What Hindus Believe

Many Hindus call their tradition Sanatana Dharma, the eternal dharma, a phrase often used in India as a name for Hinduism.¹ The scholar Michael Witzel describes "Hinduism" as a loose grouping of interlinked religions of South Asia, which has grown without any central authority or dogma. He finds an almost universal acceptance of rebirth and karma.²

Dancing with Siva, a catechism that teaches a monistic form of Shaiva Siddhanta,³ names four main denominations.⁴⁵ For Vaishnavas, God is Vishnu; for Shaivas, Shiva; for Shaktas, the Goddess Shakti; and Smartas leave the choice of deity to the devotee. All four, it adds, share belief in karma, dharma, rebirth, and the authority of the Vedas,⁶ though Witzel notes that some traditions, such as Virashaivism, reject the Veda.²

Alongside these families stand the schools of Vedanta, which interpret the Upanishads and the Brahma Sutra, a summary of their teaching.⁷ Three are best known: the Advaita (nondualism) of Shankara, the Vishishtadvaita (qualified nondualism) of Ramanuja, and the Dvaita (dualism) of Madhva.⁸ Ramanuja and Madhva identified Brahman with Vishnu,⁸ and Dancing with Siva ties Smarta tradition today to Shankara.⁹ This page names the school wherever teaching differs. See also Branches and Christianity vs Hinduism.

What is ultimate reality?

Vedanta schools call ultimate reality Brahman, but they differ on whether Brahman is beyond all qualities or a personal God with qualities.⁸ A hymn of the Rig Veda lists the names Indra, Mitra, Varuna, and Agni, and then says: To what is One, sages give many a title (Rig Veda 1.164.46)¹⁰.

Advaita Vedanta teaches that Brahman alone is fully real: pure existence, consciousness, and bliss. In this highest sense Brahman is nirguna, "without qualities." Seen from within the world of experience, Brahman appears as a personal God, Ishvara (the Lord), who oversees the world's creation and dissolution. The world appears through maya, Brahman's creative power.⁷

The school is summed up in an anonymous verse: Brahman is alone True, and this world of plurality is an error; the individual self is not different from Brahman⁷.⁷ Shankara, whom the philosopher Neil Dalal calls the preeminent Advaita thinker, flourished in the eighth century CE, by the dating Dalal reports.¹¹

Most Vaishnava traditions worship Vishnu as the supreme God, together with his avatars, or incarnations, such as Krishna and Rama.¹²¹³ Sri Vaishnavas honor his consort Lakshmi as inseparable from him.¹⁴

Ramanuja (1017 to 1137 by traditional accounts; 1077 to 1157 in recent scholarship), a teacher of the Sri Vaishnava community, held that Brahman has qualities (saguna). Souls and the material world are real; for Ramanuja, the philosopher Shyam Ranganathan explains, all individuals are modes of the body of Brahman.¹⁵⁸ Madhva (1238 to 1317, the dates the scholar Valerie Stoker gives) also identified Brahman with Vishnu, and taught that Vishnu alone is independent. Souls and matter are real but wholly dependent on him, and forever different from him.⁸

The Gaudiya tradition of Chaitanya (1486 to 1533), born in Bengal, which includes the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), worships Krishna as Bhagavan, the supreme personal Lord, who surpasses the impersonal Brahman. His followers understand Chaitanya himself to be Krishna, come to give devotion even to the lowliest of people.¹⁶

Shaiva traditions worship Shiva as the supreme Lord. Shaiva Siddhanta, an important school of South India, counts three eternal realities: God (pati), souls (pashu), and bondage (pasha). The scholar Mariasusai Dhavamony explains that Shiva is in everything yet beyond everything, and stands to the universe as a soul to its body.¹⁷ Dancing with Siva calls Shiva one without a second, the Supreme Being and only Absolute Reality¹⁸.

