Upanishads Creation Story
In Clooney's Hindu Wisdom, the Hindu Creation Myth from the Brhadaranyaka Upanishads is translated as The Great Forest Teaching. It "indicates features of Indian thinking about beginnings, creation, and creativity that are basic and influential even today" (Clooney 1). It tells us that "self is the source of everything" (Clooney 4). Without knowing yourself first, you cannot know anything else. You must look inward, not to a supreme being, in order to find the true meaning of life (Clooney 4).When studying other religions, no matter how different they are from your own, you must figure out who you are from the beginning in order to take anything away from any other religion. By knowing about other religious traditions, you can know yourself more deeply and in a new and different way (Clooney 4). The Hindu Creation Story is different from most other religions' creation story because creation of the universe was from self instead of a supreme being. For example, in Christianity, God created us
Man became a bull and unified with her, thus creating cattle. We "gain more from this wisdom than we give in the search; we become more than we could have been before. From the beginning, the world was self in the form of a human being, who occupied the world alone (Clooney 2). Man unified with woman and as a result, the human race was born. This continued to happen as she changed from animal to animal thus creating all pairs of animals (Clooney 2). We are nurtured by that wisdom and it becomes a part of us (Clooney 5). What is uncomfortable or bizarre to us in the beginning eventually becomes part of the greater self that we are only beginning to understand. Male is also very dependent on female, despite the fact that she is shameful of their unification, because he needs her not only for reproduction, but to fill the void in himself that is causing him loneliness. from nothing in six days, where as in the Hindu myth, man created the universe. All of this was the "surpassing creation of Brahma, for he created the gods who then were above him. The central theme of the Hindu Creation Story is that there is only one true self and as we learn from Hindu wisdom, "we shall re-create our religious selves" in the process.
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