Hinduism

This.

There are two aspects of hinduism fro me.
One is cultural/ancestral, which deals with which gods you worship and how, and is more ritualistic/traditionalistic.
The other is philosophical, ( which is not found commonly today) and is mostly found in books like Gita and Vedas, which gave way to the development of the different schools of thought within hinduism, and also buddhism and jainism, if they are considered seperate from hinduism. This was not always the case as hinduism was not used to refer to themselves.

You're thinking of Buddhism you tard

Um, no?

>And since they have no holy book.

They do its the vedas.

Technically its the Gita though

That's something of a reductive assertion. Hinduism in all it's branching has three main streams of literary influence. One is, of course, the Vedic literature, but we cannot forget the Agamas and the Puranas, which while older, imply in their structure that they've been passed down from a much older time using oral preservation techniques.

Even then the Vedic literature, late and early, gets split up between multiple concurrent and overlapping canons. Different authors would strip down sections of the Vedas and that's how we got the various collections of Upanishads.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upanishads#Association_with_Vedas

Dude stop right there.
Bhagavad Gita is not the only sacred text that exists and itself is a section of the Mahabarata (remember how I just posted about Vedic extraction?)

>which while older
*younger, as in compiled rather later than the Vedas, but imply in their structure......

I for one would include Jains as Hindu, but probably not Buddhists because of the atheism. Theravada Buddhists are as much Hindu and Buddhist, tho.

HinDOOs believe in the sanctity of their own feces, and wallow around in it to the point that it causes enormous health problems.

ftp.iza.org/dp4009.pdf

>Jains as Hindu, but probably not Buddhists because of the atheism
Jains are also nontheist. Jains and Buddhist come from the same religious movement, known as Śramaṇa, and I'd also quibble about the extent of "hindu" concepts in Theravada, unless we consider Vajrayana as a subset of Therevada and not it's own Mantrayana or Tantrayana tradition.

>Theravada

Their veneration of saints is borderline theistic and wildly at odds with Buddhist ideas. Yes they're certainly Buddhist rather than Hindu, but if Buddhism didn't exist no-one would have a problem with calling them a sect of Hinduism.

>Jains

Jains don't worship gods but they do believe in them and honor them in various ways. Really tho I see them as being like Hindus because of the focus on gurus.

Anatma is not athiesm.

"Hinduism" is a Western construct to make sense of the variety of beliefs found in the subcontinent.

Most Hindus believe in the Brahman; the ultimate reality , the One or God if you like. The deities are all different aspects of that Ultimate reality. Different people emphasize or worship different gods but there is no religious violence because they understand each god as simply another element of the Divine.

There are other, more philosophical sects such as Vedanta which is basically a focus on the non-dual nature of the world. There are atheistic and other groups as well.

The only bad ones really are the likes of the new fundamentalists like the Hare Krishnas that are basically Hindu versions of American Evangelicism.

They believe in bullshit. They believe there are 330,000,000 gods. They believe they have to live ;perfectly or be reborn as something worse than what they are. None of them ever live perfectly. So they're trapped in a never ending ladder of failure.

t. insecure christtard

I'm Hindu, maybe I can help you. I can't speak for all Hindus because, as I'm about to explain, Hinduism is pretty eclectic.

Hinduism is basically just an umbrella term for a big set of common traditions and heritage. I guess it's somewhat similar to the idea of the Western canon. It's like asking what white people believe in when they have Norse gods, Greek Gods, Catholicism, Protestantism, etc. Imagine if all of those were lumped under one word like "Europism"

We have different texts like the Vedas, Mahabarata, Ramayana, etc that most people are familiar with to varying degrees. A lot of people probably haven't even read them and are familiar with Hindu concepts through oral traditional alone. Most Indians believe in some variation of the main concepts like atman, the big three (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva), samsara, moksha, etc. Beyond that it's just a big mix and match based on your own beliefs, values, and probably most importantly heritage. A lot of Hindus also incorporate a lot of Buddhist ideas into their beliefs as well.

My family is big on Ganesh, Rama, and Buddha. My Dad passed down these traditions to me orally. I'm familiar with some other traditions from my own research and talking with others. I should note both my Dad and I are atheist, for us it's more of a philosophical tradition. Other people might take their beliefs very seriously and truly believe in their Gods.

I pretty much agree with this.

>My family is big on Ganesh, Rama, and Buddha

So you're Hindu but you follow Buddha? Do you worship him as a god, or do you just meditate in a Buddhist fashion?

Is Rama the same god as Krishna? Or is it more like a Yahweh / Jesus thing?

Many Hindus have a buddha statue in their family altar.

