Transcript The Logic of Hinduism Visit www.worldofteaching.com For 100’s of free powerpoints Lecture Outline • 1) Hindu Panentheism and Indian History • 2) Why does.

The Logic of Hinduism
Visit www.worldofteaching.com
For 100’s of free powerpoints
Lecture Outline
• 1) Hindu Panentheism and Indian History
• 2) Why does God Create?
• 3) Meditation
– Why?
– How?
• 4) Argument for Immortality
Combine Pantheism and
Monotheism: Panentheism
“In Me are all existences contained,
Not I in them!” (Bhagavad Gita)
• Pantheism: God is everything; everything is God
• Monotheism: there is one God, separate from the
world He/She creates.
• Combine: Panentheism: 1) the world is the
expression of God in time/space, 2) yet God also
remains the conscious Unity in all expressions
Emanationism
“They comprehend not, the Unheavenly,
How Souls go forth from Me; nor how they come
Back to Me.”
• 1) Soul (Aspect, Part of Brahman) goes forth into
forgetfulness (matter)
• 2) => Karmic existence in samsara (illusion of
time and space)
• 3) Return to consciousness of inner divinity
(moksha, Nirvana): Sat-Chit-Ananda or bliss
consciousness of being)
Neo-Kinship and the unity of
God and the World
• Ancient kinship > animism
– =>pantheism
– Hinduism absorbs animistic hunter-gatherers
• Evolution of polytheism (=> avatars) and
monotheism does not reject animism
• >Panentheism (“Pan” = all; “hen” = one)
• Continuity with early beliefs of kinship society
• Contrast with monotheism of the West and Middle
East: God is above and outside of nature
(separation of God and world)
God Becomes Human
• God knows Him/Herself, but does not
experience what it is to be God.
• To experience something requires first not
being it.
– E.g., to experience joy requires sorrow
• Hence, to experience Him/Herself, God
must become (pretend to be) not-God:
• > the creation of the world
Path to True Self
• Krishna is an “avatar” because Krishna
realizes his true being as Brahman
• Ordinary human (Arjuna) fails to
understand this
• Hence Arjuna is caught up in cycle of birth
and death (Samsara) and Illusion (Maya)
• To find peace/joy/bliss: find your real Self
• This is God’s experience of being God
Meditation:
Path to the Inner God
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The Saint who shuts outside his placid soul
All touch of sense, letting no contact through;
Whose quiet eyes gaze straight from fixed brows,
Whose outward breath and inward breath are drawn
Equal and slow through nostrils still and close;
That one—with organs, heart, and mind constrained,
Bent on deliverance, having put away
Passion, and fear, and rage;--hath, even now,
Obtained deliverance, ever and ever freed.
What does meditation do?
• We normally identify ourselves with our thinking
mind, our desires => Ordinary self, ego.
• Concerned with past and future
• Not being in the present
• We normally don’t control our mind; it controls
us.
• We need to set aside the mind to discover our real
being: the experience of being: I AM
You are not your thoughts
• = “You” are not your thoughts
• Become aware of the Self outside of the
thoughts.
• That is really the You that is the expression
of God: the true Self
How to meditate
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Sequestered should he sit,
Steadfastly meditating, solitary,
His thoughts controlled, his passions laid away,
Quit of his belongings. . . .
There, setting hard his mind upon The One,
Restraining heart and senses, silent, calm,
Let him accomplish Yoga [=union], and achieve
Pureness of soul [Atman], holding immovable
Body and neck and head, his gaze absorbed
Upon his nose-end . . .
Light Meditation
1. Feel and relax your body completely
2. Focus your attention on nose-end for a while
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Feel disconnected from the body
Ignore your thoughts
3. Close eyes and observe the darkness, shadows,
inner clouds, colors, forms
4. Keep searching for the light in the center for as
long as possible
Krishna’s argument for immortality
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That which is
Can never cease to be; that which is not
Will not exist. To see this truth of both
Is theirs who part essence from accident,
Substance from shadow. Indestructible,
Learn thou! The Life is, spreading life through all;
It cannot anywhere, by any means,
Be anywise diminished, stayed, or changed.
The fleeting frames
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But for these fleeting frames which it informs
With spirit deathless, endless, infinite,
They perish. Let them perish, Prince!
And fight!
(1) Being
1. Being cannot come out of non-being
2. If once there was nothing, now there
would be nothing.
3. Hence being is eternal
(2) Non-Being
1. Things that come into existence and pass
away – i.e., change – are a mixture of
being and non-being:
2. Inasmuch as anything is, it cannot not-be.
3. Inasmuch as anything is not, it cannot be.
4. So changing things are illusory,
“shadows” on the wall – “Maya”
(3) Being and Non-Being
1. Inasmuch as I am a changing being of
time (focused on past and future), I am
involved in Maya (Illusion)
2. My true being is in the present moment of
Now, the moment of IS/AM
3. Inasmuch as I AM, I AM Eternal, Divine
Plato’s argument for immortality
• The human soul can recognize unchangeable
truths.
– E.g., The Theorem of Pythagoras.
• We can recognize unchanging Beauty in itself in
the changing beautiful things.
• The soul must be like what it knows and loves.
• Therefore, the soul must also be unchangeable
• Rise to the soul level, above preoccupation with
sensory objects (the shadow world)