You cannot know it!

(continued from “Why doHindus worship idols?”)

There is no more clear denial of the perceptible form of God than the following verses from one of the well known Hindu scriptures namely the Këna Upanishad

“That which cannot be described by words, but that from which words get revealed, know that alone as the God. And not that worshiped by people (as an object).

That which cannot be comprehended by the mind, but that by which the mind works, know that alone as the God. And not that worshiped by people (as an object).

That which cannot be seen by the eyes, but that which is the force behind the eyes, know that alone as the God. And not that worshiped by people (as an object).

That which cannot be heard by the ears, but that which is the force behind the ears, know that alone as the God. And not that worshiped by people (as an object).

That which cannot be smelt by the nose, but that which is the force behind the nose, know that alone as the God. And not that worshiped by people (as an object)”

(Këna Upanishad verses 1.5 to 1.9)

That being the case, the puzzling question that remains is – “why do Hindus worship idols?” I will come to that next.

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Myth about polytheism

(Continued from “Why do Hindus worship idols?”)

Before I start on idol worship, probably it is apt to clear some misconceptions about polytheism and monotheism. It is generally held that Hinduism is polytheistic and other major religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are monotheistic. 

This is a misconception at least at the conceptual level. It is true that Judaism, Christianity and Islam emphasize on single God who is the supreme.  Many people will be surprised that even Hinduism talks about single God. For example, one of the most ancient of Hindu scriptures namely the Veda has this to say

“They refer to as Indra, Varuna, and so on. But the fact is that the same one is called by different names by the clergy”.(Rig-Veda Book I, Section 164, Verse 46)

If you look at the Upanishads (parts of Veda), the God or ‘Brahma’ as he/she/it is referred to, is always talked about as a single unique entity. Unlike the other world religions, this entity is considered to be not only formless, but also beyond explicit description. That is why I have used ‘he/she/it’ to refer to this entity as is the normal practice in these Upanishads. In one of the well known Upanishads namely the Taitarïya Upanishad, God or Brahma is defined as follows

“(Brahma is) that from which all the beings came into existence, that which sustains them and that into which they finally converge”. (Taitarïya Upanishad, Section Bhriguvalli, Verse 1)

And surprisingly, almost similar definition of God can be found in Quran as well as Bible!

The assertion of formlessness of God can be found throughout the ancient Hindu scriptures. I will talk more about that in the next post.

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Why do Hindus worship idols?

In the religious world, idol worship has been a contentious issue. History is replete with incidents where either a group of people holding a particular view on idol worship destroyed the sacred icons of other groups who held a different view, or looked down on them as pagans or primitive people. Recent destruction of Bamian Buddha images in Afghanistan by extremists is only a sad example.

 

On the other hand, modern Hindus consider idol worship as an inalienable part of their faith, so much so, that today we can’t think about Hinduism without idol worship.

The intention of this series of posts is neither to justify Hindu worship of idols, nor to condemn it. My intention is to bring some interesting facts to light that would force either group to rethink on their respective stand.

In the next post, I will start with some quotes from ancient Hindu scriptures about idol worship.

PS; Most of the material in these posts is taken from my own book on ancient Indian ShilpaSastra (sculpture manuals).

Next post     

Demystifying the strange mantra

Recall the original strange mantra we started with.

 

“That is complete. This (too) is complete. (This) complete has come from (that) complete. When complete is removed from complete, what remains is also complete”

If we equate ‘that’ to the original ‘That’ which alone existed in the beginning (recall the Chändogya Upanishad creation story) and ‘this’ to our perceptible world we see around, including us, the meaning of this apparently strange mantra becomes almost clear. 

This world came from ‘That’. And as per the Upanishad, even after this world came out, ‘That’ remained as it was. ‘That’ did not get transformed into ‘this’. It took more forms and coexists with all those forms.

There is no doubt about the fact that the original ‘That’ was limitless or ‘complete’. But each of the forms taken by ‘That’ is definitely not limitless and complete.  Each has its own shortcomings.

If that is the case, how does the above mantra say that ‘this’ is also complete?

We probably have to see each of the entities in ‘this’ sans the name and form it has taken. What do we see there? ‘this’ is same as ‘That’. This is what exactly, many Upanishads say – when all names and forms are dropped, ‘this’ becomes indistinguishable from ‘that’ or in some way ‘this’ merges with ‘That’ in the same way “the rivers merge with the sea when they finally lose their individual names and forms”. Before merging, each river had a name and its own characteristics such as speed, breadth, length, force and so on. But once they merge with the sea, there is no river but just the sea.

This is also the momentary experience one gets in advanced stages of meditation or samädhi. When the identity with the body is overcome, the limited ‘I’ becomes universal ‘I” which is limitless. 

So, ‘this’ is also ‘complete’ in reality.

PS: I am aware of possible objections some staunch Dvaita adherents may have to my explanation. I am only trying to unify diversity in views and see sense in various Upanishadic verses, and great philosophies of these masters whom I hold in high esteem. After all, in the domain of ‘infinity’ our ‘limited’ algebra does not work as we saw earlier.

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Multiplicity in the universe is only apparent

Recall again the Chändogya Upanishad description of the creation of the world that we discussed in an earlier post. Originally there was a single entity. But that single entity (simultaneously) took different names and forms and ‘became’ many.

No matter what forms and names the original ‘That’ took, the fact remains that each of those forms are all ‘That’ in the essence. The names and forms may be different. It is a case of simultaneous coexistence of the same entity in many forms. In our space/time limited world view, such a thing is difficult to comprehend. But let me give a simple example to illustrate this point (this is only for illustration, please don’t stretch it beyond limits)

Assume that there are multiple movie theaters adjacent to each other, each running different movie with the same actor playing the lead role.  In each movie, the actor plays a different role – in one he may be a drunkard, in another he may be a wicked man, in yet another he may be a saint and so on. The role is dictated by the story line of each movie and the actor plays exactly as per the script – the name and form he has taken.

At the same time the real actor sitting somewhere, may neither be a drunkard, nor wicked, nor a saint. He is in no way bound by the story line of the movies he has enacted. For a viewer, the same actor appears differently. But behind all those diversity of roles, it is the single actor who is playing the roles. The differences are imposed by the story lines of each movie.

So if we ignore the space/time limitation of our perceptible world, it is not too difficult to understand that behind all this seeming diversity, there is a single entity that appears differently. 

This is exactly (well, almost), the Advaita philosophy of Šankara – “Brahma (the name used for ‘That’) alone exists, the diversity is just apparent (Mithya) “

Let us move back a step and see the original strange mantra with which we started and see how all these things mesh well. That will be the next post.

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