We started talking about non-western religions in class on Tuesday. I really don’t know much about them, other than the little I learned from the movie Eat, Pray, Love. The thing that fascinated me the most was how non-western religions are non-linear and believe in reincarnation. The Hindu gods were especially fascinating.
The Hindu gods are Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Brahma is the creator god. Brahma has multiple faces and arms, and carries a spoon and a string of beads. He is the beginning of the circle of life for creation. The second is Vishnu. Vishnu is the god that preserves order and keeps chaos at bay. He carries objects like shells and halos to represent the circular order. He also is known to have avatars (incarnation of Vishnu). The last god in the Hindu Trinity is Shiva. Shiva is the god of death and destruction. Shiva is normally seen with a ring of fire around him, which represents cremation. It is also said that Shiva is the god of sex. This represents procreation and the connection of the circle with Brahma.
I had never heard of any of these but for some reason they fascinate me. I was trying to think of someway to relate this to Christianity, which is my personal faith, but I couldn’t. This non-linear pattern completely sets them apart.
My thoughts were corrected on Tuesday as well about karma. I thought karma was if you did something bad, something bad would eventually happen to you. What goes around, comes around. I learned that karma is actually how all things are connected and the belief that when I do something wrong, it doesn’t effect just me, it effects everything in the universe.
It does seem almost impossible to relate a Western religion, like Christianity for example, to a non- Western religion. Both are pretty much as opposite from each other in concept as they can get. One of the things that Hinduism teaches is that everyone is everything and everyone is the ultimate reality, whereas in Christianity, there is one God and He is the ultimate reality. One way that I found that I can relate the two is that both religions make us responsible for our own salvation. In both Christianity and Hinduism, our actions in our lifetime will be punished or rewarded in the end and us, and only us, can be held responsible for where (or how depending on the religion) we end up.