17The question I thought you were asking is where does a Hindu believe we would fit in this salvation cycle? We would be stuck in the regeneration. We'd be reincarnated until we got to this point if we ever got to this point. It's kind of like comparing apples and oranges to see what Christians are. Very different salvation paradigms. Yes, very different. Paths to salvation. I know very little about this, so I'll go through them quickly. Janana, Marga, the way of knowledge. In other words, you can improve your lot on the reincarnation paradigm as you approach Moksha. You can do that by obtaining greater knowledge in the world. And part of that would be realizing the illusory nature of the world. The worldly existence is Maya, M-A-Y-A. There's the Bhakti Marga, which is the way of devotion so you can advance yourself on the reincarnation paradigm by cultivating loving devotion to the personal God. There's Karma Marga, which is the way of works and action, which is basically doing good stuff. You perform duty or Dharma. Remember Dharma is another word for Hinduism. It is Sanatana

1:20:26Dharma. That's the endonym for Hinduism. And then this isn't really a path to salvation. It's more of like a tool. And that is yoga. Yoga utilizes physical and mental discipline like meditation to help achieve liberation. I don't ask for one time that spoke strongly against yoga as being a not a foothold, but a way to get involved. What people unexpectedly get involved with Hinduism. Yeah, Christians very greatly on that opinion. My opinion is just ask the person who's leading it. Are you doing glorified stretching? Or are you actually teaching Dharma? That kind of stuff. Because if you're doing that, I don't want to be part of it. But yoga really does have some very innovative stretching techniques that people like me could probably have a lot less shoulder pain if I would learn how to do some of those techniques. Number seven, question number seven, what is

1:21:26right and what is wrong? So back to Dharma again in this context, we're talking about order and balance. Rules of what balance means will differ depending on your community's religious traditions or your specific set. These rules will also change depending on your stage of life, known as Ashrama. So you ladies are going to be in a different stage of life than me. And we're all going to be in a different state of life from that little one over there. These rules will change depending on your caste or your varna and on your gender. So how old you are, what caste you were born into, what socioeconomic status, and your gender are all going to determine what exactly Dharma means for you and for your community. The universal principles, do I have those here? Yeah, the universal principles. So when you say what is wrong and what is right, these are the things that most Hindus are going to agree with. Ahemsa, non-violence, Satya, which is truth, Sautya, which is purity,

1:22:33Taksaya, which is self-perfection, and the biggie is karma. This is the universal law of cause and effect. So everything you do in life has an effect. It'll either affect you in this life or after this life. Either in the heaven or hell state, which we will get to soon or we're going to talk about soon or in your next reincarnation and your next life. So whether you come back as a king or a popper or a slug, a lot of that is going to depend upon the karma done in this life. And if you were born as a homeless person or untouchable, well, then that's the fault of one of your previous reincarnations. They were particularly awful person. That's why you were born into this socioeconomic system. You can kind of see some very deep darkness at that, the kind of blaming poor people and ethnic minorities for things that they couldn't possibly have anything. First of all, I don't believe in reincarnation, so I don't believe it's even true, but even if it is true, they had no control

1:23:34over that. But it's in their fault that they're poor. Now here's what's interesting. Scriptures do not actually play a major part in determining morality and ethics. There is scripture that indicates morals and ethics, but it's not as big of a deal as it is in Islam or Judaism or Christianity, where a lot of what we believe is right and wrong, especially as Protestant Christians, we really believe in solar scripture, that if I tell you you must do this or you must not do that, it's got to be from scripture. Solar scripture is not a Hindu tool as far as I can tell. What is right and what is wrong, we can also tell from inner light so the inner light, since we're all divine anyway, since we all come from the great Brahman, then we can tell from deep within us what is right and what is wrong. Hinduism is also heavily community oriented, so society, your community will tell you what's right and wrong. And then I don't know why I wrote it this way, the cows, cows don't tell you what's right and wrong, but it's our next topic. So should we eat cows? Well, apparently not, because within Hinduism, cows are

1:24:40gal mata, the mother cow. Cows are honored because they bring great provision through their milk. The cows also embody non-violence. Now, apparently they've never been to a rodeo, because cows are seen as fundamentally non-violent creatures. They're also seen as strong because fools can be used for farm labor. That is true. Mickey almost got his head knocked off by a cow, because he was running around with a board and hit a cow on the butt when he was much younger than Gracie. And I was there that day, and I saw that cow rared up and kicked, and a Mickey was half a foot taller, because the cows just kicked right above Mickey's head and then went back down. Apparently, if the video is blending there, believe me. Yeah, if that's accurate. Cattle slaughter, therefore, is restricted in India, depending on the state, like in the far east,

1:25:45the far east of the state, even in Hindu areas, there's far less restrictions for the eating of beef there. Then there are, like, in northern India, where it's very illegal to slaughter cows. Because it's re-incarnated. The re-incarnation almost certainly has something to do with this discussion as well. In order to avoid killing and eating cows, many Hindus embrace vegetarianism, when you combine that with the fact that Muslims avoid pork, if you go to an Indian restaurant, you're almost certainly going to be limited to vegetables, lamb, and chicken. So you're not going to go to an Indian restaurant and get pork or beef. Question number eight, how should society be organized? Traditionally, Hinduism teaches that there are forecasts and four stages of life. And these things determine how society ought to be organized. So the forecasts are known as varnuffs. You have the Brahmins, which are your priests and teachers and intellectuals.

