Hindus- Suffering and gods
“As is birth so is death, and so is the dwelling in the mother’s womb thus, is the manifest the misery of the world, how can there be a satisfaction here for thee.”
Hindus know that
the life is full of suffering and miseries and therefore man dwells in the
ocean of agony (Bhavsager) and try to overcome this ocean of distress.
To get rid of sufferings is the only way to follow the path or religion. The god is the only touch stone which will remove sufferings from life. God can take them out from this Bhavsagar- ocean of suffering- and only god is the one who is testing, punishing and will one day he will bless His showers.
The god or gods are one who is omnipotent, omnipresent and also a father who is testing his sons like that of Christianity and Islam and now pleasing god or gods with sweets and offering are the only way to get blessings. For Hindus, god wants his devotees to sing songs and make prayers and he will one day listen to these prayers and again bless showers of wealth and happiness. The only way to get rid of sufferings is to please god or gods.
But ancient
Hindus took the meaning of suffering and to overcome this suffering
differently. For them suffering is real
and understand that where there is life there is suffering. To overcome the
suffering in life, philosophies came out to make people understand the reality
of life.
Suffering in not in the way of poverty, exploitation or mismanagement but suffering in the words of injury, illness, old age and death. Suffering is greed, attachment, desires, jealousy, instability, envy, distrust, insecurity ad such feelings that emerged from human minds.
Yes, for Hindus life is full of suffering is as common as life with rain or winter or winds and therefore there is no expedient for suicide and thus there is no running away from the life in the main teaching of Hindu Darshan.
Hindu philosophies brought rationality to understand the reality and rational way of life and thus for them overcoming all sufferings is to live a life on rationality.
But Hindu texts show that to get rid of suffering, there was no need of god or gods or to make god or gods please. There was no role of god or gods in taking away the distress from life.
Badarayana – school of Vedanta- taught that all suffering and their cause is Avidhya (That is wrong knowledge) and object of philosophies to remove this wrong knowledge by means of right knowledge which is Bahaman. The highest bliss (Said in Taat Upnishad part II)
Karika and Sutras of Samkhya- the oldest Hindu Darshan- elaborate three kinds of sufferings and the goal is to overcome these sufferings. For them the suffering is the main problem and to get away from this suffering is the only path of true knowledge. Knowledge for them is capable of removing all physical and mental pains.
And for Yoga philosophy, the problem of suffering can be resolve by Chitt Vrati Nirodh (cessation of manifestation of thoughts) and this can be attain by the eight fold path of Yoga. The perfect freedom is the only way of removing all type of sufferings.
Vaishiskas promised to the followers that only knowledge is the final cessation to get rid of pain in life. And Nayaya in the first Sutra said that complete bless or Apavarga is the highest reward which is obtained by the complete destruction of all type of pain is only through logical bend of mind or deduction of true knowledge.
Sufferings are desires or attachment to the worldly things. The attachment towards worldly things is related to mind and it arise the streams of thoughts. We suffer for what we have done and we reap what we son.
Vedanta took Avidhya or wrong knowledge for sufferings Samkhya took Aviveka mistaken knowledge for suffering; Nayaya took Mithyagyana erroneous knowledge responsible for suffering.
Hindus dealt the problem of suffering so widely that they touched every common man in it. Now what knowledge does to remove the suffering or distress? Hindu text says that reality or real knowledge took man into the stage of bliss. This state of bliss is attaining by knowledge and therefore where ever there is bliss there is no sufferings.
Even Hindu epics describes that when god incarnated they too suffered and they too faced sufferings and Hindu gods were not magicians healing people or acting against the natural laws. Even Lord Krishna in the Bhagwat Geeta said that there is no one who can change the reaction of any action. People reap what they sown.
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