okay today we're gonna get into hindu teachings and we're gonna be moving into that middle section of history that looks at the Upanishads and some of the new teachings of Hinduism that developed during the medieval ages the first thing I want to point out that before we move on is that there are actually four different religions that all start in India and so we labeled these earlier at the dharshan or religions because they all have the same five the same basic teachings so Hinduism Jainism Buddhism and Sikhism all started in India and therefore they have a lot in common with each other they all teach Dharma samsara karma and moksha in various ways so we're going to go over some of those terms today so that you know what those words mean and then I will test you on that and upcoming quizzes but what I want you to know is how each one of those religions views those different concepts in different ways that is they obviously come two different opinions about what karma is or how it gets applied or what samsara is so I want you to note what some of those differences are that go through some of the other chapters and then those will be the kinds of questions that I put on an upcoming quiz so today we're going to look at Hinduism later on we'll look at Jainism and Buddhism and then much later on we'll look at Sikhism but today I will define those terms so that you need to know what those terms mean for those chapters when we get to them later on alright so let's get right down to it the scriptures of Hinduism are bountiful there's hundreds of different books in Hinduism but the oldest scriptures that they have are called the Vedas and that comes from the Sanskrit word Veda which means wisdom or to see in Sanskrit seeing something it doesn't necessarily mean with your eyes it can mean kind of understanding it and so wisdom or seeing things are kind of similar in that language I guess that's very similar to English right when we say you know we're like in calculus class and we figure something out and we go oh I see it's kind of how the word is used in sands as well in fact we even get some English words from the Sanskrit word Veda we get the word video or view or visor all of which come through the Latin language Veda is the source of the Latin word to see so when the Hindus use this word they're not just talking about what you see with your physical eyes but what you see with your mind's eye and to embody that teaching the Hindus well that does place a red dot on the forehead to indicate the third eye of enlightenment so you can see like physical things with your physical eyes but you can understand spiritual things with your spiritual eye and that's what this is is a representation of the Vedas are your ability to understand religious truths so you don't see good and evil but you can know it you don't see God's existence but you can know it and so what the Vedas are trying to do is to open people up to these spiritual truths that help them to see religion so that's what the Vedas are geared for now most people don't read the Vedas they're mainly written for the priests and have to do with the older parts of religion but in the medieval ages hindus wrote some additional scriptures we call the Upanishads and Upanishads are a variety of different texts as different gurus would study religion or study nature and come to a new discovery right they would learn something new and therefore become enlightened the Upanishads are philosophical ideas that are derived from introspective meditation so Thea guru is simply meditating on some religious questions something about morality or theology or something like that they would then write that teaching down and that would become a new scripture so for the Hindus scriptures are not closed right there there's not like a closed Canon where you say these are the scriptures and you're never going to add to it again they continue to add to their scriptures as they learn new things about religion in fact they think that that's how religion should work is that you continue to learn stuff and as we evolve spiritually we continue to write those spiritual teachings down and people can kind of follow those different paths the word Upanishad literally means to sit near so you're supposed to kind of picture a student sitting next to his guru learning about religion much like that story I told you in the last lecture where the student was asking how many gods there are that was a story from the Upanishads so you can kind of picture these teachings in the illustration of the Upanishads now one of the open assad's is the most beloved book in all of India and that's called the bhagavad-gita that that title bhagavad-gita means the song of the divine one and it's actually referring to Vishnu particularly one of his incarnations Krishna so the whole story is about how Krishna is trying to teach religion to a warrior noble named Arjuna and as Arjuna goes on these wild escapades Krishna's trying to teach him a stuff about religion so at the end of this lecture I'll tell you the story of the bhagavad-gita just you can kind of give a sense for what that story is all about most Hindus have read the Bhagavad Gita it's actually the most beloved book in India Gandhi used to walk around with a copy of it with them at all times and he would read it every day he said every day you'd read a little bit from it and he got something new out of it every day not everyone has read the Upanishads but some people will read a few of them I've only read maybe a dozen of them and most people don't read the Vedas I've tried I get through the Rig Veda but it's not as relevant to today's society so mainly that's just resorts those are scriptures that have more to do with the priesthood than anything and then as I said the Hinduism believes that there are 330 million different gods and I'm not going to go through all of them but I do want to just point out the Trimurti are the three gods that are the most important today Brahma Vishnu and Shiva we already talked about their qualities of creation and sustaining and destruction but ultimately speaking Hinduism is about one thing and is Brahman Brahman literally means that which makes great and the reason why it means that is because Brahman makes things what they are Brahman is the substance of everything in the universe Brahman is the universe you could describe Brahman as the unchanging absolute being he's absolute in the sense that is the complete category right there's nothing missing from him he is literally everything and he's unchanging in a sense that if you are everything what would you change to like if you have all of the properties of the universe then to change would do indicate that either you didn't have everything to begin with or you'd have to get rid of something and then you'd no longer be Brahman you see what I'm saying in order to be everything you have to be everything at all times and that is what Brahman is so notice that I occasionally we'll use the he pronoun as just a I don't know it's an English habit I guess that people tend to call God he and the Hindus would say no you you really can't assign gender to God because God is genderless right God doesn't have genitalia those concepts don't really apply to it God is both male and female and everything in between God is both lightness and darkness Brahman is all things and it's hard to even describe what that thing is so if they just say it's the spiritual