Shakta traditions center their worship on Shakti, divine female power, which the Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions describes as either the supreme being conceived as female or a consort of one of the Hindu gods. The Devi Mahatmya, of the sixth or seventh century CE (sources differ), worships the Goddess as supreme.¹⁹¹⁴ Goddess worshipers hold that every goddess, gentle or fierce, is a face of one Great Goddess, Mahadevi, and the scholar Rachel Fell McDermott notes that, from the Devi Mahatmya on, texts describe female deities as Brahman, the ground of being.¹⁴ Many Shakta Tantras teach that the absolute is Shakti herself, or the union of Shiva and Shakti.¹⁹

Dancing with Siva reports that Smartas traditionally worship five deities at one altar, Ganapati (Ganesha), Surya, Vishnu, Shiva, and Shakti, to which Shankara added Kumara. Each devotee may choose a preferred deity, held to reflect the one Brahman.⁹ The Sringeri monastery, which traces its founding to Shankara, puts it in four words: Many forms, one Bhagavan²⁰.

What is a human being?

Hindu teachers hold that a person is, at heart, an eternal self (atman) that lives in a body but is not born and does not die.²¹²² The Katha Upanishad says: This Self is never born, nor does It die. (Katha Upanishad 1.2.18)²³

The schools differ on how the self relates to God. Advaita teaches that the individual self (jiva) and the universal self are identical, since both are Brahman. The individual only seems separate, as the space inside a pot seems separate from space itself.⁷ Ramanuja taught that souls are many and real, share the essential nature of Brahman, and keep their identity even after liberation.⁸

Madhva taught that God, souls, and matter all differ from one another, and that each soul differs from every other in its inborn nature.⁸ In Chaitanya's tradition, souls are tiny emanations of God, both different and not different from their source.¹⁶

Shaiva Siddhanta teaches that souls have knowledge, will, and the power to act, and cannot be separated from Shiva. Advaita means inseparability, not identity¹⁷, Dhavamony writes of the school, so souls keep their distinct character even in liberation.¹⁷ Dancing with Siva teaches, as the school's monistic teachers hold, that the soul's deepest essence was never created and is eternally one with Shiva.²⁴²⁵

What is wrong with the world?

Hindu teachers hold that beings are caught in samsara, the beginningless round of birth, death, and rebirth, driven by karma; each school names its root in its own way.²² Dancing with Siva, a Shaiva catechism, adds that karma is not fate, because people act with free will.²⁶

Advaita names the root as avidya, ignorance. Ignorance confuses the self with what is not the self, hides Brahman, and makes a person feel like a limited doer in a limited world.⁷

Devotional schools speak of a self that has lost sight of its bond with God. For Ramanuja, beginningless past karma hides the soul's true nature as a knower who depends on Brahman.¹⁵ In Shaiva Siddhanta, souls are bound by three fetters: anava (ignorance), karma, and maya (changing reality), so they experience themselves as independent of God.¹⁷ Chaitanya's tradition teaches that a soul is reborn until, by divine mercy, it realizes its true nature as Krishna's servant.¹⁶

Why one Lord's world is so unequal is the objection on the Strongest Case page.

What is the way forward?

The goal is moksha, release from the round of death and rebirth; the schools differ on whether knowledge, devotion, or God's grace brings it.²⁷⁷⁸ The Bhagavad Gita, a dialogue between Krishna, whom Vaishnavas worship as God, and the warrior Arjuna, speaks of paths of knowledge, action, and devotion.²⁸²¹³

Advaita teaches that knowledge of Brahman alone brings liberation. For Shankara, good works purify the mind for that knowledge but cannot replace it. He asked the seeker for discernment, detachment, self-discipline, and a longing for liberation.⁷ The Sringeri monastery puts the goal this way: Liberation (Moksha) is the direct recognition of this eternal oneness²⁹.²⁹

Ramanuja taught bhakti yoga, the discipline of devotion: doing one's duties for their own sake while constantly worshiping God and offering him the fruits of one's work. For him, devotion is itself a direct awareness of God. His followers agree that grace is needed and tied to prapatti, surrender to God, but divided over whether liberation is shared work or God's alone.¹⁵ For Madhva, attaining Vishnu's grace is the soul's only hope.⁸ Chaitanya's followers see in him the model of loving devotion to Krishna, and teach that, in principle, all people, including women, those of low caste, and sinners, may take up bhakti.¹⁶

Shaiva Siddhanta names three paths: service, worship, and meditation, all animated by love of God. They prepare the soul to receive divine knowledge from Shiva as a free gift; in the school's Tamil terms, grace (arul) is the remedy for ignorance (irul).¹⁷ In Tantric Shakta practice, initiates follow the form of worship a guru assigns them. Most Shakta Tantras declare themselves to be of the Kaula school, whose two main branches worship the benign goddess Tripurasundari and the fierce goddess Kali.¹⁹ In the Devi Mahatmya, McDermott writes, the goddess Durga offers her devotees either worldly enjoyment or liberation.¹⁴

What happens after death?

