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Sermon - August 1st, 2010
World Religions: Hinduism
Rev. Gwen Drake
Genesis 1:1-31
Prayer: O Holy One, let us listen with open minds and open hearts. May your grace and love flow freely through us. Amen.
Huston Smith, a contemporary authority on World Religions recalls a moment in history on July 16, 1945 in a desert of New Mexico, at “Site Y” at Los Alamos. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos project was being watched closely that morning, 65 years ago. An observer wrote, “He grew tenser as the last seconds ticked off. He scarcely breathed. He held on to a post to steady himself…When the announcer shouted ‘Now!’ and there came this tremendous burst of light, followed…by the deep-growling roar of the explosion, his face relaxed in a expression of tremendous relief.” This was what an observer saw on the outside. Later Oppenheimer himself recalled what flashed through his mind at that moment was two lines from Bhagavad-Gita with God speaking: “I am become death, the shatterer of worlds; waiting that hour that ripens to their doom.”
Another person who sets the stage for this short introduction to Hinduism is a man who weighed less than 100 pounds and whose worldly possessions were worth less than $2 when he died. That was Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi wrote in his autobiography, “Such power as I possess for working in the political field has derived from my experiments in the spiritual field.” Also, he wrote, “Truth is the sovereign principle, and the Bhagavad-Gita is the book par excellence for the knowledge of Truth.” The Bhagavad-Gita is known as the “Song of the Lord.” Its 18 chapters and 700 verses are the most prominent and important of the vast diversity of Hindu scriptures and found in nearly every Hindu home.
Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston college describes Hinduism as “an over-the-top religion of big ideas, bright colors, soulful mantras, spicy foods, complex rituals, and wild stories.” Hinduism is the least dogmatic and most diverse of the World Religions. Instead of repelling new influences, Hinduism absorbs them. Hindus have no founder, no current leader, no shared creed, and no dogmas, no evangelism, and no excommunication. Many say Hinduism is not a religion at all, instead a way of life. You are a Hindu by birth. It is the people, an incredible diversity of people, more than a religion—like Judaism. It is the third largest religion in the world, next to Islam and Christianity. Hinduism is an umbrella term. Hinduism gave us karma, yoga, and reincarnation. Hindus acknowledge and worship many, many gods, but all of these are aspects of the one supreme God, the creator, called Brahman. The Hindus believe everything, including us humans, is part of Brahman. Yet Brahman is more than the sum of everything in the universe.
While most religions can be described using the metaphor of a tree with a trunk, root, and branches, a better metaphor for the Hindu tradition is geological. Imagine the Hindu tradition as layer upon layer of rocks of various sorts stacked on top of one another. The most ancient layer is the Indus Valley layer, a great urban and literate civilization existing before the Egyptians built the pyramids, more than 3,000 years before Jesus was born.
The second layer is the Vedic layer. Veda means “knowledge.” This is the layer with the oldest of the world’s holy writings. These holy writings are full of wild stories of the gods. The Vedic layer of Hinduism was preoccupied with disorder, calling order out of chaos. The Vedic priests performed fire sacrifices to keep chaos at bay.
The third layer of Hinduism is the philosophical layer, where the questions of the meaning of life and the nature and destiny of the human soul was explored. The Upanishads, written in ancient Sanskrit, were commentaries on the early writings, the Vedic texts. They introduced the concepts of karma and reincarnation beginning in the 6th century before Christ’s birth, a time of astounding religious creativity. Philosophical Hinduism introduced meditation techniques and yoga. The mystics of this age believed the path to liberating wisdom was an extraordinary path requiring extraordinary means, leaving behind possessions and family and jobs, a kind of social death. The human dilemma was not chaos for these wanderers, it was ignorance. What got us into this mess was ignorance, so what would get us out would have to be wisdom. Wisdom of the soul, liberating it from karma and the repetitive cycle of life, death, and rebirth. death. Death is not the release, moksha is, liberation is--spiritual liberation from ignorance, karma, and reincarnation.
Accepting guidance from a guru could help, still it was an individual, personal journey. A guru would give techniques to their students for finding knowledge themselves...like yoga, the use of breath and body to transport yourself from ignorance to wisdom, from illusion to reality, from humanity to divinity. The goal was total union of the soul with the divine.
This wisdom was more than knowledge and belief—it was something to be experienced. Shankara wrote in the late 8th century, “When a man has been bitten by the snake of ignorance he can only be cured by the realization of Brahman. A sickness is not cured by saying the word ‘medicine.’ You must take the medicine. Liberation does not come by merely saying the word ‘Brahman.’ Brahman must be actually experienced.”
