Yesterday, Saketh’s post (this week’s Question of the Week) asked us to consider what motivates us — what our “object of devotion” is. After thinking about this, I came up with another question: if we consider our “object of devotion” to be a person (assumed to be a non-saint) or an ideal, does this make us less religious, or “worse” Hindus, so to speak? Many religions are defined primarily by a belief in a certain God — Christians must accept God as their Lord and Christ as their Saviour; Muslims must believe in Allah and his Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Does Hinduism operate in the same way? Must Hindus also believe in Rama, or Krishna, or Durga, or Saraswati, or Shiva, or Sai Baba, or any of the countless other deities? Or is it simply enough to live a moral life, based on the ideas of morality, rather than strict devotion to God?
My American, college-minded brain tells me that Hinduism (or Vedanta, rather, since I’m not particularly well-read regarding other sects of Hinduism) should not shun those who don’t specifically believe in a God; especially since Vedanta teaches that the very God that most people seek is within, rather than without, I would expect that it is not a big deal not to believe in God. In fact, Swami Vivekananda once said:
“An atheist is he who does not believe in himself.”
And more than that, Vedanta emphasizes many different aspects of religion — it is not completely necessary for a Karma-Yogi to believe in God, because for the Karma-Yogi, “God” is manifest in the lives of those whom he seeks to help. A Jnana-Yogi need not necessarily believe in God, for he bases his search on introspection, rather than a firm reliance on a “higher being.”
Using this logic, I’m tempted to say that for Hindus, the belief in God, as such, is not a prerequisite — perhaps only a belief in good is required.
At the same time, I am forced to question my logic — am I saying this simply because it is convenient for me to think this way? Certainly, it makes my life easier if I convince myself that I need not be certain whether or not I believe in a higher power…
What do you think?
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God as in a personal friend like Krishna or like an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being?
I , a Hindu did not like the idea of God at all till I found this line ” There is only God and nothing else”
Because in this kine , God is being equated to Laws of Physics.
For what it’s worth, the belief in an almighty God / Brahman of the Vedantic sort was not an essential belief of many of the groups we now retroactively term “Hindu”. The adherents of the schools of Mīmāṃsā and Sāṃkhya were atheist in this sense—they rejected a grand creator / sustainer god.
Back then, what made a person a member of a group we retroactively term “Hindu” was belief in the infallibility of the Vedas. In this sense, the Mīmāṃsakas were definitely “Hindu”.
It’s only as Vedanta has come to define what many modern Hindus think of as Hinduism that the notion of God either in the sense of Brahman or in a monotheistic or henotheistic sense has come to dominate the discussion.
That’s something I’d like to learn more about, Gokul — the different conceptions of divine energy in Hindu thought. I want to be able to discuss theism and atheism in a Hindu context with the proper vocabulary.
“Using this logic, I’m tempted to say that for Hindus, the belief in God, as such, is not a prerequisite — perhaps only a belief in good is required.”
If this is the case (and before anything, let me state that this actually pretty much encapsulates how I think about Hinduism – that a belief in good is a necessary and sufficient condition for being a Hindu, while a belief in God is not necessarily either – and is the main reason that I consider myself one), then it begs a couple of major questions:
1. What is the nature of ‘good’? For the purposes of discussion, let us assume that good, in it broadest possible form, refers to the belief that certain actions have intrinsic merit, and that certain others do not. But then how is this valuation, this assessment of merit, conducted? Is it done on an individual basis (i.e. whatever one believes to be meritorious is defined as ‘good’ for that one person, and on a broader level, being good merely refers to adhering to your own conception of what is good)? Or is it a more overarching, absolute kind of concept?
2. Is such a broad definition of good enough to characterize Hinduism? Does it need to be narrowed down? What about a person who truly believes, for example, that ‘good’ is to be found in fulfilling his own physical urges at any cost? Is he also a Hindu? Is there a metaphorical line to be drawn anywhere, and if so, where?
Curious as to what people think.
@ Saketh:
What little I know is this:
I wish I knew more myself buddy
The modern terms for “theist” and “atheist” are “āstika” and “nāstika”, but they’re typically used to mean “believing in the infallibility of the Vedas” or “disbelieving in the infallibility of the Vedas”.