Hindu teaching holds that, until liberation, the self takes a new body shaped by its karma. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says: As a man, casting off old clothes, puts on others and new ones, so the embodied (self) casting off old bodies, goes to others and new ones. (Bhagavad Gita 2.22)²⁸ In the Katha Upanishad, the young Nachiketas asks Yama, the god of death, what becomes of a person after death. Part of Yama's answer is the verse quoted above: the Self is never born and never dies.²³

The scholar Brian K. Smith describes the most common Hindu account. The universal self is untouched by karma; what moves on is the individual self, carried in a subtle body with the traces of its deeds. It may be reborn in a heaven, as a human or animal, or in a hell. In practice, Smith adds, many Hindus seek a better birth through gifts, devotion, and vows, rather than release itself.²²

The schools picture liberation differently. Advaita teaches that the one who knows Brahman is not born again.⁷ For Ramanuja, liberated souls keep their identity, and a work attributed to him describes Vaikuntha, Vishnu's eternal realm, on which the seeker meditates to gain liberation.⁸¹⁵ Madhva held that souls, because of their inborn natures, are destined for different ends.⁸

In Shaiva Siddhanta's classical teaching, as Dhavamony describes it, souls keep their distinct character even in liberation, and the poet Manikkavacakar sings of the soul purified by grace for eternal fellowship with Shiva.¹⁷ Dancing with Siva, which follows a monistic reading of the school, teaches instead that the soul at last merges with Shiva like water returning to the sea,³⁰²⁴ and notes that pluralist teachers disagree.²⁵

How should a person live?

Hindu teachers answer with dharma: duties that fit a person's nature, stage of life, and place in society, and virtues meant for everyone. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions distinguishes eternal dharma, which applies to everyone, from svadharma, a person's own relative duty.¹ Dancing with Siva, a Shaiva catechism, calls dharma the law of being, the orderly fulfillment of an inherent nature and destiny³¹. It names four levels: universal order, social duty (varna dharma, the duty of one's class), human duty (ashrama dharma), and personal duty (svadharma).³¹³⁰

Classical texts describe four stages of life (ashrama): celibate student, married householder, retiree, and renouncer. Witzel adds that the four classes (varna) divide into thousands of castes (jati).² Classical texts also name four aims, which the Oxford dictionary calls the legitimate goals of life for high-caste Hindus. Dharma, right conduct and belief, governs the others: artha, wealth; kama, enjoyment of the senses; and moksha, liberation, which transcends them all.³²

Some virtues bind everyone. The Vamana Purana, as the Oxford dictionary reports, lists ten limbs of eternal dharma: non-injury, truth, purity, not stealing, charity, forbearance, self-restraint, tranquility, generosity, and asceticism.¹ The Bhagavad Gita asks a person to do their duty without craving its rewards: Your business is with action alone; not by any means with fruit. (Bhagavad Gita 2.47)²⁸

For devotional schools, a good life is also a life offered to God. Tirumular, one of the Shaiva saints whose words Dhavamony quotes, ties the two together: whoever does not love all people does not love God.¹⁷

Key terms

Term	Meaning
Brahman	Ultimate reality: beyond all qualities in Advaita; identified with Vishnu by Ramanuja and Madhva, and with the Goddess in Shakta texts. In Shaiva traditions, Shiva is supreme reality.81714
Atman	The real self, present in every form of life.21
Samsara	The beginningless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.22
Karma	Deeds and their results, which drive the cycle of rebirth.2622
Moksha	Release from the round of death and rebirth.27
Dharma	Eternal law and right conduct, and each person's own duty.132
Bhakti	Loving devotion to God.1516