As you walk the streets of India, you become a part of a carnival blur of coughing buses, dirty rickshaws, mopeds, bicycles, and a myriad of cars and makeshift taxis all going their absolute maximum speed in every different direction.\u00a0 Weaving in and out of this chaos are other pedestrians, scurrying monkeys, and the occasional holy cow, who takes its time to stop and swish its tail as the honking traffic swerves around. The relentless honking assaults your senses along with a powerful, nauseating stench hanging thickly in the muggy air.\u00a0 You watch holy men bow to street altars, beautiful women with kohl-lined eyes carry baskets, and barefooted beggars with missing limbs beg for money.\u00a0 As temple bells ring, drivers shout, and high-pitched Hindi pop music blares from loudspeakers all around, you decide to test your luck and climb into an auto rickshaw.<\/p>\n
As this tiny golf cart-like vehicle swerves its way through battles of Indian road chicken, your driver begins steering with his left knee, freeing both of his hands to wave lit incense sticks around his dashboard statue of Lord Krishna. It is time for his daily puja, or worship. Though you strongly want him to keep his hands on the wheel, you wonder on second thought that maybe you can use all the help from higher up you can get. Within this chaos pulses one of the oldest, most beautiful, inclusive religious traditions whose roots go back nearly 5,000 years.<\/p>\n
What do Hindus believe?<\/strong><\/p>\n Hinduism believes in 330 million gods and goddesses. However, they are all manifestations of the One Absolute Source, called Brahman. This unique perspective can arguably make Hindus both polytheistic (many gods) and monotheistic (one God) at the same time.\u00a0 Most Hindus feel that underneath all religions is the one dharma or truth, therefore you will not find Hindus knocking on your door to spread the good news of Vishnu or Shiva.\u00a0 With lots of room for individual interpretation, Hinduism is often compared to a giant sponge, absorbing up any new philosophies that complement existing ones (and even many that don\u2019t).<\/p>\n For example, some Hindus welcome Jesus right into the mix of, not as the only son of God, but as one of many incarnations of the God Vishnu\u2019s saving grace and compassion.\u00a0 Hindu devotion to Deity is evident in their colorful statues, open floors for prayer, and multi-sensory worship in temples.\u00a0 You may see Hanuman (Monkey God and sidekick of God Rama), Shiva (Divine Yogi and Lord of Destruction), the popular flute-playing Krishna and his beloved Radha, the playful Elephant-headed God Ganesha, or in one rustic temple in northern India, even a mermaid-tailed God relaxing in a ceramic pot.<\/p>\n But, why would God take on a monkey, elephant or mermaid form?\u00a0 Well, according to Hindus, why not?\u00a0 Hindu scriptures tell us that God can manifest as whatever God likes and will come to us in whatever form appeals to us.\u00a0 Hindus feel there is no limit to the manifestation of infinity. Take the God Ganesha for example. When his father, Shiva gets angry and whacks off his head, it is replaced with an Elephant\u2019s head.\u00a0 Ganesha could spend his life bitter about this unfortunate event, but instead he accepts his fate with a positive and upbeat attitude. Like Ganesha, each deity has their own rich and fantastical stories which, though not always perceived literally, are taken as important moral lessons that we can still learn from today as we make our way through our multiple incarnations.\u00a0 Eventually, Hindus believe we will be released from this cycle of reincarnation and our souls will be liberated, returned to Brahman. This is called moksha.<\/p>\n How do Hindus worship?<\/strong><\/p>\n You can visit a Hindu temple in India, Indonesia, or Beavercreek (the castle-like white structure behind the Target in case you were wondering) and in any one of them, you can see these Deities decorated colorfully with garlands of flowers and sandalwood paste smeared across their foreheads (marking the third eye or divine connection).\u00a0 Giving offerings is part of worship, known as puja, and can include pouring water or milk, waving incense smoke, or placing food items like fruit or sweets on the altar (which once blessed, can be eaten later).<\/p>\n But puja does not only occur inside a temple. Worship happens at home, in nature, or as you learn quickly your first day in India, in an auto rickshaw going sixty miles an hour. Puja can also be a journey.\u00a0 Like most religions, pilgrimage is a major aspect of Hindu worship. Of the thousands of Hindu sacred places, Varanasi (also called \u201cThe City of Light\u201d) is one of the most powerful holy sites.\u00a0 Pilgrims from all over the world come here to pray and partake in the healing power of the Ganges River.<\/p>\n A Pilgrimage<\/strong><\/p>\n It is sunrise as you creak along the dark water of the Ganges in a wooden canoe.\u00a0 As the fog lifts into the damp air, shadowy figures along the shoreline bustle around, preparing for the day\u2019s chores.\u00a0 Steps called ghats stretch across the shoreline, marking specific locations, some for yoga, meditation, ceremony and others for laundry, bathing or\u2026cremation.\u00a0 Along one ghat, throngs of people bathe and pray in the river, slap their sudsy laundry against the hot rocks, brush their teeth or chit chat with one another while a few ghats down, the dark smoke from a burning body rises into the thick, damp air. This juxtaposition of life and death is just as evident in the river itself, considered a pure Goddess, yet physically polluted at a severe level.<\/p>\n Hindu scriptures hold that this physical world is illusion (maya) and it is only our true essence that is real.\u00a0 Wanting to understand, you ask an old swami, \u201cHow do you have faith when there\u2019s so much suffering?\u201d He just smiles, \u201cSuffering is life. This is maya. Release is moksha.\u00a0 Only the eternal spirit is real.\u201d\u00a0 Unlike many religions that propose to answer tough questions, Hindu scriptures do not attempt to give an explanation to the chaos of the world, offering that perhaps the world is not even really chaotic, but it is our perception of the world that is the problem.\u00a0 Or as one devotee exclaimed, \u201cIt\u2019s not the Ganges River that\u2019s dirty, it\u2019s your mind that\u2019s dirty.\u201d<\/p>\n You end your Varanasi stay by attending a nightly river worship. Local children in bright yellow saffron robes sit cross-legged in rows around a central fire which creates a bright halo in the darkness.\u00a0 Joined by dozens of adults and swamis, they sing \u201cHare Rama, Hare Krishna\u201d over and over again to the hypnotic melodies of a citar and rhythmic tabla drums.\u00a0 The kids clap their little hands and sway with the rhythm of their prayers among the musicians. After awhile, the music beings to slow and devotees begin placing brightly colored marigolds and floating tea candles one by one into the Ganges.\u00a0 In this moment, you feel honored to witness something this sacred, a religion so ancient, yet so vibrantly alive.\u00a0 Hinduism is a diverse religion of contradictions, a multitude of layers, colorful ceremonies and exuberant rituals thousands of years old, yet it remains as adaptable and vibrant as ever.\u00a0 Ganesha would be proud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As you walk the streets of India, you become a part of a carnival blur of coughing buses, dirty rickshaws, mopeds, bicycles, and a myriad of cars and makeshift taxis all going their absolute maximum speed in every different direction.\u00a0 Weaving in and out of this chaos are other pedestrians, scurrying monkeys, and the occasional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":259,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1yu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/259"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5983,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5982\/revisions\/5983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}