Full transcript
0:00I
0:11see some familiar faces. Can you hear me in the back? Good.
0:14Um...
0:21One correction to the introduction. Its 330 million gods and goddesses.
0:30Million.
0:31Give or take. We have one hour.
0:38Let's hit it.
0:42330 million gods and goddesses.
0:49Um... polytheism?
0:51As in more than one, [God] ism? Well, it depends on who you talk to.
1:01There are Hindus who argue that their religion is
1:06actually monotheistic, and that's one of the things that we want to talk about today.
1:16Where do we even begin?
1:19I mean it took a long time
1:21to develop that many faces for the divine, right? And that's what we've been talking about so far.
1:27How is it that we picture the divine? What does...
1:33"He"
1:35look like, or "She," or in this instance
1:39"They." Or perhaps even "It" look like. How is it that we imagine God to be? What
1:48metaphors, and it's some level they are all metaphors. What metaphors
1:53do we use? Or to put it another way, what how have we constructed the divine?
2:01In our minds, and not just our individual minds, but our social minds, right, to try to understand. What is
2:11at the end of the day perhaps beyond
2:15understanding. And
2:17I think
2:19the religious tradition of Hinduism gives us an excellent opportunity
2:23to think about that, so
2:26welcome to the adventure, and
2:28let's see what we can figure out.
2:32Um...
2:37This is so complex.
2:41What you can do is,
2:43as with any religious tradition, trace the evolution of thinking as time goes on. And
2:50with hinduism [we] have plenty of time [to] work [with] because,
2:57well for one thing... Maybe I should back up.
3:01The first thing we need to realize is that there really is no such thing as Hinduism!
3:06Okay? That is, it that is a name [that] is a blanket, if you will, that we toss over an incredibly complex
3:16cultural phenomenon. A
3:19mixture if you will of beliefs and
3:23practices and myths. And you know what myth means from the week before last.
3:28Not fairy tales, but religious stories. And
3:35the word "Hinduism" doesn't even come from the Indians.
3:41Who named this religion Hinduism?
3:45Well who owned India until the middle of the 20th century right? The British!
3:52Yes.
3:54Yes.
3:55And they themselves were struggling to understand. What was going on religious studies have wrestled,
4:02scholars have wrestled with it my dear colleague, Dr. Amy Allocco, is an expert in
4:11Hinduism. Her work is mainly in South India. She studies snake goddesses...
4:16Which sounds fascinating?
4:19She has taken many students here to India with her.
4:22And I hope others will go as well. I'm also happy to see some students here today.
4:31If you asked a hindu:
4:34What is your religion? They will say
4:37"Sanatana-Dharma"
4:38Now that's not Carlos Santana from the sixties band okay, no, Sanatana-Dharma
4:44which means something like the eternal religion and what they're [saying] is our religion has always been here and
4:52I think [at] some level pretty much every religion argues the same thing, right?
4:57They will trace [it] back to the very beginning for reasons of Authority right And again,
5:02that is the way that they have constructed their own self images,
5:06religiously socially speaking.
5:11330 million gods and goddesses what you see as time goes on in
5:16the myths coming from the sacred scriptures of the Hindus, the Vedas, the Upanishad,
5:23the Bhagavad Gita.
5:25What you see is an evolution of thinking about the divine right and you can imagine how difficult it might be to keep up with
5:33330 million gods and goddesses. For instance, if every one of them had a holiday
5:38Well, we would never get anything done, right?
5:41But one of the things that I challenge you to do today that I really [encourage] you to do,
5:49whatever your own
5:51religious, sociocultural background,
5:55try, if you can, to
5:58step into these other shoes, to look out that window on the divine and
6:04understand as much as we are capable of doing,
6:08what it must be like to understand the divine in
6:12this way?
6:16Imagine if you will
6:18by some stroke of
6:21Luck or God's will [or] a karma,
6:24which is a little more relevant in this context, that you had been born in India. If indeed you
6:32Yourself were [not] born in India. Imagine you grew up in
6:37this context and what you had been taught from your mother's knee, right,
6:42is that there are many gods and goddesses. Each of them different. Each of them unique.
6:49Then for the first time you hear that [there's] a religion that has only one [God]?
6:59How does [he] keep up with everything?
7:02right only [one]?
7:05Only one.
7:07Well, what happens in the history of Hindu thinking is that,
7:12the religious philosophers
7:15begin to talk about the possibility, at least, and over time it becomes something of a certainty, that
7:22yes, there are
7:24[330] million different gods and goddesses.
7:28Each in its own way unique, but they are all part of a much larger
7:36reality. And I don't want to use the term "being" because when I do
7:41I'm afraid Gandalf is going to sneak back into your heads, that Western image of God is a being. Remember
7:48we did the circles in the west. We tend to think of the divine
7:52creating the world and so that we're separate from the divine and we have to get back to the divine?
