Atman is the self that Hindus hold to lie beneath personality, body and mind. It is not the character a person builds up but what is present underneath all of that.
The Upanishads press the point by elimination. What changes cannot be the atman, so the body, the senses, passing thoughts and the sense of being a particular somebody are all set aside.
The Chandogya Upanishad states the result in a famous phrase, tat tvam asi, that you are, spoken to a student about the reality underlying everything.
Hindus contrast atman with jiva, the living individual bound up with body and ego. The religious task is often described as releasing the atman from that entanglement.
The schools then divide over how atman stands to Brahman. Shankara and Advaita hold that the two are finally identical, Ramanuja that the atman is real and permanently dependent on God, and Madhva that they are eternally distinct.
None of these accounts makes the atman a personality that survives. What passes on carries karma but not the memories, the name or the body of the life just ended.
Definition
Atman is the self or soul that Hindus hold to underlie a person.
It is distinguished from jiva, the individual bound to body and ego.
It does not change and is neither created nor destroyed.
Schools differ over whether it is finally identical with Brahman.
Analogy
The Katha Upanishad compares a person to a chariot.
The body is the chariot and the senses are the horses.
The mind is the reins and the intellect is the driver.
The atman is the passenger whose journey it is.
A driver who cannot hold the horses never arrives.
Samsara and rebirth
Samsara means wandering, and Hindus use it for the round of birth, death and rebirth through which the atman passes.
The cycle is described as beginningless, and it is not confined to human lives. Animals are inside it, and so are the devas, the gods, whose very long lives also end.
Rebirth is not treated as a fresh start. The situation a person is born into is understood as continuous with what came before it.
The Bhagavad Gita supplies the standard image: as a person puts off worn out clothes and puts on new ones, so the embodied self leaves worn out bodies and takes others.
There is no permanent hell in this picture, so even the worst rebirth is temporary. Hindus describe heavens and hells as places where merit or demerit is worked off before the round resumes.
Moksha, release from samsara, is the aim the tradition sets, and the paths that are held to reach it form a study of their own.
Definition
Samsara means wandering, the round of birth, death and rebirth.
Hindus hold that the atman passes through it many times.
It takes in animals and gods, not only human beings.
Release from it is called moksha.
Karma, pap and punya
Karma means action, and Hindus use the word for the law by which actions bring fitting consequences back to the one who performs them.
The law is described as impersonal and reliable, a feature of how the world works rather than reward and punishment handed down by a judge.
Analysts sort karma into three stores. Sanchita is what has accumulated, prarabdha is the portion ripening in the present life, and kriyamana is what is being made now.
That third store is why karma is not a closed system. Present action is treated as genuinely free, so it changes what a person carries forward.
The moral vocabulary that goes with it is pap and punya. Pap is the demerit wrongdoing earns, and punya is merit or spiritual excellence, gained by right action, worship and giving.
Devotional traditions qualify the law. In the Gita Krishna tells Arjuna to abandon all other duties and take refuge in him alone, and bhakti movements hold that God can remit accumulated karma.
Definition
Karma means action, and names the law that actions bring fitting results.
Hindus describe it as impersonal rather than as divine punishment.
Pap is the demerit wrongdoing earns and punya is merit.
Its results may fall in this life or in a later one.
Common Mistake
Karma is often taken to mean that everything is already fixed.
Hindus treat present action as genuinely free.
Only part of a person's accumulated karma is ripening at any time.
Reformers including Gandhi attacked using karma to excuse neglect of the poor.
Nothing in the doctrine instructs anyone to leave suffering alone.
Maya and the world
Maya covers the world as it appears, measured out and changing and not what it seems to be. The word is often translated illusion, and that translation needs handling with care.
Shankara gives the strongest reading. The world is real enough for everyday purposes but not ultimately real, so he separates practical truth from the highest truth.
Other schools read maya as God's creative power. Vaishnava teachers describe the world as the real work, and sometimes the play, of a real God.
Avidya, ignorance, is what makes maya a problem. The trouble is not that things appear, but that they are taken to be permanent and to be one's own.
That mistake is what ties the atman to samsara, since desire fastens on whatever is thought to last, and action follows desire.
So maya is a diagnosis rather than a dismissal. Hindus who use the word still marry, work, raise children and keep their duties.
Definition
Maya is the changing, measured out appearance of the world.
Calling it illusion wrongly suggests that nothing is there at all.
Shankara treats the world as real for practice but not ultimately real.
Vaishnava teachers read maya instead as the creative power of God.
The three gunas
Hindu analysis describes everything made as woven from three strands, the gunas, a scheme inherited from the Samkhya school.
Sattva is clarity, lightness and goodness, rajas is energy, passion and restlessness, and tamas is heaviness, inertia and darkness.
All three are held to be present together in anything, and what differs from one thing to another is only the proportion.
The Bhagavad Gita applies the scheme very widely, sorting food, sacrifice, giving, knowledge and even resolve into three kinds by their dominant guna.
Practice follows the analysis. Many Hindus prefer sattvic food, fresh and mild, on the ground that what is eaten shapes the mind that has to do the religious work.
The gunas belong to prakriti, the created order, so the aim is not to pile up sattva forever but to see past all three.
Definition
The gunas are the three strands running through everything created.
They are sattva, rajas and tamas.
All three are present in anything, and only the proportion varies.
The scheme comes from Samkhya and is used throughout the Gita.
Example
The Gita sorts giving into three kinds by guna.
A sattvic gift goes to a fit person at the right time with nothing expected back.
A rajasic gift is made grudgingly or in hope of return.
A tamasic gift goes to the wrong person at the wrong time.
The same threefold test is applied to food, worship and knowledge.
The concepts as one chain
Taken separately these look like four doctrines. Hindus use them as one account: the atman is caught in samsara, held there by karma, and kept there by mistaking maya for the real.
The chain also runs backwards. Seeing through maya loosens desire, action then loses its grip, karma stops accumulating, and the round can end.
The gunas explain why the change is slow. A mind weighed down by tamas or driven by rajas cannot easily see what the analysis asks it to see.
Because the account is shared, Hindus who disagree about much else can still use it. Advaitins, devotees of Vishnu and worshippers of the Goddess all speak of atman, karma and samsara.
They differ over what release finally means and how it is reached, and those questions belong with moksha and the yogas.
The vocabulary appears constantly in ordinary life, in explanations of misfortune, in decisions about food and duty, and in what is said over the dead.
Active recall
What is the difference between atman and jiva?
What does samsara include besides human lives?
Name the three stores of karma and say which one present action affects.
Why is translating maya as illusion misleading?
Name the three gunas and give one way the Gita uses them.