The Hindu Way of Awakening

Swami Kriyananda

Description

Hinduism, as it comes across in this book, is a robust, joyful religion, amazingly in step with the most advanced thinking of modern times, in love with life, deeply human as well as humane, delightfully aware of your personal life's needs–or so it seems, for the teaching in this book is no abstraction: It is down-to-earth and pressingly immediate.

Swami Kriyananda's inspired, entertaining, energetic writing style make this book delightful reading for anyone interested in spirituality and the deeper meanings of religion. A master of word imagery, he brings order to the seeming chaos of symbols and deities in Hinduism. This book reveals the underlying teachings from which the symbols arise, truths inherent in all religions, and their essential purpose: the direct inner experience of God.

Sujets

• Self-Help
• Spiritual Growth
• Religión
• Self-realization
• Bhagavad Gita
• Swami Kriyananda
• Autobiography of a Yogi
• Inner peace
• Self-help (disambiguation)
• Spirituality
• Meditation
• Hinduism
• Yoga
• Religion
• Ananda
• New Age
• Karma

Informations

• Publié par: Crystal Clarity Publishers
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781565895294
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Hindu Way of Awakening:
Its Revelation, Its Symbols
(An Essential View of Religion)
The Hindu Way of Awakening:
Its Revelation, Its Symbols
(An Essential View of Religion)

