Hinduism - Lesson 12

Dr. Timothy Tennent
Hinduism
wm645-12
Three Vehicle Structure of Modern Hinduism
Lesson Transcript

You'll notice in the handouts, there's this wonderful handout entitled The Three-Vehicle Structure of Modern Hinduism, which is actually not really a lecture in itself, but it's really an exercise to help kind of understand and summarize where we are at this point. Hinduism is a very complex religion, can be very confusing to first-time studiers of the religion, and therefore I thought it was very important to try to put on one side of one page, kind of the whole of the Hindu structure, and that way you can see Hinduism, as it were, at a glance. So this handout is for that purpose.

I'm just going to walk you through the handout. This is known as The Three-Vehicle Structure. There are different ways of structuring Hinduism, but this is probably the most traditional way, and it means, it's based on a term in Hinduism called the margas, or the three margas, or three vehicles.

We'll actually parallel this later with Buddhism, because Buddhism also has a three-vehicle structure, or three ways of organizing modern-day Buddhism. So in the same way, this is how it works with Hinduism, and what I want to do is just kind of walk you through this chart, and if you have the handout to look at, it would be very helpful as we walk through it. First of all, you'll notice at the top level, Hinduism is divided into two major branches, philosophical and popular.

Now, we'll look in a moment at how some of this gets brought together, but generally speaking, Hinduism operates really at two levels. The high philosophical Hinduism, generated mostly from the Upanishads, and the philosophical tradition, particularly Shankara, and the six schools of orthodox philosophical thought. And so that is kind of one branch of Hinduism.

The other is popular, which is here organized according to way of actions and the way of devotion. Now, popular Hinduism is kind of the Hinduism as it's practiced on the street by common people in villages, etc., all throughout India and around the world. Now, underneath those two broad headings, you actually have three phrases with the word way of.

This is this word for marga, or the way, the path, even the vehicle of Hinduism. The way of knowledge, the way of actions slash works, and the way of devotion. Now, all through Indian history, all through Hindu history, though Buddhism picks up on the same problem, they are trying really to resolve the relationship between knowledge, works, and devotion.

This is a classic tension within the Hindu kind of conversation. So, essentially, this is a struggle to say which of these two leads to the other, which is the priority, or what is the supreme goal of Hinduism. Is it knowledge? Is it works? Or is it devotion? So, this has come out in modern day Hinduism as the three margas, the three paths, the yana marga, the karma marga, and the bhakti marga.

Yana marga means the way of knowledge, karma marga, the way of works, and bhakti marga, the way of devotion. So, all of our conversation in this brief survey on different philosophical schools of India, we mentioned already there are six, what they call astika doshanas, it means orthodox schools of philosophy and Indian thought, and they are listed right here on the list. You have samkha, yoga, vimamsa, vaiseshika, nainaya, and vedanta, and all of these are worthy of study and reflection, and we don't have time to look at those in this brief course, but they are very, very interesting.

The one at the very bottom called vedanta, which means obviously the word vedas there, and that n-t-a ending means the end of, the end of the vedas, which is the Upanishad. Remember how the Vedic material had the different layers of material, and the Upanishads were at the end? Well, the end of the Vedas is the Upanishad, so that vedanta is that system which focuses on the Upanishads, and that's what really has come out today kind of as the way Hinduism is mostly expressed in the Western world, and even in India, is the dominant school of Hindu thought. But the others are also very, very important, and they play into a number of things.

The other big emphasis in the West would actually be probably you've heard of yoga. Yoga is very popular in the Western world. What you should know is that yoga actually accepted the philosophy of the samkha, which is the number one person on there, but yoga believed that certain techniques could be used to achieve the goals of samkha.

