Invitation to World Religions

The Teachings of Hinduism  109

the nature of our future incarnations. To ensure that the future will be good, our actions now must be good—and that means living in conformity with dharma.

Dharma  For Hinduism, the term dharma can mean law, duty, righteousness, or even religion, all of which have to do with living in a way that upholds cosmic and social order. Dharma is traditionally believed to have been divinely revealed to the rishis , the poet–sages who composed the Vedas. Through the centuries, Hindu texts have set forth ritual and social obligations that define a good life. The Laws of Manu , for example, a classic juridical text from the period 200 bce to 200 ce, contains detailed prescriptions for correct behavior in all aspects of life. The two ancient and enormously influential Indian epic poems, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata , depict the simultaneous particularity and uni- versality of dharma. As we will consider in more detail in a later section, both poems present epic heroes who must resolve conflicts between social or family obligations and their own personal sense of what duty demands from them. Samsara  Hindus use the term samsara in two closely related ways. Samsara is the continuing cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. It is also the worldly realm in which birth, death, and rebirth recur. When the physical body dies, the eternal self or soul, the atman, moves on to another body. This process continues until the true nature of the atman is recognized. As noted previously, the nature of each rebirth is deter- mined by karma. Virtuous acts of kindness and generosity over lifetimes ensure fa- vorable rebirths, perhaps even in the blissful heavens of the gods. Selfish action and meanness lead to undesirable rebirths. Hindus believe in a multitude of heavens and hells, as well as other regions in between. A rebirth in a heaven or hell could last thousands of years but is still only temporary. The most desirable rebirth of all is as a human being in a situation that offers the greatest opportunity for realizing liberation from samsara; for example, as a sage or an ascetic. The concept of samsara presents some basic questions. What gives rise to sam- sara? And why are human beings so prone to remain stuck in this samsaric realm? Through the ages, Hindus have offered various answers to these questions. Some of these answers have involved the concept of maya , which in the Vedas refers to the magical power the gods used to create this world. Is the world an illusion, as is often the case with magic, or real? Hindus are divided on this issue. In either case, they agree that human beings are powerfully attracted to this world, with its many particulars—our egoistic selves, our relationships, our possessions, and the seemingly countless objects of our desires. Our attachment to such things in all that we think and do and the karma it generates steer us after each lifetime back into the samsaric realm of particulars. All of this leads to another basic question: Why should anyone want to escape from samsara? After all, the prospect of a future filled with numerous lifetimes

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