Sure but do they worship him as a god?

As a guru I think. Same with Sai baba.

Some schools of buddhists for all intents and purposes worship Buddha,

>330 million
This meme again.

The original Sanskrit is 33 कोटि. Some retarded western Indologist translated the कोटि wrongly to mean "million" instead of "category".

Hindus will worship anything godlike.

See "Sai Baba" and "Santoshi Ma"

Sort of this, but some Hindus also see him as an avatar of Vishnu.

The Vedas, Itihasas, and the Puranas are all Hindu/Vedic holy texts. Among these the Bhagavad Gita and the Srimad Bhagavatam are considered the topmost. The essence of all Vedic thought is given in the Bhagavad Gita, and I like this for verse for a summation:

"Always think of Me and become My devotee. Worship Me and offer your homage unto Me. Thus you will come to Me without fail. I promise you this because you are My very dear friend. Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reaction. Do not fear." (Bhagavad Gita 18.65-66)

Vedic sastra holds that we are not this material body nor our mind. We are the spiritual soul dwelling inside of the body, trapped within the cyclic process of birth and dead for millions of births. Everyone in this world is looking for happiness and wants to be free of misery, but through the arrangements of material nature one perpetually suffers and never finds real happiness. This is because material is meant for miseries, not for happiness. Real happiness is spiritual, not material, therefore you must escape the material situation to attain actual happiness and liberation from suffering (Moksha). This is best done by directly surrendering unto God and a spiritual master (guru) and serving them (bhakti). Bhakti is the topmost system of practice as confirmed in the Gita, but there are still those who do not are atheists and claim to follow Vedic philosophy.

The sastra is considered infalliable, but of the atheistic school of Adi Shankara use their own interpretation of the scripture concocted by their own mind. As such, they lose the original meaning of the scripture and deviate from the optimal path. But even the atheists who seek to understand their own Self and become one with Brahman ultimately approach God at the end. This is because God is the absolute truth, and stage Brahman that the atheistic school seeks to understand is subordinate to God himself

cont

>Itihasas
Fuck I always forget about these damn things and need to expand my reading list.

"Arjuna inquired: Which is considered to be more perfect: those who are properly engaged in Your devotional service, or those who worship the impersonal Brahman, the unmanifested?

The Blessed Lord said: He whose mind is fixed on My personal form, always engaged in worshiping Me with great and transcendental faith, is considered by Me to be most perfect. But those who fully worship the unmanifested, that which lies beyond the perception of the senses, the all-pervading, inconceivable, fixed, and immovable-the impersonal conception of the Absolute Truth-by controlling the various senses and being equally disposed to everyone, such persons, engaged in the welfare of all, at last achieve Me. For those whose minds are attached to the unmanifested, impersonal feature of the Supreme, advancement is very troublesome. To make progrese in that discipline is always difficult for those who are embodied. For one who worships Me, giving up all his activities unto Me and being devoted to Me without deviation, engaged in devotional service and always meditating upon Me, who has fixed his mind upon Me, O son of Prtha, for him I am the swift deliverer from the ocean of birth and death. Just fix your mind upon Me, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and engage all your intelligence in Me. Thus you will live in Me always, without a doubt." (Bhagavad Gita 12.1-12.8)

The absolute truth is realized in three different stages. Brahman (Spirit), Paramatma (God within the heart), and Bhagavan (God himself). The impersonalist atheists cling to a lower manifestation of the truth, but in the end they come to understand Bhagavan due to their pursuit of truth. All are manifestations of the absolute truth, just like one who studies the sunlight and one who is engaged in study of the sun globe are ultimately engaged in the same topic but different manifestations of it. Herein it is said those devoted to God are considered more perfect than the atheist, impersonalist school.

I recommend reading the Bhagavad Gita first, it contains a nice summary of all Vedic wisdom spoken by Krishna himself. I also heavily recommend reading the Srimad Bhagavatam after the Gita. It's a natural commentary on the Vedanta Sutra by Vyasadeva himself. In fact it is even said:

"O expert and thoughtful men, relish Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, the mature fruit of the desire tree of Vedic literatures. It emanated from the lips of Śrī Śukadeva Gosvāmī. Therefore this fruit has become even more tasteful, although its nectarean juice was already relishable for all, including liberated souls." (Śrīmad Bhāg 1.1.3)

Simply by hearing the Bhāgavatam one can become a God realized soul by the end of it.

Haha an ISCKONtard. So much fun triggering you fucks irl that I don't even need to do it online.

>Bhagavad Gita
I have a few times in various editions.

My last pass on the Gita was Abhinavagupta's commentary, thanks.