essence of the universe Brahman is the heart of what all things are made out of now oddly enough right science kind of establishes something like this where if you've studied physics before you probably are well aware that everything consists of a set of atoms and atoms are made up of subatomic particles like protons neutrons and electrons and when you really get down to it you can even break those parts down into their sub subatomic particles and there you get like gluons and nuan's and quarks and when you really get down to what everything is made of it's all just made up of energy and for the Hindus they say aha see science has proven what we've been teaching for five thousand years they believe that all of the universe is made up of the same energy and that energy is God notice it's not a person with arms and legs Brahman just is the energy of the universe that all things are comprised of so they describe Brahman in three different terms they say that Brahman is sunt which means reality itself it is chit and which means pure consciousness so brahmana is not a physical being it's conscious being it's simply thought thinking about itself if you will and third it is Ananda which means blissful so it's doing good so that's the idea brahmana is that the thought that happens in the universe that makes things great that makes things what they are and that's what Hinduism is all about this concept to understand and to know and to become one with Brahman so Brahman is the spiritual essence of the universe in that it's not the physical stuff it's not the Sun and the moon it's not the earth and the people it's it's the stuff that underlies all reality that's what Brahman is and that thing is what the Hindus call God the same thing is true with human beings right we are not our physical being I mean our true self is something other than the physical parts of us Hindus believe that when you die your soul lives on and they have a word for that the soul they call it Atman audubon is the spiritual essence of each individual being it is unchanging and imperceptible because you can't see this thing it's not something that you see with your physical eyes you only see physical things with your physical eyes and it's unchanging in the sense that it's the thing that's true about you from birth till death and everything in between and Beyond right it's the thing that lives on after you die and before you were born it is eternal it is unchanging it cannot be destroyed it is the spiritual essence of who you are so you might look at somebody and think you know that person that you might confuse the person for the body that they're in but what the Hindus are trying to say is that you are not your body you are your mind you are consciousness having a bodily experience we are not human beings having a spiritual experience we are spiritual beings having a human experience so that shift in thinking indicates that for Hindus it is the conscious self that is real the physical world is always changing it's it's always flawed or limited in some way but consciousness is something that you can't see philosophers have really wrestled with this in if you've ever taken a philosophy of mind class or if you've ever studied philosophy of mind one thing that we cannot pinpoint is what consciousness is right we you know you think if we just open up somebody's skull and look inside the brain we're gonna find consciousness somewhere in there and we can't find it the consciousness seems to be something different than the physical gray matter of your brain so I'm not gonna be able to like do brain surgery and like pull out the true person be like here is here's Brian or you know like that's not that's not the thing it's something different than the physical matter it's something that cannot die you can't cut it in half you can't you know dissect it or do experiments on it so for the Hindus they're trying to capture the essence of who you really are you are your thoughts you are your your consciousness and therefore you're playing out this human life through your physical eyes but the thing that's inside of you having that physical experience that's who you really are that is your op Mun so sometimes this is translated as self or soul but if you're thinking of a soul like like a like a ghost a ghostly apparition of your body then you're missing the point this consciousness is something that has no shape or form or or mass it's just pure consciousness so what the Hindus are trying to get you to do is to recognize that when you see people you're not seeing the true self when we look at a person we might make judgments about that person just based on the way they look and we don't know anything about that person right we might see somebody who's wearing a hoodie and think oh they must be a criminal I should shoot them in the face no you don't know that person you don't know anything about them other than the way they look and you make these judgments right about people that that have no bearing in reality because you haven't taken the time to get to know that person so what Hindus are trying to say is that you've got to be careful that you got to get to know the person carefully to see the true self and notice that that takes time when I get to know students I don't know who they are and it takes me several weeks maybe even months to even get to know their personality gets another character get to know their likes and their dislikes it takes a long time it's a vested interest of getting to know a person and finding out who they really are that's what the true self is and therefore Hindus are saying you need to get to know that being not just the physical aspects of the of the body so here's one of the million dollar questions in Hinduism if you are the spiritual being within your body eternal unchanging imperceptible being and Brahman is a spiritual essence of the universe then what's the difference between you and God what's the difference between atman and brahman and the answer is drumroll please there is no difference what Hindus realize at some point is that consciousness is just consciousness everywhere it's not like it's located here so some of you may be thinking well we're just parts of the divine consciousness we're not parts of divine consciousness because you can't cut consciousness in half let me try this for a second I want you to have the idea of green in your head right you have that idea and I want you to cut that idea in half you're like Brian I can't cut an idea in half that's not something you can cut in half it's just an idea right it's not a physical thing so therefore you can't cut consciousness in half because it's just thinking that's it so what the Hindu wants you to realize is you are identical to the Divine Being you are the Divine Being you are God and once you come to realize that you start to see other people in a different way that is you don't treat them like you know they're criminals or you don't treat them like they're you know thieves or murderers or whatever you start to realize that those people have the divine spark within them and you got to see them for who they are not for who you thought they were so the word that Hindus used to greet one another is namaste namaste literally means I see the God within you or I greet the God within you I'm trying to say I'm looking past your pupils your irises I'm looking past all of this physical makeup within you and I'm trying to say I'm