Hinduism is the ancient religion of India it's the third largest religion in the world with over 1 billion followers and the majority of Hindus do live in India which is the only Hindu majority country in the world for many people it's very difficult to understand what Hinduism is because in so many ways it is more like a disorganized religion than an organized religion Hinduism has no founder it has no common language no common deity no common scripture No common ritual uh all the things that we think about when we think about bounded organized religion most
Hindus would believe that we all have a soul and that soul is a reflection of God so that individual soul that we all possess means that our Natures are inherently Divine that we can know God by going inside of ourselves for Hindus the soul is reincarnated uh over many lifetimes and the goal of Hindu life is to achieve Liberation from the cycle of rebirth Li ation from the cycle of suffering for Hindus it's not just that humans have a soul but all sensient beings have a soul including animals so in India one will see the
multiplicity of depictions of the Divine you will see the Divine represented in animal form for example one way to think about this notion of our souls being inherently Divine is through the Hindu greeting of Namaste which uh is a traditional breathing in India and it literally means the Divinity Within Me acknowledg es and salutes the Divinity within you so in this simple greeting we see a core Hindu theological belief that's articulated in the most ancient Hindu text the rigveda there is a verse that says God is one but the wise call God by many names
or truth is one but the wise call Truth by many names so built right into the heart of the tradition is this notion of pluralism there is no way to convert to Hinduism It's Different Strokes for different folks uh when I was growing up as a Hindu my parents would tell me there are many pass up the mountain but they're all leading to the same place and so uh at its core um Hinduism has a great deal of respect for the other world religious traditions and recognizes them as equally legitimate paths to understanding ourselves and
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