From a modern academic standpoint, the usual “Six Schools” picture that we have of Indian philosophies is considered deeply flawed and anachronistic. It seems better to think about “text traditions,” or a collection of responses by different individuals to different texts that in retrospect constitute a “school”.
In terms of conceptions of a supreme God, the main philosophical debate takes place between the Nyāya school and Buddhists belonging to what is often called the Yogācāra-Sautrāntika school. Because so much of this debate is based on minute analysis of a complex but shared theory of logic and inference, some modern scholars actually treat these two different “schools” as representing two different sectarian positions within the same tradition, which some call “pramāṇa theory”. (The word “pramāṇa” is sometimes translated as “instrument of warranted awareness”, and basically means a foolproof way of knowing something to be true.)
Mīmāṃsā stands outside pramāṇa theory, for a variety of reasons:
a) It does not follow the methodology of pramāṇa theory
b) It, like Nyāya, is an āstika school
c) It, like the Buddhists, does not believe that there is a supreme God.
Mīmāṃsā, to put it crudely, believes that the Vedas are “foundational”, independent sources of meaning and dharma that need no other justification and that possess meaning eternally.
In case you’re interested, Prof. Parimal Patil has just come out with an awesome (but very technical) book called “Against a Hindu God” that is a philosophical analysis of the Nyāya-Buddhist debate on proofs for the existence of a supreme God. Copies should be available in Widener pretty soon, I think.
@ G:
Welcome saar! Glad to see you’re contributing to this awesome blog.
Regarding your paragraph (1), this is a very old problem, and we covered it in fair detail just a couple of weeks ago in one of my classes. In Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, Socrates phrases it roughly as “is that which pleases the gods good because it pleases the gods, or does it please the gods because it is good?” The two major schools of Islamic theology, the Mu`tazilites and the Ash`arites, were sharply divided on this issue.
Which is merely to say that this is a long-standing debate in ethics and theology and philosophy. I am very curious to know what you guys think what the response should be. For my part I’m comfortable leaving it to the individual to decide what “good” means to them, ideally in conversation with other people (so as to maintain some sense of shared values).
And as for (2), I don’t know. My instinctive response is to say that what should matter as far as leading an ethical life, regardless of religious or cultural tradition, is one’s setting out a quest for “good”. What that “good” may be and what the path that one takes to that “good” may be can be studied within particular religious or cultural communities. (G, notice how I’ve gracefully sidestepped your difficult question!)
I’m curious to know what you think of your own puzzle, because the “answer” to the question you pose is in a way the “answer” to my question here of what this “good” is.
I stumbled across the Jamini’s Purva Mimamsa Sutras (the text from which the Mimamsa school of thought arises – @Gokul, correct me if I’m wrong) last Thanksgiving and really enjoyed reading a little of it. It is EXTREMELY rigorous and fairly hard to read. If you’re interested, the following article is well written and summarizes the text: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_go2081/is_n1_v113/ai_n28627442/
How does one continue to “do good” without feeling accountable to some moral authority? Can everyone possibly be mature and strong enough to deal with the idea that there is no real “incentive” to doing good, other than satisfying personal moral codes? As a person raised as a Muslim, I have seen that most Muslims hesitate from disputing God’s existence not only for fear of being burned in Hell for doing so in the first place, but in order to rationalize the ultimate goal of their good actions: entry into “Heaven”.
This is probably a completely ignorant question, so i apologize in advance, but I’m curious: are there similar incentives in the Hindu tradition? Is this where “Karma” comes in?
Very interesting post and comments. Kudos for actually attempting rational discourse regarding this issue. I haven’t met many people who allow themselves to grapple with the ideas being thrown around here without feeling like their religious identity is being threatened.
This is especially interesting to me right now because I’m taking Jay Harris’ class titled “If there’s no God, all is permitted”, a Moral Reasoning class that explores the exact same question: can human beings exhibit complete rational behavior in the absence of a higher authority?