talking to that thing inside you that is who I'm saying hi to and I'm saying hello you God so if you were to ask a Hindu what is the relationship between humans and and God they'd say I am God it's actually one of the most quoted phrases in Hindu scriptures it says you are that thou art that saying that you are one with the the being of the universe so to understand that means that you you start to treat people better right you treat people like they are divine beings - and you treat them with respect and kindness you treat them with love and charity you don't treat them as criminals you don't treat them as murderers because each one of us is suffering from something that Hinduism calls Maya now Maya is this religious problem of Hinduism it's the thing that keeps us from seeing reality from for what it is it's the world viewed inadequately so we might think that we see things just by you know looking at something right you might you might be making judgments about me based in the way I dress or the way I look or or the way I act some of the things I say but you probably don't know who I am you don't probably know much about me and therefore you're probably making these judgments inaccurately that's what Hindus are saying is the problem of religion we are all suffering from Maya because we see things incorrectly we assume that by looking at someone's appearance that we know something about their person when you don't even know that person you haven't got to know them right you've got to actually spend weeks with a person to really get to know who they are and then you'll see the true self you'll see who they really are when you when you go on dates and you meet somebody you know people say things like oh love at first sight right puppy love or I don't even know what that means right puppy love love at first sight all you know about the person is what they look like and you think you're in love with them I don't even understand that concept right in order to get to know the real person you've got to like spend hours with them asking them questions finding out what they're like what their interests are you know what do they think about this issue what do they think about that issue and that takes months years decades right you've got to get to know the real person and that's that's what causes I think a lot of the problems I think that one of the reasons why our divorce rate is so high is that we're in these relationships and then you know we get to know the person and we're like oh you're not who I thought you were because when we first meet somebody all we know about is what the way they look but we project onto the person all of our ideal qualities let's say I'm going on a blind date right and I meet somebody oh I know is the way she looks I don't know anything about her and so I might project onto her qualities that I want to be true cuz I want this relationship to work and therefore I'm projecting my best qualities under her only to find out a couple months later that she's not that person and then I walk away disappointed and be like oh right I'm speaking from experience here because before I met my wife I dated 40 women now you do the math right that's a lot of women per year and so therefore I was you know in every way of the relationship would end within two months because it would take about two months for me to really get to know the person and when I got to know her I realized she was not who I wanted her to be I was holding her to some you know ideal that wasn't realistic it wasn't who she was and it finally clicked with me when I met my wife that in order to fall in love with someone I've got to love them for who they are not who I want them to be and that's I think the problem in America is that we have these like imaginary visions about what people are like and then when we see reality we find out that people have flaws or we find out that they have different opinions on issues than what we have we just say oh I'm out of here like we can't handle that and so 40 relationships all failed because I had I didn't take the time to really get to know them and when I did find out who they were like I didn't choose to love that person so with my wife I did the opposite I said I'm gonna find out who she is and I'm going to choose to love her for who she is not for what I think she is because if you're just you know pretending that a person's gonna be some way that they're not you're living in a dream world or you don't really understand the person you're not really in love with a person you're in love with your idea of that person and that is fantasy that is a lie and the Hindus are trying to tell you that is Maya that's what's wrong with the world today we don't see things for what they truly are and therefore it causes us all sorts of problems prejudice racism sexism all of those issues are when we think we see someone and we make up assumptions about them we don't know who they are but we have made up in our mind who we think they are and then we act on that false perception Hindus are trying to tell us that the way you think the world is may not be the way the world actually is that it's like we're going around with a veil over our eyes and we perceive the veil to be the reality what the Hindus are trying to get you to do is to pull back the veil and to see things with your third eye right to see the person for who they really are not who you want them to be or who you thought they were you have to do something and it takes work doesn't it this is an easy stuff you know it's very challenging to maintain a relationship someone because you know I spent two years with my wife trying to get to know her and I thought I had figured her out but there were still areas of her life that I had never even explored yet and so I'm still even even now asking her questions about wait a minute tell me about third grade right tell me about second grade I I don't even know who she was back in those days I want to know everything about her and then choose to love her for who she is not who I want her to be that is intrinsic love that is where you are saying I care about the person for who they are not who I want them to be so Maya sometimes translated as illusion and and I suppose that could be a proper interpretation but if you're thinking of delusion that's not quite right you know when somebody drops acid and they say pink elephants floating through the room that's not Maya what they're saying is there really is something there you're just seeing it wrong so there's a story in the Upanishads where a man walks into a darkened room and this is before they had electricity right so he goes into this darkened room to get something and he sees a snake coiled up in the corner because the fear for his life is like oh my gosh yeah snakes are dangerous they're poisonous I could die if I make the wrong move she starts to sweat you know he's shaking at the knees right you know maybe panicking his heart's racing he isn't it what to do he's scared for his life when in reality it's not actually a snake in the corner it's a piece of rope that's been coiled up you see Maya is referring to something that's there but we're just seeing it wrong there really is a rope but we're seeing it as a snake and because we see it incorrectly it provokes fear it provokes anxiety it provokes emotions that are clouding our ability to see things with our third on enlightenment so enlightenment is literally the