The Logic of Hinduism

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1) Atman and Brahman:From Unity to Separation to Unity

• 1) Diversity of individualities, personalities, ways of life and deities (Illusion)

• 2) The ordinary personality (“ego”) is not one’s true Self, Atman, which is one with Brahman (the divine)

• 3) Atman/Brahman unifies the seemingly separate individualities or egos

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Why does God create?

• Recall: in order to truly experience wealth, one must experience poverty

• God knows that He/She is God, but wants to experience divinity

• To experience being God, God must experience what it is like not to be God– i.e., being an ordinary human being, i.e., you and

me• So, when we discover our true divine nature, this is

God within us experiencing what it is like to be God3

Emanation of God• 1) Brahman expresses itself (emanates) in Atman (the

Souls, higher Selves)– Compare with God creating the human being in Genesis,

breathing His spirit into separate matter. – But the outer material world, including the animals, is not

created this way– In Hinduism there is no separation between Creator and

Creation: Advaita (“not two” in Sanscrit) Vedanta– 2) Atman loses (forgets) itself and identifies with the

physical being as separate and independent reality– illusion of the egos, the separated selves (Maya)

• 3) Rediscovery of one’s true Self = return to oneness of Brahman in the play of life (Lila)

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Ordinary Self of Civilization (ego)

• Focus is on sensible world of – pleasure and pain, – power and powerlessness, – pursuing wealth and avoiding poverty

• Seeks rewards outside the present action: – in the future (including motive to raise oneself in the

caste hierarchy in the next life)– concerned with negative consequences of the past

(external punishment, internal guilt) • = World of opposites: Maya (illusion)

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True Self (Atman)

• Turn within; find point of permanence in the impermanent present, the “now”

• The past and future are not; only the present is

• Atman (true Self) is one with Brahman, the universal Spirit, of which one can only say,

• It Is! Being: “Thou art that”

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Plato’s argument for immortality

• The human soul can recognize unchangeable truths. – E.g., The Theorem of Pythagoras.

• We can recognize unchanging Beauty in itself in the changing beautiful things. – Diotema’s teaching to Socrates

• The soul must be like what it knows and loves. • Therefore, the soul must also be unchangeable • Raise your awareness to the soul level, above

preoccupation with sensory objects (the shadow world)

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Krishna’s Argument for Immortality

• Being is, non-being is not• Change (a mixture of being and non-being) is

an illusion• What IS (Being) is Now • Within the Now there is the illusion of

constant change, but the Now itself does not change

• Consciousness of Now = the Soul (Atman) • Consciousness of change = the Ego

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Analogous to watching a movie• In the movie many things happen, people move

from one place to another– That’s how it seems when we are caught up in the

film.– But everything in the movie happens in the same

place, which never moves and changes: on the movie screen.

• Being is like the three dimensional movie screen in which our lives unfold. – Being itself remains the same – even as time, the movement from past to future,

seems to unfold within it

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Hinduism or Daoism?

• Hinduism: only Being is, non-being is not• Daoism: non-being is real– (the emptiness between the spokes)

• Which is right? – Hinduism: the nature of ultimate reality– Daoism: the nature of the human world• Full of non-being: we create it• Hinduism: This is Maya > Lila (the play of life)

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2) Meditation: Path to the Inner Self

• The Saint who shuts outside his placid soul• All touch of sense, letting no contact through; • Whose quiet eyes gaze straight from fixed brows,• Whose outward breath and inward breath are drawn• Equal and slow through nostrils still and close; • That one—with organs, heart, and mind constrained,• Bent on deliverance, having put away• Passion, and fear, and rage;--hath, even now,• Obtained deliverance, ever and ever freed.

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What does meditation do?

• We normally identify ourselves with our thinking mind, our desires => Ordinary self, ego.

• Concerned with past and future• Not being in the present• We normally don’t control our mind; it controls us.• We need to set aside the mind to discover our real

being: the experience of being: I AM

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You are not your thoughts

• = “You” are not your thoughts, worries, fears (Ego)

• Stop thinking and just BE• Become aware of the Self outside of the

thoughts about external changing things, past and future

• That is really the true You (Atman) that is the expression of God (Brahman)

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How to meditate• Sequestered should he sit, • Steadfastly meditating, solitary,• His thoughts controlled, his passions laid away,• Quit of his belongings. . . .• There, setting hard his mind upon The One,• Restraining heart and senses, silent, calm,• Let him accomplish Yoga [=union], and achieve• Pureness of soul [Atman], holding immovable • Body and neck and head, his gaze absorbed• Upon his nose-end . . .

