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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Date: Sat Apr 26, 2003 10:29 am
Subject: Spiritual Bedrock

http://www.sulekha.com/chpost.asp...ilosophy&show=0&cid=57350

Sitaram comments: Three little words, "Born", "Gone" and "Is."
Think of the 4 little words of the genetic code. The vocabulary of
being is succinct. The repetition of this mantra of four, in
countless permutations and combinations, gives rise to such a
diversity of life and consciousness.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_code

adenine , cytosine , guanine and uracil , which are used in the
mRNA ; in the DNA , thymine takes the place of uracil.

========================

http://pubweb.northwestern.edu/~rrk904/

In early childhood moral education by means of simple stories such as
Panchatantra should be emphasized.
Before one enters formal faith it is important to have a sound moral
foundation.

I had wanted to comment on this for quite some time, in that I think
this is a fantastic insight of yours.
I have often wondered what separates me, through no particular virtue
of my own, from many of my peers who know next to nothing about
Hinduism. I think that you hit directly upon it: the stories I heard
as a child.

Raised upon a steady diet of uplifting stories and aphorisms,
Amirchitrakatha comics and personal testaments from my mother and
father, I grew up with a rock-solid base of understanding of what was
right and wrong, what was dharmic and what was not. Of course, it was
very primitive at the time, and has since
become quite a bit more (I would hope!) nuanced, but this base has
served me quite well. It is a common
source of inspiration for me, most of my friends, and my family, and
a beautiful tapestry upon which I can
relate to them all, as well as to my ancestors and hopefully to my
descendants.

In addition, I think that stories often contain seeds from which an
entire understanding of the world can
spin, and spiritual masters are geniuses for using them in this
manner.

To take just one example: I used to sit in on Swami Dayananda
Saraswati's lectures at the Arsha Vidya
Gurukulam as a child, and I remember that the topics were often
complicated enough to confuse full-fledged
PhDs. However, his breakdown of them into simple stories helped
immeasurably.

One story I remember is when he substituted words for Brahma, Vishnu,
Shiva: "born" for the first, "is" for
the second, and "gone" for the third.

Then he read "Brahma Vishnu Shiva" as "Born Is Gone". Then he
said, "Gone Is Born". I remember that my 11 year old mind reeled from
the magnitude of what Swamiji was suggesting with this SIMPLE (but
elegant)
breakdown. (Please do take the time to think out the intricate
implications of this poetic truth!)

Ever since, I've carried many of his stories with me and used them to
understand both philosophy and life.
So I think stories are indeed the bedrock upon which any real
spiritual/ethical/moral understanding must be built, especially in
childhood.

- posted by Raman

http://pubweb.northwestern.edu/~rrk904

(excerpts):

The Happiness Equation

The pursuit of happiness is the motivation for all action. A man's
desire for sex? Pursuit of immediate gratification. My desire to
achieve on a test? Pursuit of a better job and emotionally sound
conditions. Your desire to worship and honor Jesus Christ? Pursuit of
eternal joy. All examples of desires that are rooted in the need to
be happy. Happiness itself (a measure of how successful you've been
in fulfilling your goal of becoming happy) is a function of two
variables; one being total desires, the other being desires
fulfilled. The quotient of the two (as per the following equation)
determines the Happiness Quotient, or HQ:

HQ = Desires Fulfilled

Total Desires

This, by the way, is just my whimsical example. Don't assume that
Hindus, Buddhists, or Shintoists actually use this equation to
calculate their HQ on a daily or weekly basis. However, the model
serves to explain a central point. If no desires existed, then the
bottom of the equation would contain a zero, and so the HQ would
approach infinity, or eternal happiness. In other words, the message
is this:

If you want to be successful in your quest for happiness (since
happiness is the ultimate goal for everyone, regardless of how you go
about achieving it), then reduce your desires to zero.

Desires as a function of time

It's fine to say that desires fall into three categories (physical,
emotional, and logical); this helps to understand why we want the
various things we want. However, it's also useful to classify desires
as they occur as goals, and how they vary with length. For example,
you, Brandy, have a variety of goals. You have immediate goals like
eating dinner or going dancing next Friday night. You have short-term
goals, like doing well in your classes and getting into the major you
want. You have long-term goals, like going to law school and getting
married. And you have eternal goals, like practicing a good Christian
life and going to Heaven. Each goal, as you see, has as its goal your
happiness, either now, in the future, or eternally.

Hindu heathens like me have similar goals. We believe in the
existence of goals to fulfill the following four areas of life: kama,
artha, dharma, and moksha.

