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Is
Hinduism a Polytheist religion?
By Shree Krishna Bastola -
Editorial for 4-12-2000
http://www.hinduunity.com/editorial.html
Traditional belief in the west is that the Semitic religions
(Christianity, Islam and Zudeism ) are the monotheist religions and the eastern
religions including Hinduism and Buddhism are polytheist.
Oxford dictionary defines polytheism as, belief in or worship of, more than one
god (please note that god is spelt with a small g). It also defines god as,
"a superhuman being regarded and worshipped as having power over nature and
human affairs" and the example it gives is "Mars was the Roman god of
war". Monotheism on the other hand is defined as," the doctrine that
there is only one God" (please notice that it has a capital G) and that it
defines God as "the creator and the ruler of the universe in Christian
Jewish and Muslim teaching". Please notice that there is no mention of
Hinduism here.
The dictionary is 1995 edition and not
1930. The oldest book in the world ,Rig Veda, says that "there is one God
but people call it by different names". While Adi Sankaracharya says that
ekoh bramha dutia naasti which means there is one God and no second God. God is
generally regarded as Omnipotent , Omniscient, Omnipresent, Timeless (no
beginning or end) and Creator of the universe. The ancient Hindu seers agree to
that; in addition they also tried to discus why God created the universe,
coming to the conclusion that God is incomprehensible .From the above discussion
it is very clear that Hindus have not yet been able to apprise their belief to
the west or the west is deliberately suppressing the truth. I would not like to
discuss it further because I believe truth will win satyameba jayate. In fact I
would say the study of God in Hinduism is unparalleled in any other religion.
The dictionary defines monotheism as 'belief in one God'
whereas polytheism is defined as 'a belief in many gods'. The ancient Greeks and
the Romans had gods for various activities. They regarded one of
those gods as greater than others, but they did not have what we understand now
by God. Concepts of monotheism and polytheism arose when Christianity came as an
alternative religion to the Greeks and the Romans, whose religion was rightly
called polytheistic. Now when you come across a religion which has got both God
the supreme being and various other gods (deities) i.e. Hinduism, it doesn't fit
into either category so easily. To understand Hinduism.......
Let us delve into human feeling and relations and how they progress from a lower
level of friendship to the highest level of Moksha.
Assume that two people (souls) meet. This
meeting, if goes positive, will lead to friendship or if negative, will lead to
hostility. Lets talk about the positive side here and say that they liked one
another and the bond developed into friendship. If this friendship becomes
deeper it become love. When love becomes deeper and respect is added to it , it
becomes adoration. When adoration becomes deep and awe is added to it becomes a
prayer (puja) in which the lower soul asks for favors from the higher soul. When
love increases further the person continuously thinks about the higher soul and
concentrates on the higher soul, this is called meditation. When meditation is
very deep, various channels are open and it will lead to samadhi and then to
final Moksha if God pleases.
Hindus know that every human being is the
manifestation of God. Some Hindus say that Hindus pray to gods because they are
the manifestation of God and that ultimately they are praying to God. A
gnani can do that but for average people that would mean thet one person
should pray to other, because all people are manifestation of God. This doesn't
and should not happen. As I pointed out in the previous paragraph, there is
certain criteria for that which has to be met before one prays or does puja.It
is not essential to pray to God only. The above thought seems to stem from the
fact that only God should be prayed (as some religion claim), which as we shall
see later is not the case.
Before we talk about gods in Hinduism let us try to understand a little
bit of Hindu culture and what praying is:
Hindu culture has always visualised living and non living things into those that
have beneficial effect , which are called divine qualities and those that are
harmful to us , which are called devilish qualities. Any thing that has divine
quality is praised and respected to the extent of deifying it e.g. Cow (We do
not eat beef because of respect of this animal, which has such divine qualities
, contrast that with Muslims not eating pork which is out of devilish
(negative) thoughts, that it is dirty), and Soma rasa. When a person says and
does namaskar he is saying 'I salute the divine qualities in you'. This is also
what we do when we are doing puja. The idea in puja or prayer is to praise the
deity , along with Namaskar, so that the deity becomes happy and grants what the
prayer wants.
