For my book, I read Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction by Kim Knott. It lays out Hinduism in an easy to understand way. Each chapter focused on an important aspect of the religion, The Gods and Goddesses, important Hindu scholars, the concepts of karma and dharma, and the stories such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. It gives the stories of not only the Gods; Vishnu, Krishna, Brahma, and Ganesha and the Epic heroes we have all heard of before, but also of lesser known people like Gurus who have made an impact on modern Hinduism; Anandamayi Ma, a modern woman who defied gender roles and become a mother and Guru to many Hindu women in India.
After reading this, I feel like I have expanded my knowledge of Hinduism, not only on things that I already knew, but things I never knew. I was able to expand on the Hindu idea of the self and how they value their inner beings. But I learned a lot of interesting new things, such as the three famous Hindu philosophers, Shankara, Ramanuja, and Madhva, whose ideas changed the way many Hindu scholars understood the readings of the Vedas, the Hindu sacred texts. This book also helped me discover the path I wanted to follow for my research paper. After reading this, I think I want to focus on the idea of karma, or the spiritual side of yoga, how it affects the mind as well as the body. Hinduism is such a unique religion it's hard to choose one thing to focus on!
Alex,
ReplyDeleteIt looks like you have a pretty solid idea of the direction that you want to take. It'll be interesting to take a look at the connection between yoga and the beliefs of Hinduism. I know that when I travelled to India, the family that I stayed with is Hindu and would practice meditation and yoga in the morning. When you complete the paper, I would love to read the paper to see what the connections are between yoga, karma and the ideology of Hinduism.
I love that you learned about the hindu philosophers and the physical connection to the religion. I have loved hinduism for some time, but all my knowledge was really focused on the gods and myths rather than the real-life aspects of the religion. I think it would be really cool to delve deeper into the religion as you are doing because, as you said, it is a very unique religion. I think that part of the uniqueness is that it is (sort of) polytheistic. Somehow, this gives it this bright, exciting, coloration that in my opinion makes it drastically different from other religions. It might be interesting to look at how the difference in the gods and goddesses of Hinduism sets is so much apart from the main monotheistic relations. Another big difference is that it seems like it really affects its practicers more physically than other religions. As both you and Evan mentioned, Hindus meditate and do yoga, but beyond that the religion seems to impact their everyday lives much more than say, christianity. I'm really looking forward to hearing more about your paper!
ReplyDeleteAlex,
ReplyDeleteYou seem like you know exactly what approach you want to take on this paper. You also seem very passionate about Hinduism. What approach are you going to use to make your points on karma? Because karma is a very abstract concept. I'm interested to see how you will go about that.