7:58Once you toss in sin, then you have a real mess. You have a real challenge on your hand, right?
8:03It's all about how do we develop this relationship?
8:06How do we [maintain] it through prayer a conversation between two separate beings, if you will, right, but in the East
8:12generally speakingthe circles are not separate, but concentric, that we are born
8:18into the midst of the [divine]. In fact, we ourselves are
8:23divine, and not just humans,
8:26but all creatures. The [Earth], the very cosmos itself, is
8:32holy, is sacred, is
8:34divine, is possessed of
8:37energy of life.
8:40And the hindus come to see that all of those many gods and goddesses are
8:47simply different [faces] of this one
8:51[divine]. And they give the divine a name: Brahman. Listen to how I say that: Brah-man.
8:59Brah-man.
9:01The term originally meant "breath." As
9:05in to breathe, right?
9:07Breath, the Divine breath, the breath of the universe. And it's actually a common notion in
9:14several of the religious traditions. For instance,
9:17if I may step into Judaism for just a moment, not to steal my own thunder or anything, it wouldn't be the first time
9:22In
9:24the Jewish Scriptures and of course they become the Christian scriptures as well, when it is said that in the [beginning]
9:30God created the heavens and the Earth, and the Earth was without form and void and
9:35the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Those primordial waters out of which all things come. Well
9:43the actual term for spirit in Hebrew is "Rula" and, again listen. Rula.
9:49It's the breath. The breath of God moved on the face of the waters. In the new testament,
9:56the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
10:00"Pneuma" as in pneumatic tires. Again, you get this notion of the divine breath. So
10:09again, if the universe itself, if the cosmic, and oftentimes in the ancient world, the universe is pictured as a gigantic human.
10:17Excuse me, a gigantic male.
10:20Imagine that, right, who's telling this story. It's not Eve. It's Adam, right, as a
10:29gigantic human being. Of which we are all part, right?
10:34Then the [spirit] is the [breath]. The soul of that
10:40cosmos, of that divine.
10:44And again we can dismiss this as some ancient,
10:48perhaps even primitive,
10:50myth. These poor ignorant savages,
10:52how could they [ever] think of the universe that way? When we, with all our scientific knowledge
10:57know that it's just a collection of atoms, right?
11:00We're spinning, at an incredible rate, on a planet that is spinning at an incredible rate.
11:05Or the star that is spinning at an incredible rate
11:09around a black hole.
11:12Which itself is spinning at an incredible rate of speed, right, through this vast universe. Well,
11:20scientists are coming to understand
11:26that in a way the universe itself, in
11:30our construction of it, our
11:33understanding of it, is all of a piece.
11:36That the very same
11:38energy, if you will, that drives the stars, [that]
11:44[keeps] everything spinning,
11:47also pushes our hearts, keeps our lungs pumping. We are stardust. We are golden.
11:55To quote Joni Mitchell, one of my favorite musicians from back in the day.
12:02Brah-man, right, originally it means breath. It comes to mean the breath of [the] universe, [and] you could think of
12:10Brah-man, and
12:14[I] don't mean to be unkind but just to help illustrate some what, as having a split personality.
12:22Only it's not the three faces of Eve. It's the [330] million faces of Brah-man.
12:27The same divine, but showing itself in different ways. Now,
12:33some of you, I would imagine, are Christians, or you know enough about Christianity to know about the Trinity, right?
12:40God is one, but
12:42not.
12:44Those Christians.
12:45How'd they come up with that one? One but not. Does it not sound a little familiar to you though?
12:50[I] mean, if you compare it with the hindu understanding of 330 million in one, right?
12:56And
12:57each, you know, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, they each play different roles. And yet, they are
13:02somehow
13:03mystically
13:05one in the same. You can think of Brah-man in that way.
13:09[330] million different personalities if you will. And I use personalities advisedly, because the root of that term
13:17"persona" comes from the Greek
13:24*phone rings* Hello? That was a phone ringing for you. Elsewhere. Um where was I?
13:33See this is, technology is of the devil! Okay. It's of the devil. Oh.
13:41So tempting right, so marvelous in its own way, so seductive and yet [oh].
13:47Or maybe, I'm just, yeah, scatterbrained.
13:51330 million gods. I know we're talking about hinduism, okay?
13:54Thank you!
13:56Good job.
13:58You're a good tribe. Persona. It means "mask," right, so like a
14:05tragedian .An actor in the Greek tragedies who might wear several faces during one of those plays.
14:14Brah-man does the same. If you need water, you need rain for your crops. You should talk to Indra, the storm
14:21god, and Brah-man will come to you in this form. Now
14:25[if] we have time today, I want to talk in particular about at least a couple of these
14:32manifestations, if you will, of the divine. Of
14:40the cosmos, of Brah-man.
