Good

morning!

Before we even start this morning’s trial lecture, I’d like to thank all of you in the
judging panel for an opportunity that I consider to be a great honor, specially when
speaking English, a language that makes everything sound a bit more serious, more
definitive.
In first place I’d like to introduce myself, I’m MSc. Juliana Pereira, historian, and
for this morning’s lecture the category is: Hinduism: Hindu beliefs and the Bhagavad
Gita.
Through its representations in western pop culture it is rather difficult to figure
out how Hinduism works: its practices, its aesthetics and its stereotypes are not enough
to give us the slightest perspective of such an ancient and complex belief system.
Bearing this in our minds, we realize that to squeeze some of its most important aspects
in 20 minutes is quite a challenge. Thus, we decided to stick with it’s basics in a topic
structure roughly expressed like this:

• Origins of Hinduism;
• Sacred writings and books;
• The belief system and its social practices;
• Activity proposal: Hindu faith in the western culture.

Origins of Hinduism

The Hinduism is considered to be a polytheistic religion. Many of its deities have
their own day to be worshipped on, as, for instance, lord Shiva (the Creator) is
worshipped on Mondays, but Hindus themselves do not have a specific day to attend to
the temple: they just do it as they feel like. The multiple scriptures and the absence of a
single leader who tells the way they should be interpreted broaden the range of how
rituals and practices can and are being carried out throughout India and Southeast Asia.
Other than India, the religion is practiced in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Malaysia,
Singapore, Mauritius, Fiji, Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, United Kingdom,
Canada and United States, making it the third most practiced religion in the world, after
Christianity and Islam.
Hinduism is considered by many to be the oldest active religion in the whole
world, with its name being traced to the ancient Sanskrit language, in which the word
“Sindhu” meant river and, later, by the time of the Muslim conquests in the Indian
subcontinent (from 12th to the 16th centuries), a variation of the word – Hindu –
pointed towards those who lived across that river. That means that Hindus didn’t
originally call their religion by that name but by their own name, the Sanatana Dharma
or The Vedic Darma, meaning something that we could roughly translate as The Eternal
Way. Unfortunately we have no word that can accurately explain what means the word
Dharma whether in English or in Portuguese.
According to scholars, the Hindu belief system has no founding father or single
leading figure, as its traditions derive from the most different origins and multiple
cultural and traditional roots. It indicates that the religion has evolved over time through
different types of main books and scriptures from which we can list a group of songs,
poems and prayers known as The Vedas.

A question for you, my legendary children: Which type of religious scriptures
are you familiar with? Have you ever read a religious scripture or, at least, part
of it?

Sacred books and writings

Four of the most important Vedas can be identified as the Rigveda: which is the
first ever written text of the Hinduism, more than 3,800 years ago, stem from orally
passed down texts even older than that from generation to generation; The Samaveda;
The Yajurveda and the Atharvaveda. There are many other categories of texts that are
sacred to the Hindu, and even today, many of its verses are part of the Hindu
celebrations, what make them probably the oldest religious texts currently still in use.
The one text we’ll be focusing on is the Bhagavad Gita - roughly translated as
Song of God. Often referred only as The Gita, the 700 verse scripture which is part of a
VERY much longer epic poem named Mahabharata. For the ones curious enough o ask,
the Mahabharata is composed of 18 books and approximately 200,000 verses, from
which the Bhagavad Gita represents the chapters 23 to 40 from the 6th book.
Written in Sanskrit, the Bhagavad Gita describes the dialog between Krishna –
the supreme personality of God, Truth and Justice – with Arjuna, a warrior disciple
amidst the field of battle. Arjuna represents the role of a distracted soul, confused about
his duty in war and in life, that receives from lord Krishna himself the gift of enlightment
on the path to the fulfillment of self. Over the course of the dialogue they approach
some of the most important elements of the divine philosophy and timeless themes like
the nature of god, the nature of self, the nature of the world, the Brahman-atman in
which every living person is considered to bear in itself part of a single universal spirit,
and diverse personal means to reach the divine.
The book is considered to be one of the most sacred scriptures of the Indian
culture and is also the main scripture of the Vaishnava religion, a variation of the Hindu
faith that embraces the preeminence of the Vishnu and Krishna deities, along with
sociopolitical like the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, vulgarly known as
the Hare Krishna, made popular in the western culture in the 1960s. The approach to
western worshippers allowed the Bhagavad Gita the be translated to various languages,
making easier for the lay audience to get to know the teachings of the Dharma, the
religious Bhagavata and instructions on the devotional service to Krishna, according to
the precepts of a number of sacred Vedic scriptures. Among these precepts the book
understands the self-realization as a science and the consciousness in Krishna as a
devotional service that must be carried out through the bhakti yoga, or the divine
communion.
The Bhagavad Gita represents the very fiber from which the Hindu knowledge is
weaved, and is also regarded as one of the most important texts on philosophy and
spirituality not only in India, but in the whole world. The everlasting philosophy of the
book had instigated the minds of many great thinkers of humanity, as well as influenced
the birth of numerous spiritualist movements.