Like any sensible philosopher, I’m going to not answer this, but throw out a number of possible answers, each of which we can discuss/deconstruct:
1. Human beings have continually and tirelessly striven towards achieving happiness. Since each individual is, after all, undeniably associated with the society he or she interacts with, this effort has often taken shape in the form of a collective effort to establish a set of ground rules that promotes a flourishing community. Religions have provided wonderful incentives for people to follow these rules. The existence of a greater power (ie. God) that defines these guidelines convinces people to submit to them. In this sense, God (and these set of rules, which we can label “moral actions”) are social constructs that aid a stable and happy society. Here, of course, this takes away from the ideal that there is ONE moral Truth, which tends to be problematic. Take the case of the German cannibal Armin Meiwes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes). It’s a horribly bizarre story that raises SO many questions on morality. Is what Meiwes did wrong? I’m not sure. The fact that it was consensual just makes it SO messy.
2. Now, if you do admit to the existence of an omniscient greater power, people often are unable to reconcile the differences between the existence of God and Evil/suffering. St Augustine (in Confessions, my favorite reading in the course so far) tackles exactly this: free will. If God created people with a perfect sense of morality, the world will be filled with (in the words of my TF) perfect moral automata. Which would definitely be boring. This also, to a very large extent, means that you can construct this God as you desire.
3. Finally, my take with respect to Hinduism (this follows from #2; I believe this is true only for theistic schools of thought in Hinduism): In Vedanta, karma is not a list of actions with +’s and -’s that determine your next birth, etc, but a function of your actions and God’s – for lack of a better work – handiwork. In a very commonly described example that refers to the atman and the ego, “Two birds of beautiful plumage — inseparable friends — live on the same tree. Of these two one eats the sweet fruit while the other looks on without eating.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Hinduism#Vedanta_and_other_theistic_schools)
Thoughts?
@Gokul:
Thanks for pirouetting around my question like a damn ballerina. Academia suits you.
@All
My own answer to (1) is pretty similar to what Gokul said; I believe that each person probably has their own idea of what ‘good’ means to them, and the larger good can probably be defined in terms of each person following and living up to their own, individual conceptions of this. However, if one is to accept this definition (which I do), then it immediately begs two other extremely important questions, ones that are actually suggested by Saba and Sid’s posts. Firstly, does our definition of individual conceptions of good assume that everybody MUST have a certain conception of good and evil/ morality, no matter how subjective i.e. that such a conception is intrinsic to our makeup as human beings? Our definition would probably break down if this weren’t the case, and yet this is something that I have to think about, and that I cannot answer to or for myself at present. What I can tell you is that, while the definition of individual-level good and evil makes sense to me on a basic, gut-feeling level, the corollary does not carry as much certainty. Fundamentally, I believe that a certain level of rational thought, of conscious effort, is required for people to come up with their own conceptions of morality; it is not something that comes naturally to us as humans. Indeed, a number of moral precepts actually involve SUPPRESSING our natural urges; to assume that a tendency to develop moral impulses that suppress our baser urges is just as inbuilt and natural to us as the very urges they are meant to suppress seems to me to be a bit hard to swallow. I find the idea of a person who doesn’t actually feel any need to formulate a conception of what good and evil are for himself or herself perfectly plausible (RPG fans: this would be the True Neutral alignment). And yet, against this we have the fact a lot of us do seem to share certain moral precepts, which in turn seems to imply that there IS some shared inborn impulse towards developing a sense of morality – AND, what’s more, that these impulses tend towards our developing moral senses that actually share a lot of the same ideas of good and evil (throwing off BOTH the definition and the corollary). So yeah. Confusing stuff.
The second important question that the definition to (1) brings up is basically the same point that Sid and Saba bring up: if a tendency towards the development of a moral sense (either subjectively on an individual level OR objectively and absolutely) DOES exist, where does the motivation for it come from? Does it come from God? A shared desire for happiness? Our selfish, selfish genes?
As for paragraph (2) from my original post, the answer to that would to some extent rely on the answer to (1), and also rely on what Hindu texts/schools of thought/hoary old sages seem to be saying – none of which I feel too qualified to talk about, although I am pretty eager to hear what more well-versed people on this forum think about it in this context.
And finally, a Pinker article on morality. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ei=5087&em&en=180615d155579d74&ex=1200373200 My favorite part: “People don’t generally engage in moral reasoning, Haidt argues, but moral rationalization: they begin with the conclusion, coughed up by an unconscious emotion, and then work backward to a plausible justification.”
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