1:26:48Traditionally, Brahmins are seen as coming symbolically from the head of Brahmins. The Qashatriyas, the warriors and rulers and administrators, they come from the arms of Brahma. The Vaishyas are the traders, artisans, farmers, merchants, and, like, the middle class. They come from the thighs and the chudras. They are the manual laborers and service providers, and they traditionally come from the feet. As you see, there's a fifth group. They are the Dalats. They are the Untouchables. They have no connection with Brahma in this system. So they don't have this connection with Brahma. Yeah, so that's why they're the fifth of four. So there's four casts, and they're the fifth one, because they don't have that connection, that symbolic connection with Brahma. The Dalats throughout history have been the recipients of unspeakable discrimination for millennium. In India today, cast-based discrimination is illegal, but depending on the village

1:27:52or the community, especially in rural areas, it still happens today. There are hundreds of subdivisions called Jarti, J-A-R-T-I. These casts are actually more rigid. If you're born into a certain Jarti, then you're unlikely to be able to move, whereas if I understand it correctly, depending on your education and wealth and attainment in life, you can move up some of those other casts that we saw earlier. The Ashrama, which by definition you move throughout life, is the stages of life. The Brahmagarya are students, as you see over here. The Grihastha are the householders and the leaders of families. That would be my stage of life. The Vana Prastha are the retirement age communities, and then the San Yasa are the final stage of life. Those that are preparing for

1:28:53the afterlife or for their next, yeah, they're the burial, and they're the ones that are preparing for their next reincarnation or for Maksha, for liberation. Hinduism does not teach a separation of church and state. Nevertheless, India is a secular nation. No Rindra Modi, the Prime Minister, operates within this secular framework of his office, but his rhetoric is consistent with wanting to transform India into a Hindu state. Question number nine, what is the destiny of the universe? The world, the current world, goes through a cyclical process of destruction known as pralaya, which takes place at the end of the vast time cycles known as kapa. But the cycle continues, the world starts over again. There's a new big bang, there's a new creation, that new creation goes through its evolution, and then it gets destroyed, and so the universe like the individual

1:29:54goes through a cycle of reincarnation. There are some distinct features. The world is currently in a stage of worsening morals and ethics, and also lessening of spiritual knowledge known as the Kale Yuga. That's the current age we're in now. In the last days, Vishnu's final avatar Kalki will appear on a white horse, so there's a theme. I don't know if this teaching is influenced by the teaching of the revelation. My guess is it's going to be older than revelation, but then again, I don't think that John would have been influenced by this either, so it might just be a coincidence, that Kalki will come on a white horse to eliminate evil, to restore righteousness or Dharma, and to pave the way for the new golden age, which is the Satyayuga. Most interpretations are that the current kapa, the one we're in now, the current vast time cycle, will still last for thousands and thousands of years. Question number 10, what is the destiny of humanity? Okay, within Hindu

1:30:58theology there is a heaven known as a swarga, or perhaps a swarga, which sounds really Swedish. A swarga is a celestial realm of pleasure and light, but this is not the final realm. In fact, within Hinduism, there are actually seven higher planes of existence, and this is just one of them. It is ruled by the god Indra. Swarga is like a spiritual vacation before your next re-incarnation, so you haven't achieved mantra, but you have plenty of good karma, punya, built up because you are a good person or because you were dedicated to the gods or whatnot. And so the amount of time you spend in swarga is going to be determined to buy your good karma. So how pleasurable your time is in swarga and how long you are there. So if you've been really good, you might be hundreds of years in your time of pleasure before it's your time comes again and you become re-incarnated. Likewise,

1:32:01there is a hell known as naraaka, which is also a temporary stage just like swarga. And likewise, how long you are in naraaka and how bad it is is going to be determined to buy your bad karma or your pop. And I'm not sure if you pronounce that A twice, but it's P-A-P, pop. And the ultimate goal then is moksha, which is a liberation from the samsara cycles and unity with the divine. And that is our whole lecture. Any questions? Is your tongue about to fall out or anything from all that trying to pronounce things? Yeah, no. I mean, yeah, a little bit, but honestly, I had just much trouble with Arabic classroom. If you enjoyed this episode of the blue collar scholar, please like and subscribe to the blue collar scholar in Apple podcasts or your preferred podcast

1:33:05distributor. Writing a review, leaving a five-star rating, and sharing links to this episode in your social media accounts is much appreciated. The blue collar scholar has been written, recorded, and edited by Will writes. The opening and closing music for this episode is royalty-free acoustic guitar summer song by LP studio music from Pixabay. Any factual errors made in the preparation or recording of this podcast are unintentional, and your feedback is welcome. You may contact me at TheWillRides at gmail.com. That's THE-W-I-L-L-R-E-I-T-Z at gmail.com. This podcast is primarily a theology and history podcast, though any topic may be addressed. The purpose of this podcast is to

1:34:08educate. Use and distribution of this podcast can only be done by the express written permission of the content creator of this podcast. I hope that you have enjoyed this episode, and I hope that you come back for more. And thank you. I guess I was in a hurry. Spellcheck is supposed to point that stuff out to me.