IB World Religions 4.1.1. Brahman, the Trimurti and the Avatars Notes

4.1.1. Brahman, the Trimurti and the Avatars

Brahman as ultimate reality

1. Hindus use Brahman for the ultimate reality that underlies and pervades everything. The word is neuter, and it does not name a god who could be one among others.
2. The Upanishads supply the classic statements. The Chandogya Upanishad says that all this is indeed Brahman, and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad approaches it by denial, neti neti, not this, not this.
3. Later teachers sum Brahman up as sat-chit-ananda, being, consciousness and bliss. The phrase is meant to indicate rather than to define.
4. Because Brahman is held to lie beyond ordinary categories, Hindus treat every description of it as provisional. Speech points towards Brahman and does not capture it.
5. How Brahman stands to the self within a person is the question the Upanishads press hardest, and the schools answer it in strikingly different ways.
6. None of this amounts to a creed. Sanatana dharma, the eternal teaching, involves belief in a supreme being while leaving Hindus free to conceive that being personally or impersonally.

Nirguna and saguna

1. Hindus distinguish two ways of speaking about Brahman. Nirguna Brahman is without qualities, beyond form and description, while saguna Brahman is Brahman with qualities, personal and approachable.
2. Saguna Brahman is commonly called Ishvara, the lord, and it is at this level that the deities of temple and household are met.
3. The distinction concerns access rather than two separate realities. Most teachers hold that one Brahman is being described in two registers.
4. The schools weigh the registers differently. Shankara and the Advaita tradition treat nirguna as the higher truth, while Ramanuja holds that the personal Lord is fully real and not a lesser approximation.
5. Devotional movements settle it in practice. The bhakti poets addressed a God who hears, and in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says that those who worship him with love come to him.
6. Both registers survive together, so a Hindu may describe Brahman as formless in the language of philosophy and address a deity by name at the household shrine the same evening.

The Trimurti

1. The Trimurti groups three deities by function: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer.
2. Destruction here is not simply loss. Hindus describe the universe as moving through vast cycles, so Shiva's work clears the ground for the creation that follows.
3. The grouping is a later synthesis worked out in the Puranas, and it never displaced the older habit of addressing one deity as supreme.
4. Worship is spread very unevenly across the three. Brahma has almost no cult, the temple at Pushkar in Rajasthan being among the few dedicated to him, while Vishnu and Shiva have enormous followings.
5. Those followings form the two great streams. Vaishnavas hold Vishnu to be the supreme reality and Shaivas say the same of Shiva, each treating the other's deity as a form of their own.
6. Shaktas, who worship the Goddess as supreme, make a third stream, and many Hindus move among these without any sense of changing religion.

Avatars of Vishnu

1. An avatar is a descent. The Sanskrit avatara means a coming down, and Hindus use it for a deity taking form in the world in order to act within it.
2. The Bhagavad Gita gives the classic statement, where Krishna says that whenever dharma declines he comes into being, age after age, to protect the good and restore dharma.
3. Tradition lists ten principal avatars of Vishnu, the dashavatara, running from animal forms such as the fish Matsya and the boar Varaha through Rama and Krishna to Kalki, who is still to come.
4. Rama, whose story the Ramayana tells, is held up as the model of dharma, a ruler and son who does his duty at very great cost.
5. Krishna carries more weight still. He teaches Arjuna in the Gita, and the Bhagavata Purana tells of his childhood at Vrindavan, which stands at the heart of much devotional life.
6. The lists vary by region and sect, some counting the Buddha among the ten and others Balarama. Shaiva traditions rarely use the term at all, describing Shiva's appearances as manifestations rather than descents.

Murti and darshan

1. A murti is an image in which a deity is present for worship. The word means form or embodiment, and Hindus treat it as a place where the deity makes itself available rather than as a likeness.
2. That presence is understood to be invited. The rite of installation, prana pratishtha, asks the deity to take up residence, and an unconsecrated image is not treated in the same way.
3. Darshan is the point of the encounter. The word means seeing, and the seeing runs both ways, since the worshipper sees the deity and is seen by the deity.
4. This is why the eyes of a murti are large and open, why they are often the last part to be finished, and why temples are arranged so that a worshipper can stand before them.
5. The same word covers other meetings. Hindus speak of taking darshan of a guru, a sacred river or a holy mountain.
6. Not every Hindu accepts image worship. The Arya Samaj, founded in 1875, rejected murtis as a departure from Vedic religion and remains active today.

One reality, many forms

1. The habit of holding one reality and many deities together is very old. The Rig Veda says that truth is one and that the wise call it by many names.
2. Scholars use the word henotheism for the pattern that results, in which the deity addressed at a given moment is spoken of as supreme without the others being denied.
3. The pattern runs from household shrines to the great temples, and takes in local grama devata, village deities whose worship may be older than any Sanskrit text.
4. Hinduism is orthopraxic. What holds it together is shared practice and duty rather than agreement about doctrine, which is why no creed has ever been required of Hindus.
5. So these concepts are held in different combinations. An Advaitin, a Vaishnava devotee and a village worshipper may all use the word Brahman and mean noticeably different things by it.
6. Contemporary practice shows the same range: a diaspora temple housing murtis of several deities, a philosopher describing Brahman as formless, and a family whose evening devotion is addressed to one deity by name.