Ethics 101 : Ahimsa

Ahimsa literally nonviolence. It may ring a bell because it was the famous codeward of Mahatma Gandhi's movement resistance to the British occupation of India. Ahimsa means not hurting yourself.

There are some situation where causing harm cannot be avoided. In the well-known example from the Mahabhrata, Krishna advises Arjuna to take up arms against a prince whose evil actions must be stopped. Note that Krishna makes this suggestion only after multiple attempts at peaceful negotiation have failed.

Hindus are generally a peace-loving people. Yet only a minority go so far to say that even in cases of self-defense or protection of the innocent, violence must always be avoided. Hindus generally acknowledge that the ahimsa movement worked because Mahatma Gandhi was defying the British. If he had been up against the Nazis, the outcome might have been different.

Nevertheless, practicing Hindus takes ahimsa quite seriously. A Canadian friend of mine was mentioning how each time he would leave the home of a Hindu friend she would hand him a sweet and say to him", If I have offended you in any way during your stay in my home, please forgive me". This was a women of extraordinary kindness who he couldn't even imagine anything offensive! Yet it was important to her to ensure that if she had inadvertently anyone, she is clear at once. 

Five Things to Definitely Avoid

I recently returned from Prayag, the area Allahabad where the second century B.C.E sage Patanjali had his ashram. He was a spiritual genius of the first magnitude whose books on yoga science, medicine, and grammar are Hindu classics. His presence is still strongly felt there and legends about the great master abound.

One of Patanjali's many contributions to Hindu culture was a set of ten commitments. It's a famous list of basic do's and don'ts that define what it means to be an ethical person. It spells out a fundamental commitment to spiritual life. It's the perfect place to begin our consideration of Hindu morality.

Patanjali began by listing five yamas,things that no one should ever do :

1. Ahimsa : Do not harm anyone

2. Satya    : Do not lie

3. Asteya  : Do not steal

4. Bramahacarya : Do not overindulge

5. Aparigaraha     : Don't be greedy.

Manu and women

Manu the ancient Hindu lawgiver is leery of granting women independent status. He prefers that they be supervised either by a father or a husband. This way there's no question who is a baby dad.

But Manu's impression of women wasn't all bad. " Men who wish for good fortune must always honor women," he wrote. " The gods shower happiness and prosperity wherever women are venerated. But in those lands where women are not respected, misfortune surely befalls".

The Ten Commitment

The ultimate goal of Hindu spirituality is liberation from the wheel of rebirth. But while we're still riding up and down on the wheel, there's a practical matter we need to attend to. How do we live in this world? How should we conduct ourselves?

Moral principles are foundation of every religion. Not everyone is capable of becoming enlightened in this lifetime just as very few of us have the stuff to become gold medal Olympic athletes. But all of us have to live together on this planet. And most of us are concerned about living at peace not only with others but also with ourselves and with God. Our ethics shape both our inner and outer worlds.

Different religions hold many principles in common. Other ideas about what constitute virtuous actions are startlingly different. We've already looked at one major difference between Hindu beliefs and Christian and Islamic principles. Christians and Muslims feel morally obliged to convert other people to their religions. Hindus feel respect for other faiths is a more appropriate moral position. Let's look at the basic ethical tenets of Hinduism. We'll see how they agree with and how they diverge from contemporary Western views. 

Selling Sons

The dowry probably did not start out as a bad thing. On the contrary, its original purpose was not to demean women but to support them. In Hindu culture, most women have the birth home when they marry and become part of their husband's family. The dowry ensured that they brought their own financial resources with them-money they could use to support themselves and their families if their husband died or abandoned them.

Hindu males, however, stay with the birth family. The eldest son is particularly important since he's responsible for looking after the welfare of his younger siblings, for supporting his parents when they retire, and for conducting the parent's funeral rites.

While men receive their inheritance when their parents die, women receive theirs when they marry. This means that each time a daughter marries, her family sustains a substantial loss of income. There's financial loss in both cases, but families only feel that it when the girl marries because the son keeps his money within the family.

This system has become grotesquely distorted. It has evolved from sending a daughter away with  some worldly goods, to would-be-in-laws demanding huge sums of money from parents looking for husbands for their girls. " If she's joining our family, she better bring plenty of income with her!" In other words, these parents sell rights to their sons for exorbitant prices.

The disastrous social consequences are that Hindu families go bankrupt financing the weddings of their daughters. Many families just can't afford to have girls. Now that tests to check the sex of a fetus are available, some Hindus opt for abortion if the fetus is female. That it should come to this is bitterly ironic since Hindu scriptures uniformly condemn abortion.