14:48But first I wanted to say [a] word. And again, I am generalizing.
14:53I'm not sure how else to do this. Um, a
14:56word of
14:58comparison between
15:02the scriptures of the western religions.
15:06Judaism. Christianity. Islam. And
15:09the scriptures of the Hindus, the Vedas, and
15:13other works, right.
15:17In the West we seem [to] have a
15:22very definite idea about who God is.
15:27Not what, but who, and I don't just mean visually okay?
15:35If you think about
15:37one of the major components, certainly of Judaism and Christianity,
15:43and
15:44the same kind of attitude adheres
15:47among Muslims, right.
15:50We think and I say we, right, westerners
15:54think that they know God
15:56so well that they know what He wants for us. And they know it with a great
16:04measure of certainty.
16:07Thou shalt.
16:09Do this. Thou shalt. Not
16:13do that. That's how
16:15intimately we understand the will of the divine.
16:23Still it is left to us to figure out ,you know,
16:27how that is supposed to work itself out in our everyday lives, and many is the debate that has occurred on that score.
16:35But
16:37you may get a little bit of that kind of
16:40attitude. I think of it...
16:43Here's my English major showing, okay?
16:45But I think of the western scriptures as being written in the declarative mode. This is the truth.
16:52This is the truth. To the extent that on occasion
16:59it
17:00switches over into the imperative mode. You shall do this.
17:06You shall not do that, right?
17:11And of course you get other attitudes, but I think that is something of the tenor.
17:17And you can correct me if I'm wrong. Some of you know better than I do, right.
17:22In the scriptures of Hinduism and,
17:25somewhat as well in the scriptures of buddhism, and certainly in the scriptures of taoism, as we shall see in in a couple of weeks.
17:34What you find is
17:37more the
17:39interrogative mode.
17:41Instead of "This is the truth," it seems to be more
17:46"What is the truth?"
17:48Not "this is who God is and this is what he wants," but "who is the divine?" What is the divine?
17:57It seems... It strikes me more pondersome. A
18:01more of a wondering, right, which,
18:05in some ways might
18:10indicate a measure of security.
18:14Now if life is crazy, and
18:18out of control, and you're scared,
18:22what do you usually look [for]? Somebody needs to tell us what to do, right?
18:28Do you think of those weeks and months after 9/11?
18:33We wanted the government to step up,[help] us out here. We're hurting, right. We're scared. What do we do?
18:40And,
18:43that's what the government did, right? That's what governments do.
18:51And now of course
18:53the situation has changed, and we have some time to [think], and one of the things we get to think about is
18:59those weeks and months after [9/11].
19:04And
19:06were we doing the right thing?
19:10And
19:12did we ask the government for the right thing? If you know anything about the debate, about, you know, we lost some
19:18right to privacy during those times, and now we're beginning to see the ramifications of those measures that were taken.
19:27You know, the whole use of drones. I mean all these different issues, and I know I'm chasing a rabbit here
19:32but I think it's an important one. Happens to be a political rabbit. How can you talk about religion without talking about politics?
19:38I apologized to my grandmother one more time.
19:41The two things she told me never to talk about...
19:46Here I am making a living at it, right?
19:50oh
19:52life is strange.
19:55And beautifully. So the interrogative mode. It seems to me that
20:02wondering
20:04It could be considered something of a luxury. Life's got to have a little bit of order and a sense of security to it
20:12for us to be able to sit [down] and really think
20:17and, and, and,
20:19ponder and ponder. Now again, that is a, just a radical generalization.
20:25But if you do look into, and I hope that you will,
20:29the Vedas, particularly the Rig Veda.
20:34Again, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita.
20:37I wonder, I'd be interested to know if you if you think I'm onto something there.
20:46Now there's another thing that happens.
20:53As time goes on and [you] don't see it in the early scriptures of hinduism.
21:01But it grows as time goes on. It's this notion...
21:08Again, I picture it with those concentric circles, right, that Brah-man is...
21:20Let me borrow a term from Paul Tillich, okay, German theologian philosopher.
21:27Being
21:28itself, not "a" Being, right even with a capital B, right, but being
21:34itself. Whatever is, is a part of the divine.
21:40Including you and me and everything else.
21:44You see this notion coming to the fore in Indian thought, and there's a moment in the Upanishads in particular,
21:52when a brief,
21:55deceptively simple statement is made. And
22:00again, this is somewhat idiosyncratic, but I'm not the only one who thinks it. If you could identify the heart of hinduism
22:08I think it would be this.
22:10You want to learn a little sanskrit?
22:14It won't hurt you.
