Hinduism (1962)

[Music] [Laughter] [Music] On the shores of the holy river Ganges is India's ancient city Banaris. for thousands of years come here to seek union with their god in whatever form to bathe away their sins in the holy waters to liberate their souls from the cycle of birth and rebirth. [Music] [Applause] [Music] 3,000 years ago, nomad tribes entered northwest India and conquered the native peoples. In the mixture of races, early Hinduism was formed from a host of cults and nature gods. They call him Indra, Buna, Agny. But he is one to whom sages give many titles. >> The teachings of Hinduism have been passed on in sacred scriptures, the Vades, the first of them known more than 3,000 years ago. In them, the sages described the one spirit called Brahman in all life and worship. [Music] In the vadas began the idea of the genesis of the world as a divine order. The Brahman to be renewed by religious ritual. In society the divine order expressed itself as cast. The sudra, farmer and working man. [Music] The visa or vassel, merchant and craftsman. The khatria or noble, warrior, leader and ruler. [Music] And finally the Brahman teacher and spiritual man. In the 6th century BC two reforming religions challenged the Hindu teachings of cast Janism a doctrine of self-denial and Buddhism the way of enlightenment. The founders of these religions were of the princely cast. Mahaviraa, the hero of Janism and Gautama, the Buddha, the enlightened one. But Hinduism adopted many of their reforms in the worship of a trinity of gods. The creator, the god of all religions, the preserver and savior, protector of the good and the destroyer, the spirit of death and rebirth. 200 years before Christ, devotion to these gods reached its height in the Hindu gospel, the epic of the Bhagavad Gita, the story of God's love for man. And 600 years later in the golden age of India, it inspired the great Hindu philosophies. Here began the way of wisdom, deliverance from sin and rebirth by knowledge, seeking the spirit of God beyond all existence. Through the centuries, Hinduism tolerated and accepted new religious truths and absorbed whole communities of reform into Hindu society. In the villages, society has remained almost unchanged for 800 years. Here, men of all casts may seek their own way to salvation. All gods, all rituals, all beliefs are accepted. For Hinduism is the religion of tolerance. There are three ways of salvation in Hinduism. The way of works of duty to cast and formal ritual. The way of worship of faith and devotion to a personal god and the ideal the way of wisdom of renunciation of the world and union with the infinite. [Music] God Brahman is the essence of all religion. But God is not a person. God is the spirit in all things. It is in all action, all self, all being, in men, animals, plants. So for the Hindu, all life is sacred, but the world is a place of darkness and sin. The spirit of God is divided. Each being, each self is ignorant of its divinity. This is the message that the holy men carry with them. Man's worth is in his awareness of divinity. And the rules of life are set to bring him to union with the universal spirit. If a man has lived a good life, he will be reborn closer to the infinite. But he will be reborn a lesser being, even an animal, if he was sinful. No deed done can be undone. Man must attain purity through duty, self-surrender, service to the gods and to his fellow man. Thus all men, all casts have their duty to each other and to the deity. The existence of divinity in all things lends dignity to the humblest action and the lowest cast. Utter no word to pain your fellow creatures. Rever the aged. Be self-reliant, humble and truthful. Eat no flesh and abstain from selfish indulgence. These are the ways of works. Sinners become pure by gifts. Good men by tolerance and peace. Those with hidden sin by reciting sacred texts. The holy and wise by discipline and self-surrender. [Music] [Music] [Applause] To millions of Hindus, however, God is not an impersonal spirit, but a personal deity, a savior. For centuries, this faith has inspired Hindu art, literature, music, and the dance. Behind the crowd of images, behind all the deities is the universal godhead. It is the creator. It is the preserver. It is the destroyer. The absolute takes many forms. It is good and evil, male and female, God and goddess. God is in all and is all. He is Brahma, the creator, the soul of all things. [Music] He is Vishnu, the protector of the good, a loving savior who comes down to earth in every age to lead mankind. He is Shiva, the destroyer, the immortal god of fertility and rebirth, the dancing god who makes the world his sport. Shiva is worshiped in the great yearly pilgrimage at Amarath in the Himalayan mountains. Here say the myths, he revealed the secret of immortality to his wife