What is Hinduism? What is its definition? This is a question, which is being increasingly asked both in West and East, both from Westerners and from the Easterners. India is no longer the land of snake charmers, it has some real ideas, which can often answer what Science, or Western Philosophy is unable to.
In two words we can say that it is Sanatana Dharma. But then what is Sanatana Dharma? Definitions confine and limit, this being their primary utility, but dharma cannot be limited. It is limitless. So there can be no exhaustive definition of dharma or Hinduism. We can only give some examples and make surmises about its true nature (not the definition).
Definitions are the property of a closed system, or a law, which is applicable in the material world, and that only to a certain extent, with many constraints. However there are no constraints in Dharma. It was, it is and it will be.
Sanatana Dharma states that the Ultimate Truth is beyond any human language, so it is not possible to express it and write it in words. That’s why there is no “God’s” book in Hinduism. The carrier of such a society, which strives towards this ultimate truth, is Sanatana Dharma.
But in the Dvaita we have to limit it in order to give a criterion for the followers. Sanatana Dharma is a mechanism which breeds a society in which the quest for knowing the Ultimate Truth is encouraged and facilitated. This tradition is generally taken forward by Guru-Shishya Parampara. According to dharma the life of manushya is divided into four periods; Brahmacharya, Grihistha, Vanaprastha and Sanyas. A person practices celibacy until he gets married, and meanwhile learns about the Shastras and a dharmic living according to them. Then he marries and lives the worldly life, enjoying all its pleasures, as permitted by a dharmic living. In the middle age he winds up his worldly affairs and turns inward, in the search of truth. Then after this cleansing period, he takes full Sanyas, and tries to know the Ultimate Truth.
This is the life style of a Hindu living according to Sanatana Dharma. Hinduism doesn’t hate any worldly pleasures. It has provisions to fulfill all worldly desires, hence the four Purusharthas; Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha. Instead of self-mortification, which is prevalent in Christian Monasticism, it doesn’t inculcate in its followers a hatred of the body. It doesn’t divide the body from the soul. It considers the body as the tool for self-realization. So it hasn’t got to be hated, but to be cared for and cleansed of impurities. By impurities it means impurities acquired by the heart and the mind and not by the body.
One basic defining principle of Sanatana Dharma or Hinduism is the karmic cycle and the fact of reincarnation. Sanatana Dharma states that we all are manifestations of the one single reality, which is the Ultimate Consciousness, the Para Brahma, the Universal Consciousness. It is just because this Universal Consciousness, the Goddess Chiti has forgotten herself in its many myriad physical forms, that there is this illusion of separate existence of individuals. We think that the awareness which we feel is this body, and do deeds by having an ‘aham bhav’, a sense of action. Due to this, certain patterns get fixed on this ‘aham bhav’ and this becomes our accumulated ego, which is born again and again. Until we realize that the individual existence is an illusion and that there is only one in this Universe, we keep revolving in this cycle of rebirth.
Dhyana is a tool to get out of this cycle and realize our True Self.
So Sanatana Dharma says that a tradition which leads its followers inwards to the quest of the Ultimate Truth is a dharmic tradition, and one which leads him to the outward quest of worldly desires is an adharmic tradition.
In two words we can say that it is Sanatana Dharma. But then what is Sanatana Dharma? Definitions confine and limit, this being their primary utility, but dharma cannot be limited. It is limitless. So there can be no exhaustive definition of dharma or Hinduism. We can only give some examples and make surmises about its true nature (not the definition).
Definitions are the property of a closed system, or a law, which is applicable in the material world, and that only to a certain extent, with many constraints. However there are no constraints in Dharma. It was, it is and it will be.
Sanatana Dharma states that the Ultimate Truth is beyond any human language, so it is not possible to express it and write it in words. That’s why there is no “God’s” book in Hinduism. The carrier of such a society, which strives towards this ultimate truth, is Sanatana Dharma.
But in the Dvaita we have to limit it in order to give a criterion for the followers. Sanatana Dharma is a mechanism which breeds a society in which the quest for knowing the Ultimate Truth is encouraged and facilitated. This tradition is generally taken forward by Guru-Shishya Parampara. According to dharma the life of manushya is divided into four periods; Brahmacharya, Grihistha, Vanaprastha and Sanyas. A person practices celibacy until he gets married, and meanwhile learns about the Shastras and a dharmic living according to them. Then he marries and lives the worldly life, enjoying all its pleasures, as permitted by a dharmic living. In the middle age he winds up his worldly affairs and turns inward, in the search of truth. Then after this cleansing period, he takes full Sanyas, and tries to know the Ultimate Truth.
This is the life style of a Hindu living according to Sanatana Dharma. Hinduism doesn’t hate any worldly pleasures. It has provisions to fulfill all worldly desires, hence the four Purusharthas; Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha. Instead of self-mortification, which is prevalent in Christian Monasticism, it doesn’t inculcate in its followers a hatred of the body. It doesn’t divide the body from the soul. It considers the body as the tool for self-realization. So it hasn’t got to be hated, but to be cared for and cleansed of impurities. By impurities it means impurities acquired by the heart and the mind and not by the body.
One basic defining principle of Sanatana Dharma or Hinduism is the karmic cycle and the fact of reincarnation. Sanatana Dharma states that we all are manifestations of the one single reality, which is the Ultimate Consciousness, the Para Brahma, the Universal Consciousness. It is just because this Universal Consciousness, the Goddess Chiti has forgotten herself in its many myriad physical forms, that there is this illusion of separate existence of individuals. We think that the awareness which we feel is this body, and do deeds by having an ‘aham bhav’, a sense of action. Due to this, certain patterns get fixed on this ‘aham bhav’ and this becomes our accumulated ego, which is born again and again. Until we realize that the individual existence is an illusion and that there is only one in this Universe, we keep revolving in this cycle of rebirth.
Dhyana is a tool to get out of this cycle and realize our True Self.
So Sanatana Dharma says that a tradition which leads its followers inwards to the quest of the Ultimate Truth is a dharmic tradition, and one which leads him to the outward quest of worldly desires is an adharmic tradition.