22:17*Sanskrit*
22:19*Sanskrit*
22:21*Sanskrit*
22:23*Sanskrit*
22:24*Sanskrit*
22:26Can I hear you say it *Sanskrit*
22:29*Sanskrit*
22:32Translated that means:
22:36"That you are."
22:40That you are. In other words. You are that. Well, you are what?
22:45You are what?
22:49You are
22:51Brah-man.
22:53You, your individual soul, your outline, if you will, right. That's the little circle.
23:00Are Rahman, the Big Circle,
23:02one in the same. One in the same. And
23:06if the life of a hindu could be defined,
23:08and we're not just talking [about] one life here, right, the whole reincarnation thing comes in here. Over these many lives.
23:16Your job, if you will,
23:19your assignment if you choose to take it, right, is slowly
23:22but surely, to dissipate the boundary between your circle and the circle of the divine.
23:30So that the oneness you already have right, but because of the illusions of life and
23:37because of the karmic muck that we
23:39mentioned last week, right, that accrues [on] us as we do bad things and fail to do good things.
23:45As you straighten that out, as you
23:48lose that, as it dissipates, right, in your life, in your lives,
23:54you come to experience who you have been all along from your very first life.
24:02I suppose is the lowest life form and I'm not sure what would be the...
24:07an Amoeba?
24:13Well, let's go even farther than that right we in the West thinking of life in terms of the animate and the inanimate
24:20[alright], that's our construction of it, but here if all things are animate. Maybe we start out as a
24:27sand pebble, I'm not sure how you would be a good sand pebble...
24:31To come back as, you know, a higher life form maybe stay out of people's shoes. I don't know!
24:39But there's that moment when it is actually said *sanskrit* You are
24:46that. And you know,
24:48where I stand that is such a radical notion to consider. That you yourself are,
24:54always have been, always will be,
24:59Brahman. You're [divine], right. You're divine. And so how do we live into that?
25:04How do we live into that and that's one [of] the major questions
25:08addressed by the hindu religious tradition. As it is in every single
25:14one of
25:15the religious traditions. In other words, not only who are we?
25:20Where do we come from?
25:22Where are we going?
25:24But the ethical question
25:27arises. What do we do in the meantime? How do we live a good life? How do we live our own,
25:34divinity, if you will,
25:39We can't cover all 330 million gods and goddesses today.
25:46But that's [okay]. Hinduism is a very patient religious tradition. You have many lifetimes to get that done. But
25:55it does suggest that you get busy, okay?
26:02What I'll do today is concentrate [on] three, and especially on two, of those gods and
26:08goddesses. Now again, Dr. Allocco is a specialist ,particularly in Hindu goddesses, right? I just
26:15keep from stepping into her territory. I'm sure she would mind. I'm going to concentrate on some of the male depictions of the divine.
26:23But there are three who hold a great deal of significance for hindus, and they're known as the "Trimurti."
26:30The Trimurti.
26:33*Spells the Trimurti* And that first syllable gives you a clue. The Tri-murti.
26:38We have a few words in English that start with "tri-." Can you name one for me?
26:45Triangle, there you go! Triad, right, you know, we're in the [Piedmont] Triad region, [and] it implies what?
26:51Three-ness. Yes. The three of the main gods of Hinduism would be
26:58"Brahma," not Brah-man, right,
27:02but Brahma. You just dropped the "n" off the "ma," right?
27:09Brahma
27:11Shiva
27:12And you see this build a couple of different [ways]. It's all transliterated so pick one and go [with] it. These are either "s-i-v-a," or
27:20"s-h-i-v-a." You also hear it pronounced in different ways, [Shiva]
27:24and Vishnu.
27:26"V-i-s-h-n-u." Vishnu, for those of you taking notes.
27:32[Brahma] is understood to be the creator God.
27:36Who brings the Universe into being. And
27:41then Vishnu steps in and takes over. He is the the "God of Maintenance," if you will. He keeps the universe
27:49going for as long as it does, and
27:51then, when it's time is up, he hands it over to Shiva. And
27:56Shiva steps in. Shiva is known, well, in many different ways, but one [of] his major roles is the destroyer
28:02god, right. To destroy the universe.
28:07Are these good gods? Would a good god destroy the universe?
28:13Maybe?
28:15Well...
28:17Let's look at a couple [other] religious traditions.
28:24Let's bring it home for [the] moment. I assume for most of you.
28:28Does the Christian God create the heavens and the Earth. But of course!
28:34Does He, right, does he also destroy the
28:38universe in the end?
28:41Oh yeah. Is he considered to be a good guy. Oh
28:44Yeah, right. Oh, yeah.
28:47But one of the things that is fascinating to me about this story, this myth, if you will, right. Again,
28:52no value judgment about truth or non-truth this religious story about how the universe came to be, right, and you get an arc,
29:00right, the creation, the maintenance, the destruction.