Fun Fact: Brazilian singer Raul Seixas along with his long time partner
songwriter Paulo Coelho released a song with the name Gita in a self-titled
album back in 1974. The song became a huge success, earning them the prize
of a Gold Record.

Hindu belief system and its practices

The whole Hindu belief system is based on six principles, here noted as:

• Truth is Eternal: There might me many different pathways to achieve the Truth.
Through, for instance, devotion, knowledge, duty, but all of them are just
different forms to achieve the one truth that transcends their own existence.

• There is one main God, even though he might be no the only one: The Brahman
is the one god or soul through which other gods and goddesses can manifestate.
Brahman is the creator soul of the universe, sided by other powerful gods like
Vishnu (the Protector), and Shiva (the Destroyer), along with uncountable other
minor gods and mother goddesses whom which Hindus can decide to pray (or
not to pray) to.

• (We’ve alreadybeen through that one) All Hindus believe that the Vedas are
sacred: Their hymns, prayers and rituals, memorized and passed down orally
from generation to generation in the times of yore gave origin to the set of books
aforementioned. It is indeed worth to notice that some Hindus choose to follow
some Vedas more than others, since it is not a dogmatic religion.

• Dharma: the aforementioned word means the very motive of the journey in
which every Hindu lives on this Earth to find and to fulfill. It is, again, a rather
difficult word to translate, but it reflects mostly the belief that there is a way of
living life according to your own path of truth and righteousness.

• All souls are immortal: and they were immortal even before Plato wrote
Phaedon. Hindus believe that every human being possesses an atman, a bigger
connection to the universe. And this atman, this part of god that lives inside
everyone interconnect us among ourselves and to the universe, to Brahman.

• Karma and Reincarnation: The good and bad deeds of present and past lives
have decisive influence over ones path (ones dharma) to finally reconnect to
Brahman. Considering that the atman (soul) is immortal, universal and eternal it
is not surprising that it can transcend the physical body and reincarnate, with its
dharma (path) being modulated by the actions (karma) of past lives. It
 determines, for instance, who one is going to be born as, who one’s parents are
going to be, if one is going to live a successful or unsuccessful life.

• The Caste System: The dharma journey, the karma burden and the reincarnation
are bone marrow of the caste system. Even though it is prohibited in modern day
India, the belief in the caste system was justified by the person you were born
into, according both to your dharma and karma.

This image shows a parallel between the nature of the Brahman and the Caste system,
in which:
• Close to his head are the Brahmins, who were determined to become priests and
scholars.
• In his arms are the Kshatriyas: the class of warriors from which kings and rulers
were chosen.
• As his legs were the Vaishas: the farmers, traders and merchants.
• As his feet were the labourers.
• And outside of the whole system were the Dalits, who, considered untouchables,
dealt with everything rotten, including human waste.

The ones who were born into the superior member castes were considered to be closer
of the Moksha, the salvation, the liberation of this eternal cycle of life and death and
the freedom to rejoin the universal spirit of Brahman

FUN FACT: Hinduism the only religion in the world that worship women goddesses.


Activity proposal

Is it possible to find references to the Hindu culture and belief in western pop culture?
Have you ever seen a reference in a movie, videoclip, song or anything else? Is it ok for
western artists to appropriate from elements of a foreign culture?

Do some research online and bring your samples to class so we can discuss them.

I will most certainly bring my own reference to class and hope you guys enjoy it ;)

Raja Gemini as a Hindu deity at RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 5 Reunion (2013).