process of simply turning the lights on to shine some light onto the situation so that you can see things for what they truly are that's what we have to overcome no they have this concept of samsara as the wheel of rebirth the wheel of reincarnation and the original symbol for this in Hinduism was the 8-spoke wheel but centuries later the Buddhists stole that symbol for their religion and the Hindus were like oh so they had to come up with a new symbol and and they have different versions of this but here's an example of a symbol that represents the different stages to enlightenment so notice that the earth is at the center and then around that you've got day and night which could also represent the swirling of good and evil and then there's different spokes that lead to the outer edge of the wheel those are the paths to enlightenment each depicted here in different stages and then the edge of the wheel has the 12 different stages of enlightenment where you're trying to get closer and closer to the edge of the wheel so that you can get off the wheel so samsara is the process of trying to become reincarnated until you can get to the edge of the wheel so that you can jump off as samsara is not a good thing it's actually a bad thing we oftentimes translate the word reincarnation as rebirth but it actually doesn't mean that samsara literally means redeath that is when you when you die you are reborn but what that means is that you're gonna have to die again so that's not really seen as a good thing don't get me wrong there are good things about reincarnation it is after all a never-ending series of second chances what it means that if you screw up in this life and you don't achieve salvation then you can try again in the next life and if you don't make it that time and try it again in the next life so reincarnation is the process of being reborn over and over again now the good aspect of that is that it just makes religion a lot less stressful so I had a Hindu friend in grad school who was taking the comprehensive exams and grad school you have to take these exams where you divulge all that you know about this whatever questions are gonna ask you and you don't know what the questions are going to be and you've got it devolves all of your knowledge about it and if you pass then you get your grad degree if not and you're screwed and we were studying I remember some of my friends were in the library they would actually be reading their books and just fall asleep they wake up and then just start reading again right they one guy even stopped eating and got sick and had to get some food go to the hospital but that my Hindu friend was just like walking through the library and he was like yeah she's like hey do you guys want to go see a movie tonight and I'm like you understand that cops are tomorrow right aren't you gonna study he's like already studied like yeah but don't you want to study some more like if we fail these it's you know it's the end of of the degree and he said he says that's okay if I don't pass this in this life I'll just do it again in the next life and I started to realize right the reason why he was so laid back in his life and Hindus do tend to be kind of laid-back people is because they believe they have this never-ending series of second chances to you know get it right the next time and you know if you don't get it right this time you can continue to try again the negative part of that is that it means if you are reborn you didn't pass in other words there's sort of a test at the end of your life and if you didn't pass a test you didn't get off the wheel so remember the goal is to get off of the wheel of samsara and that's why some Cera is viewed as negative it's sort of like the repetition of being reborn over and over again and then having to die right because you know like if you are reborn you know you just that means you just died and so you're like that kind of sucked because no matter how you die that's terrible right so then you're reborn you're like oh man I got to do it again it sort of like the Groundhog Day if you've ever seen that with Bill Murray or the edge of tomorrow right Tom Cruise tucks that that movie kind of illustrates the point of having to die over and over again it eventually just gets so tiring they just stop trying you know that's how the Hindus sometimes feel about samsara that when this life gets old when you're tired of it that's when you're ready to get off the wheel and so samsara is the process of being reborn until you reach a state of enlightenment so here's an example of reincarnation going horribly horribly wrong I had a student who shared that with me and I just thought I'd share with you guys too it's not enough if you guys like these memes but you can tell me in the comment section what determines the direction of your rebirth is called karma and karma is a cosmic force of the laws of cause and effect right the laws of good and evil if you want to think of it that way karma is when you when you perform an action it has these karmic effects on the rest of the world and that ultimately will shape your reincarnation so when you do good deeds you get good karma good things will happen to you the good reverberations will come back to you but if you do bad deeds and these bad reverberations will go out into the universe and then bad vibes will start coming back to you so you you end up you get what you deserve right if you ever heard the saying what goes around comes around or everyone gets what he or she deserves these sayings are elements of karma and saying that if you continue to treat other people poorly you're going to get treated poorly but if you treat other people with kindness and respect then people will start to show you kindness and respect that's the law of karma now what determines the direction of your at birth is how much good and bad karma you have when you die so you know sometimes karma can have its effect right here in this life for example if I were to you know punch one of you in the face right some of you might punch me right back that would be my immediate karmic effect so sometimes the the cause and effect happens immediately but sometimes it doesn't right there are some people that if you punch them in the face those are unawakened right I don't suffer the the bad karma effect of that until later when I'm like walking across the street and a bus runs me over okay that's that's karma can have these sort of later reverberations that eventually you will get what you deserve so here's the question what if I do a bunch of bad deeds and then I die peacefully in my bed that night what happens where's the bad karma there well that's what determines the direction of your rebirth when you die whichever one of those is higher determines whether or not you go up the wheel or down the wheel of samsara so if your good karma outweighs your bad karma at the point of death then you'll be reincarnated as a higher life-form if if your bad karma outweighs your good karma then you'll be reincarnated as a lower life-form and if they're about even then you'll probably stay where you were in the previous life so the wheel of samsara has at the top the priest the warrior nobles and then the merchants and then the peasants and then the untouchables and then below the untouchables are women sorry it's just Hinduism traditional views women and then below that are cows and then below that or other large animals and then