29:06Well in the western religions, that's pretty much the end of the story, isn't it?
29:09I mean, what you get after that is, you know, you're dancing in robes and playing harps, right, on the clouds
29:15[for] ever and ever, amen.
29:17Not so here.
29:19Not so here. That's not the end of the story. If anything it's really just the beginning.
29:25Because once
29:27Shiva has finished his work, Brahma steps back up and
29:32recreates the universe.
29:35Vishnu
29:36re-maintains the universe. Eventually,
29:39Shiva will destroy that universe once again. Only [to] have the cycle repeat, and repeat.
29:46Rinse and repeat, and repeat.
29:49So it seems as if
29:55not only do individual souls, or "atmans,"
30:00go through a reincarnation cycle. But the cosmos itself goes through a...
30:09Well, I guess you could call it a reincarnation cycle, right. Birth, death, and rebirth.Now, we had some fun last week
30:17talking about the big bang theory didn't we. Not the TV show,
30:22but the scientific theory, right.
30:27And if you look at it, it reads a lot like a creation story, does it not.
30:36Yeah. Not... Certainly not usually considered to be religious...
30:40But it strikes me as [a] myth nonetheless. A story that we tell ourselves to explain to ourselves where we came [from], who we are,
30:48where we're going.
30:51But again, does the big bang happen only once?
31:05I was taught [that] it did just once, right. You get the big bang,
31:10everything in the universe is flying outward at a high rate of speed.
31:14There's that spinning again, right. But it reaches a certain point, and
31:18this is only one theory among many, but still it reaches a certain point where it can't stretch anymore.
31:24And then it begins to shrink, and shrink, and shrink over the millennia until eventually you get...
31:33Let's call it "the big crunch".
31:35Big bang.
31:37Big crunch, right.
31:39One-shot deal.
31:40Just like the way that we have constructed our own
31:43lives, our understanding of our [own] lives in the West, is we get one life. Isn't that what you were taught?
31:48Is it just me? Did I get gypped? One life, that's it, man. You know, no pressure!
31:56You got to get right! You got one shot! And if you don't...
32:02Woe be unto you, right?
32:06Yeah, when you hear that as a 6 year-old.
32:13But it's...
32:15There are scientists now who are beginning to argue?
32:19That the big bang hasn't happened only once. That
32:25you get the big bang, a
32:28zillion years later, you get the big crunch. But then,
32:32bang,
32:34crunch, bang, crunch, bang, crunch, like the universe wasn't large enough already, [right]?
32:41Now we get to imagine even more.
32:43In a repetitive cycle.
32:51Were these ancient hindu thinkers perhaps onto something?
32:57Is it a similar metaphor?
33:01I mean were they just gazing at their navels? Because oftentimes these ancient religious people get dismissed, right?
33:08Not really talking about the "real world."
33:11But I wonder, you know, did they not have some clues. I mean some of these people were
33:17astrologers, you know. They understood the stars. They knew a great deal about the universe. And
33:23honestly, I have heard hindus say that hinduism is not a religion. It is a science.
33:31It is a science. It is the science of the soul, if you will, right. And
33:37yes, you all over there in the West are really good with your science about studying
33:42material, right, [in] the material universe you're making great progress. But
33:48when it comes to matters of the soul... Which you might
33:53translate into the psychology of the individual human being.
33:58We still have a ways to go [on] that.
34:01We struggle here in the West, for all of our goods, right. All our technological progress, shall
34:08we say.
34:10Still...
34:13You know that little smartphone?
34:16That little smartphone that has so connected us, right, in so many different ways.
34:25Yes, and no, right. Some good points. Maybe some not so good. I mean, it's great a little tool, right?
34:32And I spend time on social media. I'm a
34:37fan of the "Facebooks," if you will. Right, Twitter, that's a whole other thing. I don't tweet.
34:45Because tweeting is for the birds, okay? I'm just saying!
34:53144
34:56144 is all you get!
35:00I'm not a short story writer. I'm a novelist forget about it, right!
35:04I'll stick with email at least for the time being. But yes it has connected us in these little ways, right.
35:10I've got, you know... How many Facebook friends do you have?
35:15Okay.
35:16Friends, really? That's great. Collect them like beads, right, like baseball cards. How many of those
35:25"friends" are going to drive
35:2830 minutes at 3 o'clock in the morning to help you change the tire on your car? That's a friend!
35:35It's not someone who likes your stuff right? That's a friend.
35:39I don't mean [to] demean it, but I see the effects that it has. I see the effects, even on myself.
35:45I wonder if the more we are connected through our technology in these small,
35:52somewhat shallow, ways, right, because most of the conversations are over here. And believe me, I'm not a lurker,
35:57okay. Not creepy old guy. But
36:01so many of the...