The opposite practice, of demanding money for a daughter, was strictly forbidden in Hindu law. It smacked too much of prostitution. 

Declined Status

Nevertheless, there's no question women have lower status than men in Hinduism. The difference in status was almost certainly not so dramatic in the distant past. Hindus scriptures written centuries ago describe women and teachers and philosophers and show women receiving initiations they are denied today. The Veda itself includes women among its highest seers.

Some of the unfortunate problems women experience in Hindu culture today may be due to 1,500 years of nearly continual invasions from the north, beginning around 500 B.C.E. To protect mothers, wives, and daughters, women were increasingly confined inside the house, cutting back their wider social roles.

But the worst problems Hindus women experience are due to the horrible practice of selling sons. Though outlawed in modern India, sadly this custom is still widely practiced.

Yemen

The majority of Yemen's population is divided into tribal groups, especially in the northern areas of the country where 85% of local residents belong to various tribes. There are also small groups of peoples of Turkish/Ottoman origin in urban areas. Roughly 53% of the population are sunni Muslims following the Shafi school while 45% adhere to the Zaydi Shia branch of Islam with small minorities of Ismail Muslims.

Lantern Festival

It is not to be confused with the Mid-Autumn Festival; Which is sometimes also known as the " Lantern Festival" in locations such as Singapore and Malaysia. 

Women First

In Hindu India, the role of women is perceived very differently than in North America. Take the first 50 years of India's as an independent nation following its emancipation from Britain. From one third of that time, India had a woman prime minister. In the United States, at least up till the moment I'm writing, if Americans so much as had a strong first lady, half the country would become apoplectic!

Perhaps the reason Hindus seem to feel more comfortable with a female commenderin-chief than North Americans they're because they're constantly exposed to images of powerful goddesses. And the Hindu national epics are full of accounts of intelligent, politically influential women. Or maybe it's because the archetypal role for a women in India is rather than sex object as in the West. You might trust your mother to run the country, but you probably hesitate to have a sex kitten do so!

If you cross the border from Hindu India into Muslim Pakistan, you'll instantly feel the different cultural climate. In most of India, women can travel comparatively free from fear. In Pakistan, a women needs to be covered from head to toe in a heavy robe or accompanied by a male guardian. Otherwise she may find herself in serious trouble. 

Metamorphoses

The Hindu life course is specifically structured so that each individual has an opportunity to go for the gold, to reach the spiritual liberation before death. If all goes according to plan, life metamorphoses through four stages :

1. Brahmacharya : Student life

2. Grihastya        : Married life

3. Vanaprastha    : Intensive spiritual

4. Sannayasa       : Letting go

Brahmacharya literally means " walking with God". During these years, the student receives cultural, vocational and religious training. You'll also hear the term brahmacarya used to mean celibacy since Hindus weren't supposed to have sex before marriage.

Marriage is a very Big Deal in Hindu culture. A small number of individuals renounce the householder in life and go directly from brahmacharya to sanyasa, devoting their entire lives to the spiritual quest alone. But the vast majority of people are expected to practice spirituality within the context of raising a family. Remember that having children was one of the five sacred duties required of Hindus. Even parents of some of the greatest saints India has ever known, like Shankaracharya and Ramana Maharishi, tried to pressure them into married life to meet the social norm-and so that they'd support in their old age.

When a couple got on in years, they'd retire as we do in the West. But rather than moving to Florida and fishing all day, they'd go live in a hut in the forest to pursue intensive spiritual practices. Vanaprastha literally means "living in the woods".

As death approached, Hindus (especially males) would renounce even the little hut and go wandering on pilgrimages, living on whatever handfuls of food strangers would offer. This was the act of letting go preparatory to final release when the body itself dropped away.

In Western culture, people are very rarely prepared for death. Hindus spend the last years of their life specifically preparing for this transition. Though these customs are have gone to spend the last months of their lives chanting God's name and praying. Many temples specifically accommodate these retirees with a minimum of food and shelter so that they can close out their lives with God.

Moksha : The Ultimate Goal

The basic goal of life on which the  are founded is dharma : morality especially as it expresses itself in the fulfilment of one's duties. But the ultimate goal of life is moksha, enlightenment. The previous three aims are understood with this very much in mind.

Prosperity and pleasure are great. Just about everybody wants them. But they don't last forever. After eight or nine decades at the most, the soul loses both at its physical body crumbles away. If your pursuit of the good things in life hasn't been from the perspective of the supreme good, then death can be a horrendous experience. Being cut off from the people and things we're attached to its wrenching.