below that or smaller animals and then below that our insects anything that has consciousness has a soul has an Atman and therefore you could be reincarnated as any one of those beings and this is why a lot of people think that cows are sacred in Hinduism it's not that the cows are treated as gods although that's partially true it's that they are treated as if they have at Mons and as an enlightened Hindu would recognize the Atman is God so yeah the animals are just as much a divine being as we are and because you could be reincarnated as a cow or a dog or a pig therefore you shouldn't eat those so we actually have the same morality as Hindus we just have different beliefs we all believe you shouldn't eat your ancestors right you shouldn't eat Uncle Bob but they believe that Uncle Bob might be reincarnated as a cow you you see the point there so the reason why Hindus are vegetarian is because they believe that each animal has an up maan within it the vegetables don't so therefore you're not going to get any bad karma from eating vegetables but taking an animal's life and eating it would be like killing one of your ancestors or perhaps one of your future you know offspring that maybe that cow will die and then later become your son in the next life the point is is that you should treat those animals with respects so Hindus do not harm the cows even when they're just passing through the streets because those animals deserve as much respect as human beings do note the similarity there with indigenous religions so you could be reincarnated in all of these different ways and notice that it's easier to go down the wheel as I'm sorry than it is to go up the wheel so if you know if you're a good merchant you could possibly be reincarnated as a warrior Noble you have to be a really good maybe you give lots of money to charity or something like that but if you're like a bad merchant you might be reincarnated as a peasant and if you're like a really bad merchant let's say like Bernie Madoff who stole sixty five billion dollars in investments from American people like you might be required reincarnated as like a woman or a cow right you know and then like axe murderers and child molesters and people who talk during movies would be reincarnate is like a cockroach or something like that right so it's like the worst kind of existence for those people and I always get this question like well how does a cockroach know what it's Dharma is how does it how does it be reincarnated higher well they just do what their Dharma is whatever the Dharma is of a cockroach I don't know what the cockroach is but you could probably figure out what the Dharma of a cow is to give milk right the to eat grass that's what its purpose is and so you know when a dog is being a good dog and helping you be your man's best friend or whatever the saying is then it's going to be reincarnated as a higher life-form but if it's a rabid dog then it will probably go down the wheel of samsara so you see that karma always has sort of like a two-way street to it there's the Karma that I'm producing out into the world and then there's the Karma it's coming back to me so when I kick someone in the shins for example I'm causing bad karma out into the world that person is receiving bad karma but that person earns good karma for having tolerated this bad deed so you can see that things sometimes happen to you because of other people's actions you get rewarded for having to endure that bad karma but then you will receive punishment for the bad things that you did had reverberations around the world so that's what they're trying to get at here is that karma is going in all of these different directions and then when you die is all kind of tallied up and that determines whether you go up or down the wheel so it's easier to go down the wheel cuz it's easier to kill a million people than it is to save you than just one life right with we could just push a button and drop a bomb and kill thousands of people all at once that's that's easy but it's very hard to actually try to save a person's life so karma is the the wheel the thing that determines the cause and effect of your rebirth so there's a passage from the Rig Veda that kind of hints at this it says the man with food in store who when the needy comes in miserable case begging for bread de hardens his heart against him even when of old he did him service finds not one to comfort him so what this verse is trying to indicate is there's a rich person who has all this food in store right he says he's rich he's got so much food he can't even eat it all and then when a beggar comes to help him even though that beggar may have been a had helped this rich man once in the past maybe they went to high school together and this beggar once did a good deed for the rich man if the rich man turns him away and says no I'm hardens his heart against the beggar and says I'm not gonna give you any bread he will not find anyone to comfort him in his time of need that's karma what the Hindus are trying to say is that the way you treat others is going to be how other people treat you so watch what you do because it's going to come back round and the ultimate goal of Hinduism is moksha moksha literally means liberation and was talking about is liberation from your personal limits your personal ego and your cycle of rebirth that is moksha is what frees you from this constant chain of being reborn over and over again it's literally jumping off of the wheel of samsara so that you can become one with God and that's what the Hindus are striving to achieve that's the religious goal so that's the ultimate goal for Humanity all people are trying to reach that at some point but notice Hindus aren't in a hurry to get there they understand that they've got an infinite series of reincarnations that they can go on if they don't make it this time well then try it again the next time so Hindus are not like all trying to get it right now they don't believe that you know if you screw up in this life it's over right burned no you can do it again and you can try it again and try it again until eventually you will reach this state and when you do you'll become one with God and once every person has done that then this world can be destroyed and the next world can be created and the cycle will begin again so the bhagavad-gita says he who abandons all desires and acts free from longing without any sense of - or egotism he attains to peace so once you are free from your personal ego you are free to reach this state of moksha or enlightenment so if moksha is the goal and Maya is the problem how do you go from the problem to the goal what's the religious solution and there are three answers to that question in Hinduism at least three some people say there's six paths to enlightenment others say there's just five or four but the bhagavad-gita illustrates three paths to enlightenment and personally I think you could probably reduce any of the six other forms of enlightenment to the one of these three so we're just going to go with the three that are found in the bhagavad-gita the first path to enlightenment is called gain jana yoga and that translates into english as the way of wisdom gain Jana means wisdom in the same way that knowledge talks about what we know in our mind in fact the reason why there's a silent K in the word for knowledge is because there's a silent J in the word forget Jana I know that sounds weird but Sanskrit