So all the bodily exercises, the posture, the breathing exercises, all the things that are now part of hatha yoga, it actually comes out of that school of philosophy, so that's something you may be familiar with in the kind of modern American life or whatever. But other than that, the main thing to know is that each of these schools has a certain set of beliefs and practices which they believe could lead to ultimate knowledge, which is why it's called the Way of Knowledge. Now this particular branch is governed and ruled over by the Brahmins, the high caste Brahmins, at the top of the kind of the Varna structure, and so you'll see the Brahmins are emphasized there.

And you'll see on the left-hand side, it emphasizes the study of the Vedas, the study of the Upanishads, the study of Brahman, and in this phrase, tat tvam asi, which refers to the great insight of the Upanishads, it means thou art that, or that thou art, and it's the identification of the ultimate Brahman with the essence of yourself, which is the Atman. The identification of Atman with Brahman is the great insight of the Upanishads, and that's part of the key insight of the philosophical system. Now on the right-hand side, you'll see it's in two different sections.

One is the Way of Actions or Works, and this focuses on doing your duty of caste and keeping karma. People often ask about karma. There are different kinds of karma in Hinduism, and so karma is basically karma that references to deeds from your past lives that are accumulated, and it's like baggage from the past is one kind of karma.

You might say past baggage karma. There's certain karma that you're currently incurring in this life, so things that you're doing in this life that create karmic incrustations on you are currently accumulating karma, you might say. And then there's the karma that you're currently paying off in your current lifetime.

So kind of view it as a big ledger of debits and credits. In Hinduism, everything you do, every action, is either a credit or a debit to your karmic balance. Essentially it works that way.

And so over lifetimes, if you are working that off, you'll have better reincarnations or transmigrations, and you eventually go to liberation. If you are not doing it, outweighing it, you have worse and worse, eventually coming back as a meat-eating animal, for example, where you can't improve your karmic status for some time. Being in a human state is a good thing because you can actually improve your karma in that state.

Well, this karmic ledger sheet, as it were, is governed by what's known as the Laws of Manu. This is a very famous book. Once again, you can go on Amazon.com and you can purchase the book today.

But traditionally this was a set, a collection of oral understandings of what, in fact, produced karma, what relieved karma. And so that's an essential part of this whole way of action and way of works, is maintaining your karma, and being attentive to that, and the duties of your caste. And you notice on the bottom, it has the kind of four large groupings.

Actually, we often call these castes, but these are the varnas, the colors, the Brahmin, the Kshatriya, the Vaishya, and the Shudra. And you can see the percentages of how many Indians self-select and see themselves or their group as part of this. Now the reason why it's unclear is because Indians don't actually so much go by, I'm a Brahmin or I'm a Kshatriya, but you go by your sub-grouping which is actually your particular jati or your particular caste.

So that caste grouping is much smaller. So even though there are actually only four varnas, there are hundreds, there are actually thousands of caste groupings, or jati groupings, as they're often called. And in that case, people are not always sure exactly where the lines are drawn.

The Brahmin's vertical line is pretty clear, only about 8% of people fall in that category, but the others are a little more fluid. And as you get down into the lower grouping, it gets very fluid. And you notice at the bottom there is this half of Indians are in the Dalit category, half of Hindus, I should say.

Now this half is a very large number, probably larger than what it actually is. But the point is, part of the laws of Manu work is certain kinds of behavior is reinforced by maintaining the ability of a Brahmin to maintain the purity of their lineage and their heritage. So for example, a Brahmin would never have social intercourse, certainly not sexual intercourse, with a low caste shudra.

This is strictly prohibited. So things like eating together, walking together, they were actually called unseeables or untouchables because they weren't allowed to be seen by high caste Brahmins. So let's just say a Brahmin did that.

They had intercourse with a shudra, for example. Well, what happens? Well, that person is thrown out of the caste system, which is where we get our phrase in English, an outcast. It literally means someone who is taken out of the caste system and that person is relegated to the lowest, beyond the pale part of Hindu society.

So that group is actually quite a large group over the years, people have been put into that category. The problem is in modern day India, there are all kinds of programs and incentives and financial plans and a number of things to help uplift this group. So it's now kind of advantageous for people that are in the shudra groups to say, hey, I'm actually a Dalit because it actually helps you.

