We have two extremes regarding religious texts — one is to disregard their completely and foray alone, and the other is to adhere to them with painstaking detail. Sonali touched upon this division previously.
We want to strike a comfortable medium, where religious texts are treated as a resource for students to consider the ideas past thinkers thought about the same object. This median attitude is necessary in order to adapt Hinduism into a modern American context — too free, and we cannot call ourselves Hindu — too strict, and adaption is impossible.
So the puzzle is — to what extent should we put our faith in a religious text? Because we cannot tell the value of a religious statement without testing it in our own lives, the answer to this question is practical, and not theoretical.
Why religious texts? To give us guidance in asking and answering questions the past has pondered. But how we determine which religious texts complement, rather than constrain, our search — that is something we need to figure out together.
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One question I’ve had when reading religious texts is whether I should be more open-minded while reading the texts.
For example, when I read some verses from the Gita, I’m reading with the knowledge that this is the Gita, and thus I expect to read words of wisdom. If a bum on the street told me the same verses, I wouldn’t treat them the same way.
Am I giving the Gita too much credit, the bum too little, or both? How important is the source of the knowledge?
You raise an interesting point, Saketh. One certainly needs to strike the proper balance.
As for judging the validity of a religious text, I think a lot has to do with the distinction between shruti and smriti texts. The shruti texts are considered the most authoritative: these consist of the Vedas and the Upanishads. The smriti texts are more recent texts such as the epics, Puranas, Hindu law texts (e.g., Manu Smriti), etc.
I think much of the importance of a smriti text lies in its being grounded in Vedic tradition, as laid out in the shruti texts. One important distinction between the two classes of texts is that smriti texts often deal with societal issues (e.g., law) which shruti texts don’t focus so much on. Thus, the smritis are perhaps meant to bridge the gap between spirituality and everyday life. At the same time, however, I think that one must keep in mind that society changes over time, and in accordance with such societal changes, it becomes necessary to reassess many of the smritis. For instance, some of the detailed instructions in the Manu Smriti, I feel, were more suited to older times and seem outdated in modern times. Thus, I personally tend to regard texts such as the Upanishads with more authority than law texts such as the Manu Smriti.
However, despite the fact that shrutis are often considered more authoritative, it is interesting that most Hindus are much more familiar with the smritis. For instance, very few Hindus have read the Vedas, but just about anyone knows something about the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Gita. In fact, I would argue that the Gita (generally considered a smriti text, although some consider it to be an Upanishad – the Gitopanishad), in terms of popularity and availability, has become the scriptural authority on spiritual matters, more so than the Vedas. Why is this the case? I think it’s the fact that texts such as the Gita and the epics are more accessible to the common person, while the Vedas are very difficult to comprehend.
Ultimately, I think answering the question of how much authority to place on a certain text is difficult. This is perhaps why Hinduism stresses the importance of a spiritual guru.
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