Let us try to understand what god (deity) is in Hinduism and why they are
so many of them:
The various gods are known as deities in Hinduism. These deities have done
something good for the mankind when they were here in previous ages, now
they live in their abodes. They were many of them because they lived in what we
called satya yuga which is the age when beings were in exalted state, by
virtue of their exaltation they had spiritual powers. Their action were divine
in nature and were awe inspiring. Because of the exalted age they were many of
them , that is why we have so many deities each deity has his or hers own
temperament . There is nothing wrong with them being so many .Neither you have
to know about all of them nor you have to pray to all of them. You can pick and
choose any deity which suits your temperament. It is soothing to know that
we had so many souls who did good work. Compare that with present age of Kali in
which we are all in a debilitated state and have no spiritual power and
have to struggle a lot to attain such power. They (deities) have the power to
change people's karma (you will know that many Gurus who are sidhas do have the
capability to change the peoples karma to some extent, so it is not surprising
that the deities who lived in satya yuga to posses power to modify peoples
karma). It has to be clearly understood here that these deities are mere
elevated souls they do not have the power to create the universe and they do not
have the others powers of God e.g. omnipotence , omniscience etc. Therefore
these gods (deities) are in no way equal to the God (permeshwore). It has been
erroneously written 'Gods' instead of 'gods' while writing about
Hinduism by many Hindu and non Hindu writers. God is singular, because there is
only one God. It cannot be pleural.
Lets take an example of Lord Ganesha and see the status that he has:
When one goes through the puranas one will find that Ganesh
has done a lot of good work for the people with his spiritual powers He
has killed several demons, who were giving lot of trouble to the people at that
time, creating a sense of awe in the people. He also is brilliant and he showed
his brilliance (divine quality) to his father Siva and got the boon that he
should be prayed first in a puja. He is also easily pleased . That's why he is
so popular. Since he was of satya yuga he had spiritual power by which he
could change our Karma. It is important to remember that he is not a God but
a god (deity).
Since Hinduism have the
distinctly monotheistic component and it also has many deities it should
be called MONOTHEISTIC POLYDEITIC religion.
Let us see what Christianity and Islam really are:
In Christianity, there is Holy Trinity, in which there is God , Jesus
Christ and the Holy Spirit. It has been a problem in Christianity that people
are mostly praying to Jesus and forgetting God. Here you'll find that the God in
Christianity has the power to create the universe and is omnipotent , omniscient
etc. but Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit do not have that power, but have created a
sense or awe, and are therefore prayed , so they should be called gods or
deities. So as per the above discussions Christianity should be called
MONOTHEISTIC BIDEITIC religion. Now the colonial power is gone things should be
defined as per logic and truth rather that force and arrogance.
One can
wonder, why Jesus is more popular then God. I think one of the reason is
people can identify themselves with Jesus, the man, and hence have developed a
special bond with him. It is something like the appearance of a person from
minority community in the TV who can be identified as a role model for the
people of that community. This is why I say there is nothing wrong with
worshiping deity despite some religions not allowing it. In Islam, there is a
sura (Al-ahxab 33:56) in Koran in which Allah says "Allah and his angels
are praying on the prophet, o believers pray on him(Mohammed) and send him
utmost greetings" by which Islam should be called MONOTHEISTIC
MONODEITIC religion, but because other Koranic passages which specifically
dictates that only Allah is worthy of praying, the prayer of Mohammed
either did not start or died in course of time. It should be noted here that
while Muslim follow and live according to the rules of Koran to be near
God and the Christians talk of quiet contemplation for the monks to be near God,
the Hindus talk about deep meditation and realisation of the spirit (truth) when
they are living at present and not only after death.. One can easily understand
which is the greater form of worship as specified in passage dealing with
progress of human relations, from low to high.
Is praying to a deity (god) a bad practice?
I don't think so. As human beings we are in need of
things and therefore we ask for favors .This is a natural human reaction. We go
to the person who has got the capacity to do things for us, to ask something
(various lobbying groups). Similarly people go to church or temple to ask the
deities to do us favors. It is amazing to see people bonded with their deities.
This gives them a sense of security, peace and a feeling of someone with
you, if nothing else. This itself is the very thing we need in this age because
many people do not trust anybody, have nobody to rely on and feel so insecure,
loosing their mental peace. In Hinduism you have many deities with various
temperaments and nature, so you have the luxury of choosing and bonding
with the deity which suits your nature. You don't have to know all of them and
pray to all of them. While Christians worship two deities we worship
several. Gita says that people can worship the deity they like; in fact
the lord will enhance bond between the two. It also says that those who go to
the deities abode after death will have to return while those who go to the
permeshwors abode do not have to. It must be stated clearly that praying
to the God is higher form of worship then praying to the deities (gods). One
should strive for the former because that is the ultimate goal. I would again
say that it is not essential to pray to God; people can pray their deity and be
happy.
(c)2000, Krishna Bastola
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