Death is less of a trauma if during our lives we've been practicing the premier Hindu spiritual discipline of vairagya, dispassion. Western students sometimes think vairagya or nonattachment means stifling nature and cutting ourselves off from relationships. In fact it means expanding them.

Truly dispassionate people are the most loving folks you'll ever meet. They don't just love their family members and friends. They love everyone and everything. The divine inner nature, which is love itself, is allowed to shine in all directions, embracing everyone without particular attachment to one individual or another.

As human beings we naturally love our children, our family and friends. Hinduism suggests though that we not get overly attached to our attachments. At some point, we will have to let everyone of them go. If we bear this in mind through life, death becomes an expensive experience, not a fearful ending. We look forward to-and work toward- an illumined state of consciousness that enfolds all our fellow beings in a state beyond time.

Making Love

Hindus's attitude toward sex is perplexing to many outsiders. No one can fail to notice the expansive variety of sexual postures assumed by half-naked statues that decorate the outside of many Indian temples! Yet to outward apparences, many if not most Hindus are quite sexually conservative. Not only women, but men are often still sexually inexperienced on their wedding night. And it seems overly prudish to Westerners that many Hindu women remain dressed even while bathing! (This was also the practice in much of Europe till fairly recently.)

Sexuality is celebrated in Hinduism, but generally within the context of marriage. By confining one's amorous adventures to a spouse, the sexual drive is expressed in a healthy manner and yet also disciplined. There have, of course, always been other norms. A few parts of India have been known for their more relaxed

attitudes toward sexuality. Today as Western influence becomes more pervasive, sexual experimentation is increasing among Hindus generally. 

Making Money

In the Hindu religion, getting rich is considered an entirely appropriate human behaviour. In fact, some holy texts advise us to make as much money as we can with our two hands. And then to give it away with ten hands to those in need!

There's an important caveat here. Remember how in the list of goals of human life, dharma came first?This means that while we are free, and even encouraged, to make money, it must be done within the context of dharma. Our way of making a living must be ethical. Dharma not only means our duty in life, it also means righteousness Morality is the basic underpinning of society.

Paying Your Debts

There is also a general dharma incumbent on all human beings. Each of us has five duties or debts we need to repay:

1. We must fulfill our obligations to the gods for their beings. Each of us has five them with the appropriate rituals.

2.The tremendous debt we owe to our parents and teachers must be rapid by supporting them and by having children and passing on our knowledge in turn.

3. We fulfill our duty to our guests by treating them as if they were deities visiting our home.

4. We have a debt to all other human beings as well. This can be rapid by treating each with the respect he or she is due.

5. Also, we have an obligation to all other living beings. We must offer them our good will and food or other types of help when appropriate.

There are two preoccupations in Hinduism : freedom and responsibility. While tantrics, and renunciates launch into the freedom of spirit, Hindus who choose to remain in the workaday world are very conscious of their karmic debs and the profound interconnection and interdependence of the living in the many different planes of reality. Dharma defines their place in the world order and shows them how to live together in mutual respect and support. 

Arjuna's Dharma

In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna urges Arjuna to pick up his bow and go to war. This was because Arjuna had been born into a ksharitya family of kings and warriors. His brother's kingdom had been illegally taken over by a tyrant. It was not the dharma of the priest or the stone mason to stop the evil tyrant. As a defender of justice, it was Arjuna's job to ensure that the kingdom was returned to its rightful ruler.

Even though Arjuna didn't want to fight, Krishna insisted he must fulfill his dharma. The Hindu view is that even if the stone worker would rather be a World Federation wrestler, he should stick with the professional responsibility he was born into. This attitude is incomprehensible to many Westerners. But in India (as in many Asian cultures), the welfare of society as a whole outweighs the individual's own preferences. Traditional Hindus believe that it is by fulfilling their duty, not by fulfilling their fantasises, that people hold their society together. 

Doing Your Dharma

In this context, dharma means doing that which you were meant to do, doing it ethically, and doing it to the best of your capacity. Generally it refers to one's career. One person's dharma may be manufacture tires. Another person's dharma could be to sing professionally, or lay foundations, or practice medicine.

In Hindu culture, often your dharma was determined by the family and clan you were born into. If you were born in a family of stone masons, your fulfilment in life would come from working with stone. If your mother was a washerwoman, you would probably be a washerwomen, too. Though for most women, the primary dharma was being a housewife and mother. 