passes through greek and greek to english so gain jana is translated as Knossos in Greek and gnosis has a silent G in front of it that's where we got the word agnostic I think I indicated in the definitions lecture and then from Knossos we get the word knowledge in English and as a sign kay for similar reasons don't ask me why it's just how language works so the way of wisdom is actually the way that I've been teaching you this whole lecture that is the the way of wisdom is to simply recognize that Atman is Brahman and when you understand that truth you live a different life right you begin to treat people with respect you see the divine quality in each person and therefore you're trying to help them out in the same way that they're trying to help you out and therefore you kind of you live for other people you live to help others too to increase the amount of goodness in the world and to help other people achieve enlightenment that's good jnana yoga I shouldn't need to say anything more about it because we've really been talking about that this this whole lecture so that's the first path to enlightenment it's notice it is an intellectual path to enlightenment you simply have to understand the truth of this reality the Atman is Brahman and then intellectually you'll become one with God because if God is pure consciousness and you obtain that consciousness that all things are unified you have become Brahman in consciousness so it's an intellectual conversion to the God to the state that God state of mind so the bhagavad-gita chapter 4 verse 38 and 39 says there is nothing on earth equal and purity to wisdom he who becomes perfected by yoga finds this of himself in his self his Atman in course of time he who has faith who is absorbed in it that is absorbed in wisdom and he who has subdued his senses gains wisdom and having gained wisdom he attains quickly to the supreme peace so notice that once you let go of your personal self and you know thinking like it's all about me my mind I'm just gonna hoard stuff for myself you start to see that everyone else is part of the divine reality - and that they matter just as much as you and when a person recognizes that that's wisdom and that wisdom leads them to the supreme peace moksha the second path to enlightenment is called karma yoga which translates as the way of action karma just literally means action karmayoga is the way of action but in America a lot of people mistakenly think that this means that if you just simply do enough good deeds you'll keep moving up the wheel of samsara until eventually you'll just fly off the wheel and that is not how this works I'm wondering if you can figure out why that doesn't work before I get to it but it's a mistaken concept that if you're just doing good karma to move up the wheel of samsara then you're doing it wrong that's actually not what it means why doesn't it mean that because it's selfish right if you're just simply trying to get good karma or do good deeds to get good karma so that you can be reincarnated as a higher life-form so that you can move up the wheel notice how many times I said the word you and that right it's all about you know that's missing the point so Hindus recognize that you cannot achieve enlightenment through this means of just working good karma instead what they ask you to do is to do selfless deeds without desire or emotion without the expectation that you're going to get something good out of it you just do good for goodness sake have you ever heard that phrase we sing songs like that and around Christmas time or you do good for goodness sake means to value intrinsic goods apart from what you get out of them that is you're not supposed to do things because you get rewards you're supposed to do things because you actually care about the person so Karma Yoga is the ability to do good without any expectation that anyone's going to reward you for that or you're gonna get anything out of it you're just wanting to do good because you want to help somebody because you want to see the world you know be better and and you're kind of just cutting yourself off from the emotions of what that might mean for you as a person so therefore Karma Yoga is kind of the opposite what a lot of Americans think and simply just doing good for its own sake without regard to the consequences or the effects of that action that's Karma Yoga I'll explain that in just a minute when I start talking about the caste system bhakti-yoga is the third path of enlightenment and I think we can explain that pretty easily it's just a path to of devotion if you simply devote yourself to the gods by doing rituals ceremonies and the Hindu temples all of the things that's prescribed by Hinduism maybe the gods will save you in spite of yourself it's not it's not that they are saving you because you were serving them and doing these rituals it's that you basically are asking them for for mercy you're saying I know I can't get to enlightenment by myself I'm not smart enough to understand the way of wisdom I'm not strong enough of will to be able to practice karma yoga therefore I'm just going to serve the gods and hope that they will save me in spite of myself this is what some religions call salvation by grace it's the idea that the gods just take mercy on you and say you know what I will help you in spite of yourself no you're not you're not worthy of this but I'm going to rescue you from yourself that's bhakti-yoga just devoting yourself to the gods through rituals and love and they will help you so those are the three religious solutions I won't do that to you in in other chapters I'll usually keep the religious problem goal and solution as simple as possible but in this case I've got three solutions that the bhagavad-gita tells you and when I get to that story you'll see how each one of those plays out but real quick let's attach this idea of the different paths of enlightenment to the various caste that we saw in the last lecture so the priest of the class is more inclined to follow kin jana yoga simply because they're already doing it that is they are reading the scriptures they're studying things they're trying to figure out the truth of the universe and so Kenyatta Yoga is simply conducive to their lifestyle it fits their Dharma the Dharma of a priest is to study therefore can Jana Yoga fits that that example now a lot of students think well wait a minute why wouldn't the priest perform bhakti-yoga where they're just being devoted to the gods and the answer is is that the priests have to perform those ceremonies for other people not for themselves you know what a priest marries somebody they are themselves not getting married when a priest baptized they're not themselves being baptized so bhakti-yoga is when there you are the recipient of those religious ceremonies and rituals the priests are the ones who have to perform them so it's not like they're getting merits because of that so therefore in yoga kenyatta yoga is what fits their lifestyle because they're already trying to figure out these religious truths so that they can reach enlightenment notice the priests are at the top of the reincarnation wheel of samsara so therefore they are there are just on the cusp of achieving enlightenment in their life the warrior nobles then practice karma yoga and this might be a little bit hard for you to understand at first but I think you'll get the point especially if you think about what Karma Yoga