Religion

Religious Studies and Religious Traditions Paper Part 1

Relationship with the Divine

I think most Hindus hold a view about the God that there is no separation between God and the Creation. In Hinduism God (Brahman) is considered to be everything. This causes a problem for me as a student of religious studies this idea is difficult to understand just because it is difficult to have a relationship with the Divinity, if the divinity is all about the totality of existence. God out of his grace manifests as particular embodied forms which are in temples and homes. The main purpose of these embodied forms is that the people can easily worship and form a relationship with the Divine. The embodied forms which are made by Hindus certainly do not exhaust the Divine but they are represented as manifestations of God. I think the main idea behind these manifestations is that the devotees can easily form a close relationship with the Divine. This is the reason this worship cannot be called idolatry, because idolatry is defined as worshiping something as a God, which is not actually God. Hindus believe that these embodied forms of the Divine are material manifestations of Divine itself and they are not considered just as some symbols which point to the Divine. I have also come to know that most Hindu traditions believe that everything is sacred, whereas in most world religions only God is considered as Divine. Hindus don’t worship their gods directly in fact they worship their earthly manifestations. (Patheos Library)

Example of relationship with Divine

In Islam, Muslims have a direct relationship with Allah (Divine) they do not believe in a middle man or any sort of embodied form of the divine.

Relationship with Sacred Time

Hindus view the time as cyclical. The cosmos is created and then maintained for a certain period of time then destroyed, only to be recreated. This cycle has no beginning and no end. Each world cycle (sometimes called as a great cycle) is the...