Hinduism

Hinduism

India Republic is a South Asian country officially known as Bharat as its alternate name, since January 26, 1950 when Indian´s Constitution was enacted (Wolpert, 2). This country is one of the most populated states with approximately 1.2 billion people in Asia and it is the seventh largest country in terms of geographic area. Of this 1.2 billion people 80.5% identify themselves asHindu, meanwhile the other 19.5% divides under the regiment of other religions like: Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, etc. (India Online Pages). As evidence of the importance of this religion is the Hindus temple, known as the “Tirupati Temple”, which is the second most visited all over the world after “The Kaaba”, Islam’s temple religion. Because of its predominance among the Indian population, theHindu religion explains many aspects of everyday life in the country; most Indians behave, to a greater or lesser degree, according to what this religion teaches.

In Hinduism food is not only a vital element for life, it represents several meaningful things; they consider it as a gift from God and not only that, it even represents a part of God which is something very important for them; thisis why they don’t eat meat. Since they give food a lot of importance there are several rules that they have to respect. Hinduism preachers are not allowed to consume specific things such as: alcohol, garlic, onion and red colored foods (i.e. tomatoes). One of the most important rules is not to eat beef, because the cow is a sacred animal and they consider it to be a generous and gentle animalwhich has soul; they say that we should be gentle and respectful with cows because they provide humans with plenty of products such as: milk, yogurt, cream, leather, etc. all these in exchange of nothing but grass and water. Just as the cow, eating pork is forbidden as well. Basically they avoid over all things to cause pain or to harm any living thing. This is why the majority of people choose topractice vegetarianism; however vegetarianism is not mandatory, it is a matter of personal consideration and/or preferences.

Hinduism has a strict code of conduct that its followers should abide by in their daily lives. It consists of ten restrictions, or yamas and ten observations, or niyamas. This is the ethical and moral discipline of the Sanatana-dharma religion, without the support ofwhich, spiritual progress would be absolutely impossible. The terms of conduct inside their society are delimited by this yamas or niyamas and have different ways to treat their friends, their spouse, and their guests; for example: the friends that are closest to you, can arrive to your home without announcing, and for instance in our culture is more likely to make a phone call at least before youarrive. The roll of the wife in this culture is very different to what we are used to, in this culture the wife has to be completely obedient to her husband and their truly duty is to serve them. Also when a family that practice Hinduism exists certain codes for the guests, for example: the kids must leave the room with a smile in their faces and the father is the only one that can talk with theguest, if the father is not in the house, the wife is the one that can talk but must have to be in company with another familiar. Also the guest has to give some presents for the family they are visiting and the spouse gets the nice one.

According to Hinduism it is necessary to practice ritualistic worship, internal or external, in order to obtain the realization of the Supreme. As externalworship the deity should receive flowers or the burning of incise; meanwhile, internal worship consist in prayer and in different kinds of meditation such as japa, nyás, and mudra (Kenneth, 1987). Influence of Hinduism in Indians daily life can be identified in both kinds of rituals as there are specific hours a day in which they should be practiced. But not only these kinds of worship has a...