My Hinduism

Being born in a Hindu family I was taught to go to temples, pray and perform the rituals. But once I took Science, I started looking at things rationally and could not find any rationale behind praying, visiting temples or giving offerings to the priests instead of beggars sitting outside the temple. So my scientific rationale and teen rebellion made me look down on Hindu practices that my family did. Still, I did all the activities.

When I was in college, I came across an article explaining how Hindu practices such as mindful meditation (Vipasna) and yoga could create high states of consciousness and how it was being researched and evaluated in foreign countries. This actually ignited my curiosity about Hinduism because before that, being a Hindu for me was to go to temples, pray and perform rudimentary rituals. But as I researched I came across a lot of facts that cleared my mental fog. Some of these were -

a) Some Mantras gave the speed of light to accuracy of 98% at a time when people didn't even know if light had a speed.

b) The first metal ever to be distilled was Zinc and was in India. We also exported steel and other metals to all across the world. And who did all this process? Brahmins?? No. It was done by the so-perceived lower classes of modern times . (What i realized was, maybe casteism was not a prominent feature back then.)

c) There are archaeological evidence that India was advanced in technologies like architecture, arithmetic, medicine, farming, water-harvesting and what not.

d) The concept of four Yuga and continuous creation and destruction was strikingly similar to the BIG BANG theory of the universe expanding and will start contracting at some point.

A lot more facts like the above mentioned changed my perception about Hinduism being just about "mandir pooja" or rudimentary rituals. There had to be much more to this religion just than what I perceived to have survived for 10,000 years and its followers being leaders in technological innovations and cultural progress. 

After all this research the question that came to my mind was "What is the underlying philosophy of Hinduism?" because Hindus around me worshiped many gods. Some believed in Shiv, some in Ram, some in Krishna, and the list went on. So I called up my mom and asked "Why am I Hindu?" she replied "Because I am Hindu".  I knew she didn't have an answer, nor did my grandmother or any of the other religious people I knew.

Before going to Hinduism, let's look at why did we need religions at all? In my opinion there were two main reasons -

1. The need to explain natural phenomena - I think  the inability to explain natural phenomenons like where did we come from? Why and how does thunder occur? etc. lead to people thinking of powers that explained them and religion and beliefs in god came into being. If we look at deities in religions like Hinduism (Bharma - Creator ,Vishnu -preserver, Shiva - Destroyer) and Greek mythology's strongest god ZEUS(the god of thunder) or any other, we can notice that they basically try to explain things that people at that time couldn't comprehend and associated them with gods.

2. Trying to create order - I also believe that visionary people during those times knew that there is a requirement of  creating a system or law that would prevent chaos and bring order and purpose to how people lived their lives.

Now coming back to the question "What do Hindus believe in?" after some research i finally found the underlying principle or theory of Hinduism, which is-

" Every Atman(soul), originated from Brahman(infinite source of energy) enters the Prakriti(world) and is lured into the cycle of life, has the ultimate aim of achieving Moksha (Atman reuniting with Brahman)"

The thing that has fascinated me the most about Hinduism is that there is no single right way to achieve Moksha. For Atman to attain Moksha one can take any of the following steps -

1. Sat (By praying and realizing Brahman)

2. Chit (By meditation and yoga to achieve a highly conscious state)

3. Anand (By praying to anything that you consider a manifestation of Brahaman, from Shiv to Ganpati).

Even when the Atman reunites with Brahman that can also take two paths -

1. Dvet vedant - Meaning both Atman and Brahman will have different identities like a parrot on a tree.

2. Advet vedant- Meaning Atman will lose its identity and get submerged into Brahman like a drop of water in an ocean.

So this answered my other question: Why did we have so many gods? It's because being HINDU gives the choice and freedom of having a God and choice of the path to attain Moksha. The beauty of Hinduism is that it gives its followers the choice of everything, from way of living to attaining Moksha. There is no right, wrong or only way. One has to explore one's own path.

The cycle of life means reincarnation and Hinduism says that there are 6 life forms that an Atman can reside in -

1. Aquatic

2. Birds

3. Plants

4. Insects

5. Animals 

6. Humans

The reincarnation is based on accountancy of karma if one has surplus of positive karma one gets a higher life form and the ones with deficit of positive karma get into lower forms of life.

There are two main sects within Hinduism -

1. Vaishnav or Grihastha - The people who believe that one can achieve Moksha by having a family experiencing the world and at same time doing good karma and bhakti yoga.

2. Aghor - These are the people who believe in denouncing the world , living a hard ascetic life and giving pain to their body to get Moksha. Both of these philosophies/sects are equally acceptable in Hinduism.

I also believe that meditation and yoga, that was meant to be a big part of our journey, has been lost in the practices we perform now and that temples were made initially with the objective of having a community place where people could come together and meditate and perform bhakti yoga.

This was my understanding of Hinduism and the amazing thing is you can have your own understanding that is completely different to that of mine, and still we both can be HINDU.