Kama is pleasure, or immediate "happiness". The desire for Kama is
the constant desire that pesters us: eat! sleep! mate! and goes into
complexer variations on the same theme: go dancing! get drunk! etc.
The will to live in the moment is the embodiment of a desire for Kama.

Artha, the counterpoint, is security. The desire for Artha is the
desire that pesters us: study! plan! invest! in order that we can
continue to be happy; it recognizes that "happiness" must sometimes
wait so that pressing needs can be addressed and our futures can be
assured. A desire for Artha is also what motivates our unhealthy
fascination with money--money, after all, is the basic building block
of security--security to retire, take a loan, build a house, etc.

Dharma is something like duty, or values, or a mixture of the two.
The desire to maintain Dharma is the desire to lead a better next
life. It constantly urges us: tell the truth! be loving! fight for
good! give alms! Such practice of virtue brings in good Karma and
allows us rebirth in a better situation. (More on Dharma later.)

And Moksha, at last, is eternal joy; it is the ultimate goal of
everyone (after all, how can you get any better than that?), and the
struggle for it is what redeems us from a completely selfish
existence. The previous three motivations, although some good can
arise from them indirectly, are basically concerned only with
the "I", whether it be her immediate pleasure, her future well-being,
or her well-placed next incarnation. However, Moksha transcends this
because once it is achieved, the individual glows with the light of
happiness forever and from that point on can lead others to the same--
thus becoming completely selfless.

These four time-dependent goals (desires to maintain happiness now,
in the future, from life to life, and forever) help us to further
categorize all desires, and so enable us to see why happiness remains
elusive; it is due to the conflict between the desirers and between
their desires. Our minds may desire emotional attachment and
affection from a relationship while our bodies may just wants sex.
The Kama motivation might urge us to go party a night before an exam
(to use a hackneyed example) while the Artha motivation urges us to
study. Since both desires can never be completely fulfilled, the
denominator of the Happiness Equation increases while the numerator
remains constant, and the HQ decreases (imagine this qualitatively,
not quantitatively--sorry if I got carried away!). Thus, we must find
a way to resolve the desirers and their time-dependent aspects if
happiness is to be achieved.

But Don't Animals Have Souls?

What is this elusive doer, this "I", this thing everyone calls a
soul? What is it, exactly? Well, our process of definition can't be
very exact, since the soul is so different from everything else with
which we interact. So is it the body? No--cut off a hand, a foot, a
leg, even replace the heart, and the person is still whoever he or
she was. Is it the mind? No--crush it with overreaching emotion,
inflate it with incredible feelings, and the persons is still the
same--albeit a little unbalanced. The intellect? No--people suffer
amnesia, get smarter, or begin to deteriorate with age, but we still
call them by their names and think of them as "them".

Many questions have plagued physicists for years--questions that
relate to the fundamental nature of the universe. (This discussion
gets a little nerdy here, but I have faith in you--you can take it:)
The foremost question is, what makes up the universe? We used to
think it was atoms--then we found protons and neutrons. We thought it
was protons and neutrons--then we found quarks. Now they think it
might be little loops of space called "superstrings", these
incredibly complex entities that it hurts my head just to think
about. But the drive has always been towards simplicity--finding the
stuff that makes an atom or a quark or a string exhibit the qualities
it does: color, shape, mass, reactivity. Of course, scientists can
always ask "why?" No matter how far they delve into the nature of
matter, there's always the question: well, what makes strings do
that? I know you have these laws, but what causes those laws to be?

Here is the opening for religion. The fundamental cause of all the
laws--the reason these particles exist the way they do, and continue
to do so despite disturbances--has to do with the fundamental energy
that motivates all matter.

There's that word again! Motivates. In other words, something must be
providing a motivation for all matter; this motivation is what makes
matter what it is. Remember, too, that something is motivating us as
humans to do things--and this is the soul. Since we are made up of
the same stuff as the universe, the fundamental energy of the
universe (let's call it God, for lack of a better word) is the same
energy as us. And here's the beauty--just as it is us, we are it!

This means that all things, whether they be people, dogs, spruce
trees, or computers, have a measure of the God that underlies all
matter. So everything has, in a manner of speaking, soul.

Inanimate Objects Can't Have Souls!

Well, like I said, that's just a manner of speaking. At the same
time, here I define (definitively) just why humans are different from
the rest of matter--we can recognize our souls, and further recognize
their oneness with God. This ability to recognize is what makes us
humans, and it is also what makes us divine.

