 Trying to condense Hinduism into a single video is both impossible and potentially insulting. Hinduism, the term Hinduism, was not even invented until centuries after the practices that worship the beliefs originated. Centuries between the beginnings of Hinduism and the invention of the term Hinduism. Hinduism has a variety of beliefs. There's no unified structure. There's no unified system that all and only people believe if they are Hindu. It doesn't work that way. So, you know, to kind of account for this, you need to keep in mind two things, at least two things. The first is I am not an expert in Hinduism. I have done some readings on Hinduism and I'm trying to convey what I've found in those readings, but I am myself and not an expert. So, I'm probably going to get some things, you know, I'm not going to be able to explain some things as well as an expert would, or as somebody who is a Hindu would. If you are an expert and you are watching this, I am open to polite correction. That's just fine. I'm sure this is not the last version of this video and I will try to incorporate whatever corrections are offered in later editions. The second thing to keep in mind is that you're going to have to allow for a variety of beliefs within the term Hinduism. Even some of the fundamental concepts have contrary claims made to them depending upon which school of Hinduism you're appealing to. Nevertheless, I'm going to try my best to give this video and try to introduce you as the viewer into some of these notions. I'm not going to say fundamental because there's nothing that only Hindus believe right. But some of these significant notions, these major notions that underline what we refer to as Hinduism. It is your real self. It is your eternal self. It is your spiritual self. What does this mean? Okay, so look down deep into your depths. Take a moment and try to examine biggest desires, your strongest feelings, your greatest values, the most important values that have will make you what you are. None of that is ultimate. All of that that I just described, your feelings, your emotions, your desires, your wants, your values, that's only the ego. That's the non-real self. That's what underlies that. It is beneath that. It's what allows you to have that. But that's not your real self. Your deepest desires are your ego. What you want. Your values which you hold dear, again, that's what you want. That's what you're clinging to. That's the false self. What you're clinging to grounds you in this world. It keeps you here. It nails you into this belief. But that's not Atman. That's not the point of Atman. Atman is the fundamentally real self. It's the eternal self. Your beliefs change. You believe different things when you're a child than when you do now. Your fundamental values change. You do not have the same values now that you used to. And when you were older, you won't keep those same values. Those will change. That's what changes. Like this body, this body changes. This hand is going to get wrinkled. More veins will appear on it. There will be more wrinkles that appear on this face. My hair is going to go gray, some of it's already started. All of that is what changes. Well, if that's what changes, that's not your fundamental. That's not your real self. That's not your eternal self. Atman is the real self. That's the eternal self. Everything else that you're experiencing, as far as that's concerned, all of what you're experiencing as far as that's concerned, that's not real. That changes. That comes and goes. It's the eternal. That's what's real. That is at. Brahman might be the most difficult thing to understand in Hinduism. Yet, at the end of the day, you achieve enlightenment when you do understand Brahman. So what is Brahman? Well, look at the things around you. Some are hard, like you're rigid. You're like your computer is rigid. It's hard to knock against it. You'll hit resistance. Some of it is soft, like your pillow. Don't try it right now because you might fall asleep. Some of it is hot, like coffee or tea or a shower. Some of it is cold, like lemonade or ice. Some of it is sharp, like needles. Some of it is dull, like a spoon. All these things that exist around there, all these things have Brahman as their source. Brahman is the ultimate reality. Brahman is the essence of everything. Brahman is interesting because it has no limits. Since everything comes from Brahman, it has everything in it. It has its potential in it. And it's actuality in it. Brahman is all things. Brahman is all things. It is both hot and cold. It is both sharp and dull. It is both hard and soft. It is the source of it all. It's the source of everything. It is both transcendent in that it's above all things. Metaphysical is being beyond and above all things. But it's also imminent because it's here. All things are Brahman. Okay. Now, since it has all things, it is both their potentiality and their actuality. The gods and goddesses even are manifestations of Brahman. These gods can be different from each