Lesson video

Hello, my name is Miss Pauvaday, I'm a teacher in the South East of London.

Welcome to this series on Buddhism.

It's good to have you here.

Today's lesson is going to be about India.

It's going to be about the kind of, what was the world like when the Buddha was born.

We are often really heavily influenced by the kind of big ideas of the time that the culture that we live in even the language.

So really, if we want to understand Buddhism and where it came from and how the Buddha was influenced, we really need to look at what India is like at the time of his birth.

So, let's get ready.

So before we start, you're going to need a few things.

So you're going to need a pen, some paper.

You're going to need to settle on your mind because we're going to be looking at some quite interesting but slightly complex ideas.

And the other thing you're going to need is some Play-Doh if you have it.

So let's have some fun with some Play Doh I've stolen some from my kids.

But don't mind if you don't have any, because we can easily do on paper.

So go ahead and pause now and go and get the things that you need.

So what you will hear a lot as if you go through the lessons on Buddhism, is this idea that people are ignorant.

Now, it doesn't mean ignorance in the way that we believe it, this is a kind of, it's slow or as something negative to say about somebody.

What it means is that we or human beings don't see the world really as it is.

We are ignorant to the true nature of reality.

We think it's one thing but actually it's a different thing.

This is what the Buddha was teaching, Buddhists and Hindus believe.

They believe that the way that people see reality is actually not true, and it's partly because of this issue of our senses.

And so that's what it means not to be awake that we're not awake to the true nature of reality.

Our senses have limitations, it's difficult to see things from other people's perspectives.

And even from a psychological perspective it's difficult to prove that we all see the same colour for example, modern psychology has some very interesting tests in this era showing that actually experience is somewhat subjective.

And you might recognise this when you sometimes if you see Hindus, maybe you're near a temple or maybe people in your school, or maybe you seen on TV or if you've been lucky enough to go to India, you might see people, Hindus who have a dot on their forehead.

It's known as the Bindi.

And what that Bindi represents is this idea of not really being able to see reality as it is but the journey towards really seeing.

So, in Indian philosophy in general, you have this concept of the third eye and it's like a spiritual sense.

It's another sense that is trying to be open, trying to be trained, to see things as they actually are.

And later on, we're going to see why that's important particularly in Buddhism.

Why Buddhists are trying to do that.

Okay, so let's have a quick thing.

Go ahead and pause for a second as you look at this question.

What do you know about India so far? So have a look at these images and which of these would you associate with India? So go ahead and pause, have a good look.

Have a very good look.

Okay oh, I've just got ahead of myself then.

Hopefully you've unpaused now.

So the first image I said, have a good look.

Some of you might have spotted something quite interesting in this picture.

This is a diya lamp, which is often used in Diwali in Indian festival of light.

That's a swastika.

When I teach this to my students that they just go crazy and I'll be honest, I quite enjoy that they just have this sense of alarm.

Oh my goodness you're showing a swastika.

The swastika is a Buddhist Hindu symbol.

It didn't belong as Hitler.

We're going to look at that a bit later on.

It actually existed for a very very long time in Vedic traditions.

So Indian traditions, it wasn't just Buddhist or Hindu.

You will find it in other ancient religions as well.

And yeah later on, but Hitler appropriate symbol we'll look at that briefly.

The guy in the middle is Patanjali who you are thinking, okay who's this guy, but you will definitely know.

Definitely know what he was a great teacher.

He was a great teacher of something called yoga.

And you definitely have heard that.

I'm sure you have, some of you might practise it, some of you might do it at school, very, very big across all countries across sports, across all sorts of different areas now.

So, and he's there because yoga was a philosophical school.

And the purpose of it was to make your body strong and to become aware of your body.

So for this journey of enlightenment that was the initial meaning for it.

So you can start to see some of these ideas are kind of crossing together now.

So you're probably thinking, okay, definitely not skiing.

Some of you might be thinking, okay, yeah, they're skiing in India, some of you might be thinking, oh God, no, that makes no sense.

I've put that there just to show you how massive India is.

It's enormous that you can go to one end where the Himalayas are and you can ski.

You can go on a skiing holiday in India, and then you go to the other end and you're a tropical beach.

So it's important for us to know just how massive India is.

And it's interesting to know, because in India you have so many languages, so many, probably over about 300 I would say, if not more, that are still in existence.