An Aside on Dharma, Religion, Values, and Why There Are No
Commandments

Dharma is, strictly speaking, that which holds up the essential
nature of a something. Manav Dharma, or Man's Code, defines what
holds up the essential nature of humanity. What is this essential
nature? Simply the ability to recognize the divinity, and the
divinity itself. The dictates of Dharma encompass many different
facets of existence, from when to begin married life to how to pray.
These dogmatic ideas form the basis for "right action" to a certain
extent, and prescribe one (not necessarily the only) way to purify
the body and mind in preparation for spiritual action. Thus, in this
sense, Dharma is often translated loosely as "religion", since it
describes a goal for life--purification--which will lead to a higher
reward--the ability to attain enlightenment.

Dharma exists to provide us with values for living our life. But
instead of a whole list, we are given one (and only one) real
stricture: ahimsa paramodharma. This means, literally, that "non-
injury is the supreme duty". Since the causing of injury to others or
oneself encompasses all sin (by the Hindu definition), ahimsa
paramodharma helps us decide which action to take. This also tends to
complicate the procedure for determining if something is a sin or
not; nonetheless, it keeps people from oversimplifying and forces
them to analyze the problem from many angles if they are to act
rightly.

Notice this is not a commandment--thou shalt not kill. Why is this?
Simply because the ancient sages recognized that life is terribly
complex, and simple strictures will lead to simple thinking which
will inevitably result in non-virtuous conduct. Thou shalt not kill
is all well and good until someone comes and tries to kill your
family--you don't just sit there while they're being butchered, you
fight back; or, as in war, you sometimes have to take up arms against
people, even people you love, who may have done you no wrong--and
sometimes such conduct is justified. The Civil War is a prime example
of a war where the South had done nothing to offend the North--and
yet, ultimately, its method of livelihood could not be tolerated, and
so war occurred.

So, Hindu philosophy states--when presented with a choice, consider
how much damage each alternative will do/could do, and choose the
least harmful alternative (and include yourself in the analysis).
This will help you to instill virtue and purity into your actions,
and this purity will help lead you to the realization that God and
you are equal.

The Nature of Good; the Scapegoat of "Evil"

While Christians think of humans as fundamentally sinful, Hindus
think of humans as fundamentally good. Our souls are eternal,
unchanging, and (when you get right down to it) they're God. So, they
must be fundamentally good. No other explanation exists.

Evil, on the other hand, is a myth. We don't believe in the existence
of a fundamental, intelligent force that opposes God; this force
unnecessarily complicates our model. Instead, all actions that seem
evil are really motivated by one of the many forms of ignorance--
arrogance, lust, hunger, compulsivity. Ignorance is not evil; it is
simply stupidity. It is only a force to reckon with as long as we
make it so; once we embrace our divine nature, ignorance is destroyed
forever.

"Evil" people such as tyrants, murderers, and rapists, therefore,
deserve not our hatred or our fear, but only our pity. They do what
they do because they are fools, too caught up in their delusions of
power, money, or perversity to recognize that they can be
fundamentally happy right now. They do terrible things to each other
and to others, certainly. However, what can they possible harm can
they do to a self-realized person, who has embraced his/her nature as
God? They can destroy his/her body, mind, even intellect, yet we've
already seen that they cannot destroy his/her soul. Thus, ignorance
can breed terrible crimes, but the magnitude of any of their pathetic
actions always pale in comparison to the fundamental Truth of bliss.

Does this, however, mean that Hindus take a dismissive attitude
towards criminals and sinners? Hell no! Remember, we believe in
Karma, and Karma punishes people all the time. In fact, even saints
have been known to suffer extreme privation--even following their
self-realization. One highway-robber turned Buddhist saint was stoned
to death by the families of people he had waylaid on the highway.
Basically, nothing's going to let you off the hook; if you've sinned,
you're going to pay for it.

The difference, however, is how you take it. Have you ever noticed
that sometimes things happen to you that at any other time you'd
consider horrible, yet somehow you bear them and don't even think
twice about them? Well, that's exactly what Hinduism teaches. You
can't control what happens to you completely, and if you've sinned
you're going to get punked down, one way or another. However, if
you're self-realized, the harshest happenings (family death, house
burning down, spouse leaving) will seem like no big deal. In fact,
they will not even affect you--except to push you to help other
people who might need help dealing with these tragedies. You, after
all, will recognize that tragedies are only a fiction of the body-
mind-intellect complex and mean nothing to the infinite souls
involved in the real world, the underlying God.

Hence, even the cruelest people will have a shot at Heaven, even in
their lifetime. They will still get their share of punishment since
the law of Karma will not exempt them. So the Hindu belief is neither
harsh nor lenient on sinners (which we all are); it is simply fair.

