Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mr. Hutchinson and welcome to our lesson on Hinduism.

We have been learning all about this fascinating religion that originated in the Indus Valley region, thousands and thousands of years ago.

We've learned how it's a collection of sort of beliefs that we now give the name Hinduism to, and we've learned about some of the core sorts of ideas that underpin it.

For example, in the last lesson, we learnt all about Dharma, this sort of power that sort of drives the universe.

In today's lesson, we're going to delve a little bit more into some of the core beliefs and some of the core ideas at the heart of Hinduism to give you an even better idea of this belief system and the different sorts of beliefs that have originated from the area.

So we're going to look particularly at three concepts karma, samsara, and Moksha.

As usual, you need to make sure that you've got all of your equipment ready that all of your distractions are away so that you can just focus on this lesson and complete all the tasks and increase your knowledge of the religion.

Our lesson will give a brief recap on the Purusharthas, which we looked at in the last lesson.

We'll then look at the central idea of samsara which drives lots of the dharmic thinking.

We'll look at the law of karma and finally, the concept of Moksha.

So quick recap.

We looked in the last lesson at the aims of Hinduism, the sorts of goals or objectives, that drive many Hindus lives.

The Purusharthas, and they were Dharma, which we looked at in closer detail.

And last, in the last lesson, how Kama C, sorry, K-A-M-A.

So don't get that confused with the karma that we're going to look at today, which sounds the same, but it's spelt differently and it's a different concept, Kama "K-A-M-A" is just to do with pleasure and enjoyment.

Artha, which is the livelihood and Moksha, which we'll look at later.

So quick recap.

You should know this by now I'm sure that you're going to smash it.

How many aims are there within Hinduism? How many Purusharthas are there within Hinduism? Is there is there one, two, three or four? Quickly put your finger on the correct answer.

should know it straightaway Well, then if you said four, did everybody get it? You're amazing, you're so clever.

You already know so much, well done.

So there are four Purusharthas within Hinduism and sort of underneath all of this, is another sort of concept that we need to get our head around.

Driving sort of like the, an understanding of the universe generally within Hinduism is an idea known as samsara, which is sometimes known as the wheel.

And it's key to lots of dharmic beliefs.

So samsara is the idea that there is a sort of cycle of life or a circle of life that each of us has an, an Atman or a soul or a spiritual being.

And that's not just contained to humans, the Atman or the sort of spark of, of life is in all things.

Samsara describes the sort of endless cycle of life.

So for us, for humans, we might start off as a little baby, grow into a child then into an adult and into old age.

Within Hindu belief system that your Atman at death will be reincarnated and so the cycle will then continue.

Your soul will be released and go into something else.

The Atman will be released from your body after it dies and be reincarnated into something else, This sort of cycle, isn't the only cycle that exists within Hinduism.

However, this would be a normal cycle of, birth, life, death.

rebirth from human to human, Atman from human into another human.

But Hindus believe that it's possible through living a bad life and holding bad karma to go through this life and if you finish ending with bad karma, breaking out of the cycle of rebirth within humans and into some sort of lower creature, for example, perhaps an animal, your Atman will go into an animal and you have to build up your karma again, to get back into humans.

Within humans, the idea that you can become a better and better human, and really the goal in terms of collecting good karma, which we'll talk about in a moment is to break out of the cycle and attain Moksha.

Moksha means that you break away from the cycle completely.

And you're just at one with God, which Hindus often called Brahma, the, the one eternal sort of universe, that God as an impersonal sort of the entire universe.

Now Hinduism is a polytheistic faith with hundreds of thousands, probably millions of Gods recorded within Hinduism, but one name given for the entire universe is Brahma, which we'll talk about in a later lesson.

So that would look like, being born, living a really good life and when you die, instead of being reincarnated and sort of your Atman being reincarnated, your Atman is released from any sort of physical form.

And is it one with Brahma, it becomes part of the entire universe.

So in terms of Hindu rituals, death is very common for people to be cremated.

And so their bodies will be burned.

And the idea is that this releases the spirit nice and quickly and then very often the ashes will be scattered into a river so that their life can flow on like the river flows on.

So let's see if you were listening carefully there.

And if you can complete this sentence, which brings together some of the ideas of samsara within Hinduism.

What's the meaning of samsara? Can you finish that sentence? So at its most basic samsara is just a name given to the cycle of life, that ongoing cycle of life, which could result in you going, your Atman being reincarnated into a lower creature or into a higher human and the only way to escape samsara is to be at one, which is to achieve Moksha, to be at one with a Brahma, the God.

And this is all driven, I mentioned it a few times.

This is all driven by this idea of karma.

So let's take a moment to think about what karma means.

The law of karma, according to Hindus is the idea that for everything that you do for every action that you take, there's some sort of reaction, there's some sort of consequence.

Now, so first of all, let's make sure that you have this really clear.

What does karma mean? For every action there's a reaction or consequence, the power that supports the universe, your livelihood, the job that you do or spiritual realisation being at one with Brahma.

What does karma mean? Chosen your answer? Well done, if you said that it's the idea that every action has a consequence.

Now, if you want to really push yourself, can you describe what those other three options means? The name given to these other three options, we've discussed each of them before.

You could write down B and then the name given to the power that supports the universe.

C or the name that we give to the livelihood.

And D the sort of spiritual realisation, the freedom from samsara.

If you want to challenge yourself, give that a go now.

But we're going to focus on this one, karma.

So the law of karma is the idea that the universe keeps score, that for everything that you do, every action that you take, you can be either rewarded or you can gain a higher sort of status, become closer to being at one with the universe, or you can be less likely to be released from samsara and perhaps even take a lower status.

How do you achieve good karma? How do you have good karma? Well, you follow Dharma, you follow these things that we've looked at in the last lessons.

You're honest, you're patient, you show control, you don't hurt things.

So take a couple of those, name a couple of behaviours that will be linked to good karma and try to contextualise them.

So you think about maybe something you've done recently, what would be described as having good karma? How was it in line with Dharma? Write down a couple of good behaviours recently that you've done that are linked, that would be linked to good karma within Hinduism.

Awesome work, really interested to see what you said.

Hopefully refer to one of these, one of these ideas within Hinduism, this idea of being honest or pure, having goodwill, perhaps you might even spoken about asceticism, denying sort of luxuries and not being really interested in having lots of different material things.

And so something that we've spoken about a few times in this lesson is this final concept of Moksha.

So we know that samsara is the cycle of life that endless, samsara is that wheel, the endless cycle of birth and rebirth that karma drives how the rebirth will go, whether you will be born, whether your Atman will be born into a higher status body or a lower status creature.

And this ultimate goal of Moksha, of the release from samsara altogether.

So we talked about how samsara, the cycle of life was a baby, then a child, then an adult, then into old age.

And Hindus want to achieve Moksha to be at one with their God.

So here's a quick question to put this into context, how do Hindus use karma, that law of karma to try and reach Moksha? And I want you to try and put into, so I want you to build up all of these different ideas that we've used together.

So you take a moment, plan out your answer and try and use all of the different vocabulary and new concepts and they're tricky concepts, so well done for thinking hard about them and include them all in your answer.

So make sure that you've discussed good karma, samsara, Brahma and Moksha.

Use all of those words, writing an answer to that question.

How do Hindus use karma to try and reach or achieve Moksha? Pause the video and give that a shot now.

Great work, I'm sure that you've got an awesome answer.

So, well done.

I want to read it and it's not that I can't read it.

I wish I could, remember I'll say at the end that you can share on social media so I can give it a read.

And this is my answer.

Let's see if yours is similar to mine, I wrote Hindus try to achieve good karma, for example, by being generous and honest, not simply in one life, but in every life, as they're reborn in every life building up that good karma, in doing so they hope to end samsara and achieve Moksha so they can be at one with Brahma.

You might've had similar ideas, give yourself a tick for every key term that you used.

Well done If you went even further than me, I'm sure that lots of you did, that's really impressive.

Well done, you'll have an even better understanding of Hinduism.

It's the end of our lesson.

Like I said, love to read your answers 'cause I know that you're working really hard and getting to grips with this religion of Hinduism.

So if you'd like to share your work, ask your parents or carers to take a photo of it and pop on social media.

I'd love to read it.

It's the end of today's lesson.

Well done for working so hard.

Well done for getting your head around, some other core beliefs and core concepts at the heart of Hinduism.

In our next lesson, we're going to continue to learn, about this really interesting religion and develop our understanding of it even better.

I can't wait to see you then.