Invitation to World Religions

108  CHAPTER 4  Hinduism

Whenever sacred duty decays and chaos prevails, then, I create myself, Arjuna. To protect men of virtue and destroy men who do evil, to set the standard of sacred duty, I appear in age after age. 3 We will learn more about the Bhagavad Gita later in this chapter. The Individual and the Quest for Liberation

Having explored Hindu perspectives on divine reality, we turn now to basic concepts that form the framework of the Hindu outlook on the individual and the quest for liberation. Some of these concepts, such as samsara and karma, are also significant for other religions with Indian origins (Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism). Atman  All Hindus believe in an undying soul or self, the atman , whose nature is neither limited by the physical body nor defined by its relationship to the world. It is the atman that moves from body to body through successive incarnations. The task of recognizing the true nature of the essential self is understood to be arduous and rarely achieved. Most Hindus assume that this will require many life- times. One’s life ordinarily revolves around a sense of selfhood that is limited, con- strained by desires and by ignorance of the true nature of atman. Therefore, life ordinarily is lived by the egoistic “self ” that is by nature selfish and stuck with false identification of the self with the physical body. This leads to suffering, as the body undergoes painful changes brought on by disease, old age, and death. Monistic Hinduism, true to its basic premise that all reality is ultimately one, teaches that the atman is Brahman. Another famous passage from the Upanishads conveys this idea through the story of a young man named Svetaketu, who receives instruction from his father on the true nature of the atman. Using a number of analogies, the father explains that despite the appearance of multiplicity, all reality is one. The father emphatically declares: Tat tvam asi svetakato iti (“ You are that, Svetaketu!”). 4 Atman is Brahman.

Karma  The course of the atman through successive incarnations is determined by karma. In its original, most basic sense, karma means “action,” but for Hindus it means the consequences of action as well. Karma functions in accordance with the law of cause and effect: good actions produce good effects, bad actions produce bad effects. Karma encompasses all kinds of action, physical as well as mental. A per- son’s situation in any given moment has been shaped by all previous actions. Similarly, the karmic forces that we set in motion in our present lives will determine PROPERTY OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS