Hi, Nick here from Pods with Nick and James. Just a quick one before we get into this podcast.
I want to say a massive thank you for the support that we've received since starting these podcasts.
We thoroughly enjoy it and we look forward to creating more.
If you want to have your say on any topics that we've discussed or suggest future topics,
you can do so at www.reddit.com slash r slash nickandjamespodz
If you want to support us, you can do so from as little as £1 a month.
You can do that at www.patreon.com slash podswithnickandjames
Back to the podcast.
Hello and welcome back to Pods with Nick and James. My name is Nick and this is James.
Hi there.
Today I wanted to lead on from last time where James introduced us to the Abrahamic religions.
I wanted to lead on with that so I want to discuss the Indian religions.
Now I'm saying the Indian religions because there are four particular religions.
Can you name them James?
I know Sikhism, Buddhism, Hinduism. Now I will admit I don't know the fourth. What's the fourth one there?
It's Jainism.
Ah, alright.
Jainism is the world's most peaceful religion but I'll discuss why that is a bit later on.
All those religions come from India. All Indians were said to have descended from King Bharat
and Buddhists even call India Bharat to mean those descended from King Bharat.
So if you don't know, some of the more religious books are the Mahabharata, the Hindu book, the Mahabharata
and that literally is like the word of India. Essentially it translates to and it covers the very ancient and mythological past of Hinduism.
More than likely the pure differences in these four religions stem from the dynastic past of India.
So where it was so divided, almost, you think about the colloquial languages we have in England
where you've got the Yorkshire accent and the Welsh accent and the Essex accent.
That stems because we had the same language as a core structure but we all very much kept ourselves to ourselves and did it our own way.
Well that's pretty much the same way that Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism all stem around the same core beliefs and I really want to cover those.
The Dalai Lama himself says that Buddhism and Hinduism are twin brothers.
I thought that was a pretty cool little fact and the reason I went to that is because the Dalai Lama is obviously a very important person as far as Buddhism goes.
And there he is quite open-mindedly going, yeah, our religion is quite similar to this other person.
Whereas you don't really hear that. You think about, would you ever hear a Muslim or a Christian going,
my religion is quite similar to Muslim religion or my religion is quite similar to Christian?
You wouldn't hear it at all, would you? As a matter of fact, the moment the words came out of their mouth, their pastor or whatever would just be beheading them in that moment.
Perhaps not beheading, but yes, you would require for most Christians, it would require a certain amount of alcohol before they'd say that.
I am sober, but I will admit the three Abrahamic faiths do share a lot in common and it's just a shame that, you know what, not going to go down that.
We're talking about the other ones, but I will admit it's a shame that it's different from what is picked upon rather than the similarities.
I think you'll really like the centre of a lot of these religions because it's almost polar opposite to the Western religions.
I think it's almost, you almost misconceive these religions based on how we're brought up in the West.
We're taught to see things from the eyes of the West and therefore you look at the religions in the wrong way just because that's not how we were brought up.
We assume too much of these religions, whereas really they're quite cool, laid back down to earth religions, you know.
Anyway, I'll get into them. So, Hinduism. Let's start with the word Hinduism. Hinduism itself is derived, the word India even, is derived from the word Hinduism.
Do you know that? There is a river that runs between India and Persia called the Sindhu and Persians being lazy people, they swapped their S's with H and that gave birth to the Hindus that lived across the river.
And then they told the Greeks that the Hindus lived across that river and the Greeks being the people that they are, dropped the H and stuck a nice Greek E on the end of it and thus was born India.
That's literally how it comes about.
Okay.
Yeah, so India itself is literally just the Hindu people. It's just a word for the Hindu people. And it stands to reason that Hindu is one of their, or is the oldest religion in that area.
Hinduism can be broken down into seven core beliefs. Now I'm going to start with Hinduism because I like to think of Hinduism as the grandfather of all the Indian religions. That's not to say it's any more important, that's not to say that it's the right one, it's just to say that as far as I can tell it was the one that came first.
Alright, so we'll start with this because you'll see a lot of similarities going forwards based on what we talk about here.
So Hinduism can be broken down into seven core beliefs. There is one universal soul known as Brahman.
Okay. There is belief in an immortal individual soul, or Atman. So your soul is immortal. It belongs, for lack of a better term, to you as an individual.
And you live in an endless cycle of reincarnation based on, another one of their core beliefs, Karma.
So Karma is, obviously you understand the basis of Karma, what you give, returns, you know. But Karma itself can cling to your soul, right?
So the long and short of it is that if you do bad in this life, that bad Juju, that bad Karma, sticks to your soul and then influences your next reincarnation.
So you will be reincarnated to suit the negative Karma, or positive Karma, whatever may be the case, that your body instilled from the last life.
So if you feel like you're suffering in this life, it's likely that, as far as this religion is concerned, it's likely that is because of your own actions in a previous life.
You're reaping what you sowed, almost. So the ultimate aim is to realize your oneness with Brahman and free your soul from Moksha, the endless cycle of reincarnation.
So how you can free your soul from reincarnation is by accepting the Vedas, the four Hindu sacred books of knowledge. And I won't go into which ones they are, one of them is musical, they're basically hymn books.
But there is great teachings within these Vedas, and you should definitely look into them. If you've got time yourself, listeners in your own time, all of these religions I'm going to talk about now are incredibly insightful and very philosophical.
And if you want a bit of self-development, they're definitely something you should look into.
So Moksha is the endless cycle of what they call transmigration, which is essentially reincarnation. You live in this body, you die, your soul leaves the body and enters another one, and so on and so forth.