means now there's two aspects to the warrior Noble the warrior and the noble so it applies in both ways if you know someone who has ever been in combat or if you yourself have ever been in combat you'll know what I'm about to describe soldiers have a dilemma that they have to face in their life and it's the dilemma of survival you're out in the battlefield and you're fighting against an enemy that you know is trying to kill you and you don't want to die but you've got to risk your life you've got to put yourself in harm's way to actually achieve the goal of winning this war so the soldier has this dilemma to face while they're in the foxhole they know that if they just stayed ducked down they'll live right there there no one can shoot them but if they pop their head out to fire their weapon out in the battlefield then their bullets fly across that field that could hit them in the head and kill them instantly so what people often have to wrestle with is that fear the fear of death that this could be the last ten seconds of my life right now if I stand up and fire this weapon but soldiers know that you have to overcome that fear that's why Karma Yoga means doing selfless deeds without regard to desire or emotion because you may feel the fear you may feel the emotions weighing upon you preventing you from standing up but you've got to stand up and fire that weapon anyways of course I'm assuming this is a just war and you're fighting for a good reason all that stuff they're saying that you should do good because it's the good thing to do again assuming it's the right kind of war to fight not because you're you're gonna get anything out of it you may not you might even die you might go home maimed for the rest of your life but you did the right thing because it was the right thing to do that's Karma Yoga does that make sense it illustrates how the warrior noble can practice Karma Yoga we can also say that with politicians you know politicians are oftentimes facing scrutiny because no matter what your politics are somebody out there is not gonna like you and there's going to be protest and there's going to be all sorts of debates and and infighting amongst the political parties politicians just have to do the right thing even if they get yelled at or even if they are if people don't elect them again they have to simply do what they think is right in order to achieve their goal of serving the people maybe that doesn't connect with you either let's try a different example relationships you might come across someone that you think is the perfect person for you and your emotions kind of get the best of you and you think I don't know if this is this person's gonna accept me what if what if they don't like me you know I go up to him and if I start talking to them and they might laugh at me or ridicule me and and then I don't know if I can handle that kind of rejection right this fear this insecurity that we all have prevents us from even just walking up to a person and saying hey I like you would you like to go on a date it's scary to do that because you're putting yourself out there and you may not be welcome you may not be invited so karmayoga is saying in spite of your fears in spite of your emotions you need to just do it as right and introduce yourself to that person and if you get knocked down or if you get humiliated fine walk away from that but do the right thing because who knows that maybe that person that you're so scared to talk to is the right person for you and you're just too chicken to do it karma yoga says you've got to do it because it's the right thing you won't know if that's the right person for you until you'd you actually ask them out let me use another example because maybe some you don't know what that that experience is like trying out for a job when you when you go for a job when you sign your application you go for a job interview it's scary right because you're sitting in front of a panel of like three or four people who are scrutinizing your every life behavior they want to find reasons not to hire you that's what the interview process is is to knock out people who don't fit the job description who they don't want to hire theirs and the last person standing is the person they they get so many people are scared of this process of going to an interview because it's it's very intense you know those people are asking you questions trying to get you to mess up so that they can know how you how you deal with the questions they ask it's it's in so intimidating a fact that a lot of people won't even bother applying out of their jobs because hey if I just stay where I'm at at least I I know I have a job here so nobody wants to go for the promotion or no but also change jobs even if their job is really bad they just they just tolerate it because they're afraid of being rejected at the next interview so this can be a challenge know that RVC has a career services that will help you work on your resume and even perform mock interviews mock interviews help you to kind of learn you know how an interview goes because if you know if you wait until after you graduate to go and sit in an interview and that's like the only job that you were vying for like the dream job and then and then you mess that up right you've just messed up a perfect opportunity when you could have been practicing that you've got to go through some mock interviews you've got a you know maybe even apply for other jobs that you know you're gonna turn down just to get the job interview experience and then when you've kind of got that under your belt then you can go for the dream job and say alright let's do this and you'll do better I'm speaking from experience here because when I was at NIU I went through their job Career Services training I took some mock interviews I was also working part-time at a local community college and I asked the Dean who hires people like me I said would you do a mock interview with me and sure I even apply to other places just to have the interview experience so that I would know what an interview was like and you kind of get a sense then what are the questions gonna be like what are they gonna do and you learn how to behave in an interview so that by the time I finally came to Rock Valley College I blew the walls down right I was doing excellent eighty people applied for my job 80 people apply for it that tells you a little bit about the job market in philosophy and I don't think that's true in other cases in other disciplines but you could you get the point eighty people applied for this job but only one person got it this guy right now how many rejection letters have went out that day 79 right so there were 79 people who got turned down but only one of them got the job and I'm not saying that to scare you I'm trying to say that to wake you up that it is just a fact of life that a bunch of people apply for a job but only one person gets it so you're gonna have to get used to rejection it's going to happen to you a lot just because that's the way the system works so going to these interviews is a way of practicing karma yoga in the sense that you're just doing it because it's the right thing to do despite what your emotions are despite what your fears may be hopefully some of these examples will help illustrate the point merchant's then are left with the third path of enlightenment bhakti yoga why because they don't have time for anything else right they're so worried