other, but that's okay because Brahman is all things. These gods can even be opposed to each other, but that's okay because they can still be from Brahman because Brahman is all things. Everything is Brahman. Everything is from and in the ultimate reality. Now, as long as we're kind of on this topic, it's important to know there's at least two main, two different schools of thought about Brahman. One is that Brahman is a person and that Brahman has intelligence and consciousness and a will. That's one view of Brahman. Another view of Brahman is that Brahman is not a person. And this isn't to say that this is a limitation on Brahman, but rather to say that Brahman is a person, is itself a limitation. So Brahman, on this kind of line of reasoning, Brahman isn't a person and to say that it's not merely a person, it's so much more than that. It's so much more than a person. So keep in mind this division between these two main ideas about Brahman being a person, about Brahman not being merely a person. It's going to be important later on. But this is a really important, it's going to become important later on when we consider the statement, Atman is Brahman. There's a variety of ways that we can translate in English the word Dharma. Code of conduct, duty, virtue, morality, or even religion. Maybe most broadly we should just think of Dharma as how you should live your life. Maybe. I'm adding one more translation in there. Dharma is how you're supposed to behave. It is your duty. It's your obligation. But it's important to remember, while Dharma is universal law, Dharma applies to everybody. Everybody has Dharma. Not everybody has the same Dharma. There's different rules depending on your station and life. And this isn't necessarily difficult to believe. There's different ways you should behave to a child if you're a parent versus if you're just merely somebody on the street. So there's a child in front of you. There's a child crying. You should do different things depending on whether you're the parent of the child or just a stranger. If you're a stranger to the child, leave the kid alone. That's not your kid. The parent is there to take care of the child. It would be perhaps a little obtrusive for you to come in and console the child. A parent should pick up the child and console it or whatever. Or if the child is misbehaving. Maybe it's the duty of the parent to discipline the child to correct the child's behavior, but not yours. That's not your child. Don't discipline the child. That's not yours. So Dharma, I'm not saying that necessarily is Dharma. I'm just trying to explain that once duties or obligations can change depending on what station and life. But Dharma, with Dharma, these are the duties, these are the obligations that you have. Okay. Now Dharma, as I said, Dharma is everywhere. Everyone has Dharma, but not everyone has the same Dharma. Your Dharma differs depending on station and life. Okay. Now, it's important to recognize that in Hinduism, you're supposed to perform your Dharma dispassionately. And what that means is your performance without enthusiasm, you perform it without dread or hatred, you perform it without reluctance, you perform it without gusto. Emotion is the ego. Emotion is the physical, the now, the transient, the temporary existence. Okay. You're supposed to perform Dharma. You are. You act according to Dharma, but you do so because it's Dharma, not because you want to. You do so because it's Dharma, not because you don't want to and still have to. Yeah, so, I don't know, some of you obey the, you can't give an example, some of you obey the speed limit. Some of you. Now some of you obey the speed limit because you what, you are enthusiastic about moderate speeds and you think that that's just fine to travel this speed and it maximizes efficiency and fuel consumption. And you really enjoy that speed. Some of you obey the speed limit but don't really want to. I want to go fast. I want to go fast but here I am doing the speed limit. I really don't want to. Neither of those instances is following the speed limit dispassionately. To follow the speed limit dispassionately, I have the speed limit because it's the speed limit. That's it. That's it. It's a peaceful, content obeying of Dharma, not an enthusiastic, exciting obeying of Dharma, not a grumpy, grumpy and resentful following of Dharma. It's following your, it's performing your duty, dispassionately performing your duty. Karma is literally translated in English to action. Now what karma does, at least in the context of Hinduism, is it governs the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. So Hinduism, a claim in Hinduism is reincarnation. Atman, the real self, is born again in different physical bodies. So now there are better ways to be reborn and worse ways to be reborn, right? You can and the best ways aren't necessarily human. There are some, I don't remember details, but there are some stations there are some kinds of rebirth that are better than human, right? I think it's some animals, but