If you're going to be that far down, you might as well go all the way down because you might not have access to certain benefits. So there's a little bit of incentive at some times to be a Dalit, and it sounds bizarre, but in today's world that's true. So generally speaking, the first three castes or varnas are referred to as the forward-looking caste, those that belong to those varnas, and the others are called the backwards-looking.

And it was Gandhi who referred to this lower group, the shudra Dalits, as he called them Harijans, or the children of God, and he tried to dignify them, but he believed they should be dignified within the context of their duties. Notice that above this part of the chart, there's this thing called the four stages of life. This is known as the ashrama dharma.

This means that there's a certain pathway through life that is considered idealized, and it's particular for the Brahminical life, but it's put out there for others to follow as best they can. Essentially what it argues is that everyone should go through four stages in their life, and your first stage is the student stage. This is where you are a learner, you go to school, you learn things, you go through your education program.

At that point, it's important for you to get married and move into a householder stage. This is where you become a father or a mother and have children, etc., and you raise a family. Family life is highly idealized and very, very important in Indian society, so if someone stops after the schooling stage and, for example, does not get married, that's considered to be a shame, a lack of honor in the Indian system, because this next stage is the householder stage.

So it's very, very important, and parents will arrange marriages for their children because this is a highly important way it's structured. The third is called forest dweller, which is what we would probably call more like retirement phase. This is where you go into a more reflective part of your life where you spend time thinking about ultimate reality, and you spend your retirement and you're freed up from your normal work in order to think about ultimate things, and then the very end of your life is called the sannyasin stage, which is where you renounce the world, you take off your clothes, and you wear just the clothes of a beggar, and you go to the Ganges River, and you die there, and you're cremated on the banks of the Ganges River.

Now, there are, of course, people who do exactly that, but this is still mostly kind of an idealized progression in the brahminical community, but it is part of what it means to have, that's the maximum way to have good karma, is to follow that structure, and so there you have it. Now, over on the final part of the chart is called the way of devotion, or the bhakti marga, and this developed really more around the time of Christ, it's a much lighter development in the Hindu world, but you have the development of a number of gods and goddesses that are very popularized in India. And I don't actually have listed here the gods that are most important, I do have a few highlighted, like Rama and Krishna, that are in bold print here, but actually there are many, many gods, and in the course, we actually highlight which gods are the most popular to know about in India, like Vishnu, for example, Shiva, obviously are very crucial in this, but the idea behind this is that people will look at all the 330 million gods of India, and they will devote themselves to one particular god, in an act of exclusive worship, and this is called bhaktiism, it's devotional Hinduism.

So you give yourself to a god or goddess, you would perform what they call puja, which is a form of sacrifices to that deity, go to their temple, you see the term here, mana, mana has a touching, you go into the temple, you touch the idol, you pour milk on the idol, you would put flower petals on the idol, it's an act of devotion, this is done by millions of people in their homes, and in the temples all over the country, you'll see these temples in fields, you'll see them in marketplaces, you'll see them beneath every banyan tree in the country, you'll see them in people's homes, it's everywhere. And so this kind of practical worship is very much part of the Indian worldview, and generally speaking, this is a broad statement, Shivaite worship predominates in the north, Vishnavite worship predominates in the south, though all these are everywhere, and you also have a lot of worship of the goddess Kali in all of India, particularly up in the north as well. But the point is, these are highly followed, and they're very, very important in the Hindu world.

And then this is reinforced by all of the epics of these deities. India has produced two great epics, one is called the Mahabharata, it means the great epic of India, Bharata is the word for India, and then the Ramayana, which is the epic or the story of Rama. These are very, very important, you may have heard of the famous poem called the Bhagavad Gita, that means the song of our Lord, the word Gita means song.

