Hinduism 330 million gods
The film, Hinduism 330 Million Gods, gave a basic overview of Hinduism. It focuses primarily on the Hindu concept of the divine, religious practices and the stages of life. It derived most of its information from ordinary Hindus with some commentary from some more educated Hindus. Hinduism has many gods and goddess but at he same time has a monist belief. These two apparently contradictory views are reconciled by the idea that all the gods are just different manifestations or facets of Ultimate reality. In the film we where given the analogy of ultimate reality or "Brahman" as the powerhouse and all the gods as light bulbs. The Ganges River, is not only sacred in Hinduism, but is also considered a goddess. Hindus believe that the river can wash away their sins and reward them with immortality. In the film we saw people bathing themselves in the river to purify
Since ultimate reality is beyond what we are capable of sensing, the idol acts as a proxy. Hinduism considerers idol worship perfectly acceptable, unlike many other religions, such as Islam, which totally rejects even having religious images in place of worship. The film showed the Hindu concept that each stage of life has a different duty. The first stage is that of a student, upon entering this sage a child is considered "twice-born", this has nothing to do with reincarnation but referrers to being born into the duties of caste by learning the Vedas. It approached Hinduism from a western point of view and described it in ways that someone with little knowledge of Hinduism would be able to understand. It is often said that Hinduism is less a religion and more a lifestyle, the over lapping images of people engaged in a religious cleansing while at the same time engaged an ordinary activity serves to illustrate this. The next stage is that of a householder, when a person has a family and works to provide for them, the third stage is when a person starts to recede from the world and focus on prayer and meditation and the last stage, which is no for everyone, is when a person totally recedes from society and becomes a wandering acetic. The film was a good introduction to Hinduism. He has a spartan lifestyle, spending most of his time in meditation and prayer. In the film we saw a school in rural India during a religious festival. They prayed to an idol, made offerings to it and when the festival concluded they destroyed it. For Hindus an idol is simply an aid to concentration, in the film it was referred to as being like a "pointer". The whole point of becoming a religious devotee is to become closer to ultimate reality or what the West would call "God".
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