don't, I don't really remember I'm not exactly an expert. So you know, this karma will dictate your station in life, your station what happens for your death and your station in rebirth. Karma dictates what happens to you during this life and it's related to Dharma. Whether you follow Dharma or not determines the consequences. That's karma. If you perform Dharma good consequences will follow. If you fail to perform Dharma bad consequences will follow. And to put it simply and good things or what goes around comes around. It's kind of how in the West we describe it, right? If you do good things, good things will happen to you. If you do bad things, bad things will happen to you. Now and the good things in this case is Dharma and the bad thing is violating Dharma. So now it's important to remember that what you do now impacts not only your life now but your future incarnations. Your future incarnations. Samsara is reincarnation. It's this cycle of life, death, rebirth. That's Samsara. You're born, you live, you die, you're reborn. Now you might think that this sounds great, right? Something you'll get to be born again and again. In a sense, I live forever. I live forever. All I have to do then is to always follow Dharma and my rebirths will always be good. And I'll live forever with good consequences. Now you might think that. We're tempted to think something like that in the West. You want to do good things so you'll be born again and again. Moksha is this liberation from Samsara. Now, you might think, wait, hold on a second. What do you mean liberation? Moksha is a good thing in Hinduism. It's the freedom, the liberation from being born again and again. Now, you might wonder, wait, why would I want to stop that cycle of rebirth? Wouldn't it be great to live forever with good consequences? This seems like a good thing. Think about it. If you're born again and again, you're always in this transient, temporary, flawed, limited reality. If you're always in the temporary flawed, limited reality, you're never experiencing Brahman. You're never experiencing the unlimited. Your experiences, your life, your choices will always be limited, not unlimited. Why would you want a merely limited reality? Why wouldn't you want to pursue an unlimited reality? And this is where Moksha comes in. Well, if you are liberated from reincarnation, you can experience unlimited reality. If you're liberated, you're rejoining Brahman. So there's a phrase that's meant to refer to this whole process to achieve Moksha, to be liberated from samsara, and in the phrase, at least in English, is atman is Brahman. Atman is Brahman. Now the point behind this is that the eternal self, the real self, is this unlimited reality. Now, again, there's kind of two different ways, at least two different ways to understand this. If the idea is that Brahman is a person, that Brahman is a person, has intelligence, has a will, has consciousness, it's not to say that your person disappears when rejoins that person. No. There's a distinction between the person of Brahman and you, and your atman. However, as a creation of Brahman, your atman reflects Brahman. As much as Brahman is the ultimate reality, your eternal self. Brahman is the ultimate reality, and these things are just manifestations of it. Your eternal self is related that way to your physical attributes, and these are just manifestations of the real self. It's not the real self. You can want many different things. So your real self is like Brahman, or is Brahman in that kind of relationship between Brahman and the things, and atman and the ego. That's one way of understanding it. Another way of understanding it is the second way of understanding Brahman, and that Brahman is not merely a person. And you are Brahman. There's an identity between you and Brahman. You are at once a manifestation and are Brahman. Both those things together. And in either case, that's how Moksha is achieved is through this enlightenment, through this realization that you are Brahman. And the following Dharma is the way to do this. You do your duty not because you want to, so dispassionately doing your duty, separating or detachment from oneself, performing one's duty to achieve enlightenment. That's the rough idea, at least the best way that I can explain it. So you don't do things because you have desires, you don't do things because it's your duty. You don't eat because you're hungry or it's your food. You eat to sustain your life. That's your duty. You don't what? You don't pursue a career because you enjoy doing it. You do so because it's your duty as part of being a society. There's lots of ways. And again, your career will be determined by your station in life. When you start acting not out of the ego, but as atman. And by that means you don't act passionately, you act dispassionately. You come closer the more you work on that, the more you meditate on it, the more you contemplate that. You come closer to moksha and you're liberated from reincarnation by being liberated from the self.