Video Transcript: Hinduism Lecture 4

Now having made that point about commending the study of Hinduism to you for the future, there are two more points that I want to make about it, because they  are have to do with how it will contrast with other religions when we get to them.  And one of those comes from the Bhagavad Gita. It's very popular work among  

common people. And it has a story at it. It's very revealing of how Hinduism  bears on moral attitudes. And it has to do with Arjuna who is in command of an  army, and he's about to go out and fight. And he has terrible misgivings about all of the people who are going to be killed. And he cries out to Krishna, for some  help, some advice. It reads this way, Krishna, as I behold, come here to shed  their common blood, you concourse of our kin, my members fail my tongue dries in my mouth, a shudder thrills my body, and my hair bristles with horror hardly I  can stand what which rich spoils could profit. What rule come recompense, what span of life seems sweet bought with such blood? Seeing that the stand here  ready to die, for his sake was life was fair and pleasure and power grew  precious these people grandsire sire sons, brothers, fathers of those sons in  law, elders and friends. So speaking in the face of these two armies, are Judah  sat, sank upon his chariot seat, and let the bows and arrows fall, sick at heart.  Now, would you expect Krishna's answer to be? Well, it comes something as a  surprise, perhaps. You are grieving. Where no grief should be. You speak words  that lack wisdom. For the wise heart. Don't mourn for these, that live or die. Nor I nor you or any of these, there ever was, there ever will be, or all that lives lives  forever. Learn this life is spreading life through all. But for these fleeting frames  which is informs with spirit deathless, infinite, an infinite, they perish. Let them  perish, Prince rise and fight, he shall say, Look, I've killed someone, and how,  and who shall think, Oh, I'm killed, these both know nothing, life cannot slay, life  cannot be killed. So advices, this world is only illusory, the real life, the reality  behind all this is not going to be affected. So go to it. Get into that ward, kill  those people. It's a bit surprising from the standpoint of Abrahamic religions. And finally, I want to mention one other thing that is very typical of Hindu practice,  and that is that the priests and monks, take a very tolerant attitude toward the  great religious diversity in India and outside India. Both the attitude is, suppose  we have people that are actually animists, there's a local village in a remote  area, and they're worshiping spirits in the trees of the rocks and stuff like that.  And the, the Brahmin peace priest will come by and participate in their rituals  and, and bless them. The idea behind it is this. These people are doing the best  they can with the religious insight that they have, at this level of incarnation, of  reincarnation. And maybe at the next level, they'll be capable of greater spiritual  insight and greater and greater until finally, they're reborn as Brahmins and then  they'll see what we know. So they take this, this attitude of great tolerance,  because they look upon those other religions as people just doing the best they  can with what they're capable of doing. And they look upon other religions that  way too. They look upon Judaism, Christianity and Islam as inferior stages of 

religious insight, which, given enough time and enough rebirth A person will  outlive out grow and achieve new insights until they come to the level of  knowledge of a Brahman and they know Brahman Atman is the only reality and  then they escape the wheel of rebirth and achieve nirvana. 

So, this is a very brief intro it has been a very brief introduction to Hinduism. And we will close with this and next session we'll begin a brief introduction to  Buddhism .