Now an interesting thing that Hinduism has, which I haven't seen very much in many other religions, is they believe that time is cyclical.
So they cover this very, very briefly in The Good Place, but they do a piss take in it. I do enjoy it, I think they do do a bunch of good stuff in that show.
I can actually imagine somebody of Hinduism at least being able to take offense at this. They say that in that time is cyclical, and the shape they show it making basically spells out a cursive form of the name Jeremy Bellamy.
But yeah, okay, so Hindus believe that time is cyclical. Do they have any... this is again possibly a wrong and Western way of putting it, but do they have a time scale or a number that they put on the length of their phone?
So there are four yugas which are ages or aeons, as obviously we were talking about aeons last time. There are four yugas of which they total around four and a half million years.
Okay, Hindus currently believe that we're in the final yuga, which is where humanity's over consumption and arrogance leads to the overall destruction of reality and it all has to recycle itself.
That's interesting because that's... yeah, like okay, so there are actually some similarities there with the Abrahamic faiths or at least with some people's understandings of the Abrahamic faiths like Jehovah's Witnesses going out in paradise on Earth or the Earth being made new, which could...
I'm possibly going out on a limb here, but that could be like, for lack of a way of saying it, the reset or the restart of things.
Okay, so I think it's obviously this is something that I want to talk about in our potentially next podcast, which is going to be an overview of similarities amongst all the religions and how there's truth in everything and history itself must be rewritten in order for us to understand ourselves because we're looking at religions like this ancient story that none of it's true.
Whereas really we need to be looking at religions as the oldest recorded history of humanity, lost religion of humanity and learned by the mistakes that were committed in these books.
Yeah, and just because what you believe in your Christian book happened to your side of the world as it were doesn't mean that what happened in the Bhagavad Gita or in the Mahabharata didn't happen in India.
It's all just different perspectives of potentially the same thing.
Anyway, I'll get to that. Yeah, I mean that's for another podcast. There's so many, like you said, there's so many similarities between all religions. I think it's almost ignorance to say it comes down to coincidence.
But that's what you're taught in religion. You're told, oh no, it's just coincidence. If they're similar, it's coincidence.
Anyway, so one of the other core beliefs of the Hindu belief is in Dharma. Now, do you know what Dharma is?
No, no, although I'm afraid Nick, what I'm going to definitely need is in about 15 minutes, I'm going to say all the words that I remember that I've learned so far, and then we're going to need to kind of go through the ones that I've clearly forgotten.
No problem.
No problem. All right, let me finish the core beliefs of Hinduism and we'll have a revision.
So Dharma, now if I was to translate this in my typical ignorant Western way, it would translate to proper behaviour.
The issue that I've got with that is that that's so vague and so single-minded or small-minded. It doesn't really give the depth of the real meaning.
So Dharma would probably be better to call it something like complete empirical pure being and purpose.
If you think about a lion's Dharma is to catch and eat gazelles. A sloth's Dharma is to sleep for 22 hours a day in a tree.
Humans, as I perceive it, humans is to consume every single resource in a completely non-renewable fashion for self-servitude and gratification, which I think we're doing pretty good at, if I'm honest.
That was a joke by the way.
Yeah, no, no, I get it. Cool, cool, cool. It's unfortunate that that is what we end up doing and something does need to change there, but again, hopefully we'll be able to put the worlds to right.
Yeah, I think in figuring this out anyway. Sorry, keep going.
Yeah, no, that's it. That's sort of core beliefs are that's the Hindu core beliefs.
Now, obviously, I only did only wanted to focus on the core of their religion. If you look into Hinduism, there's so much incredible stuff there.
I showed you some of it last time after the podcast, didn't I? Like the like some of the excerpts from Bhagavad Gita and stuff like that. It's incredible stuff. It really is.
And definitely worth looking into if you don't know anything about the religions yourself. Don't look at it necessarily as a religion.
Look at it as as as education history lesson, if you will. But it's incredible stuff.
So do you want to give me some of the stuff that you remember and we'll see what which ones.
Okay, so there are four ages, but I can't remember how many ages exactly.
So there are four ages in which time goes in a cycle. Each cycle is about four million years.
There are four holy books to do with Hinduism.
You've said that the Dalai Lama, the head of Buddhism, has said that Hinduism and Buddhism are twin brothers, which is interesting.
They both contain the idea of karma. But there was a specific name for the soul that I've already forgotten, which I'm trying to figure out.
It's Brahman. The individual soul is Atman.
And then the universal soul, if you want to think about it in kind of a paganistic way, you could say Godhead.
So that kind of ocean. I think about it as the ocean. If your soul is a droplet, then this is the ocean. And that's the Brahman.
Right. Okay. How old is Hinduism again? Like how far back does it go?
Now it goes back as far as like 4000 years as far as written records go. But you've got to be careful when you look at history as far as...
To be fair, most things, yeah, like most records are limited to about 4000 years.
You've got to be careful with Hinduism as well because time scales in their ancient books get a little bit difficult to comprehend.
And that's purely because I firmly think if it's written down and if it's almost too good to be true, it's probably true.
I don't mean that in a really naive way. I mean, nobody's going to write down something that is so ridiculous, nobody's going to believe it.
Unless it's actually true.
Well, they'll be, yeah, because people will just go, well, that's obviously not true and then move on with their day. Exactly. Exactly.
Now I showed you some... Do you remember the Rukmin Vimanas that I showed you from the Bhagavad Gita, the flying craft that were described within the Bhagavad Gita?
A lot of them almost look like flying cities, like something out of the Studio Ghibli film.
They are described as flying cities in the Bhagavad Gita.
