Religious Studies Anthology

(Tuis.) #1
Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
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was above all the work of Sankara that some of the most influential drew upon to
express the new outlook. This was a new pluralism, building on Sankara’s notion of
levels of t rut h and his idea of an ult imat e realit y (whic h all religions point t o). We
shall return to these developments later on.


Our next sec tion c onc erns the sense in whic h (on the whole) Hinduis m is
theistic. At first sight (for the Westerner) there is a certain degree of bafflement:
each goddess has a god, and vice versa. There are children, mythic beasts, lots of
equivalents of the main god or goddess. Christian missionaries in nineteenth
century India tended to look on the system as idolatrous. There were also features
suc h as non-personal represent at ions of t he deit y, above all t he lingam. Hindus
denied t hat t hey worshiped idols or t hat t he lingam was a phallic symbol. I t hink
that the best model of God (or Goddess) as conceived in modern Hinduism (and to
some extent the anc ient Hindu traditions) is as refrac ted. What Hindus tend to
believe is a refracted theism. This is the thought that God and gods and goddesses
are one, but, unlike the Semit ic religions... Hinduis m tends to see the gods and
goddesses as offshoots of the one Great God (Siva, Vishnu, Devi). The deities are
allowed a bit of individualit y, for t hey figure in st ories of various kinds. On t he ot her
hand, if you worship Ganesa too int ensely you c an fail t o see t he Divine Spirit
behind his symbolic visage. This attitude to the gods lies behind the modern Hindu
penc hant both for toleranc e and for philosophic al pluralism.... Another feature of
Indian theism is Ramanuja ’s view that the cosmos is God’s body. In our case the
body is only imperfec tly under our c ontrol: whereas in God’s c ase the universe is
wholly under her or his c ontrol. This analogy is haunting, bec ause it means that we
get a vivid sense of God’s presence everywhere in his universe, as we are present
in our fingertips, etc. Though Ramanuja did not think that the c osmos looks like a
body, it is so. He also analogized the universe to an organic body: in other words
here we are dealing with the relevant Sanskrit term standing for human or other
animal body, as distinct from a physical body, such as a stone dropped from a
height by Galileo. Another point worth mentioning is that through large parts of
India God is the Goddess, Devi or Kali or Durga, and so on. Moreover every God
has his c onsort, suc h as Vishnu and Laksmi, and Siva and Minaksi in Madurai, etc.
Hinduism does not emphasize the male in the way the Abrahamic religions do.
Anyway, on these various issues there are grounds for debate with c ustomary
West ern philosophical thinking. Finally it may be noted that Hindu theism has a
plac e for the non-personal side of God: there is no unrelenting anthropomorphis m
or personalism..... This is in part bec ause the very notion of God is also a neuter
noun, that of brahman.


Next , Hinduism inherits from the sramanic movements suc h as Jainism and
Buddhism the prevalent belief in reinc arnation or rebirth, though the Mimamsa
sc hool is an exc ept ion, sinc e early Vedic hymns did not incorporate the belief, but
rat her forms of anc est or rit ual. Generally, reinc arnat ion exhibit s various feat ures:
first, a human c an be reborn in a variety of forms, whether in heaven as a god, in a
hellish purgatory, as a ghost, or as another life form, from insec t to elephant. At
the end of the day, she might ac hieve moksha or liberation from the round of
rebirt h. In t his c ase t here are varying possibilit ies: it might be an isolat ed,
suffering-less existence; or it might be in some degree of intimate closeness to
God, in a heavenly realm. A person who is liberat ed may have done it on her own,
as in Samkhya-Yoga (though in this c ase she will have gained help from God); or it

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