36:03phone conversations that I overhear are somewhere along the lines of "where are you?" and "what are you doing?" First thing.
36:09Where are you? Suddenly, we become really fascinated with location. Maybe it's GPS. I don't know. But "where are you?"
36:16and "what are you doing?
36:20But where are those lengthier conversations? And where is that human connection, right?
36:27Have you had [a] chance to Skype? You know what I thought, where you're looking at a laptop, usually a laptop, right?
36:32And there's that... how did they get that person in that box?
36:36Chaplain Fuller for the first time I ever saw you, you were inside a box, right? You were in a laptop!
36:41I'm like okay, magic, smoke and mirrors.
36:46And yes, again, it connects us with people who are far away. Whose faces
36:50we might not [see] but the time we spend with our technology increasingly? I fear that it steals from us
36:59those moments of real humanity between
37:03two people, right. Where you have time to sit and actually move beyond
37:11those pregnant pauses. I
37:14mean, one [of] the signs that you are with someone who is, or soon will be, a friend...
37:20It's when you have that first
37:22quiet moment that
37:25[could] be awkward
37:27but it isn't.
37:29That it's okay for you just to sit with each other or stand with each other, right?
37:35I mean, that is a moment of humanity. It's a silent one, but again. It's not the declarative.
37:40It's not the imperative. It might actually become
37:44the interrogative, right. A moment to ponder together
37:51what it might mean to be alive. And
37:54some of you have been in truly long-term relationships, and you know what I'm talking about. There's
38:00a comfort level that can come. That it's ok
38:05just to [be] together you know I have to do something not have to say something, right?
38:11So.
38:15Thus endeth the sermon on technology, okay?
38:20It's actually kind of awesome in many ways and anyway...
38:28Oh, boy.
38:3018 minutes.
38:35All right, we're going to give it a shot. Let's talk about Shiva for a little bit. And
38:40then we'll talk about Vishnu.
38:42Brahma we'll leave for another time. Perhaps another lifetime, right. Let's talk about Shiva, and then we'll talk about
38:50Vishnu. In and of themselves, but also, I think, as representative somewhat of...
38:57Of
38:59Indian culture. At least as it has been understood historically right that it is [a] mixture of cultures.
39:06Well like every culture really.
39:08But certainly her. Because we're talking hundreds of millions. Doesn't India have now over a billion people?
39:15Am I right about that?
39:17A billion. A billion people. That makes even 330 million seem like a small number doesn't it?
39:24Shiva
39:26is fascinating. For one thing, he is a study in contrast. He is understood as [the] God of Fertility.
39:32But also of asceticism. Asceticism self-denial,right. Both a God of Creation
39:40But also a God of Destruction. We've already seen him play the role of destroyer in the trimurti, right?
39:47A mixture if you will of what is usually understood to be good and evil.
39:55Oftentimes, Shiva is depicted as...
39:58He's dancing. He's dancing God, right. Sometimes you'll see him dancing in a circle [of] fire, right?
40:06So he's going to make it big in [Vegas]. I'm thinking. Circle of fire. He's the dancing
40:13God. And here, let's go back to those concentric circles again for a moment.
40:19It is said that this is a different creation narrative, okay, from the trimurti.
40:26That Shiva himself plays all three roles of creator, maintainer, and
40:32destroyer. And the way that he does it is
40:35he gets up to dance. Because as you and I now know we are all part [of] the divine,
40:41right, we are all part of Shiva. We all dance with Shiva. In fact we are Shiva's dance
40:48Did you know [that] the things that you did today were actually a part of Shiva's dance?
40:53You're welcome.
40:56Right?
40:57We dance with Shiva! And as long as Shiva dances,
41:01that's the universe. That's the cosmos having its existence! For however long it lasts, right. Again,
41:06there's that depiction of the universe as a gigantic
41:10being. An
41:13anthropomorphized being. A being that looks a lot like humans, right. And
41:17as long as he dances the universe
41:20flourishes, right. But what happens when you dance? Well, it happens a lot more quickly for me now than it did back in the day
41:26You get tired!
41:27Don't you, yeah?
41:28And eventually you're going to go sit down, right? When you stop [doing]... Well, when Shiva, [when] that happens to Shiva, when he
41:34eventually stops dancing,
41:37the universe lapses into it's original chaos. It goes away. But then, I don't know,
41:44did he step to the bar?
41:47Have a beer and get a second wind? Just work with me here.
41:51I'm trying to come up with a metaphor here.
41:53Right, um, he gets back [on] the dance floor. It goes at it again, and there it is: the universe
42:01back again, right.
42:05And there's another
42:07creation-destruction myth, if you will, that is somewhat similar.