So you can understand, if they've got an ancient book that has got the description of flying cities in it,
and they're talking about some of their monarchs living for like 30,000 years, you sit there going,
no, it's all rubbish, mate, it's all rubbish. No, I don't... Why would they write it down? If you're just going to look at it and go, oh, it's rubbish.
They're not idiots. They're not idiots. They know it's going to be looked at. But they've got to write the truth.
As far as I see it, that's the way I envision it. Just because you can't comprehend it, when you can't believe it based on what you see in the modern day,
doesn't mean it's not true. And why are you there to tell it any different? To say any different?
No, I am going to say something, and this isn't what I believe, but it is something which has been thrown at me when talking about religion.
Oh, well, what's the difference between that and Harry Potter, for example, is one that I've been told quite freely and quite regularly.
Well, you see...
Yes, no, great. What's your answer to that?
My answer to that? I've always got an answer for this, because I don't believe that any one person has a new or unique thought.
I believe that every thought stems from an occurrence somewhere. And this goes along with parallel universe theory, along with the infinite universe theory as well.
If anything can be thought of, then what you've picked up on is a frequency which has downloaded that information to your brain.
You think about... I mean, it's really difficult for me to try and actually get my words out of the cuff, but essentially I believe in coexisting realities,
which means that every single one of your choices are played out. When you have a choice in your life, your life branches.
Then all of a sudden another universe is created where both of those choices that you had are played out. And as such, every single possible occurrence that could happen has happened.
And if everything is coexisting alongside itself, and everything that we see and interact with operates at a frequency, then if you tune into a certain frequency you can get information from other places.
So when J.R. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings, all I really believe he did, and this is where people are probably going to shout stupid things at me about me being completely lunatic,
but all I really believe he did was he tapped into a frequency where that was the reality.
Because all of his scripture is so... all of his writings are so deep, so full of detail, that it's difficult to believe a singular mind could come up with that incredible world,
with all the languages, all the history and everything just on its own. I believe more likely he tapped into a frequency of and managed to observe or download all of that information and put as much of it as he could into writing.
And it's the same with Harry Potter, and it's the same with Bloody Red Dwarf. When I was growing up, I would love to go out into the infinite universe somewhere and find a Bloody Red Dwarf mining vessel somewhere with a Dave Lister and a cat on it.
Just go sit there with them. I think the fact that nobody can tell me that that's wrong allows me to have that belief, and nobody's ever going to be able to disprove that, so I'm allowed to believe that.
I absolutely love that. Weirdly enough, a friend of mine did show me this comic book where these two cultists are going door to door.
Rather than spreading a God of love, which is kind of like what is put forward by most of the religions, they are literally putting forward a God of hate, but they're saying,
Ah, so you don't need to worry about whether God loves or hates you. He definitely hates you, which means you don't have to worry about it. And the other one's like, ah, whew, what a relief.
And then as they're walking away, they're saying, you know, we can't prove any of this. And the other one goes, yes, but nobody can prove that it didn't happen.
And it's interesting parallels there, because you've taken it in quite a positive way of using it as a way of affirming the fact that no one can prove you wrong.
Therefore, it's OK for me to imagine and believe and think these things, whereas the writer of that comic book has used it as a as a mocking thing for to try and undermine the logic of any belief system.
So I find it interesting how the same fact can be used in multiple ways by different people. Exactly.
It's all perspective. Yeah. Anyway, I'm going to go over Buddhism now. So see if you can follow along with the similarities between Buddhism and Hinduism.
Do you want me to do you want me to just say same or just to list them at the end or something?
Just just obviously point them out if you notice anything that screams at you. Well, that's a bit similar. So the Buddha himself, the original one was born in four hundred and eighty B.C.
as a prince as Prince Siddhartha Gautama in the area that would later become Nepal.
Interestingly, Siddhartha's father knew of a prophecy that said that his son would become a great religious leader and not follow him on the throne. So the king set out to stop this from happening.
So what he actually did was he locked Prince Siddhartha in his palace and gave him absolutely everything he could ever want for.
He didn't. And he forced every sick person or old person to leave the palace. They were never allowed in the palace again.
OK. And at the age of twenty nine, Siddhartha actually ended up really depressed because as fulfilling as his life was, it really wasn't complete.
And he felt like there was a massive chasm that was missing. So he pushed and pushed and pushed with his father and eventually his father said, yes, OK, you can go out on a trip.
And as he leaves the palace, he goes out on this trip and as he's traveling, he he he he passes a sick child.
He passes an old man and he he passed a dead body and he was absolutely blown away to observe these things for the first time at twenty nine years old.
He he was like, what's the point of anything if all that ends up happening is that you suffer, you grow old and you die?
What's the point? Why do we do any of this? And he got really, really angry and he continued his his journey.
And as he continued, he saw a monk who had given up all worldly possessions and was completely happy.
He decided that he would try this. So he gave up all worldly possessions and he renounced his title as prince and he became a hermit.
And he starved himself and he suffered because he starved himself and he realized in his sufferance that he wasn't getting anywhere by doing that.
So what he actually did in the end was he went, OK, so there's got to be somewhere in the middle.
I mean, it's got it. I can't overdo it by giving up everything because I need things to be able to survive.
But I don't need everything. So let me find the middle ground.
And eventually he meditated whilst he was like he meditated on that and he tried to develop that as an idea.
OK, and he realized that true enlightenment isn't through the lavish lifestyles or complete redundancy thereof. Instead it lay in the middle.
He meditated and entered the state of nirvana, realizing that all life's troubles stem from desire and that this can be avoided by accepting life's changes for what they are.