And because of that, you have very very different skin types.

So you might meet people from the very Northern parts of India who might be very light-skinned.

Some people from the North of India might even have green or blue eyes, but people in the South tend to have very, very dark skin because it's obviously the hottest part of India and very dark hair, brown eyes usually.

And that means that in India you've got all sorts of different types of delicious food, different types of culture, different types of festival, and most importantly, different types of religion.

And this is what I wanted to really get to.

So this is another thing that people.

It's not really obvious about India.

Hinduism is like this collection of religions, which we're going to get to in a minute.

So, where did it all start? And again, we're looking at the world that the Buddha grew up in.

So we are talking over two and a half thousand years ago now, more.

And enormous country, different climates, different languages, different religions but the main idea is with these Brahmic ideas which we're going to cover now.

So let's have a quick look.

The Buddha, he taught in an area close to the region of the Ganges, which is in the northeast of India around 200 BCE is 200 years before the common era or before the Christian era.

And Brahmanism was the dominant philosophy of the times.

Brahmanism, big fancy word after the main kind of God of Hinduism.

But you will associate it with Hinduism.

And we'll look at the reason why in a moment.

And this Brahmanism has been around for 1500 years BCE.

So we are talking close to 5,000 years, possibly longer, Historians, archaeologists can't really date it, really don't know the beginnings of what we call Hinduism now.

Partly because of the area that it kind of grew up in those tend to be areas where there's a lot of conflict.

So you can't just go into these areas and start digging and looking for relics because there's Wars or conflicts happening.

And the other reason is the materials that would have been used.

We're talking about a very, very long time ago.

So the materials that would have been used would have been they would have disintegrated.

They wouldn't have survived the test of time.

So we can't really date how far Brahminism is.

And the people around the time they were not the first people there.

There was already a great civilization there.

The Indus Valley Civilization really, really advanced.

They had water sanitation system.

And again, we're talking thousands of years before Christ really.

And we typically associate that era, that place in India became populated by this group called the Aryans.

And again, you might've heard this term those of you who have been paying attention to history you might be thinking how that sounds, similar to something that comes up in Nazi Germany and you would be right because Hitler did, you probably use some of these ideas.

But the Aryans they were not a race of people they were kind of prehistoric nomadic, so they were like traveller people.

And they came from Russia, Iran, Turkey, and then they came to this Indus Valley civilization in northeast of India and they settled.

And from that Indian civilization that we know now of kind of grew.

And they adopted the cultures and the religion and the language of that era, and what they did was they preserved a lot of the teachings as well.

So, and the Aryans, they believed they spoke like a kind of ancient Aryan language and this then later became known as.

So this kind of blended with another language called Sanskrit.

And then there's another language partly which is associated with Buddhism.

And Sanskrit, mostly Sanskrit did migrate back to Europe and kind of merged with some ancient Greek and Latin which is the basis of our language.

So you can see how like, at this point, what I'm trying to do is paint you a picture of just how far back we are thinking about it.

So far back that people were still moving around all the different areas of the world and we're talking about small groups here, but the beginnings of different languages.

So it's very, very long ago.

I promised that I would explain Hitler and the Aryan Race.

So Hitler did adopt the swastika.

You can see on his arm there, it's actually in the wrong direction.

No, actually that isn't the right direction.

Sometimes it's flipped over.

And basically the reason he adopted the idea was because he thought this Aryan people was a race of people, he thought they were pure Europeans.

He thought they were blonde and blue eyed and he thought they were a group of people that hadn't mixed with any other types of people.

But we know historically that everyone had to mix.

The fact that we survived means that different groups of people actually had to mix.

He didn't understand that basically there was a historian and literally a philosopher I suppose, Arthur De Gobineau, he misinterpreted these Vedic texts, these ancient Indian texts and thought that they are a race of people.

And that's where Hitler was kind of, he got the wrong end of the stick basically, he misunderstood.

So he got very excited.

He thought, oh, okay, here's a pure race of European people, haven't mixed with anyone and I want to build a civilization on that idea.

And so he started adopting some of these ideas from what he believed was the Aryan but actually it was Vedic, it was Hindu.

He got it wrong, basically.

Let's see what we can remember.

Now, have a go at, look at these question, pause the video, write them down if you want to and think what would be the answer.