Swami Kriyananda
crystal clarity publishers
Copyright © 1998 by Crystal Clarity Publishers
All rights reserved
Cover and book design by Christine Starner Schuppe
Original cover photo of Nataraj statue by Wayne Green
Printed in USA
ISBN-13: 978-1-56589-745-8
eISBN-13: 978-1-56589-529-4
crystal clarity publishers
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This book is dedicated with gratitude, and with love:
to “Indu” Inder Jit and Rani Bhan, for awakening me to the need for it;
to India, for deepening my appreciation of the universality of truth;
to my Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, for awakening me to an awareness of my higher Self;
and
to Sanaatan Dharma , for the eternal verities it offers to all humankind.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Prefatory Note
Part One: The Revelation
1. What Is Revelation?
2. What Are Symbols?
3. The Power of Symbolism
4. Symbolism in India
5. Dating It All
6. Symbolism: Truth, or Imagination?
7. Philosophy, Religion, Science, or—What?
8. The Hindu Revelation—Part One
9. The Hindu Revelation—Part Two
10. Symbolism—or Idolatry?
Part Two: The Symbols
11. Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva: The Trinity of AUM
12. The Symbolism of Brahma
13. Brahma’s Secret
14. The Garden Door
15. The Importance of Satsanga (Good Company)
16. The Avatara: Revelation, or Return Voyage?
17. The Avatara and Human Evolution
18. Symbolism in the Bhagavad Gita
19. Tantra—the Way of Confrontation
20. The Divine Mother
21. Unity in Diversity
About the Author
Further Explorations
Introduction
Hinduism is often omitted from rosters of the world’s great religions. Everyone knows, of course, that Hinduism exists. Even so, it is confused in many people’s minds with what they think of as Buddhism. For Buddhism fits into their concepts of what a religion ought to be. For one thing, it was founded by one individual, Gautama Buddha, who was a historic personage like Moses, Jesus, Lao Tse, Mohammed, and Zoroaster. Buddhism, moreover, like most other religions, has an organized structure (divided, like the others, into a number of sects), a set of specific dogmas, and an officially recognized Way. Moreover, like the other religions, it has its own set of clearly defined, “noble” principles for better living.
Hinduism, by contrast, seems to have merely “happened.” Foreigners see in it such a bewildering array of gods and goddesses, of complex and seemingly incomprehensible ceremonies, and of confusing “explanations” for everything that most students of the subject end up merely bewildered.
A friend of mine years ago, a long-time devotee of yoga meditation practices, was able upon retirement to fulfill a lifelong dream by traveling to India. On arrival in Calcutta, he enthusiastically asked a guide to show him the spiritual sights. The man took him first to Kalighat Temple, where he was shown a goat being sacrificed to the “Divine Mother.” So great was his shock that he returned immediately to his hotel, and expressed no further interest in seeing any further “spiritual” sights. When I encountered him a week later, I found him completely disillusioned with Hinduism, although still faithful to his meditation practices.
Even if the Westerner holds good intentions toward India—and my friend was certainly one such person—he may see Hinduism as containing some of the worst examples of paganism. Small wonder, then, that many people look upon Buddhism as the noblest representative of India’s religion, and turn to it when wanting an Indian religion to place among the great religions of the world. For not only did Buddha found a religion: He was a religious reformer. Moreover, he offered a common-sense approach to self-betterment to which the modern mind can relate easily.
While Buddhism is relatively simple, Hinduism is complex. Hinduism recommends the worship of countless deities, many-armed, many-headed, with animal bodies or animal heads, dancing, playing on a variety of musical instruments. What, the foreigner asks, is going on? When he sees a goat being sacrificed in bloody ritual, is it any wonder he dismisses the whole show as idolatry in its most debased aspects?
By contrast, Buddhism seems, to Westerners especially, to offer a benign and palatable form of the Indian religious experience. Most students of religion know that Buddha tried to reform some of the ancient practices; they think of him as having brought order and sophistication to primitive chaos. When they prepare lists of the great world religions, they think of themselves as demonstrating respect for the religion of India by calling it Buddhism. Most of them are not even conscious of their mistake.
Buddha’s position relative to Hinduism is similar, in a sense, to Martin Luther’s relative to the Roman Catholic Church. * Both men were reformers, and the structure reformed by each was not supplanted by his teachings. The Catholic Church survives to this day, and has in many ways been strengthened by Luther’s reforms. Hinduism, similarly, was purified and strengthened by the teachings of Buddha, and was in no way replaced by them. Most Hindus today look upon Buddha as one of their own avataras , or divine incarnations.
There are two aspects to Hinduism, as there are to every religion. One is outward and concerns ritual worship, traditions, and patterns of social behavior. The other is inward. This other is essential in both senses of the word: It contains the essence of that religion; it is, moreover, essential that this essence be understood for Hinduism really to be understood at all. This second, this essential aspect of the Hindu religion concerns the individual’s relationship to God, and to higher truth.
In their inner aspect, the ancient teachings of India are so broad-based that it seems almost a contradiction of the vastness of their vision to identify it uniquely with any specific religion. Hinduism, in its plethora of symbols and images, is endlessly complex and therefore endlessly misunderstood, but its true mission is both simple and universal: soul-enlightenment. The way to understand this mission is to realize that it is goal-oriented, not way- oriented. In other words, its focus is the ultimate attainment, Self-realization in God. It is not focused on the outer rituals, which are intended merely to remind one of God. The outer teaching of Hinduism, which I call the Hindu Way of Belief, developed out of an inner vision of this universal goal of all life. To understand the outer way is not possible without first probing the inner.
The purpose of this book, then, is primarily to clarify certain deep teachings that lie, like the ocean, beneath the bewildering profusion of surface waves.
The secondary purpose of this book is to analyze a few of the symbols people commonly encounter from their very first exposure to Hinduism. I don’t propose to explain those symbols in exhaustive detail, but rather to give an overview of them in the hope that foreigners and “modernized” Indians alike may come to appreciate the Hindu Way of Belief, also, for the deep truths it contains.
For even today, thousands of years since they were first expounded by the ancient rishis (spiritual sages), the religious teachings of India nourish what continues to be the most spiritually grounded civilization in the world.
Footnote
* A better comparison might be the example of Jesus Christ, who was a great master. Jesus, however, unlike the others, never founded anything, but remained throughout his life a loyal Jew. Many commentators have claimed that the first actual Christian was St. Paul of Tarsus.
Prefatory Note
This book contains, inevitably, a number of Sanskrit terms for which there are no satisfactory English equivalents. Though I have translated these terms into English, the book would, in my opinion, appear too pedantic were its pages heavily strewn with italics. What I have done, therefore, is introduce these terms conventionally in italicized form, but thereafter, at my discretion, treat them as though they existed already in English as indeed they deserve to do. For it is a genius of the English language that it welcomes foreign words so accommodatingly. Indeed, English in its antecedents isn’t really a language at all: It is a synthesis of German, French, Scandinavian, Latin, Greek, and Italian, and has its own roots, besides, in Celtic, Pict, Scots, and God knows how many other indigenous languages of the English Isles. English has, more recently, been enriched by countless languages from around the world—from Indian to Eskimo, from Russian and Hungarian to Zulu.
Most of the Sanskrit words in this book have not yet been accepted officially into modern English. My alternative, which I hope is a happy one, to burdening these pages with italics has been simply to treat them as though they’d been already accepted into the family. Why not? The tradition exists already, and millions of English-speaking people the world over are already familiar with them, and use them freely without either a blush or a stammer.
Murti is an example of such a word. It is the Sanskrit for a religious or spiritual image. I tried to use it in this book, but the text at that point demanded movement with a minimum of digressive explanation. Yet in truth, murti serves bett