What's Life For?

According to Hinduism, there are four main goals in human life.

< Dharma : Fulfilling your purpose 

<Artha     : Prospering

< Kama    : Having fun

< Moksha : Getting know God

Let's take a brief look at each.

Renouncers

Some people step outside the caste system on purpose. These are the sannyasins, the wandering holy men and women of the Hinduism. Caste law applies only to Hindus of this world. Sannyasins have given up the comforts and luxuries of home and family to wander freely without any possessions or worldly responsibilities. without any possessions or worldly responsibilities. They are focused on self-realization and are considered "in this world but not of it". Caste regulations don't apply to them, yet they are among the most highly respected members of Hindu culture.

Some sannyasins are swamis, who have formally taken vows in one of the renunciate orders. Don't expect to go to their headquarters and get a list of all the swamis, though. Things are not done in an organized someone who's swami initiates you in his or her order without necessarily registering your name anywhere. You put on the orange robe of a swami, and you're in business. Recently there was an attempt to begin keeping order in the orders, but the resistance was so fierce the effort collapsed. How can you expect someone who's renounced the world to worry about whether their name is listed in the ledger in some administrative building?

Quite a few of the sannyasins wandering India are not swamis but have simply renounced worldly life with blessing of their guru or even on their own. They beg for food once a day or get a free meal at the local temple. Typically they move along from one pilgrimage spot to the next since staying in any one place for longer than a few days (except during the monsoon season when travel is impactical) is seen as a potential source of attachment. They do their daily ritual practice, chant, meditate, and sometimes teach or hang out with fellow renunciate.

Chinese New Year

Chinese New year is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. In China, it is also known as the spring Festival, the literal translation of the modern Chinese name. Chinese new year celebrations traditionally ran from Chinese New Year's Day itself, the first day of the first month of the Chinese calender, to the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first month, making the festival the longest in the Chinese calender. Because the Chinese calender is lunisolar, the Chinese New year is often referred to as the " Lunar New year".

Outsiders

Not everyone in the world fits into the four-caste system. There were people who left the system voluntarily. And there who left involuntarily. Finally, there were people who never in the system to begin with.

The panchamas are the famous outcastes of India. These are people, or descendants of people, who committed some serious infringement of caste regulations that led to their being ostracized from orthodox Hindu society. A person could become a pariah, for example, by marrying outside their social group. (Remember that until about the twentieth century, this kind of thing wasn't so unusual in Western countries either.) Hindus who adopted a new religion, like Buddhism or Jainism, met with disapproval, too.

People who performed unsanitary types of jobs were also considered "untouchable". These were people who cleaned dirty like lavatories or who handled dead animals or dead people. Perhaps the ancients noticed that these people were a source of contagion (of viruses and bacteria we'd say today) and started keeping a distance.

Mlecchas are foreigners, people who never were Hindus to begin with. Generally Hindus have tended to be somewhat suspicious of foreigners. Until only recently, many Hindus considered it a calamity to have to leave India and live with mlecchas. This makes sense because for most of their history Indians enjoyed a high standard of living compared to many other cultures. 

The Hierarchy of Being

The three upper castes (all except the Shudras  are called twice born in Hinduism. The first birth occurs when the infant burst hollering from its mother's womb. The second birth occurs at initiation, the Hindu version of Christian rite of conformation. At this time, the child is inducted into formal spiritual practice. Shudras do not receive this initiation probably because originally they were not considered focused and serious enough to stick with a spiritual discipline. In real life, of course, many Shudras are highly spiritual. Many great saints have come from the shudra caste.

The four castes are very broad groupings. Most Hindus actually think of themselves in terms of their subcaste 

and clan. There are over 3,000 human subcastes in Hinduism. This system represents in the hierarchical nature of souls in the universe, so there are nonhuman subcastes, too. Animals, plants, even insects have their subcaste. So do gods and demons. 

Isha Foundation

Isha foundation is a non-profit, spiritual organization founded in 1992 by sadhguru Jaggi vasudev. It is based at the isha yoga center near coimbatore, India at the Isha Institute of Inner sciences at MacMinnville, Tennessee in the united states. The foundation offers yoga programs under the name Isha yoga It has over 2 million volunteers and works in tandem with international bodies like the Economic and social council of the united Nations.

Isha Yoga is the mastered under which the Isha foundation offers yoga programs. The word "isha ' means the formless divine. Isha yoga's introductory flagship program is 'inner engineering'. It includes initiation into meditation and pranayama and the Shambhavi Mahamudra.