So the song of our Lord, or the Bhagavad Gita, is considered to be the longest poetical poem in the world, and it is found in the middle of the Mahabharata, it's like a sequence in the larger epic, and it's a remarkable thing to study and to learn. And then there are many other stories called the Puranas, that literally means the old stories, Hari Vamsa, Hari is the word for Lord, these are the stories about Lord Krishna, and the Gita Govinda is also the song about Govinda, another deity connected to the popular side. Anyway, the point of this is that there are a number of ways in which Hindus is properly devoted to this way of devotion.

Now you'll notice on the chart, I have a little three-leaf clover on the way of action works. What that means is, that is the default path which every Indian is on, so it's like you're automatically on that path. Once you're on that path, that's like the birth path, you must be born into a particular caste, you live out your dharma, etc.

But at that point, if you're a Brahmin, you will be trained over on the left side, in the way of the Jnana Marga, the way of knowledge. If you're not a Brahmin, you will most likely gravitate over to the way of devotion. So these are not completely separate paths, but you should really view the main path in the middle, as a path all Indians share, and then people will participate in one or the other based on their caste.

Because if you're not a Brahmin, you're not going to be ultimately able to be successful in anything but the way of devotion, only Brahmins in the way of knowledge. The other little caveat I want to say is that what happened was, the way of knowledge, the Brahmins saw the popularity and the strength and the vigor of popular Hinduism. It really took India by a storm.

And if you would like to see a plot on India, that's what you would see, as like Hinduism before you in the village or in the city. So the Brahmins were really intent on controlling that. So Ramanuja, one of the great philosophers of India, he was determined to connect the philosophical side on the left to the popular side on the right.

So we're not going into detail of his philosophy, but his philosophy is about how to bring that whole side of Hinduism into his philosophy, and to create a philosophical undergirding for popular practice. Whereas the traditional way would say, well, that's all illusory, it's unimportant. Ramanuja didn't do that.

In fact, one of his most famous moments in Ramanuja's life is he's going up the Brahminical chain, and as you go up, it's a mentor system between a teacher and a disciple. And he was very brilliant, of course, and so he was acknowledged as being such. He kept going higher and higher.

So the way it works in that way of knowledge is that as you go up the system, you are given more explicit mantras. These are sacred syllables that they believe utter spiritual power. So these are little sayings, little mantric or little esoteric kind of phrases that are highly valued in that particular part of the world, in the Brahminical world.

So it gets to the point where when you finally get that last mantra, it is so sacred, it's maybe only known by three people in the world. I mean, it's just, it's that pinnacle. You're at the tip of the pinnacle of Minicalism.

So Ramanuja got to that point, and the master brought him into the inner chamber and whispered into his ear this most sacred mantra. Ramanuja leaves the presence of his master, goes down the balcony, and he shouts this mantra down to the crowds below, which would create a huge shock. And what it was, it was seeing this symbol out that the high caste Brahminical Hinduism should be for all the people.

So his life was really about creating this connection. It's very fascinating how he tries to do that and to provide a philosophical basis for popular Hindu practice. So to this day, if you go to a Hindu temple to worship a Hindu deity, it is a Brahmin who runs that temple.

If you go to the river to cremate your loved one in the Ganges River, then you have to learn a mantra to say, as you cast the ashes of your loved one in the river, it's a Brahmin who controls that spot on the Ganges River. So the Brahmins have, in fact, extended their control over this part of Hindu practice. It's one of the great triumphs.

I say that in terms of just one of the amazing things that's happened in terms of how Indian history developed. But the point is, this chart is not meant to be an exhaustive look at Hinduism. It does give you an overview of Hinduism to know where to hang things.

As you learn about philosophy, or learn about how karma works, or you learn about popular Hinduism, this gives you a way of understanding it within what's called the three-vehicle structure, or the three-marga structure of Hinduism. So this chart is really for your overall reference. We've referred to it at several points, and we'll refer to it more in the future.

It's just good to have that explained to you a little more with more clarity. Thank you very much.