Introducing Hinduism By Rev. Lawrence W. Brown

No ancient faith had a name – until it came in contact with its neighbors.   Then you had the religion of the Egyptians… the gods of the Greeks, etc.   No one called it Zeusism.   We could define Hinduism as “the religion of the Indians” – except there’s more than one.   So we're back to square one.

The British came up with Hinduism as a name of convenience.   OK, it was more convenient to them than it is to us.   History is like that.   So Hinduism it is.   What’s the ism about?   That’s up to us.   We may say it’s Dharma - a way of life - but ways of life are drying up all over the world.

Our faith has pantheistic roots with divinity soaking through everything.   Thus, we've tended to see the Divine as plural – or at least as more diffuse than do the monotheism's of the West.   A simple prayer explains this well.

"O Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations:
Thou art everywhere, but I worship you here;
Thou art without form, but I worship you in these forms;
Thou needest no praise, yet I offer you these prayers and salutations;
Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations”.

Hinduism is a very old religion and its first practitioners lived close to nature.   Perhaps, seeing cycles in nature, we came to believe the soul works in cycles too.   We believe we are souls evolving in a spiraling path to spiritual perfection… Atman on its way to becoming Brahman.   For reasons known best to God, we are given bodies to do this work in… as many as we need.   There is no Hell.   The consequences of being slow students is being given more life on earth.   Until we graduate, we stay in school.   We worship a God beyond our powers of visualization, so we reverence the forms of God we can apprehend for ourselves.   We condemn no one, provided their faith instructs them to be good and civil neighbors.   This enthusiastic curiosity is one of our greatest charms.

Because we do not believe in sin but rather see most of our self-inflicted misfortune as a consequence of ignorance, it is our inclination to teach rather than to fight.   So non-violence is the foundation of our morality.   We are taught to seek God in everything and everything in God.   So we behold the natural world less as predators do than as fellow sojourners do.   We're reminded to keep our humility about us.   We Namaste each self and bless them, and pray that they will use their freedom to choose a path that benefits all sentient beings.   “I am joy,” says our god.   “And on a portion of that joy, all other beings live.”   We are Hindus.   Although we know all about the destruction of matter in the universe, we do not worship an angry God.   We are not driven by fear but by a universal longing for a life transformed by spirit… rescued by love from its shortcomings.