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Meditation

1. Feel and relax your body completely 2. Close eyes and observe the darkness,

shadows, inner clouds, colors, forms3. Ignore your thoughts4. Be aware of your breathing5. Be aware of your awareness

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3) Maya and Lila

• Maya: the illusion of change when you are caught up in it– Life is deadly serious: who wins, who loses

• Lila: the illusion of change when you understand what it is– You play a hard game of volley ball against

opponents – and then sit around and enjoy conversation

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The true Self is an Ocean

• What is midnight gloom • To unenlightened souls shines wakeful day• To his clear gaze; what seems as wakeful day• Is known for night, thick night of ignorance,• To his true-seeing eyes. Such is the Saint!• And like the ocean, day-by-day receiving • Floods from all lands, which never overflows . . .• Such is the perfect one! To his soul’s ocean• The world of sense pours streams of witchery . . .

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Life as the play of God

• “The basic recurring theme in Hindu Mythology is the creation of the world by the self-sacrifice of God - 'sacrifice' in the original sense of 'making sacred' - whereby God becomes the world which, in the end becomes again God. This creative activity of the Divine is called *lila*, the play of God, and the world is seen as the stage of the divine play.

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Life is magical

• “Like most of Hindu mythology, the myth of lila has strong magical flavour. Brahman is the great magician who transforms himself into the world and he performs this feat with his 'magic creative power', which is the original meaning of maya in the Rig Veda. The word maya - one of the most important terms in Indian philosophy - has changed its meaning over the centuries.

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• “From the 'might', or 'power', of the divine actor and magician, it came to signify the psychological state of anybody under the spell of the magic play. As long as we confuse the myriad forms of the divine lila with reality, without perceiving the unity of Brahman underlying all these forms, we are under the spell of maya.

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• “Maya, therefore, does not mean that the world is an illusion, as is often wrongly stated. The illusion merely lies in our point of view, if we think that the shapes and structures, things and events, around us are realities of nature, instead of realizing that they are concepts of our measuring and categorizing minds.

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• “Maya is the illusion of taking these concepts for reality, of confusing the map with the territory.”

• From The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra.

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Comparison with Stoicism

• Epictetus: “Remember that you are an actor in a play, the character of which is determined by the Playwright; if He wishes the play to be short, it is short; if long, it is long; if He wishes you to play the part of a beggar, remember to act even this role adroitly; and so if your role be that of a cripple, an official, or a layman.

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• For this is your business, to play admirably the role assigned you; but the selection of that role is Another’s.” # 17

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Hinduism: The Play is Our Own

• Non-separation (Advaita) of God and world• The Self (Atman) is an expression of Brahman• The Play of Life (Lila) is our own play– We create and sustain the non-being– and so have a human world• Of Yin and Yang, Non-being and being: Daoism

• Karma: WE determine our role or part in life

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Platonic and Hindu conception of Self-determined Destiny

• “Your genius will not be allotted to you, but you choose your genius; and let him who draws the first lot have the first choice, and the life which he chooses shall be his destiny.” (Plato, Republic, Story of Ur, in Book X)

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Spiritual republicanism without a material republic

• Survival of memory of republican freedom after death of republic

• 1) Roman Stoicism: our outside fate is determined by God(s) – >Reflects powerful Roman empire

• 2) Advaita Vedanta: we (as one with Brahman) determine our outside fate– >Reflects weak Hindu feudal states

Stoicism and Rome

• >From freedom of republics to loss of freedom

• Stoic separates mind and body: we control the first, but not the second

• The external, physical reality is immovable, like the Roman army

• Reflects powerlessness of individual in Roman empire

Hinduism and India• Practical reality: – Republics also decline into feudalism (despotism of local

powers)– Feudal states are weak, limited; you can go from one to

the other and the rules change– Contrast with the “universal” character of Rome’s

“cosmopolitan law”: there is no escaping it!• Hindu beliefs: – The externality, solidity of the body and the power of and

material circumstances are illusions that we create ourselves.

– We can change these appearances by our intentions and actions

Indian Stoicism?

• That man alone is wise• Who keeps his mastery of himself! If one• Ponders on objects of the sense, there springs• Attraction; from attraction grows desire• Desire flames to fierce passion, passion breeds• Recklessness; then the memory—all betrayed—• Lets noble purpose go, and saps the mind,• Till purpose, mind and man are all undone.

Make objects serve us!

• But, if one deals with the objects of the sense• Not loving and not hating, making them• Serve his free soul, which remains• Serenely lord,• Lo! Such a man comes to tranquility; • And out of that tranquility shall arise• The end and healing of his earthly pains.• Since the will governed sets the soul at peace.

Republican conception of reincarnation

• Individual creates his own environment in Greek and Indian Republics– Hence Plato’s story of the soldier Er on reincarnation:

we choose our own lot in life.

• Hence Hindu Advaita Vedanta: we determine our karma – 1) through our ignorance of our true nature as divine

beings– 2) or consciously, when we do our duty in the present

moment