Hinduism for Beginners - Five Principles

Hindus is also known as Sanātana Dharma, the Sanskrit term. Sanātana dharma is often translated into English as “eternal tradition” or “eternal religion” but the translation of dharma as “tradition” or “religion” gives an extremely limited, even mistaken, sense of the word. Dharma has many meanings in Sanskrit, the sacred language of Hindu scripture, including “moral order,” “duty,” and “right action.”

The Hindu tradition encourages Hindus to seek spiritual and moral truth wherever it might be found, while acknowledging that no creed can contain such truth in its fullness and that each individual must realize this truth through his or her own systematic effort. Our experience, our reason, and our dialogue with others—especially with enlightened individuals—provide various means of testing our understanding of spiritual and moral truth. And Hindu scripture, based on the insights of Hindu sages and seers, serves primarily as a guidebook. But ultimately truth comes to us through direct consciousness of the divine or the ultimate reality. In other religions this ultimate reality is known as God. Hindus refer to it by many names, but the most common name is Brahman.

Hinduism is the world's oldest extant religion, with a billion followers, which makes it the world's third largest religion. Hinduism is a conglomeration of religious, philosophical, and cultural ideas and practices that originated in India, characterized by 5 main beliefs:

1. The belief in one absolute being of multiple manifestations. “Ekam eva adwityam Brahma” (There is only one God), “Eko Narayanad na dityo ‘sti kascit” (There is only one God, there is no the second ones)
2. The belief in Atman, the soul inside the living creature (human, animals, plantation), the atman is originated from the Brahman
3. The belief in reincarnation or samsara (rebirth)
4. The belief in law of cause and effect (karma law)
5. The belief in liberation from the cycle of births and deaths (moksha)

Hindu as a religion from the east (India) is unique comparing with other major western religion that commonly uniform, while in Hinduism all the original tradition is still well maintained with addition of Hinduism concept, this make practice of Hinduism will be different across the world but with the same soul of Hinduism concept. For example Hindu practice in India will be different with what Hindu follower practices in Java or Bali island in Indonesia.