Microsoft Word - Hinduism formatted.doc

(singke) #1

  • In Hinduism, a ‘guru’ or teacher is needed to aid the
    individual in cultivating a direct experience of the divine
    and recovering a sense of union with it. The guru is not
    an evangelist or priest there to preach a gospel or faith.

  • Hinduism does not see the world as something ‘made’
    by a God but is understood as a creative manifestation of
    the Divine – in the same way that speech is a
    manifestation of meaning and not something ‘made’.

  • Since the entire world and everything in it is itself a sacred
    revelation of the Divine, its sacredness cannot be
    reduced to that of scripture - the revealed word.

  • The Divine is understood as both transcendent and
    immanent in all things and all beings, the primordial
    womb of All That Is. Whilst it has both masculine and
    feminine aspects it ultimately transcends all identities –
    and with them all distinctions of gender, caste, ethnicity
    and regional culture.

  • Hinduism is ‘a-theistic’ – but only in the strict sense of
    not being theistic – not identifying the Divine with a
    supreme God-Being.

  • Instead of being monotheistic, Hinduism is monistic –
    recognising the Divine as a singular, absolute, unifying

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