So go ahead and pause now and have a look, how would you answer them.

Okay, so let's have a look at the answers.

What does a Bindi symbolise? It symbolises the third eye, this idea of trying to awaken the spiritual sense so that you can start to see reality as it actually is.

And so that's why you'll find it definitely in Hinduism.

Why is India so diverse? Because it's so massive basically, it has icy mountains and tropical beaches, over 150 languages.

Who were Aryans? So this was a prehistoric group of people that came up from all over but they were mostly from Turkey, Iran, and Russia.

And they came to India to the northeast part and they settled there.

And they are important because they help preserve the languages, teachings, and they kind of set up shop there, really.

And from that, the Indian civilization grew even further.

It already existed, had long existed before but it was really the Aryans that flourished in that part of India.

And what mistake did Hitler make? He thought the Aryans were a group of pure white Europeans who hadn't mixed with any other groups or racism.

That's just not true on all sorts of levels because the migration the fact that we've all survived is based upon the idea that these group had to necessarily mix so.

And also they weren't a race of people, they were a nomadic group of people from all sorts of places.

So give yourself a tick, see how you did, and I'm sure you did brilliantly.

What did the Aryans believe? Well, like I've mentioned before, they adopted many of the ideas that existed at the time and these ideas were found in something called the Vedas which are the Holy books of Hinduism.

And these revelations is important because basically what was happening and is still happening in India is there's this tradition of really trying to watch the mind, watch the body, watch reality, in a really kind of concentrated way to enter these different kinds of states of consciousness, so that they can start to see the nature of reality.

So that's what revealed kind of me means.

And it's about the true nature of reality and the cosmos and what human beings are.

And much of this was passed down through the Vedas which is translated as knowledge and much later on the Vedas were actually written down.

Then the Vedas were written.

But we've got evidence for the Vedas going back 1500 years ago.

So again, very, very long time ago.

So 1500 years BCE before the common era before Christ.

So again, thousands of years.

And these texts, remember I said that in India you have all these different religions or all over India.

These texts were the basis of all, many of most of the religions all over India.

They weren't exactly the same, but they all kind of followed some of the main ideas in these texts.

I've mentioned a couple of times is Hinduism even a religion.

And now it actually isn't a religion at all.

What happened was when the British invaded during kind of the, just before Britain started trading and moving to other countries, they started trading with India.

And eventually what happened is they invaded India and they took control of India for a very, very long time.

But when they got there, the British couldn't quite understand, they saw all these different religions and they kind of thought, okay it must be part of the same idea, they've got the same Holy book.

That's where the term Hinduism came from because India at the time was known as Hindustan.

So they just thought, okay, bring all of these together and let's call it Hinduism.

So that's where we get the term Hinduism.

Whereas actually Hinduism as a one religion doesn't really exist.

There are a collection of lots and lots and lots of different religions all over India, and now in Sri Lanka, or Mauritius, or all of lots of different countries where there's Indians and that follow these texts, follow ideas within the innovators.

And what's interesting is, so the Aryans adopted these ideas and like I said, the reason why we're kind of focusing on them because they preserved it.

And they were using lots of the rituals and practises that were used in these texts.

And if you can go into Hindu temple today many of them have still survived.

So something like the sacrificial fire sounds a bit scary.

It's quite interesting actually.

If you ever get the chance to go to a Hindu temple maybe with school, you will see the priests they will have a fire and they will throw things like grain or milk into the fire.

And that's what it is.

They're supposed to be offerings for God.

And they will use certain sounds and prayers and something called a Mantra which is a kind of repetitive sound.

And again, I'm sure so many of you will have heard of this very famous Mantra.

Many of you will have seen this.

This is an Aum and you might hear people saying Aummmm, that sound or syllable as a sacred syllable has existed going back as far as that and possibly even further.

So the Aryans help preserve all of these ideas and they've still existed today, which is quite interesting.

Now it's time for Play-Doh.

So, go ahead and get your Play-Doh if you wish to, I'm going to grab mine and I'm just going to give you a moment, if you don't have it, don't worry.

You can just draw an image on a piece of paper.

What I want you to do is I want you to make a symbol.

So go ahead and pause and have a look at.

I've got my Play-Doh here.

How would you communicate the idea of love, wisdom, and destruction, using Play-Doh or using paper and pen.

