HINDUISM AND YOGA ABSTRACT The historical framework of these notes focuses in the spiritual meanings in Hinduism —the way in which the peoples of India subjectively experienced the divine, the ideals of human perfection toward which they sought salvation from the human condition, the ideals of human perfection toward which they directed their efforts. The ritual forms of worship were not the main points of emphasis. Attention was focused upon a better comprehension of man himself, on how to manage life so that man would attain the most perfect expression of himself. This quest for a life discipline was even more universal in India than was the creation of ritual expressions of worship. As Indian societies developed, the importance of human spiritual formation loomed more significant. The inner human transformation was the true ritual, the true sacrifice, the true response to divine presence, the true perfection of man, his way of attaining his final destiny, his only way of achieving his true, real self. KEY WORDS SUGGESTED BY SRI HANUMAN Historical context, adivasis (ancient inhabitants), complexity, intellectual insights and the efforts toward a higher spiritual development, Aryan vs. non-Aryan, brain. INTRODUCTION Amid the complex of spiritual developments in India, Hinduism holds the dominant position. Hinduism has an amazing capacity for holding together a variety of spiritual, cultural, and social extremes. For it holds together not only the diversity of movements within its own spiritual tradition; it also holds together, in the unity of a single civilizational complex, the spiritual and civilizational developments of the entire subcontinent. Hinduism is itself so complex a spiritual tradition that there is no such thing as Hindu doctrinal orthodoxy. So long as a person accepts the authority of the Vedas and the basic elements of Hindu social order in his conduct he may believe anything and remain within the enclosure of Hinduism. In Hinduism we find and orthopraxy rather than an orthodoxy. The creative impetus of Hinduism resulted from the interaction of two traditions, the Aryan and the non-Aryan. (And later on, from the rising of the theistic sectarian religions of Vaishnavism and Shaivaism; and from the rising occurred in the nineteenth century when Western influences poured into India.) The non-Aryan represents the primordial tradition of India. Little was known of this pre-Aryan development until the discovery in the 1920’s of the prehistoric Indus Valley civilizations. After the discovery of early sites at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro had shown the development of Indian culture prior to the arrival of the Aryans after 2000 B.C., a deeper understanding was attained of this earlier tradition. From this point on, the development of Hinduism is now seen as a progressive Indianization of the incoming tradition. By Indianization is meant that the non-Aryan elements gradually modified the Aryan elements and, over the centuries, achieved an ever-larger place in the total pattern of cultural and spiritual interaction. In simple terms, the historical development and intellectual expression of Hinduism is the meeting and fusion of Aryan and non-Aryan elements, with a general tendency toward the predominance of the native non-Aryan over the incoming Aryan elements in the creative process that emerged from this process. THE NON-ARYAN COMPONENT, ALSO CALLED THE COMPONENT OF THE ADIVASIS (OR ANCIENT INHABITANTS) The following are some of the strong influences from the non-Aryan component identified in Hinduism: World-negating attitude. This attitude is very opposed to the delight in life which is found in the Sanskrit Vedic Hymns composed by the Aryan peoples. This devaluation of the world as non-being, as confinement, as meaningless, as a source of moha (confusion), even as dukha (suffering) may be the most significant aspect of the entire spiritual development of India. More than anything else it has determined the course of Indian spiritual traditions. Extreme asceticism. One of the strongest influences that emerged from the non-Aryan backgrounds of India is the strong emphasis in asceticism. The Aryan Vedic Hymns, the earliest productions of Sanskrit literature that have survived, speak of certain native, strangely clad spiritual personalities wandering about India when the Aryans first arrived. These wanderers we known as Munis (the silent ones), a type of person still found in India. From the Munis developed the Sanyasis and the entire complex of wandering mendicants, men who live the homeless life, without wife, children, or possessions of any sort except robe, staff, bowl, and drinking cup. The ascetic orientation was so strong in India that it came to be integrated into the basic life pattern of Hinduism as the fourth final stage (1. student, 2. householder, 3. withdrawal and meditation). Puja: worship, especially image worship. The special type of