Hitler

Hinduism: Livi
ng the Religious Life
The Four Goals of Life
Classic Hinduism promotes four different goals. Like other aspects of Hinduism, the goals are split between those emphasized by the "life is good" perspective and those emphasized by the "life is bad" perspective. The three life-affirming goals are Dharma (virtue), Artha (success) and Kama (pleasure), while the life-negating goal isthat of moksha (release).
The three "life is good" goals can be pursued all at once or at different times in one's life. Some goals seem more suited to different stages of life than others.
Dharma is the practice of virtue, the living of an ethical and ritually correct life. The definition of what is virtuous, however, varies, depending on a person's caste and jati membership. The primary virtueis to fulfill the duties assigned to one's caste. Thus a brahmin should offer sacrifices and do them to the best of his ability, while aVaishya silversmith should create his plates and bowls as strong and beautiful as possible. If either person tried to do the other's job, that would be seen as violating their caste duty. The dharma a person is expected to fulfill also varies depending ontheir stage of life. A student, for instance, becomes virtuous through a different set of actions than a householder.
Artha is the working for and achieving of success, in terms of both wealth and power. This means it is religiously important to be a successful businessman, to sell a lot of carpets for instance, or to manage a successful restaurant. It also means that it is religiously good to serve onthe city council, to be active in civic organizations, or even to become a politician. This kind of success is most easily achieved at the householder stage of life.
Kama is pleasure, usually understood as aesthetic pleasure of all kinds. This includes: the producing and enjoyment of art, music, dance, drama, literature, poetry, and sex. (The "Kama Sutra," which may be one of the best known Hindutexts in the West, is about the aesthetic pleasure of men and women; it discusses beauty, music, dance and sexual activity.) It is thus religiously praiseworthy to take part, to support, or just to appreciate any form of pleasure. This should always be done, of course, within the realm of dharma (i.e., in a virtuous manner).
The "life is bad" goal is moksha. It is the striving for release fromlife (since, after all, it is bad). To achieve this, a person must turn their back on life and strive to live without the things that make up life. At first, it requires the turning away from the first three goals, of rejecting family, comforts, pleasure, education, and so on. It also requires one to become an ascetic, a hermit, and to spend one's time in contemplation. This contemplation should bedirected towards overcoming the maya that clouds human perception of reality and towards realizing the true nature of the cosmos and one's place in it (that atman and Brahman are one). (For further discussion, see The Cosmos.)

The Four Types of Yoga: Reaching Towards the Divine
In Hinduism, there are four main ways to reach towards the divine reality, whether the ultimate goal is a better life,union with the divine, or a release from life. The ways are called yoga, a word similar to the English term "yoke." And, just as yoke implies a burden or a discipline of actions, so too does yoga. Each yoga puts on its followers a set of actions that help lead the practitioner towards their goal. The yogas are: Jnana yoga, Bhakti yoga, Karma yoga, and Raja yoga. The first three are discussed inthe Bhagavad Gita, while the fourth derives initially from the Yoga Sutra. These are all spiritual approaches to understanding the divine world; what we in the west generally term yoga--forms of physical exercise and control of the body--is properly known as Hatha yoga. It has no spiritual impact.
 
Janana Yoga
Janana means knowledge and this yoga is the path to understanding ultimate reality...