Hinduism
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Created by:
tsperandeo on September 27, 2011
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25 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 artha | material success and social prestige, one of the four goals of life |
| ascetic | one who renounces physical pleasures and worldly attachments for the sake of spiritual advancement; common in Hinduism and many other religious traditions, most notably Jainism |
| Atman | The eternal self, which the Upanishads identify with Brahman; often lowercase: the eternal Self or soul on an individual that is reincarnated from one body to the next and is ultimately identified with Atman. |
| Avatar | an incarnation, or living embodiment, or a deity, usually Vishnu, who is sent to earth to accomplish a divine purpose; Krishna and Rama are the most popular avatars. |
| Bhagavad Gita | A short section of the epic poem Mahabharata in which the god Krishna teaches the great warrior Arjuna about bhakti marga and other ways to God; Hinduism's most popular text. |
| bhakti marga | the most popular of the three Hindu paths to salvation, emphasizing loving devotion to one's chosen god or goddess. |
| Brahman | the eternal essence of reality and the source of the universe, beyond the reach of human perception and thought. |
| brahmin | the highest of the four classes of the caste system, traditionally made up of priests. |
| caste system | traditional division of Hindu society into various categories; there are four main varnas; or classes:Brahmin, kshatriya, vaishya, and shudra; each class contains certain subgroups, resulting in more than three thousand categories |
| dharma | Ethical duty based on the divine order of reality; one of the four goals of life. |
| jnana marga | "the path of knowledge" - one of the three Hindu paths to salvation, emphasizing knowing the true nature of reality through learning and meditation. |
| kama | pleasure, especially sensual love; one of the four goals of life. |
| karma | the moral law of cause and effect of actions; determines the nature of one's reincarnation. |
| karma marga | "the path of works" - One of the three Hindu paths to salvation, emphasizing performing right actions according to dharma. |
| kshatriya | the second of four classes of the caste system, traditionally made up of warrior and administrators. |
| maya | cosmic illusion brought about by divine creative power. |
| moksha | liberation or release of the individual self, atman, from the bondage of samsara, salvation; one of the four goals of life. |
| monism | the doctrine that reality is ultimately made up of only one essence. |
| Rig Veda | a collections of 1, 017 Sanskrit hymns composed about 1500BC earlier; Hinduism's oldest text. |
| samadhi | a trancelike state in which self-consciousness is lost and the mind is absorbed into the ultimate reality; the culmination of the eight steps of Yoga. |
| Sannyasin | a wandering ascetic who has advanced to the fourth and highest stage of life. |
| sati | the traditional practice of burning a widow on her husband's funeral pyre; outlawed in 1829, though it still occurs rarely. |
| shudra | the lowest of the four classes of the caste system, traditionally made up of servants and laborers |
| Upandishads | a collection of over two hundred texts composed of between 900 and 200 BC that provide philosophical commentary to the Vedas |
| vaishya | the third of the four classes of the caste system, traditionally made up of producers, such as farmers, merchants, and artisans. |
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