HCA-A4 Deepavali Magazine-2016

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42 www.hinducouncil.com.au Hindu Council Deepavali Celebrations - 2016 Produced by Hinduism – A Personal Reflection Prof Himanshu Pota It is fair to say that there is no Hindu who doesn’t know what Hinduism is. From Hindu scholars to saints and monks to lay Hindu, the understanding of what it is to be a Hindu is almost the same. Even a five year old child who has grown up in India or within Indian culture knows exactly what it means to be a Hindu. The difference shows when we use words to describe what Hinduism is. We all express differently what Hinduism is but who is to say whose version is better. It is not uncommon to read a description of Hinduism from a highly learned professor and feel that it is not even close to what we feel is our religion. Is there a way out? To understand the difficulty with words let us take an example. We often explain Deepavali, to people who don’t know our tradition, as a festival of lights and a celebration of good over evil. For Hindus good and evil are clear cut: In eighteen scriptures Vyas has said two things: doing good to others is for virtue and given pain to others is for sin. This clear cut distinction is not universal. For some people worshipping idols is a sin. Even simple words like good and sin are loaded with cultural connotations. How can we overcome these limitations to find words to write about Hinduism? Religion is often contrasted with physical sciences. It is common to hear people say that the sphere of inquiry of religion and sciences is different. It has to be so for a good reason. On the surface each one of us is made up of three things – physical body, feelings, and intellect or the reasoning faculty. For the most part we live our feelings or emotions. We forget our physical body and we do not use our intellect that often. Each one of us knows that feelings and intellect can at times be at variance and when the outcome of a reasoning process is not forced on us we are more likely to let our feelings dominate us. The most popular conception of religion is to provide support to certain types of feelings which we insist, with some justification, are the truth, like the existence of God. We often discover feelings which no process of reasoning can deny or confirm and base our personal religion on it. This is common to all religious human beings. Are Hindus any different? In an attempt to get out of the difficulty of putting the Hindu beliefs in words, two misconceptions have taken hold of the modern Hindu mind: the first is that Hinduism cannot be defined and the second is that Hinduism is a way of life. Neither is true but it has taken hold of us because it gets us out of the difficulty of finding a match between our feelings and intellect. Both the misconceptions attest to our feelings that Hinduism is a very sophisticated philosophy and we do not need to make an intellectual struggle to put our feelings into words (and hence to an intellectual scrutiny). Even though we hear that Hinduism cannot be defined, it is easy to do so. Hinduism is a belief that there is a unity in everything in this universe, the religion is a way to realise that unity, and there are multiple ways. The realisation of the unity can be done following any conceivable way of life and thus Hinduism is not a way of life. This short statement is in need of intellectual expansion for the purposes of discourse with us and the larger Australian community. Why intellectualise something that we feel so strongly to be true? A good way to keep our physical body fit is to use every part of the body. Any part unused becomes diseased. We use our feelings in abundance and there seem to be no danger of feelings falling into disuse. If one may dare, one can say that we do not use our intellect sufficiently when it comes to our religion. Like an unused body part, unused intellect may also become diseased. Let us exercise our intellect to put into words what we feel about Hinduism. Our ancestors did take intellectual efforts to its limit and the various philosophies are a testimony to it. Can we adopt that intellectual wealth for our times? Language is the first barrier to us profiting from the intellectual tradition of our ancestors. Let us make an attempt to overcome this barrier and any other obstacle. As a caution we may like to reflect on the fact that if we have to put into words what is Hinduism most likely we will say it in English. That is fine but as a test if we are indeed talking about Hinduism and not Hinduism as written in English language we must be able to say it in an Indian language without a single English word. That’s the first step in reclaiming our intellectual wealth. Hindus existed before the English language existed. Let us make an attempt to put into words what is Hinduism. I am sure we can give it a good go. We request you to join us in the process of drawing a word picture of Hinduism that will satisfy us. Please craft and send your words on an introduction to Hinduism to us so that we can jointly address the challenge of preparing material that satisfies us and the larger Australian community.
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