about their businesses in the bottom line and making sure that all of their industry is working properly that they don't have time to study scriptures in practice Kenyatta yoga or the strength of will to practice karma yoga they are simply going to devote the sum of the cells to God's by going to temple performing the ceremonies the rituals and the rites and hope that the gods will save them in spite of themselves now traditionally speaking those 3 castes were considered to be the twice-born which indicates that they are so close to the edge of the wheel of samsara that they could potentially get off of the wheel this lifetime that is when they die if they are really good merchants priests or where your Nobles they could get off of the wheel and become one with God anyone below that line is considered to be in eligible for enlightenment traditionally speaking now things have changed since the caste system has been eliminated and people are starting to realize that yes even peasants even Untouchables can't achieve enlightenment but that hasn't been true for 5000 years so I'm just trying trying to show you that most of Hinduism has this belief that only the top 3 castes can make it to enlightenment the same thing is true with women a woman would have to be reincarnated as a male before she can become enlightened right Atman doesn't have genitalia it's just pure consciousness so you're not male or female op months you're just outlined you're just consciousness so you could be reincarnated as a woman or a man or a cow and therefore the traditional view of women was that they were low enough on the wheel that they'd have to become a male and go up the caste system before they can become enlightened now like I said it's all illegal so even Hindus realize that women can become enlightened mother Teresa is a good example of this where they started to realize she was such a good person they believed that she went straight to moksha that she was able to achieve that enlightenment because talk about a person who sacrificed everything for the sake of others she gave up everything to help widows and orphans in Calcutta India and because of that the Hindus believed that she went straight into moksha so things are changing and of course there are other cases in which peasants and Untouchables have now achieved higher status for example they've already elected their first female president and an untouchable has become Prime Minister in the past so you know there are improvements in the society because of Gandhi's teachings and and others but there is this traditional past so I want to finish up today by talking a little bit about the bhagavad-gita and we'll just tell a quick story and then we'll finish up the Bhagavad Gita is a tale about a prince Arjuna now Arjuna is a warrior noble and his charioteer is Krishna in disguise so Arjuna doesn't realize that his charioteer is a God in the flesh but Krishna's driving his chariot and they go on these wild escapades right and they're on this they're at this war of the Mahabharata war which I indicated earlier is like a huge war between Arjuna and all of his family and the evil cousins and they're all going to fight a war but Arjuna is kind of struck with this right he's supposed to take the throne for India he's supposed to become the next rightful king but the cousins are basically trying to challenge his his king hood and say we're gonna take over the kingdom so they're gonna have this huge war to determine who's going to become the next king and arjun is faced with this dilemma he wants to take the throne but he doesn't want to kill people to do so let alone his own cousins and so he actually gets off of his chariot and he walks down into the middle of a battlefield throws down his bow and arrow and just begins to weep so Krishna gets off his chariot and it's like time stops at this moment right where the battle just kind of freezes and it's just arjuna and krishna talking in the middle of this battlefield and christa asked something like what are you doing our general like you know it's a war you gotta get up and fight and and arjun explains he's like I can't fight you know I don't want to kill these people if I kill people I get bad karma and if it killed them those are my family my cousins right my uncles are over there and I remember playing with them as kids I just feel terrible about this I don't want them to die I don't want to get bad karma and this is just it's just a big mess and so krishna then proceeds to try to convince arjuna to stand up and to fight giving him five reasons and these are the five basic teachings of hinduism number one he says it's your Dharma he's a warrior noble right it's your Dharma to fight when there's war so fulfill your Dharma and do this you are the rightful king to India you are the next in line to take the throne don't let these guys stop you do your Dharma and fight and he says yeah I know but but you know you understand it I don't want to get bad karma for this so if even if I fight they're my cousins and I don't want to get the bad karma for that action so then krishna says well okay you're worried about killing people but understand you can't kill people they're up Mon will live on all you're doing is quickening their reincarnation so you can't technically kill or be killed right you're not gonna die in spell because you're on Mon will live on in the next life so therefore don't worry about whether or not you kill anybody and then you're all tied up with you know whether or not there's karma you're gonna get karma no matter what karma is inescapable that is if you stand up and fight people and you kill them yes you might get bad karma for that but if you don't fight them well then you're betraying your Dharma as a warrior Noble in which case you get bad karma for that and if you sit here and do nothing you still give bad karma so karma is inescapable right that's just a reality that you just have to accept but then fourth he says there is a way to circumvent the effects of karma and that's Karma Yoga if you simply do the right thing because it's the right thing to do then you can achieve enlightenment and so therefore right you you are the rightful heir to the throne then stand up and fight this fight because it is a good fight and if you're not worried about whether or not you live or die then you've you've done the right thing you've you've not just fulfilled your Dharma but you've performed karma yoga and still Arjuna to sister says yeah I don't know like I mean these are great arguments but I'm just not sure if this is you know what I want to do and finally krishna says look if the gods were to come down from the heavens and to tell you to stand up and fight would you do what they tell you to do and arjun is like well of course I would I would do whatever the gods told me to do at which point then Krishna reveals himself as the mighty Lord Vishnu and he looks down upon our journey says I am THE LORD thy God and I am commanding you Arjuna to stand up and to fight and Arjuna at that point quickly pees his pants right and then he gets back on the chariot and he goes to war but the bhagavad-gita ends before you find out the outcome of that war because it doesn't matter whether or not he wins or loses all that matters is whether or not he's following the five teachings of Hinduism and that's the bhagavad-gita in a no-show we'll finish off Hinduism in the next lecture so I'll see you guys then