4/25/09

Concept of God in Hinduism

The ultimate goal of every Hindu is to attain Moksha or liberation – liberation from the cycle of births and deaths and union with the Ultimate Reality, which the Vedantins call Brahman – the Absolute. Brahman is indescribable, for it is by its very nature formless, unlimited and infinite. The Ultimate Reality is One but different people with different backgrounds try to understand, experience and describe it in their own language. As Sri Ramakrishna says, it is like water called in different languages by different names. If there are three and four ghats on a lake, the Hindus who drink water in one place would call it ‘jal’; the musalman drinking it from another place would call it ‘pani’ whereas the Englishman drinking it from a third ghat would call it water. In essence all the three denote one and the same thing, the difference lies in the name only. In our studies of the various religions of the world we find that in their highest reaches, the experiences of mystics and sages of all religions are the same.

So the question arises that if Hindus accept that the Ultimate reality is the formless Brahman, how can one explain the innumerable forms of gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon? It is very simple. To achieve the spiritual union with the Supreme Soul, there are believed to be three main paths, bhakti yoga (through devotion), Jnana yoga (the path of wisdom or intellectual path) and karma yoga (the path of action).

The most common of these paths is the path of Bhakthi or devotional worship. The absolute God cannot be grasped by the human mind. For a philosophical man, his symbol may be highly abstract as the Vision of the infinite sky or a vast expanse; something that appears unlimited. A person who cannot think in such abstract terms prefers to have more concrete symbols. So he gave forms to the Reality. The Reality is presented according to the understanding of the devotee all the while reminding him that it is through the worship of the form that he is to reach the formless aspect of the divine. So the devotee chooses a form of the Brahman in any of His manifestations and realises God through love and devotion. Image worship does not mean that some inert object like wood stone or metal is being worshipped. The image is also not a mere icon. It is a symbol of the Lord.

There is a very interesting story of how Swami Vivekananda explained the concept of image worship to the king of Alwar. The young king was apparently not a very religious man, but the Prime Minister wanted him to meet the Swami whom he believed to be a great intellectual as well as a man of realisation. The king said in half joking manner to the Swamiji, “God many exist, but I do not understand why people worship images: He is not the image.” Vivekananda explained that it really did not matter. Hinduism gave one that freedom. We can start with meditation on any form, just so it is the same thing day after day – not one thing today and another tomorrow. Even if the experience comes through meditation on God with form gradually we reach stage of formlessness. Those who can worship the Absolute were most free to do so, but Hinduism did not put down those who needed an image in front of them to focus their devotion on. Seeing that the king was not yet convinced, Vivekananda looked at the wall and asked an attendant to take down the picture on the ground and spit on it. Such an act was akin to treason and the whole audience was absolutely stunned at the command given by the Swamiji.

Swamiji seeing the baffled look on the faces of the ministers and others, laughed and said, “You think that if you dishonour the picture, you will be dishonouring the king?. But the king is not in the picture. You, his subjects, who love and respect him, think that by dishonouring the picture you are dishonouring the king himself”. Then turning to the kind he said, “Maharaja, you are sitting in that chair, nothing of you is there in that picture. But because of a little likeness, some suggestion, the artists capability of representing you in this manner, your subjects seeing you in the picture feel that dishonouring it is akin to dishonouring you. It is exactly the same with image worship. It is not that the image is God. But it is through the image that God is being worshipped. The picture or image is only a suggestion, a symbol.”

Thus it must be understood that the image is not considered God, as is often misunderstood; it is the symbol (or pratika) of Godhead. In order to get the devotee to concentrate his mind totally on God, such an image (or pratima) helps in the first and early stages of worship. In this stage of apara bhakti, the devotee asks or prays for something in return. The higher stage is para bhakti where the devotee is consumed with love for his Ishta-Devata. He sees Him everywhere and is intoxicated by his vision of Him to the exclusion of all else. His love is all consuming. He perform no poojas or rituals but dances with joy at the all pervading ecstasy of divine love. In this stage of bhakti the bhakta sees no other deity, believes in none else. He is mad in the eyes of the world but reaches divinity through ekanta bhakti or single-minded love for Divinity in the form of his Ishta Devata. Such bhakti elevates the Bhakta until at the final stage he becomes one with Divinity.

Bhakti or devotion can be of any form where each devotee worships and adores God in his own way. The devotee could look upon God as a child does his father as can be seen in the devotion of Dhruva towards Vishnu, or he could treat God as a close personal friend as is seen in the relationship of Arjuna and Krishna. In dhaasya bhava, the devotee looks upon God as his master in the same as Hanuman looked upon Sri Rama. One could cite the example of Meera or Andal who saw Krishna and Vishnu as their husbands, when one talks of Kanta bhava.

- Asha Sunilkumar (Excerpt from the magazine 'Mahima')

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