So there are four, there are a lot of centric beliefs within Buddhism. The main centric belief is in samsara, which is the reincarnation of the soul.
Which is where your soul lives a life, experiences life. During that time it picks up karma, which is another centric belief.
It picks up karma and as you pick up karma your future reincarnations are influenced by that karma.
And nirvana. Now nirvana is the state that you enter when your karma is balanced and you're free of samsara.
So you can break free of your samsara. Now it's important to note that Buddha himself entered nirvana and lived for another 40 years.
So he didn't leave his soul, he didn't project out and all of a sudden he just became an etheric being.
He lived for another 40 years after entering that state of nirvana, after becoming Buddha.
So it's not like you transform. It's a mental, or not even a mental, it's a state of being I suppose, nirvana.
Yeah, it's not like a physical place.
Yeah, which I think I wanted to point out because it's quite often misconceived when you're looking at other religions to almost demonise them in the way that,
Oh of course, yeah, well you become all knowing, you just all of a sudden poof up in a cloud of smoke.
No, don't be stupid with it. It's not that at all. You can get to nirvana and you can experience nirvana.
And all you're really doing is going and being a complete person.
Now the four noble truths within Buddhism are that life is Dukkha, or suffering and dissatisfaction, and Dukkha is born from desire,
the wants and needs that you put on yourself in order to gain more or be more.
There is an end to Dukkha if you choose it, and the eightfold path, which I'll get to in a second, the eightfold path leads to the end of Dukkha.
So the eightfold path is the right view, so you've got to change your perspective, look at things a little bit differently.
The right thought, you've got to think about things a little bit differently.
The right speech, you've got to talk in the right way, in a positive way, relinquish that kind of ownership.
And the right action, you've got to embody all of that, the predecessing three steps.
And then you've got the right livelihood, so you start to live that life of the very belief system which starts with the right outlook.
The right effort, the more you put into it, the right effort is like the development on the right thought, it's like the next step to that.
The right mindfulness, that's like wellness and completion within yourself, so you're completely satisfied in being who you are and not seeking to be anything more.
And the right concentration, now this is the step just before nirvana, and this is centered massively around meditation when you look into it in the eightfold path.
So did you notice any similarities between the two?
Well, the idea, karma being a main one there, my most, one of the, I learned a little bit about karma when I was growing up, but I think one of my, one of the most mainstream ways I heard and learned about it was through this program called My Name is Earl, where somebody tries, but it's different there.
It's literally this one guy trying to make up for the bad things that he's done in his singular life, whereas both Hinduism and Buddhism seem to say that you're, the state of your soul determines your level of suffering, and your level of suffering is determined
by what you pick up and carry with you.
Yeah, exactly.
I really like Buddhism as, I mean people say that Buddhism is more of a philosophy, I can understand.
It certainly is about changing the way that you see life, but I was talking about this earlier when I, because obviously when I do a bit of research I kind of end up talking about it, I'm autistic, so if something interests me it's basically my soul focus for the entire day.
Oh, that's kind of off.
Yeah, so I was talking to my, to someone earlier about this and I was explaining that when I was younger, back in my more adventurous days should we say, I was partying, for lack of a better term, with a number of people,
and during this time I ended up sat on this chair and about ten people ended up sat around me in a semi-circle, I remember this moment, it was really, really surreal, I didn't even intend for this to happen, but I was just talking, I was just talking about the way that I see the world and kind of being really philosophical.
And one thing that I really did touch base on then, which I didn't need like guidance from anybody else to work out, this was just what I found, what I saw, and I said like a lot of the issues or the main core issues that humans have throughout their life are where your expectations change.
Where your wants, your desires, your needs, not even needs, because nine times out of ten your core needs are always met.
Yeah, but your wants, your desires, your expectations of yourself and other people, that's what changes and that's where the stress comes in, and that's where the pressure comes in to do more or be more or seek more, you know.
And I said if people can just learn to be content with what they have for what it is, then you don't need to stress yourself out ever.
If you can just go, you know what, I'm happy, I'm happy, of course if something new happened, I would accept that change and embrace that change, I wouldn't, I'm not going to seek out that change because all change has consequence and although I'm seeking out the positive points of that change,
there may well be negative points of that change, if that change happens without my willing it to, then I will embrace that change both positive and negative and adapt to that change, you know.
And that's the core of Buddhism, you know, and that's the core of a lot of these religions that we're looking at today, is that you don't, like people put themselves in their own prison.
Yeah, I know that I definitely do with a lot of the choices that I make so okay, yeah, I'm hearing you with that.
So I want to go over Jainism first because as I said I want to finish on Sikhism and there's a reason for this.
Just very quickly, are the roots of Buddhism and Hinduism entirely different? Now I know one's clearly got a, no they are completely different, I'm just trying to remember what you said precisely.
Okay, so I know one Prince Sanatana later became the Buddha and started sharing things around there, but Hinduism was that related to the name of the king who all Indians descended from?
Yeah, King Bharat, was that also connected with Hinduism or is there an individual?
Hinduism, yeah it was connected to Hinduism. So the way that I see this, if you think about Hinduism as the one everybody started with, yeah, when Prince Samatha was born, he would have been born a Hindu.
He would have been taught the Hindu core beliefs and as he lived and experienced his life and eventually became Buddha, he would have developed on that core belief system that he had grown up around.
Hang on, you know what, yes it's good, but I think it can be better. Yeah? Yeah I hear you on that. Whether it be that he was blessed with that knowledge, whether he ended up tapping into that knowledge from elsewhere,
I mean we hear different methods of the same kind of message being received in numerous different religions, even the Abrahamic religions, where there's a difference to that religion is because, oh I experienced this and this told me that this was different.
