Question by Purple Mohawk Indian: What is the metaphysical absolute in which Hindu values are based?
Could it be Brahman or is there no metaphysical absolute?
Best answer:
Answer by Spirit
Yes, they think is Brahman. But the Vaisnavas has realised Sri Krishna as the Absolute Personality of Godhead and the Origin of all causes. The Great Goswamis have discovered 64 transcendental qualities in their fullness in Sri Krishna which are never to be found out in any other person or god and therefore found Him (Krishna) as All-Good, All-Knowledge and All-Beautiful.
The Theosophist realises Sri Krishna in His Impersonal Aspect Brahman or All-pervading Vishnu Who dwells within as Paramatma and without as the Virata and this realisation is in perfect harmony with the observation of the Vaisnavas. But the Vaisnava goes still deeper and sees Him as the Personality of Godhead “Bhagwan, Sri Krishna.” The all-pervading aspect of the Personality of Godhead is realised by the Vaisnava simultaneously along with his realisation of His Personal Aspect.
According to Srimad-Bhägavatam (1.2.11), the Supreme Lord is the ultimate fact of the Absolute Truth. Brahmeti paramätmeti bhagavän iti çabdyate. The Absolute Truth is realized in three features—impersonal Brahman, localized Paramätmä and ultimately the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Bhagavän.
The same statement is in the Bhagavad-gitä (14.27). Lord Krishna is the background of the brahman (brahmano hi pratishthäham). So the brahman is not independent or self-sufficient. Lord Sri Krishna is ultimately the creator of the brahman, or the effulgence of the transcendental body of the Lord. This brahman is all-pervading,
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Consider:
There is a profound mingling, of great hermeneutical importance, of Rta, the concept of eka(one), this (idam) and atman-Brahman (self-Being) in Hindu metaphysics. The origin of this mingling is in the early Hindu scriptures (the Vedas and the Upanisads) and it has formed the bed-rock of the Hindu thought for ages. Again, the fusion of these four notions in the three fountain-heads (prasthanatrayi) of Hindu metaphysics has produced in the Indian culture a universalism, a cosmo-centric-anthropocentric synthesis comparable to Hegel’s philosophy of Man-Nature or Mind-Matter unity.
Several Vedic and Upanisadic texts try to verbalize with tremendous force that the cosmic reality (Rta) is, to human experience, the One (eka), i.e., “all that there is is This.” “This” (idam) is the meeting-point between Man and Nature, consciousness and the world, atman and Brahman. The Vedic utterance idam sarvam asi (all that there is is This) is hermeneutically so rich in metaphysical allusions that it could suggest truths like “There is no other in Being (Brahman),” “All that the individual mind grasps and is capable of grasping in There.” “Nothing is outside Being (Brahman),” “Since Being (Brahman) and consciousness (atman) disclose themselves as the unified seeing of This, the only background This could have is Non-Being.”
The search for self-identity was central to the metaphysical enterprise of early Hindus. The obvious starting-point of this search is the cosmocentric orderliness one would perceive in one’s day-to-day life. This orderliness was not looked upon as merely empirical – it was conceived as emanating from the transcendental Oneness, “This-ness”, Being within which the individual as a conscious, mental being figures. Therefore when one looks at oneself and asks oneself “who am I?” one places oneself as “being This”, “being There”, and one tends toward exploring the raison d’être of one’s very presence as “This” and “There”. One intuits this raison d’être as the basic Man-Nature whole, as Brahman itself.
Cosmocentric unity is the basic perception around which stanzas after stanzas of the Vedas and the Upanisads move. This unity must not be understood as something to be objectively studied (as, for instance, the unity of a material thing). The unity of the cosmos is its very life. As Heidegger puts it, the life of Nature (or of the cosmos) is Being – it is the primordial presence, universal, open and pregnant with unmappable possibilities. This is the ground from which humans have arisen as consciousness “spots” or consciousness “centres” (kendras). There is a large number of symbolic representations of this ground, this primordial presence, this Man-Nature whole in the Vedic-Upanisadic literature.
For the Vedic Hindus, it was an apriori truth that the cosmocentric norma, i.e., Rta, has to be obeyed, and appeased by means of sacrificial celebrations (yajna). The devasor gods the Vedas call upon in prayer and sacrifice (Varuna or the sky-god, Surya or the sun-god, Agni or the fire-god, Pusan or the pastoral god, Rudra or the militant god, Indra or the atmosphere-god, and Prajapati or the God of gods) follow Rta as the ultimate cosmic authority. The universal Rta, as the unterlying law of the conduct of gods, was believed to be timeless and divine. It was therefore necessary for the humans to comply with action (kriva), to follow the logic of cosmic powers, in order to overcome the fear of insecurity and death.
The religions belief of the Vedic Hindus that for welfare and happiness on earth man must surrender to the gods of Nature, to Nature’s fundamental norm, has not visibly diminished in its influence on the Hindu mind with the change of time. Rta, as the One, the transcendental, the Divine and the spontaneous, is still considered to include in its compass everything that is, has been and can be. It is manifest in man through his self-expression, i.e., through his “inner” and “outer” space which he experiences as his total being. Rtais the whole mind-body stuff having a potentiality of diversifying itself into multiple consciousnesses which we ourselves are. Man as a self-conscious being is not and cannot be cut off from it. But as one having concern for his individual being and, at the same time, as one living amidst others and in the world of material things is its self-expression.