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Saturday, February 22, 2025

Hinduism's Many Gods

by

20120912

The 7th An­nu­al Hin­du Mandir Ex­ec­u­tives' Con­fer­ence was held in San Jose Cal­i­for­nia, USA on Au­gust 17-19, 2012. Out of this con­fer­ence many Hin­du pub­li­ca­tions have emerged. In one pub­li­ca­tion Mandir Vani, (The Voice of Hin­du Tem­ples,) the mes­sage of the Ma­ha Sab­ha of T&T is pub­lished. It reads: "A tem­ple is not a build­ing. It is the abode of the Lord. A tem­ple's strength is not in the bricks. Its for­ti­tude comes from the ded­i­ca­tion of its mem­bers. A tem­ple is not held to­geth­er by plas­ter and mud. Its glue is the piety and de­vo­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty. A tem­ple is not sim­ply a place we vis­it. It should be the ax­is around which our lives re­volve," wrote Swa­mi Chi­danan­da Saraswati.

"By com­ing to­geth­er and work­ing to­geth­er to en­sure that pro­grammes are im­ple­ment­ed with­in the tem­ples and al­so be­tween/amongst the tem­ples for the youth, you will bring even greater ben­e­fit to all Hin­dus liv­ing in the USA. "Cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment where the youth un­der­stand, ap­pre­ci­ate and love their Hin­du cul­ture is a cru­cial need to­day, as is unit­ing all Hin­du tem­ples un­der one um­brel­la. When we are all unit­ed in the name of Sanatan Dhar­ma, we can tru­ly bring the mes­sage of peace, har­mo­ny and uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood to the world."

Many as­pects of Hin­duism seem to con­fuse the av­er­age west­ern­er who is steeped in the Chris­t­ian tra­di­tions. The con­fer­ence pro­vid­ed an­swers to some of these ques­tions and we pro­duce here­un­der an­swers to the per­cep­tion that there are nu­mer­ous Gods in Hin­duism: "Hin­dus be­lieve in one Supreme God who cre­at­ed the uni­verse. He is all-per­va­sive. He cre­at­ed many Gods, high­ly ad­vanced spir­i­tu­al be­ings, to be His helpers.

Con­trary to pre­vail­ing mis­con­cep­tions, Hin­dus all wor­ship a one Supreme Be­ing, though by dif­fer­ent names. This is be­cause the peo­ples of In­dia with dif­fer­ent lan­guages and cul­tures have un­der­stood the one God in their own dis­tinct way. Through his­to­ry there arose four prin­ci­pal Hin­du de­nom­i­na­tions-Saivism, Shak­tism, Vaish­nav­ism and Smar­tism. For Saivites, God is Si­va. For Shak­tas, God­dess Shak­ti is supreme. For Vaish­navites, Lord Vish­nu is God. For Smar­tas-who see all Deities as re­flec­tions of the One God-the choice of De­ity is left to the devo­tee.

This lib­er­al Smar­ta per­spec­tive is well known, but it is not the pre­vail­ing Hin­du view. Due to this di­ver­si­ty, Hin­dus are pro­found­ly tol­er­ant of oth­er re­li­gions, re­spect­ing the fact that each has its own path­way to the one God. One of the unique un­der­stand­ings in Hin­duism is that God is not far away, liv­ing in a re­mote heav­en, but is in­side each and every soul, in the heart and con­scious­ness, wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered. This know­ing that God is al­ways with us gives us hope and courage. Know­ing the One Great God in this in­ti­mate and ex­pe­ri­en­tial way is the goal of Hin­dus spir­i­tu­al­ly.

Hin­duism is both monothe­is­tic and henothe­is­tic. Hin­dus were nev­er poly­the­is­tic, in the sense that there are many equal Gods. Henothe­ism (lit­er­al­ly "one God") bet­ter de­fines the Hin­du view. It means the wor­ship of one God with­out deny­ing the ex­is­tence of oth­er Gods.

We Hin­dus be­lieve in the one all-per­va­sive God who en­er­gis­es the en­tire uni­verse. We can see Him in the light shin­ing out of the eyes of hu­mans and all crea­tures. This view of God as ex­ist­ing in and giv­ing life to all things is called pa­nen­the­ism. It is dif­fer­ent from pan­the­ism, which is the be­lief that God is the nat­ur­al uni­verse and noth­ing more.

It is al­so dif­fer­ent from strict the­ism which says God is on­ly above the world, apart and tran­scen­dent. Pa­nen­the­ism is an all-en­com­pass­ing con­cept. It says that God is both in the world and be­yond it, both im­ma­nent and tran­scen­dent. That is the high­est Hin­du view.

Hin­dus al­so be­lieve in many Gods who per­form var­i­ous func­tions, like ex­ec­u­tives in a large cor­po­ra­tion. These should not be con­fused with the Supreme God. These Di­vini­ties are high­ly ad­vanced be­ings who have spe­cif­ic du­ties and pow­ers-not un­like the heav­en­ly spir­its, over­lords or archangels revered in oth­er faiths. Each de­nom­i­na­tion wor­ships the Supreme God and its own pan­theon of di­vine be­ings.

What is some­times con­fus­ing to non-Hin­dus is that Hin­dus of var­i­ous sects may call the one God by many dif­fer­ent names, ac­cord­ing to their de­nom­i­na­tion or re­gion­al tra­di­tion. Truth for the Hin­du has many names, but that does not make for many truths. Hin­duism gives us the free­dom to ap­proach God in our own way, en­cour­ag­ing a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of paths, not ask­ing for con­for­mi­ty to just one.

There is much con­fu­sion about this sub­ject, even among Hin­dus. Learn the right terms and the sub­tle dif­fer­ences in them, and you can ex­plain the pro­found ways Hin­dus look at di­vin­i­ty. Oth­ers will be de­light­ed with the rich­ness of the In­di­an con­cepts of God.

You may wish to men­tion that some Hin­dus be­lieve on­ly in the form­less Ab­solute Re­al­i­ty as God. Oth­ers be­lieve in God as per­son­al Lord and Cre­ator. This free­dom makes the un­der­stand­ing of God in Hin­duism, the old­est liv­ing re­li­gion, the rich­est in all of earth's ex­ist­ing faiths."

Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al

Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha


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