Whether it be God or whether it be a burning bush or something, it was an experience that this person had and they from that went, no this is how it's going to be from now on and that grew another religion.
And I think Buddhism kind of came about in the same way.
Okay, yeah, no that's fair enough, which is in some ways is the definition of a prophet is a prophet is someone who says, who looks around, sees what other people are doing in the form of relation to God and goes, no, in my experience, God is like this.
And rather than being killed immediately is able to convince a fair number of people, often before being killed. Yeah. Okay.
All right, great. Well, no, take me through Jainism, like what's that all about? So Jainism is quoted to be the most peaceful religion in the world.
In the West we told that Mahavira, who preceded the Buddha by a few decades, founded the religion by becoming their first Thirteen Kata.
However, if you ask the Jainists, they will tell you that he was actually the last in a line of 24 Thirteen Kata, which are just holy people.
Okay, similarities again. So they believe in Samsara, which we discussed in Buddhism, which is obviously reincarnation and karma.
They believe the path to breaking free of Samsara, laying the three jewels, the right faith, as in Jainism, the right knowledge and the right behavior.
And the right behavior is outlined in the five Mahavirats. Okay. There are another seven, I love this, they love their lists in all of these religions.
So there are seven Tattvas, okay. And these Tattvas are almost like the commandments. Okay.
So, living things have a perfect soul. Non-living things have no soul. Alright.
Bad things drag karma to your soul, and karma will stick to your soul. You can stop this influx of karma, and you can separate karma from your soul.
And if you can completely free your soul from karma, then you will free your soul from Samsara. Okay.
The five Mahavirats are completely non-violent, and I mean, it's not even a consideration. You are not violent, if you are a Jainist.
It's complete honesty. Absolute honesty. You must not steal. You have to be absolutely loyal. It's absolute fidelity, or celibacy, whichever way you choose to go.
So if you have a partner, you commit yourself to that person, 100%. Or, you don't. You don't have anyone. You just content yourself with that.
And not being possessive to anything. Alright. So that's Jainism.
Okay, that's amazing. I love the fact though, this is, weirdly enough, this is something which...
So before I became a Christian, I read the Art of Happiness, which is written by...
It might not necessarily be a holy book, but it is written by the Dalai Lama, and I hope he does get some book sales, because it did help me for a time.
Yeah, like it's weird that he talks about this. And actually, no wait, it wasn't in that book, but it was the Dalai Lama who said this.
He said, don't devote yourself to peace, because people kill and people die for peace all the time. Devote yourself to non-violence.
Because you can't kill for non-violence. That would just be crazy.
Yep. Absolutely. Like the thought of having to be violent has always been a massive issue for me. When I was growing up, there were times, don't get me wrong, where I would attempt to defend myself.
And I would just be overwhelmed with this sense of adrenaline and absolutely lose control of my limbs. And I was constantly at conflict of, I didn't want to hurt anyone.
And genuinely, even if they were pounding on me and hurting me, I still didn't want to hurt them. So what am I doing? Why am I trying to fight this person? So I'm now of that mind where I'm like, I'm just not a violent person.
I don't have any need to be violent.
Well, you can always walk away, right?
I play fight with the kids, mainly my sons. But I think that's what blokes doing it with boys. Just kind of throw them around a bit. I don't hurt anyone. I don't aim to anyway. And I certainly make right if I do.
But I think I'm digressing now. Essentially, I can't bring myself to be a violent person. I can't bring myself to just walk up to someone and want to punch them in the face for any particular reason, even if they've wronged me.
I kind of puff my chest out and throw words out there and I can be really dangerous with words, but I certainly am not a violent person.
Okay, and that's that's incredibly respectable. Like, it's not an easy thing to follow as well.
Especially when somebody is getting aggressive. It's also not a...
It's definitely not an easy thing to follow and still openly seek justice because everyone's got a different idea about what's right and what's wrong.
And I'm far too passive in my own way of dealing with things. So, yeah, like, you know, if you're committed to nonviolence, but you're still committed to justice, that's a difficult thing to follow through on, you know?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Right. Well, okay, so that's interesting. So with Jadism, when did Jadism start again? I'm really sorry if you've already said...
Jadism is the youngest of all of the Indian religions. And as a matter of fact, it's one of the youngest religions on the planet.
So it's about 500 years old and it... my brain just completely went on a walk then. And it's about 500 years old and it is about the eighth biggest religion in the world.
Okay.
Okay, that's interesting. All right. And what I quite like about that as well is that... I'm trying to think of the right words here.
I like the fact that this religion is seen as legitimate and we won't go too much into this and we'll touch upon this another time.
You know what, I crossed my packs over. Let me just correct myself there. So Jadism isn't the youngest of the Indian religions. Sikhism is, and I got that crossed over.
But it is about the eighth largest religion in the world, Jadism.
Okay. And is it still 500 years old?
No, that's Sikhism.
Okay. How old is Jadism?
Just finding out now.
Okay, I'll tell you what, I'll cover my point whilst you're following that up. It does annoy me that up until about, you know, 400 or 500 years ago, certain... like if somebody came up with a new religion, it was considered a new faith.
And then, right, and like, yeah, we won't go into this too much, but it does genuinely frustrate me that definitely around the 1800s, the moment somebody came up with a new religion, it was a cult.
I think there's a huge social, like social political dynamic there and then perhaps it was just a tool of the more traditional religions going about their business. But just this...
Well, you've said this before, isn't it? What's the difference between a religion and a cult?
Well, this, this, I know that in the past you've said that there, well, a number of people have said to me that there is no difference at all.