42:11Shiva is also understood to be something of a meditating go. And again,
42:16we've talked [about] how meditation is so important, particularly in the Eastern religions. Hinduism, Buddhism, and
42:23Taoism.
42:24Important in the western religions too, but not nearly as much [so]. What is the chief ritual, would you say, in the western religions: Judaism?
42:31Christianity, Islam?
42:34Prayer, right. Again, you think of the conversation between those two beings.
42:38Yes, there are prayers to the gods and goddesses.
42:41But meditation is hugely important for one. For one thing you're not looking for the divine out there. Where's the divine?
42:49At the very center [of] your being, right, so to meditate...
42:55Really...
42:56It's this inward
42:58journey.
42:59This inward search
43:02for the divine. And Shiva again is known as a
43:07meditating God. And so when Shiva sits down to meditate, unless he's doing standing meditation, right?
43:16That is when the universe comes into [being]. You and I are the
43:22meditation of
43:24Shiva.
43:34We're just a thought, right? We're just the thought. This is another... Oh,
43:43how do I even say it?
43:47It's another part of this construction of reality. That this world isn't
43:55real. It's illusory.
43:58The very thing [that] keeps us here. That keeps us from escaping to utter bliss, right,[is]
44:05that we are so attached to the world.
44:08We take it so seriously. And we believe that it is really real. Now again, we are [meaning-making]
44:14beings.We need meaning. We need order
44:19just to, you know, so that the world is not a completely crazy place.
44:23And so what do we do? We construct. We construct our lives. We construct our relationships, right. A social understanding. an
44:31Understanding of the cosmos. [I] mean, this very institution, is about both helping us understand
44:39how to construct a world, but also the fact that this world is constructed, and if it has been constructed the way that it is,
44:49then there are some things about it that can be changed. That can be deconstructed and
44:53reconstructed. Racism comes to mind. Sexism comes to mind, right. Those kinds of things. They have been constructed over time.
45:01They're not just realities.
45:03All right, they can be adjusted at the very least...
45:10Boy... I just took a right turn down an alley. Yes, [ten] minutes. Thank you.
45:16Meditation.
45:18You might as well get used, to this, okay. This is the way my brain works, or fails to. Come on
45:22help me out here. Come on, tribe!
45:27Right, yes, we are the
45:31figments of Shiva's imagination, if you will.
45:36Which might help us not to take ourselves quite so seriously?
45:39I was going to say. You know we build these lives and we walk through them, right?
45:43And maybe your life [is] humming along, and then, oh boy. Oh
45:50boy.
45:52Life's going to throw you that curveball, right, didn't see it coming.
45:58Somebody you love
46:00sick. You yourself
46:03faced with a debilitating illness, maybe. Even, you know, the
46:07harbinger of death itself. Or someone that you trusted, that you trusted absolutely,
46:15turned out not to [be] the person you thought they were. And it breaks your heart.
46:20It shatters your being, if you will. Well at least it shatters the current construction of your being right?
46:28Not you [yourself], but this world that you've painted, right?
46:33That, the stained-glass window through which you have viewed the world, right. It's shattered.
46:40To me those are indications of what we're talking [about] here. That
46:46[life] itself at some level might well be
46:49Illusory. Not in a bad way. [It's] just that's what we do.
46:52We make this meaning right to help us get through a day, to help us get through in life. And sometimes,
46:59right, here comes the rock. And what do we do?
47:05I would imagine all of us have been there at one time or another. If not
47:08just stick around it's going to happen, right. We take those shards of glass and
47:13we build a new window, right. We build a new understanding.
47:17the Illusory Nature of Life.
47:23In his own way, I think Shiva
47:27symbolizes time.And how time moves forward.
47:34The dancing God, the meditating God, Oh,
47:39and one of... one of the ways in which he is depicted that...
47:45One of the things that he does, okay, and it's going to be weird, but go with me, okay.
47:50He goes down by the Ganges River, the holiest river in all of India, in fact, the holiest river in all the world.
47:56Some hindus consider the Ganges River itself to be a goddess, right. I wish we thought of the Haw River over here
48:03that way. We might... We might take a little better care of it, right?
48:06Because our Karma happens to be flowing downstream, right, just as we're [getting] the karma from folks uphill.
48:15He will go down, and you know what happens on the banks of the Ganges, right? Traditionally in India,
48:19that's where they cremate the bodies of the dead, right. And Shiva will go down there
48:24and he's going to dip his hands in those ashes and then smear them all over him and wear it like a
48:32mask. Now what on Earth. Crazy god?
48:38No, what is he doing there? What is he doing here?
48:42Well for one thing he's recognizing the reality of death. Talk about a life shatterer, right.
48:48I think this is where we started two weeks ago. Nobody here gets out alive, right, and we live our lives,
48:54we construct them in the face of this, you know, oncoming reality sooner or later.
49:00Right? There it is.
