Brahman, the Avatars and the Goddess

Overview

Recall questions on nirguna and saguna Brahman, Lipner's banyan tree and Sivananda on the one and the many, Vishnu's avatars, Krishna and ISKCON, Rama and his dharma, and Shakti and the Goddess.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Explain what Hindus mean by Brahman.

   Model answer

   The one ultimate reality underlying and pervading everything, described in the Upanishads as the ground of being, consciousness and bliss. Brahman is not a member of the universe but its source and substance. Hindus differ sharply on how far Brahman can be described: some emphasise Brahman as beyond all attributes, others as fully personal.

2. 2

   Explain the distinction between nirguna and saguna Brahman.

   Model answer

   Nirguna Brahman is the ultimate considered without qualities, beyond every description the mind can frame, approached in the Upanishads by negation. Saguna Brahman is the ultimate as possessing qualities and relations, which is what makes worship, prayer and love possible. Advaitins treat the saguna form as a true but provisional way of speaking suited to a mind still working within ignorance; theistic Vedantins reverse the ranking and hold that the personal reality is the ultimate truth.

3. 3

   How is Brahman represented in the world, in the deities and in scripture?

   Model answer

   In the world, because for many Hindus the cosmos is Brahman's self-expression or, on Ramanuja's account, Brahman's body. In the deities, because a devata is understood as a face or form through which the one reality becomes approachable, made present in the consecrated murti so that worshipper and deity may exchange sight in darshan. In scripture, because shruti is held to be uncreated sound in which Brahman is disclosed, so recitation is itself a means of contact rather than mere information.

4. 4

   Are Hindus polytheists?

   Model answer

   There is no single Hindu answer, and that is the point worth making. Many Hindus say the many deities are forms of one reality and that their tradition is therefore monistic or monotheistic in substance. Devotees within a sampradaya may hold that their chosen deity, their ishta-devata, simply is the supreme, with others subordinate. Some scholars use 'henotheism' for the pattern of addressing one deity at a time as supreme. Village and household practice can be straightforwardly plural. Labelling the whole tradition with one Western category flattens it.

5. 5

   What image does J Lipner use for Hinduism, and what work does it do?

   Model answer

   Lipner compares Hinduism to a banyan tree, which sends down aerial roots that thicken into new trunks, so that the growth is continuous but has no single centre and no tidy boundary. He argues that 'Hindu' functions as a polythetic term: there is no one belief or practice every Hindu shares, yet the traditions are genuinely related by overlapping family resemblances. The image lets him affirm real unity without pretending there is an orthodoxy or a founder.

6. 6

   What did S Sivananda teach about the one and the many?

   Model answer

   Sivananda, a physician who became a swami and founded the Divine Life Society, taught within an Advaitic frame that Brahman is one without a second while the deities are aspects of that one reality, suited to the differing temperaments of worshippers, so that image worship and non-dual realisation are stages of a single path rather than rivals. His practical teaching was a synthesis of the yogas, summed up in the injunctions to serve, love, give, purify, meditate and realise, and he wrote prolifically for ordinary householders rather than for specialists.

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