So how would you do that? So, okay, Let's see what you have.

What have you made for love? If you can take some pictures, make sure you get permission and share them with us later on.

But when this in class many of my students will kind of come up with something like that.

So universal symbol hearts, we tend to think of love associated with that.

Okay, so I'm guessing many of you might have that kind of idea.

Some of you might have something even better.

So do share them.

Now I confess I gave up the Play-Doh because I'm I'm just a bit rubbish at it if I'm honest.

So I love playing with it but I'm just a bit rubbish with it.

So why I transferred my next ideas on paper.

What I did was I drew a book to represent wisdom because wisdom and knowledge for me kind of go hand in hand.

So I think that might communicate the idea of wisdom, a book, and then for destruction I drew an axe to symbolise the idea of destruction.

I did try to do in Play-Doh, but it failed.

I failed miserably, I'll be honest about it.

It was terrible.

So why have I asked you to do this? The reason why is we're going to talk about Hinduism.

We're going to talk about Hindu beliefs.

Now, remember when we talk about Hinduism we're talking about this big umbrella term for all the religions in India that follow the Vedas.

And the Vedas there is this one central idea.

We've got the idea of trying to break away from illusion, reality and there's another central idea that we're going to look at.

So how many Gods do you think there are in Hinduism? Have a quick think.

The answer is there's actually only one God.

Hinduism is what we call monotheistic, one God, which is often confused because we often see lots and lots and lots of different Gods.

But actually those aren't Gods what they are symbols.

A bit like the way that I asked you to create a symbol for different ideas.

Hindus believe in this one kind of energy, which is known as Brahman with an n on the end.

This is ultimate reality, ultimate energy.

So if you imagine the Play-Doh as the energy and it can be created and we can make anything from it.

That's the kind of idea that they have that everything in reality, past, present and future even things like thoughts are what we call manifestations of this one energy known as Brahman.

And this energy kind of explodes into being the descriptions are a little bit like the big bang and then eventually it starts to come back together and it kind of destroys itself and dies and then slowly it's reborn and explode into be being.

And in Hinduism, you've got this idea of what we call pantheism which is that God is actually everything, not the same as what you would find in particularly in Christianity which is panentheism, the idea that God actually moves and can be in its creation.

In Hinduism, Brahman is everything.

Everything is made from this one energy, which is really crazy when you think about it it's quite interesting.

And just on that note, that means that human beings are divine.

Everything around us is a form of divinity.

The term Namaste, which you might've heard of common greeting in India, what it actually means is the divinity, the divine, the God-like thing in me, the God energy meet, greets and salutes the God energy in you, that's what it means.

And what Hindus are trying to do effectively is they are trying to basically realise their true nature.

Realise what they're actually made of and what their destiny is supposed to be.

So that's what the Bindi means, it's about trying to realise what their true nature is, is unveiling, seeing realities that actually is.

And there's three ways of doing this, there's the kind of philosophical path, the yogic path we saw about, Patanjali, and developing yoga techniques.

And the Bakhti path is the one that most of you will be familiar in your RE lessons and that's kind of worshipping different deities to try and help understand these different concepts that exist in reality, trying to understand what a Brahman is through worship and through things like meditation and prayer.

So, your turn again, have a go at matching the definitions.

Pause and write them down and then have a go at matching them.

Okay, let's have a look.

So pantheism.

This is the idea that everything is made of God.

Brahman with an n on the end.

Sorry, Panentheism is God can be in everything.

So it's not the same as everything is made of God.

Brahman is the ultimate energy that Hindus believe in the one God I suppose and it's this ultimate energy that everything in the universe is made of.

And Namaste means the divinity in me salutes the divinity in you.

So good, I'm sure you did very, very well.

What I'm going to do now is I'm going to explain the Trimurt.

Now the Trimurt again you might have come across this at the primary school or maybe in your RE classes at school moment.

The Trimurti are the most important symbols.

So I asked you about destruction and that's because one of these Gods represents destruction that's Shiva.

And one of them represents a creation.

So if you look at Brahma without the n, you'll see a God there we've lots we four heads.

And the reason he's got four heads is because he's created the universe and now he's looking at every direction of the universe.

This is not really a God.

I mean, there are some Hindu divisions or what we call cults that might believe that these are actual Gods.