image worship developed in later Hinduism, and it is not found in the Aryan Vedic period. In the pre-Aryan religions of the Indus Valley, however, images were already in use. Yoga techniques of meditation. Among the most unique of all the contributions of primordial India to the spiritual life of Hinduism and the world was the development of the Yoga technique of meditation. This tradition was later associated with most of the native spiritual disciplines of India, although the Yoga tradition developed also with a certain independence as an integral spiritual discipline and a way of salvation. Atheism. There is a strong current of atheism in early Hindu thought, a current that can be clearly identified with the non-Aryan elements of Hinduism. This came to expression with the Samkya, one of the earliest and most influential of the systems of Hindu thought. THE ARYAN COMPONENT The existing accounts of the incoming Aryan tribes were compiled mainly from the early Vedic literature. It is known that they came in through the northwest passage into the upper regions of the Indus Valle and settled there where the five tributary rivers that form the Indus flow southwest from the lower Himalayan region. This was their first home in India. Later, around 1200 B.C, the Aryans moved to the central Ganges region where they settled. Here the later Vedic developments took place, especially the composition of the Upanishads, which comprise the last part of the Vedic literature and which were the foundation of the later Vedanta philosophies. During the course of succeeding centuries the Aryan influence spread over the whole of India. Sanskrit. The first contribution of the Aryans to the development of India was the gift of Sanskrit, a sacred language. This language became in time one of the mot beautiful, most precise, and most expressive of all the languages of the higher civilizations of the Eurasian world. Yajna. Yajna, worship through sacrifice, is characteristic of the Aryan peoples, especially in their earlier period. Sacrifice became so central to the early religion of the Vedic period that the sacrifice itself was divinized and then the sacrificial formula under the designation of “Brahman” was divinized. Later Brahman was used to designate the absolute reality beyond the entire phenomenal world. Theological thought. The Aryans were responsible for much of their higher theological thought of India during the earlier period. This can be seen in the development of the Vedic Hymns, which began as simple nature poems addressed to the deities as these were perceived through natural phenomena. The awareness of an abiding [durable] support behind phenomena and present in phenomena developed into awareness of an ontological absolute whence [d’où] all things attained their existence and inner dynamism. This was expressed first in terms of the Maker of All Things (Visvakarman) or as the Lord of Creatures (Prajapati). Then came the amazing insight of the 129th hymn in the tenth book of the Rig-Veda in which there is mention of That One (Tad Ekam), a designation that remained in constant point of reference in the later intellectual life of India. Atman-Brahman: inner self of all things, Supreme Reality. Atman indicates the absolute support of being, experienced subjectivity as the support of a person’s own existence. Brahman came to designate the absolute reality as this is experienced objectively as the support of the visible world. It was a great moment in the history of Hindu thought when the identity of these two was perceived: “Thou art that”, meaning that the deepest subjective reality is identical with the absolute manifested in the world without. THE UNION OF TRADITIONS It must be remembered that these aspects of Hinduism developed together over a long period of time with intimate and extensive mutual influences. The fascinating extremes within Hinduism originated principally from the meeting of these two very different traditions. The oppositions were not destructive but creative tensions. Out of the meeting of these traditions the following principal doctrines emerged: Maya: the world of change. Samsara: the world conceived as constant, endless, cyclic process of change and death and rebirth. This concept of Hinduism was powerfully influenced by the early pre-Aryan traditions of India, yet it could not fully develop until the later period when the concept of an absolute reality had more fully evolved. Karma: the law of moral causality. While it cannot be said that the law of Karma in its developed from was singularly derived from the non-Aryan element of the Indian tradition, it can be said that the doctrine has no evident foundations in the earlier Vedic writings. Moksha: liberation, salvation, by the union with Brahman. Salvation is thought of in India as liberation from the limiting, confining world of time and an emergence into the more expansive world of the eternal and the infinite. It