Hinduism is an extremely complicated religion to explain, mostly due to the fact that it is not a religion, but rather a family of religions. The word “Hindu” was actually a Persian word meant to describe the people of India, not a specific religion. This brings up the point though that Hinduism and India go hand in hand. India is unbelievably diverse in every way; ethnically, geographically, religiously, you name it, and this diversity is celebrated, not feared. India is so diverse that there are 16 major languages spoken and hundreds of dialects, bringing it up to an estimated 850 languages spoken daily. This often makes it difficult for Indians from different parts of the country to talk with each other without a harsh language barrier, typically requiring English to be spoken as the lingua franca. This is all relevant to Hinduism because the family of religions practiced amongst this diverse people is equally diverse, and this diversity is again celebrated, not scorned. … [Read more...] about What Is Hinduism?
Hinduism
Tamas and Reincarnation
Tamas, and the gunas in general, are not widely known concepts, but they are worth putting some thought into. The Bhagavad Gita, India’s most famous scripture, goes to lengths to explain the concepts, and we can do well to take note. The idea is that every state of mind and matter is a combination of the three gunas. This is extremely vague and doesn’t quite do the concept justice, but hopefully as this story goes on, the pieces will come together. The three gunas are 1.) Tamas or inertia 2.) Rajas or activity 3.) Sattva or harmony/equilibrium. We will go over all three but Tamas is what we will focus on here the most. Tamas: Eknath Easwaran explains tamas in terms of consciousness (as opposed to matter) as being like the basement level of a house. The basement tends to be piled up with a bunch of old junk and tends to be very chaotic. So too with the mind when we are full of tamas. Our minds tend to be cluttered and we ride the wave of inertia, not trying to do anything to … [Read more...] about Tamas and Reincarnation