49:02And what he's doing... He's looking at, well,
49:06dead in the eye.
49:08If that story makes you squeamish at all, is
49:12at least in part because of the way that we have constructed death.
49:17In the West, right. That we're nervous around it. We don't want to spend time with it.
49:22Three days you've got to get them buried or burned right? That's it?
49:26That's it, right. Here's this whole other recognition of it.
49:30And maybe that has something to do with reincarnation. If you thought you were going to live a thousand times...
49:37Maybe there wouldn't be quite so much pressure?
49:40Right? Yeah.
49:44As I said, you know, hinduism is a patient
49:48religio. If you don't get it right this time. It's okay. You're going to get your karma straightened out eventually.
49:54It's also, and this is one of the things I really respect, [what] we might call a
49:59Universalist religion. Everybody's going to make it!
50:04Now... Alright, back to Christianity for a moment. Is everybody gonna make it to heaven?
50:09Hell, no!
50:13But
50:19for the hindus?
50:21Some of [us] are just gonna take a little longer than others, right. Maybe a few more hundred lifetimes...
50:26Everybody's doing it, and again... It's not just about the humans. It isn't just about us.
50:33They look beyond the human race. It's not just us. That's half of our problem.
50:40What's gotten us into this mess is thinking that it's all about us. That we own everything, and we can do with it as we
50:46will. No, no we're a part of that, right, what I do
50:52to those creatures, right, to that river...
50:55Karmically speaking comes back to me. It comes back to me, right. If I do good,
51:01we [flourish] right if I do bad...
51:05Not good, right. But slowly,
51:08surely,
51:09everybody,
51:11everything,
51:12right, is
51:14moving, is growing
51:16towards a state of perfection. And
51:20bliss. *exhales blissfully*
51:24Gotta love it. You gotta love it, now.
51:29Okay, oh...
51:32I...
51:33I wish I could talk faster. Oh...
51:35Well Vishnu. Let's just, alright, quickly Vishnu.
51:39Vishnu is
51:40probably going to sound a little more familiar to you, because one of the things that Vishnu loves to do is he loves to come
51:45to Earth. And he's been here many times in many different forms, right? He's come as human, as a human being,
51:53in the form of a human being. He's come as a fish, he's come as a wild hog, as a turtle, as a lion,
52:00right. And if you think about reincarnation...
52:03Again, we don't just come back as humans. If you really screw up as a human, you're gonna come back, as I don't know...
52:12Yeah, assuming of course that humans are a higher life-form. I think the dolphins might have a thing or two to [say] about that.
52:19We're only now becoming intelligent enough to actually realize, they've been talking about us all this time! Those dolphins!
52:27And I don't know about you, but it looks like they might be laughing at us too, right?
52:35Well...
52:37Perhaps the most popular form of Vishnu for hindus. He comes to Earth as Krishna.
52:45Look up Krishna, okay, "k-r-i-s-h-n-a"
52:49Prrobably the most popular
52:53hindu god in
52:55the West. Krishna. Because of the Krishna Consciousness Movement. The Hare Krishnas.
53:01Krishna is a really fascinating
53:04figure. I
53:05can only tell one story
53:07and I'll have to tell it quickly. Oh, I wish I could talk [to] you about Hanuman, the Monkey King.
53:11I love Hanuman the monkey. He's awesome.
53:15But no, Krishna, among other things,
53:20he's a flirt.
53:22Krishna is a flirt, right? He's this really handsome god.
53:27And
53:28he loves to flirt with...
53:31Well, there's a story in particular, where there's this group of cowgirls, okay, the shepherdess, if you will, right.
53:39Who decided to take a
53:42dip.
53:43Shall we say, a skinny dip, in a pond, right. Krishna, this Krishna, okay?
53:49Sneaks up and takes their dresses, right, and
53:54refuses to give them back
53:56until they step out of that pond [and] salute him in the traditional Hindu fashion. Which is not this, or
54:03that, right, yeah, [exactly]. But this now what in the world a story like [that] doing in
54:11sacred scripture.
54:14It might even seem blasphemous to a westerner. I don't know. Well...
54:19Maybe not, if you understand the divine to be truly human. [I] mean did Jesus have a girlfriend?
54:27Of course not!
54:31You can't have the western God doing that sort of thing, right? Oh, I wish I had another hour.
54:39I know I don't. But oh that says so much about our body image, right our sense of ourselves
54:45as sexual beings. It has so much to do with our religion. Well, I think what's what's happening
54:51here. Is you see a recognition of
54:53relationships. The holiness of relationships and again think about that for a moment when you meet somebody else I bow
55:00to the divine. In fact, right now, I
55:03Do. I bow to the divine in each of you. And I hope see you next week. Thank you everybody.
55:10I'll be out here.