Anybody into Hinduism?

thank you. One's life is in constant interaction with the environment. Life is half physical and half spiritual. To dismiss one aspect and keep the other is walking with one eye open and the other closed

Jaideva Singh is the best English source on Tantra. He has scholarly translations of the Spanda-Karikas, Vijnanabhairava, Pratyabhijnahrdayam, Shiva Sutras, and the Para-trisika-Vivarana by Abhinavagupta.

Don't know of the best edition of the kama sutra unfortunately.

Gita and Upanishads are good. Check out the Yoga Sutras too!

Use protection. Communicate. Be safe and responsible. Don't stick your dick in crazy. Pairbonding exists for a reason but I cannot judge as I have sowed wild oats in my youth as well.

thank you.

I'm currently reading Gita (pic related).
Any good Yogananda books? I saw online that he made commentary of New Testament, is he good?

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kama is one of the four purusharthas dumbfuck. it is VERY compatible with spiritual life

Any hindu must reads besided Gita and Upanidhad? Yea Forums wikia chard is like about s couple books.

Books about purusharts?

bump

Ramayana and Mahabarata and Vedas

>pursuharts
Idk brah

"No!"

Or at least, no to your suggestion of reading the entire Itihasas and Vedas as introductions to Hinduism. They are truly vast corpuses of literature and will bore a learner. Personally, I found Gavin Flood's "An Introduction to Hinduism" very helpful, it made me appreciate not only the ancient roots of Hinduism but it's constant evolution up to today. Of course, any single book will be a narrow summary, it doesn't seem possible to comprehend the breadth of what "Hinduism" includes.

Can someone explain the Vedic gods to me? I understand that Ram, Krishna, etc. are incarnations of Vishnu, and the Trimurti are all one. That is to say, all gods in Hinduism are one, "there are infinite ways to worship the infinite". But where do Indra, Agni, Rudra, etc. fall into this? I see Indra acting against Krishna, and Agni and Indra acting against one another. They seem to behave very different from transcendent beings like Krishna. Are they just remnants of the precursor Vedic religion or do I just not understand things correctly?

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Indra and Agni were probably the most important gods in the Vedic period, at least within the priestly liturgy. Lesser vedic gods like Ruda (= Shiva) and Vishnu (= Krishna, etc.) came to prominence in the classical period, very roughly about 500 BC to 500 AD, and slightly later the goddess(es) became just as popular. There are countless theological views in Hinduism and it's not really possible to boil them down into one view, although some schools claim to do so. Interpretations include polytheism, henotheism, monotheism, and monism; but most will talk about a supreme, capital G, God in some sense. Shiva worshippers will say Shiva is God, Vishnu worshippers say Vishnu, and so on. Western scholarship often emphasises the divide between the view of God as ultimately personal and God as ultimately impersonal. For example, Shankara believed that the personal God was the highest expression of the true, impersonal God, within the illusory world of phenomena.

Thank you for your response user. From what I was taught the different gods are all expressions of the one transcendent reality - Brahman. But some other schools of thought have a Supreme god and other gods from what I understand now. I suppose what I find interesting is that the gods like Indra and Agni act very much like their European counterparts. Very human. Where as Krishna, Shiva, Devi are all so much more than human. Human but more. The Absolute. Thank you for teaching me about Hinduism. Do you have any suggestions for literature or resources I may study?

Rene Guenon's 'Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines'

archive.org/details/reneguenon/page/n1

Thank you user!

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huh?

Roberto Callaso's Ka and Ardor might be of interest. Western (european proto-aryan linguist) take on Hindu mythology condensed to two books.

Thank you user! I'll take a look at it. What got you interested in Hinduism? For me it was the way they viewed God and reality that I found very much clicked with me

I read the Gita and Upanishads and Yoga Sutras in a class on Indian philosophy (I am a phil major).

this guys books are really good

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So in Hindu texts, is reality the dream of the Godhead or of Brahma? What happens when the Godhead awakens? Or is that anthropomorphizing the ultimate reality?
I'd like to take a class like that, sounds fun

i'm into its philosophy but not religiously, I am content as a christian.

based

The first responder was a different guy. I can only recommend what I've personally found helpful, it won't be definitive.

The Spiritual Heritage of India - Swami Prabhavananda, 1963
An Introduction to Hinduism - Gavin Flood, 1996
What Is Hinduism? - Hinduism Today, 2007

bumpita

I’m a hindu, I hate it because literally all hindu scriptures have caste/varna system.
Very oppressive.