There is, there is a massive difference between the two.
Oh, okay. All right, brilliant. All right, fill me in there, Nick. What's, what is the difference?
Society accepts religion.
Yes. Yeah, that's it. That's the thing. The fact that you had these new religions coming in and still being accepted. And then for some reason, despite society moving forwards in so many ways, all of a sudden, it was these things are cults and are not legitimate.
You know?
Yeah.
So I want to just, you asked me how old Jainism is. I've just been having a look. So it's difficult. It's one of those with, as I said, with Indian, Indian religions. You've got to go kind of a bit careful because, I mean, one of their 13 caras lived for what they said was 8 and a half million years.
So, like I said, you've got to go a bit careful. But the one that they were talking about, 24, that, that and Kara lived about 3000 years ago.
Okay.
But that, like I said, if you ask the Jainists, that's the 24th in a line of the Tertankaras. Okay. Yeah. So despite the fact the West have decided that that's when it started.
As far as the Jainists believe it's been around since the day dot and the day dot is billions of years ago.
Yeah.
Okay.
Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. So I wanted to finish on Sikhism.
And there's a reason for this now Sikhism is the youngest of the Indian religions.
I should point out actually, I'm saying Indian religions here. Now obviously Buddhism is massive in China. So the point where the Chinese have tried, have actually passed a law to say that the new Dalai Lama cannot be reincarnated by anybody that is not Chinese.
I'm not really sure how that law is going to go about being enforced. But okay. So what that is, what that is, I think that's the government trying to undermine the huge power that first off it's mixing nationalism with religion, which, which never should have.
It doesn't. It only works in one country in the world. Let's face it.
Yeah. Well, that's exactly it. And it doesn't.
Yeah, okay.
But, uh, it also means that I think what they're doing there is that when the current Dalai Lama dies.
If the, if the new Dalai Lama is not Chinese, and therefore subject to Chinese authority and Chinese influence. They're kind of almost trying to massively undermine the religion there.
Yeah, they're not going to accept it.
They're not, the government isn't going to accept it. And all of a sudden there's going to be a schism between Buddhists who believe that the current Dalai Lama is legitimate, and therefore define the, defy the government.
And those that don't see that see the current one as legitimate, or sorry, the new one as legitimate, and are legal, in a way, by state.
So it's going to be, it's going to be frustrating, to say the least, but I think there's going to, that law in itself is almost designed by the people in power to cause civil unrest through Buddhism, which, you know what, I just, you know what, not a fan of that law, straight away.
No, absolutely. I'm with you 100%. I kind of laughed. And I can imagine the soul of the Dalai Lama is laughing, going, you know, what, what do I try and teach you? Change will happen. You have to embrace these changes.
Oh my god, yeah.
Make a fair point there.
Oh dear. You know what they say, pride comes before a fall. Anyway, so yeah, like I said, Sikhism is the youngest and fifth largest of all the global faiths.
Interestingly, it is religious requirement for a Sikh to carry a sword.
That's interesting. What's the historic, is that, is that purely a belief thing or is there a historical...
It's a religious need, it's a requirement. You must have a sword, and you must not use the sword for anything other than overcoming an oppressor.
Oh, that is very specific.
Yep. So it is, you can only use it to defend the poor and needy. Yeah, so somebody who is less able than yourself and is being oppressed by someone else, you can use that sword to protect them.
Now, nowadays, of course, most Sikhs that you see in the street, they don't walk around with massive long swords.
Most of the time it's a tiny little, nowadays it's a pocket knife or something like that, but it's well within their religious requirements to carry a sword.
So they're allowed to.
Interesting.
The holiest site in Sikhism, you mentioned this earlier, the holiest site in Sikhism is the Harimandir, which is what, James?
It's a gurdwara, which means house of the teacher, which everything you kind of learn about gurdwaras will be positive. It's very difficult to dislike a place which is open to all, and which feeds the needy, just generally.
That's what a lot of temples and what a lot of churches should be and aren't.
Yep. Yep. So it's an open kitchen. It feeds up to 100,000 people a day as well, which is incredible, the Harimandir.
Now, you said about the gurdwara, the gurdwara itself is not just the Harimandir, it's every holy house that is to do with Sikhism in the world. Now, do you know what makes a gurdwara?
No, actually. What's the main difference?
It's any place that contains the Gant Saheb, the holy book.
Interesting. Okay, so the book. Alright, right, right. Okay, so that's interesting. So just like an art museum is an art museum because it's got art in it.
Yep. Okay, so that, right, so it does the whole specific. Okay, I also like that far more because it means that the value of the building isn't intrinsic to the building, it's intrinsic to the content.
Yep. Just like a school without any children who attend or where no learning takes place is no longer a school.
Yep. Okay, I like that actually. That's pretty smart. That's pretty good.
Yeah. Now, Sikhism originated in the Punjab area of India and 60% of the Punjabi population are Sikh. However, the number of Sikh around the world is quite minimal, but you will see them.
You tell me one defining feature of a Sikh. Most people misconstrue this for another religion, but nine times out of ten if you see this one particular feature on a person it's because they are Sikh.
Wait, it's not the red dot is it? Because that would be Hindu. That is Hindu. That's Hindu. 98% sure that's Hindu.
Right, okay, sorry. It's just because you brought up misconstrued I jumped the gun there.
Something even bigger, I mean if you go more American. It's not a turban is it? It is a turban, yeah. So every time I've seen somebody wearing a turban I've always gone, oh they're Sikh.
But I know that a lot of people around me being as naive as they are look at somebody in a turban go bloody mush limps and that's not to say that I condone that at all.