But when we look at the philosophy on the whole it's this idea that these are just kind of ideas that belong to this one, God, this one God can create.

So, and that's what Brahma represents this idea of creation.

And then Vishnu the one in the middle blue God, he represents protection and preservation.

You can see in his hand, one of his hands he's got something that looks like a disc.

That's supposed to be the universe that he's protecting.

So, this represents this preservation.

The next deity is a Shiva.

You can see he's got this kind of stuff in his hand.

And sometimes he has an axe.

He has a snake on him because that represents reincarnation the same way the snake would shed its skin.

It's the same idea of reincarnation, body kind of dies, and then the soul goes on into a new body.

And so these are the most important things that Brahman does, it creates, it preserves that creation and then that creation dies and then become something else.

So that's why the Trimurt is seen as the most important deities Hinduism.

And you can see that the symbols they're tryna symbolise this idea that this is what Brahman does.

And Vishnu he's really popular in India because he represents a protection.

Remember, that these are not real Gods they're symbols of ideas that exist inside all of us.

And Hindus believe that Vishnu is a kind of deity, this idea of protection that we all have inside of us.

Hindus, believe occasionally a being will be born, that we'll try and readdress the kind of problems that we have in our society and rebalance the world when they need it.

So some Hindus would look at people like Jesus, for example, as incarnation, we call an avatar of Vishnu.

And definitely many Hindus believe that the Buddha was an avatar of Vishnu with his teachings, he taught people how to balance their lives and be happy.

But it's important that you know that the Buddha himself actually renounced all of this stuff.

He wasn't interested in God to be honest, he wasn't really interested in the idea.

So he moved away from the Vedic tradition.

He started off in that tradition because he was a Hindu himself and eventually he kind of renounced it and the belief in Brahman.

What you going to see as we go along that Hindus and Buddhists have kind of similar ideas that you will see the idea of the cycle of samsara which is birth, life, death and reincarnation.

That's what they believe happens.

So that death isn't the end.

The Atman is the ultimate soul, it's the part of Brahman that gets reincarnated.

That's what the Atman means.

And Dharma refers to doing your duty and creating good karma.

So some of these terms might seem familiar to you.

They have already existed in the Hindu religions and you're going to see them again in Buddhism but they are going to be slightly different.

And the last thing I want to just tell you about is the Samanas.

So at the time of the Buddha, the Buddha was.

There were lots of kind of Holy men who were practising all sorts of different types of meditation trying to understand reality has actually was now doing all these different practises.

And the Samanas were a group that particularly came away from the Vedic Hindu Brahmic ideas.

They really rejected all of that because they didn't agree with the caste system.

The caste system really good, I guess from a philosophical perspective, had a rationale but it was really badly used in India and it caused a lot of pain and suffering poverty particularly for the people that fell out of the caste system, a kind of system of trying to organise society and it just didn't work, it was awful.

So, even at the time, the Buddha, historians have written that the Buddha, one of the things that kind of move the Buddha away from Hinduism was this idea that he really rejected the caste system and this Brahmic idea he didn't like it.

He didn't think that it served people or helped people.

So he joined this group, the Samanas who rejected the Vedas but kept some of the Hindu ideas and effectively Buddhism started as a samanic movement and then kind of grew out of that.

The point here is the Buddha grew up with all these ideas of talking about, that's the world he lived in and he was heavily influenced by that.

But we're going to see later on how he moves away and he starts to change all of those ideas.

So the last task I've got for you is to have a go at an infographic.

I have thrown so much information at you, so well done.

This was not easy.

It was not an easy thing to kind of go through such a long history of India and some of the big ideas in one lesson.

So really give yourself a pat on the shoulder.

Now let's see if we can remember some of it.

What you need to do is if you look at the support box, try and create an infographic.

So these are posters with pictures that are going to help you, pictures and cult colours and trying to separate the sections into the early settlers, the Aryans, a couple of points about Hindu beliefs and the Samanas.

That's really all you need.

I've talked a lot at you just to give you a broad overview but you don't actually need all of that, really just need to know about who were the Aryans, what are the basic beliefs of Hinduism and who were the Samanas and put that in your infographic.

So really well done, today was actually quite a tricky lesson, a bit of a mix of philosophy and history, ancient history, so well done and I will see you next time.