A Quick Summary

1) Throughout life, we are on a quest for happiness. Happiness is
proportional to our desire fulfillment; however, we can't possibly
fulfill all our desires since they always rise to meet our resources.
So, it is futile to pursue happiness by fulfilling desires.

2) The root of our desires (and so our suffering) is the interplay
between the needs of our bodies, minds, and intellects. However, we
are fundamentally separate from these entities; we are composed of
that essence that acts on those needs. That essence is the soul.

3) Our desire to be happy motivates all our actions. Ambition is just
a desire for happiness later, while craving is a desire for happiness
now; virtue is a desire for happiness in coming lives, while
spirituality is a desire for happiness forever. All desires are
inherently selfish, but only the last one can lead to a state of mind
where selfishness ceases to exist.

4) Because none of our actions are infinitely powerful or effective,
they cannot have eternal consequences. Thus, nothing we do, say, or
believe can have permanent effects; so even death cannot be
permanent. While our body, mind, and intellect may collapse into
nothingness, the doer of actions, the soul, remains intact. The soul
migrates from life to life through the process of rebirth; where and
how you are reborn depends upon your karma, which is in turn decided
by your actions and how they satisfy the dictates of purity.

5) Because all actions are human, all contain elements of both right
and wrong. In other words, no actions we take can be completely
without harm, but they can also do great good--the guiding principle
should thus be to do the maximum good while causing the minimum harm.
Even following this ethos, we are bound to perform actions that cause
harm and damage, and we do accumulate both good and bad Karma as a
result of this. Thus, you are always accumulating both types of
Karma, no matter what you do.

6) Karma both rewards and punishes us, but ultimately the goal is not
the accumulation of Karma, since there is no way to accumulate good
Karma without getting the bad (or vice versa.) The goal is to realize
that Karma and other wordly devices/laws simply conceal from us the
Truth about ourselves; namely, that we are God. This knowledge, once
fully realized and known in fullness, can never be controverted or
denied, since it is the fundamental basis of all things. Unlike
action, belief, or word, knowledge is eternal, because it exists
without the need for external support. Knowledge is independent of
whether we know it or not; we can acknowledge that Calculus exists
without ever studying it. Just acknowledging that calculus exists and
is useful is not enough to really know calculus; we must study it.
Similarly, it is not enough to say that God is infinite and that we
are God. We have to know this fact beyond a doubt and understand all
of its contemplations in order to fully appreciate it and allow it to
enrich our lives with infinite joy. However, this knowledge exists
independently of our choice to acknowledge it.

7) Because our souls go through endless cycles of life and rebirth,
they must underlie all life--form the fundamental essence, the
particles, so to speak, that make up all matter. Moreover, since this
fundamental essence is also the cause of all things, it is God. Thus,
we are God, animals are God, everything is God. Certainly, some
aspects of God (rocks) are less manifest than others (humans) due to
their simplicity versus the others' complexity, but that is only a
matter of material degrees and so is not really important (since it
deals with this world of illusion, and not the true beauty of unity).

8) There are at least four ways of getting to God; all have been used
successfully. Whether through meditation or through study; whether
through love or through simple actions, the fundamental goal is the
same: to distance oneself from the false reality of the world,
realize its transience, and realize the Truth as a result.

9) Once enlightenment has been attained, the soul is truly free--to
never be reborn again, once again a subliminal expression of reality,
merged with and present as God. The freedom, however, also exists;
freedom to be born again, and to help others attain the same
enlightenment. What exactly happens after enlightenment, maybe I'll
be able to tell you some day (if I attain it myself), but right now
it is well beyond my ken. Nonetheless, eternal happiness is a
definite result--that much all accounts agree.

10) Miscellaneous points:

- There is no devil; all seeming evil is simple ignorance. There is
no intelligent being seeking to trip us up.

- There are not a plethora of gods, nor is there just one. Instead,
there is only God.

- There is nothing about idol worship or a caste system in our
scriptures; the former is worship of God through the idol, not the
worship of the idol.

- Hinduism has developed many sects over the years, but what I have
told you is true of the original faith. The other developments you
might hear about (including Arya Samaj, the anti-idol worship, and
Tantrism, the sexual worship) are all later implementations of
Hindus. I will not assume to call these developments wrong; they are
a different kind of Hinduism, that's all. The original Hinduism,
however, the one based on the Vedas, advocates none of these ideas.
Hindu philosophy is basically what I told you. I've left out a few
elements, but they would have been useless to your understanding. I
can explain them some other time if you like. Otherwise, the
essentials of Hinduism are covered here.

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