Parvati. From his cave flow the waters of the holy Ganges. Though some literally worship his idols. To many Hindus the pilgrimage is a symbol of man's spiritual search. The search for union with the God who is felt in the fall of the leaf, in disease and death, in the cycles of generation and rebirth. [Music] Shiva is worshiped in female form as the goddess Dura, the great mother. She is the godhead of fertility, the energy of earth. In her, her devotees see the god of love and cruelty, the god of all nature, sometimes kind, sometimes terrible. Men call her by many names and worship her in joy and fear. [Music] The worship of the great mother goes back to the dawn of history. This is popular Hinduism and it includes the worship of thousands of village goddesses and sacred objects. But it is tolerated by the learned who say that man needs material forms to center his thoughts on God. [Music] Millions of other Hindus worship Vishnu, the god of love, who becomes a savior incarnate in every age. As Krishna, as Rama, as the Buddha, Hindus love him and worship him with joy. >> Praise be to Rama, to Krishna, to the Lord of Lords they sing. Only act without desire says Krishna. >> Each man is condemned to action. But by indifference to the self, to honor and shame, to pleasure and pain, we reach true purity. [Music] to those whose acts and thoughts are pure. He promises eternal paradise. [Music] For Hindus, there is an ideal way of salvation, the way of wisdom. It begins with the life of the student who goes to a teacher to study the sacred books. He wears the mark of his sect on his forehead. He must beg his food. He must practice the way of works, the duties of cast and religion. Then he may return to his family and marry. He becomes a householder and citizen, living the life of the world, praying for his ancestors, expeating all sins committed against living things. But if he feels a vocation beyond the way of works and devotion, he may renounce the world and become a hermit. He becomes indifferent to all that he loved. He renounces worldly objects. He seeks the God of gods in whom no opposition exists. At last, he becomes a holy man, freed from the world of illusion and rebirth, seeking final liberation, absorption in the infinite. Let him not desire to live. Let him not desire to die. Let him wait for his appointed time as a servant waits for the payment of his wages. In deep meditation, let him recognize the subtle nature of the supreme soul and its presence in all living. He who has given up all attachments reposes in God alone. He attains the eternal Brahman. Modern Hinduism was born of Indian nationalism and the reaction to western religion and science. Now for millions of Hindus there is a renaissance of social reform and missionary activity. There has been a return to the spirit of true tolerance in the reform of the cast system. Untouchability is now illegal and Hindus of all casts may live and eat together. Believing that God is in all religion, Hindus respect the teachings of other faiths. As water is called by different names, so the one God is called by different names. and his incarnations Krishna, Buddha, Christ are to the absolute as waves to the ocean. Believing that God is in all life, Hindus are led to their highest moral principle, nonviolence, love and respect for all living things, especially the cow, the very symbol of unselfishness and charity. The cow, said Gandhi, is a poem of pity. She is mother to millions of Indian mankind. It is in this spirit that Hindus of all faiths practice love, charity and unselfishness. By charity towards others, they seek union with God in this world of exile and suffering. They dispel the illusion that each soul is separate and alone. Modern Hinduism sometimes recognizes no gods. More often it believes in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. It rejects the abuses of cast. It rejects temples, priests and images and turns to study of the scriptures, tolerance, missions and reform. But for hundreds of millions of Hindus, God is a personal being who has come down in many forms for love of his devotees. And for them, ritual worship is the beginning of wisdom. [Applause] [Music] Like the husks of a grain of wheat, so rights and ceremonies contain the germ of truth, and every man must perform them before he reaches the center. [Music] I Lord Krishna say unto you, he who full of deepest devotion neither loves nor hates, desires nor despaires, and has renounced equally pleasure and pain is dear to me. He who makes no distinction between friend and enemy, honor and shame, heat and cold, and who unremittingly shuts his heart to the world, is dear to me. When the fire of greed is out and the smoke of desire rises no longer, then shall man know that God is everywhere and that there is no other. Oh, [Music] I love it. [Music]