is the extinction of phenomenal existence and absorption into Brahman. Attraction toward the Absolute came with the Vedic development of the abiding reality beyond the phenomenal; discontent with the world of time came mainly from the non-Vedic and non-Aryan feeling of oppression with the visible and changing world of matter and time. Here the two traditions could meet and complement each other. Bhakti: intimate devotion to a personal deity. The Bhakti tradition of Hinduism derives both from the Aryan and non-Aryan elements. YOGA Yoga is a spirituality rather than a religion. As a spirituality it has influenced the entire range of Indian religious and spiritual development. Yoga is counted as one the six thought systems of Hinduism. Yoga is an all-pervading element of Indian spirituality. Yoga is considered an inner discipline associated with special techniques of spiritual development leading to man’s release from the bonds of phenomenal order. Its objective is a conscious, studied, sustained effort at so disciplining man’s body and mind that the inner self of man (Purusha) is released from time into eternity, from the conditioned world into the realm of the unconditioned, from multiplicity into unity. As with the other aspects of India’s religious and spiritual development, one could say that Yoga seeks the transition from the unreal to real, from darkness to light, form death to immortality. (Asato maa sad gamaya. Tamaso maa jyotir gamaya. Mrityor maa amritam gamaya.) Yet Yoga does not ask, as does Hinduism, to be “led” to this. It assumes the capacity of man to attain this and merely illumines the principles and directs the techniques whereby this is attained with personal effort. As a spirituality, Yoga is intensely concerned with the human condition, how man is to manage the human condition, to sustain his spiritual reality in the midst of life’s turmoil, and to discipline his inner awareness until he attains liberation. There are a number of terms that need to be distinguished: Manas, which refers to the psychic coordinating faculty of the senses, which may be translated as “lower mind”, or as “central organ”. Ahamkara, is the individual subjective awareness of phenomenal existence, the phenomenal “I am”. Buddhi, is above and it is called most often in Yoga as cittam (thought faculty). Purusha is the highest spiritual reality, and is most often translated as “pure consciousness”. This pure consciousness is the Self, the Seer, the one who beholds all that goes on but is beheld by none. He is the unexperienced experiencer. He is not the object of knowledge or of the action of anyone or anything. This is the ineffable, the self-luminous reality which radiated light into the world but which is illumined by nothing in the world. The thought instrument (buddhi), also termed the “higher mind”, is used by the supreme self (Purusha) as the principal instrument of knowing. Man within himself tends to confuse this Self with the activity of his instrument of thought (buddhi) and with the other operative psychic faculties. This is the cause of pain, confusion, the frustration of life. The whole purpose of Yoga is to provide the specific disciplines and techniques of inner control whereby liberation of this spiritual reality from its confinement is brought about. Yoga belongs basically to the ascetic, disciplined, solitary, meditative tradition of India. What Yoga proposes is a technique of spiritual development that would enable man to discover his true nature on a higher plane of existence wherein he would attain freedom from the restrictive forces that bound him to the world and to the psychosomatic structure of his own being. Yoga thus seeks to “decondition” man, to remove the limitations imposed upon him both from without and from within, both from the structure of the cosmos and from the structure of his own being. The real problem is the disengagement from the inner determinations of man’s own reality. This requires the restraint of the latent forces deep within the subconscious depths of man. It also requires the removal of the impression of past deeds (vasanas), which bind the spiritual man to the phenomenal world in a profound manner. This deconditioning of man, this profound alteration of the terrestrial context of man’s existence, involves a certain dehumanization of man, a dehumanization, however, viewed not as a deterioration but as an integration and elevation into a higher state of being, a state that is truly human, for the present “human” status of man is in reality not human. Yoga is aware that the total change required in the spiritualization of man must be taken seriously. It is a radical renewal, even a radical suppression of phenomenal life, in favor of a transphenomenal experience in which man finally comes to himself in his real human identity.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 20:07:15 +0000
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