/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15606357]

How is Hinduism practiced by average, religious Indians? What sort of things are they taught to read throughout their education? How often do they go to the temple, and what's it like?

[Anonymous No.15606446]

Religions of meditation have not had a single war. They have not even tried to convert anybody for the simple reason that there is no point; the other person is as divine as they are, he is just asleep and it is his right to sleep as long as he wants, and whenever he wants to wake up he will wake up.

Being awake themselves, they have found tremendous treasures of blissfulness, of ecstasy. They would like to share it, so they go on sharing it but there is no question of conversion.

Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism - these three religions are the religions of meditation. Their history is simply clean, no bloodshed.

Judaism, Christianity, Islam are the religions of prayer. Their whole history is full of blood and so ugly that to call it religious and to call these people religious looks like a mockery.

Only one religion, Hinduism, is left. Hinduism is a totally strange phenomenon, different from both the religions I have described. Hinduism is many religions together, it is not one religion. So you cannot characterize Hinduism with other religions which have a certain personality. Hinduism is a chaos. There are hundreds of religions under the umbrella of Hinduism, different from each other. Even the word Hinduism was not given by Hindus themselves.

There was no name in India. People were free to follow whatsoever they wanted to follow. That's why hundreds of small paths, having their own uniqueness, developed. There was no singular name for the whole complex, it was a crowd; but as India was invaded, the invaders gave it a name. And by coincidence, when you enter India you have to pass one of the biggest rivers of India, Sindhu, and the first invaders had no letter for s, the closest letter was h. So Sindhu became Hindu and they called the people who lived beyond the Hindu river "Hindus." They had to call them something - these people who are living beyond the Hindu river.

And you will be surprised that from Hindu the word traveled to other tribes, became Indu, became India; but it is the same Sindhu river which created all these names - Hindu, Indu, India.

Otherwise, India was totally a free country. Everybody was accepted, whatever he was doing and whatever he wanted to do. It was his right.

[Anonymous No.15606471]

>>15606357
>How often do they go to the temple, and what's it like?

Mind also has to be fed. Suppose you are a Hindu: what is the meaning of being a Hindu? It means that the Hindu religion has been fed into your mind, it means nothing more than that. You are a Jaina or a Christian or a Buddhist – what does it mean? It only means that in your childhood the Jaina religion has been fed into your computer and it goes on thinking only in that way. The Hindu religion has been put into somebody’s computer and the Christian religion has been put into someone else’s and the person goes on thinking, goes on chewing on the same information and thinks that he is a Hindu or a Christian. Actually he is none of these things. Man is simply born as a human being, everything else has been fed into his mind.

Mind is created by the society. If you are born in a Hindu family but from your very childhood you are left in a Mohammedan family and brought up there, then you will be a Mohammedan, not a Hindu. Then you will bow down to the Koran and you might even feel like burning the Gita. From where do all these ideas come? Others are teaching you all these things. This is why all the religions catch hold of children from a very young age. All the religions want to give religious instructions to young children because once a child escapes from religious teaching, then it will be very difficult to teach him later on. Before the age of seven, when the child’s understanding is not yet awakened, everything needs to be filled in his mind. Then he will go on chewing it for his whole life.

If you are a Hindu you will automatically bow down in front of a Hindu temple. This is just mechanical, this is the working of your computer. You have been taught that God lives in this temple. But when you pass by a mosque you will pass by without paying any attention to it. It will not occur to you at all that God is also living there. But someone else will think that God is in the mosque because it has been fed into his computer that Islam is the only true religion.

You are being taught and you go on thinking what is taught to you – but God cannot be taught, there is no way to teach it. This is why you cannot think about God. You might think that someone can think about God, but no: a Hindu thinks about a Hindu God, a Mohammedan thinks about a Mohammedan God, a Christian thinks about a Christian God. And there is no Christian God, no Hindu God; these are just words which have been fed into your mind.

[Anonymous No.15606495]

>>15606446
>Their whole history is full of blood and so ugly that to call it religious and to call these people religious looks like a mockery.
why should blood be ugly? isn't the weakness of people who can't even accomplish that uglier than the blood spilled by people who can?

[Anonymous No.15606524]

>>15606495
>why should blood be ugly? isn't the weakness of people who can't even accomplish that uglier than the blood spilled by people who can?

[Anonymous No.15606535]

>>15606357
>How is Hinduism practiced by average, religious Indians?
That depends, Hinduism encompasses hundreds of schools, dozens of denominations, and hundreds of races and cultures.

>What sort of things are they taught to read throughout their education?
See first answer, but the main texts are the Vedas. The Mahabharata is also big. While "Hinduism as a religion" is a construct of the British Colonial Government in India to understand "all religions in India that aren't Abrahamism, Buddhism, or Jainism", there was a pre-British intellectual understanding of Hinduism as "All religious and philosophical traditions directly reacting in a positive manner to the Vedas". This includes many religious and philosophical traditions that reject the Vedas, or react negatively to it, of course.

>How often do they go to the temple
See first answer.

>and what's it like?
Generally, Hindu temples follow the standard Indo-European plan, wherein the Temple is actually for the interaction of the deity or deities that own it and the priesthood. The Laity generally interact in some kind of open area outside of the temple. The Temple as a building thus tends to not have open areas for worshipers like Mosques, Churches, and Synagogues do, as 99% of people have literally no reason to go into the Temple.

There are, of course, many exceptions, because see first answer.

[Anonymous No.15606638]

>>15606524
Post physique

[Anonymous No.15606667]

>>15606535
>The Temple as a building thus tends to not have open areas for worshipers like Mosques, Churches, and Synagogues do, as 99% of people have literally no reason to go into the Temple.
that is nonsense anon