There is a famous story from the Upanishads about a boy who returned home after years of studying the Vedas at the feet of his guru. He was an A+ student, filled to the brim with book learning, and proud of it. His father was not that impressed and asked the boy, “Have you ever pondered how to hear what cannot be heard, perceive what cannot be perceived, know what cannot be known?” The boy had not been taught about such mysteries. So the father gave him some salt and told him to put it in a container of water. The next morning he asked his son to give him back the salt. However, the salt was dissolved in the water. So the father told the boy to taste the water. “How is it?” And the boy replied, “It is salty.” The father said, “The soul and God are like that salt and that water. You are that.” The boy discovered that he could not just sit at the feet of his father. He had to taste the salty water, for himself. He had to experience the union of his soul with the divine.
The philosophical layer was difficult to practice as well as understand. It required extraordinary insight and seriousness, one could see why another geological layer was laid down upon the philosophical layer, which is identified around the time of Jesus. The fourth geological layer is devotional Hinduism, expressed in songs, poems, dramas, dances, heartfelt worship. It became possible to be released from the cycle of life, death and rebirth in the here and now. It became possible for women and the lower castes to be released. It is the Hinduism for the common people. It reminds me of Jesus coming for the least of these, for the outcast, the widows and children. Hinduism was no longer just a one-person drama of utmost seriousness. Devotional Hinduism is a playful musical with a colorful cast of thousands. It was as if the Hindu world was saying, no religion can live by philosophy alone. Devotional Hindu sang and danced, and listened to the epics stories of gods and heroes. Devotional Hindus called upon the gods to help them achieve liberation, moshka, release from the cycle of life and death. Wisdom took a backseat to love, release from karma was a gift, given to all. Happiness was possible-- now. The point of the world was not simply to get out and beyond its vicious cycle, but to prosper in it with your family. The way of devotion has become India’s most popular path to the divine. For everyone, God can be person, emotional, and intimate.
We know Hinduism best in the West not via all the gods of Hinduism or the poetry and stories so much—but through yoga. Have you seen the bumper sticker that says, “My Karma ran over my dogma?” It is a way for us westerns to say that dogma is not as important as what we do. Food offerings are very common in modern day Hinduism, elevated to an art form in places like Bali, elegant offerings of flowers, rice, banana, sugar cane, even more elaborate than what has been prepared today for the altar. All this is a gift, a free expression of love to a given god, hoping for merit in return, an undoing of the bonds of karma.
Hinduism engages all the senses boldly. If you can imagine, just imagine the burning of incense, bright red saris, the ringing of bells, the chanting of mantras, and the chatter. Hinduism is far from the simplicity of the Quakers. Hinduism is about sight. They go to the temple to see and be seen—to gaze at their beloved gods and to be gazed at lovingly in return. Diana Eck writes, “When Hindus go to a temple, they do not commonly say, ‘I am going to worship,’ but rather, “I am going for darshan.” Darshan is religious seeing and the central act of Hindu worship.
Almost all of Hinduism is a tolerant, multicultural faith today. It does, like all religions have its fundamentalists, its extremists, its militants. The youth of India call them “fundos.” They see themselves as champions of the nation, language, beliefs, and practices of the Hindu state. They are nationalists. They are a combination of fundamentalism and nationalism, who advance their cause at the expense of Muslims, Christians, and non-religious people in India. They are in the minority. Sri Lanka was in the state of civil war for 25 years because of these Hindu nationalists.
Ram Dass writes this: “If we are to help heal the world, we need to remember that it is a sacred place. Our actions need to be positive statements, reminders that even in the worst of times there is a world worth struggling for. We need to find ways to keep the vision alive, to acknowledge but not get caught in the dark side, to remember that even the worst aspects of suffering are only part of the whole picture. We need to enter lightly.”
“When we give ourselves into becoming fully who we are by doing fully what we do, we experience lightness, we are like kites in the wind, we are on the side of the angels, we are entering lightly.”
Huston Smith writes: “That Hinduism has shared her land for centuries with Jains, Buddhists, Parsees, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians may help explain a final idea that comes out more clearly through her than through the other great religions; namely her conviction that the various major religions are alternate paths to the same goal. To claim salvation as the monopoly of any one religion is like claiming that God and be found in this room but not the next, in this attire but no another.”
There is much beauty in Hinduism and much to learn. We share much spiritual wisdom. The Hindus spiritual practices are profound. We share many truths. We can learn much from each other and I have only scratched the surface.
Amen.