I'm just saying that it's that stigma isn't it? And how many Sikhs do you think that get stigmatized because of the acts that have been caused in a completely different religious bodies name?
Yeah, that's probably really frustrating. But do you know what are the most amazing things about Sikh?
What's one of the most amazing things about Sikhs?
Even if you outed them as a Muslim or said that they were a certain way because of their belief they would go, okay I'm quite happy for you to think that.
I don't believe that myself but I'm quite happy for you to think that because that's your core belief and I believe that there is no difference in what you, there is no great divide between what you feel and what I feel I think we're all the same.
They would literally say, you know what you see me as a Muslim I'm going to forgive your naivety because everybody is the same anyway, what does it matter?
That's pretty incredible.
So Sikhism is the first religion where women were equal to men and there were women that actually fought in some of their wars.
Can you believe that Sikhs believe in Karma? Imagine that, another Indian religion that believe in Karma.
Same as other beliefs which originated around India however they believe that Karma can be adapted by God. Karma may influence your next life but no matter how much they will always be a way for you to become a good person in your lifetime.
Okay I'm liking the, it's very difficult to dislike the hopefulness of that.
Yeah, yeah. So Sikh itself, the word means learner, Guru which is their holy people, Guru means teacher or spiritual guide.
And the Sikhs follow the teachings of the ten succeeding Gurus starting with Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism. Now Guru Nanak hated greed and despised the social divides.
He was taught by God that there is no divide, there is only human, there is no religion, there is only God. And there have been martyrs among the ten Gurus.
Now I wanted to cover this as well because some of these stories are fantastic.
One was beheaded by a Mughal leader, Guru Aryan, just because he didn't agree with this guy's beliefs. And the other was Guru Tegh Bahadir who was killed by Mughals when trying to defend the beliefs of the Hindus.
You see now that is amazing.
Okay yeah, so literally he would, okay.
Now the ninth succeeding Guru stopped the succession of Gurus by making the Gansahib, the final Guru.
So he made the book that every one of the preceding Gurus wrote into and put their teachings into, the final Guru and said you know what, this is now going to succeed me, this book.
And it will always be the Guru. As long as you have this book you have us.
Okay, interesting.
That's, yeah, that's kind of like a, that's very much a cementing.
But like that's another thing to cover would be the cementing of a religion or the canonizing of a religion through its transcription into written code or written law.
That's all right.
That is interesting though that he goes to change the process of succession there, or abolish the process of succession.
Yeah, I think he's kind of got to the point where he's like you know what, I don't know that we can get any better than what we've already got. Why do we need to?
Why do we need to develop on this? It's already good enough. Let's just go with this.
Yeah, I can, I can respect that to a point. I think every,
I think every process should be trying to improve itself.
So maybe I'm, but that might just be my Western way of looking at it, but yeah I can at the very least really get behind a lot of, yeah, a lot of what's been said there, that is at least something.
Yeah.
So the core beliefs of Sikhism is that there is one God, God is everything, everywhere, everyone, all of reality, he is called Wayoguru.
They believe that no one's ideology of God is incorrect. Everyone's God is the one God because God is everything.
They believe in Maya, which is distraction, and Maya is anything that takes your mind away from God and stops your progression towards breaking free of the cycles of life's reincarnation.
And Saiva is selfless service. So they believe in selfless service, acting because what needs to happen needs to happen. And if you're there, and you can facilitate that, you should do.
Yeah, it's hard to, hard to disagree with that.
Absolutely. There are the three pillars which are the absolute, like, the standing structures of the Sikh beliefs. They are the, these are kind of like your go-to, these are the things that you must do if you are a Sikh.
They're the Nam Japo, which is meditation on God and reciting of his name, Wayoguru.
The Kirikani, which is working hard to make an honest living.
And the Wan Chakni, which is sharing the fruits of your labour with others.
Very practical and very good things.
Like I do also like that Buddhism also focuses on what you choose to do, what you spend your, your time doing, like it, I can't remember the name of it, but it does warn against becoming a soldier, for example, because soldiers have to kill people, and kind of a number of things like that.
That's interesting. I like the working. Yeah, that part of, I like how quite, that is very succinct and very logical to me that, first of all, work hard, so you work hard, so that you can have stuff.
Next bit.
When you've got stuff, share it.
That's, yeah, I just, it's, again, very difficult to argue with that sort of way of doing things. Yeah.
Now I actually think that
India's religions are some of the most poignant that we, that we have in the world.
And
I'm going to be a bit edgy, should we say, and say that, like,
even Christianity and like the religions that I grew up around, like Judaism and Muslims, like they are very narrow minded as a, as a religion.
Every single one of the Indian faiths, well no, that's a lie, I think Jainism is the one that says there is only one religion, and that is Jainism, and that's how it must be.
However, like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, all kind of say, meh, you know what, not everybody's going to believe what you believe, but as long as you believe it, what does it matter?
I guess that,
well I guess that comes down to what a religion or how a religion,
what a religion believes about
objective truth.
And it is great that there's a lot of religions out there which can just accept that this world goes beyond anything we can kind of like truly understand.
And as a result, therefore, a number of truths can be real, but like a lot of systems of thought believe in an objective reality, but it's an singular objective reality.
So I kind of, I can, I, you know, like, I can see why, for example, from just from this conversation, Nick, I now understand why there is a myriad of religions existing in India, and why, although there's social, there has been social unrest in the
past.
I now understand why they haven't historically build each other, like, they almost live harmoniously nowadays, you know, like there are six core, core religions in India.
The biggest four are Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Christianity.
