589 Quotes About Hinduism

The ultimate goal of human life is to transcend culture and personality to the unconditioned pure being. But the means to do this is through our culture and way of life.

Above all, as a Hindu I belong to the only major religion in the world that does not claim to be the only true religion. I find it immensely congenial to be able to face my fellow human beings of other faiths without being burdened by the conviction that I am embarked upon a “true path” that they have missed.

Mahatma Gandhi was as devout a Rambhakt as you can get — he died from a Hindu assassin’s bullet with the words “Hé Ram” on his lips — but he always said that for him, Ram and Rahim were the same deity, and that if Hinduism ever taught hatred of Islam or of non-Hindus, “it is doomed to destruction.

In medieval India, the Hindu Vaishnava system of bhakti-yoga (devotional yoga) developed highly sophisticated categories of relation (rasa) to God, including santa (awe and reverence), vatsalya (parental attitude toward God), dasya (servant of God), sakhya (being friends and playmates with God), and madburya (passionate, romantic love).

These days, people of all religions and sects have this thought process in common: "God is with me because my heart and intentions are pure. Yes, my head is messy but my heart is pure. Yes, I did this and that but my intentions were not wrong." If everybody is so pure and pious, why is there so much pain and misery in this world?

The true history of the world must always be the history of the few; and as we measure the Himalaya by the height of Mount Everest, we must take the true measure of India from the poets of the Veda, the sages of the Upanishads, the founders of the Vedanta and Sankhya philosophies, and the authors of the oldest law-books, and not from the millions who are born and die in their villages, and who have never for one moment been roused out of their drowsy dream of life.

Both pain and pleasure pull you deeper into the illusion of Maya (Space-Time). But voluntary pain (like climbing a hill to reach a temple) and conscious pleasure (Tantra sex) take you inward.

As a blazing fire turns firewood to ashes, O Arjuna, so does the fire of knowledge burn to ashes all reactions to material activities.

If you want to accurately judge the spiritual level of any human being, count the number of religions that he is capable of understanding and observe how effective he is in applying the lessons learned to his own life or the life of others.