You know, and the fact that those four religions can live in dominance, they're not even like, oh, there's there's like Christianity, which is bigger than all the rest.
And the others kind of just fit in where they can fit in, they are all like a large share of the population each.
And they coexist quite happily accepting of each other. I think the Christians kind of have to hide, and the Buddhists and Hindus and Sikhs kind of accept the fact that they're there.
That was once again a really dry joke that nobody must have got but we'll go there some other day.
It is, it is, yeah, that is, I don't know that's commendable and it's a shame that, I don't know it's it kind of makes me wonder then, what the hell happened with the separation of India and Pakistan if they're, if they're now getting on, you know,
but that,
okay, well, you know what I'm at least understanding why it's it's possible for these different things if because if they all say, or, with the exception of jade jadeism say that the other one is valid, they might not have it all right but they've got it mostly down, or in the case of Sikhism,
every single truth is valid.
Now I struggle with the idea of every single truth being valid because that's almost objectifying, or, yeah, okay completely objectifying the idea of moral relativism, whereas I don't see all forms of moral, of not all views on morality are compatible in my mind.
But I will admit, I struggle to argue moral objectivity as a rule generally and it's annoying because I'll listen to authors who explain it perfectly, and go oh my god that's amazing and then five minutes later, I'm not able to explain it.
Yeah.
I've got a mate who fully fully believes in moral subjectivity, and a lot of people do met perhaps yourself, do, do, would you say that morality is entirely subjective.
I mean that's possibly a conversation for another podcast. It's a bit of a loaded question to be fair as well because I think I, the way I perceive it is morality to me I've never had to think about morality.
I was kind of at my core, like, when I've been like, having to be, having to grow up as an autistic person in a neurotypical world, I found myself observing people a lot more to know, to almost like temperature gauge, how do I react, what should I say, where should I be,
but I was also smart enough to look at the way that people were reacting, or the way that people were behaving and kind of add a moral compass to it and go, that's not really going to work because cause and effect says that that's going to end up like this.
But, I'm going to take that lesson as a lesson learnt because I now know that's how not to respond, so if I can gauge my response as a polar opposite to that then I know I'm roughly in the right ballpark and I'm good.
So, for me, my moral compass has kind of centred me whilst trying to find my feet, I've started a little bit there, sorry about that, when I've been trying to find my feet in uncharted territory as it were.
Yeah.
I don't know whether that moral compass is something, I think I did learn it at a very young age, I wasn't a very nice child like I've mentioned before, I think stealing from those closest to me and generally not being a very nice person,
and then what that did to those people that were close to me, maybe centred my morality a lot earlier than most people, and therefore in my, should we say conscious adulthood, I've not really had to think too much about morality because it was so ingrained from a young age from making all those mistakes.
No, well that's fair enough, like so what I'd say there is that your morality is informed by your mistakes, or at least that's what I'm hearing.
Yeah, absolutely, that's how I feel about it.
Okay, well that's fair enough, that's fair enough. Okay, well I've got,
you know actually I'm not just gonna badmouth him, but I do get frustrated when people hide behind the idea of subjective morality as a way of saying that morality just doesn't exist.
Whereas, I think most people can agree that it does. However, what annoys me is that I can't explain why it does without illogical emotion based arguments.
But anyway, so I find, I both like and struggle with what you've said about Sikhism there because I can't see all moral truths or all truths as compatible, but that might just be my own narrow mindedness.
I'll need to think and do a bit of research on that.
No worries, no worries. I think it was an absolutely fantastic thing to go and learn about, I really enjoyed researching this podcast.
I think there's so much depth in their religions, and this isn't even scratching the surface.
When you look at Hinduism, I mean I'm only talking about Hinduism because they, as I said it's almost like the core of, the centre of all of these Indian religions.
And it's almost like they wrote their entire history into their religion.
If you look at some of the scriptures from Hinduism over the years, it's utterly incredible. It really is worth a deep look into that.
Brilliant. Well, that's good.
Well, I don't know about you, but my head is spinning from this. I'm definitely going to need to do a bit more research into this and also try and figure out a few more things.
Do you have anything else that you wish to impart with us?
No, no, I'm going to leave it there. Like I said, to those listeners still with us, we've kind of touched upon now seven of the biggest religions in the world.
And what we've done is instead of giving you our biased perspective on all of these religions, what we've done is we've given you their history.
We've given you their background.
And the reason we've done this is because in a future podcast, I won't necessarily say the next podcast, but in a future podcast, what we aim to do is we aim to bring the narrative, to kind of challenge that and say why,
like we have done with all other topics that we've discussed. Why, how, when, is it something that needs to still exist? If it does, why?
You know? And we can now do that without having to continually describe or give background to or context to all of these religions.
There's so much to them that if we didn't do a couple of episodes just on each of their histories, then we would have spent forever. And our main topic of discussion with the podcast would have been four hours long, as opposed to our normal hour, hour and 15, hour and 20 minute podcast.
Absolutely.
Is there anything you want to add today, James?
No, my mind, my mind is spinning. I'm really, I'm going to need to look at the formation of India and Pakistan again to understand how religions which had existed
for, for like centuries, or I don't know how there was a political movement to, to make a whole new country and how one person was foolish enough to, you know what, I need to, I need to stop myself there and do my research.
Yeah, no, I've got nothing, I've got nothing to add. I've said my bit, my little bit at least about objective truth, and about how,
yeah, how I'm struggling to understand Sikhism's understanding of all things being true, although you did bring up a very good point about multiple realities. But yeah, no, I'm good. I've, I've learned a lot. Thank you very much for your research.
No problem at all. And thank you to all the listeners that are still with us. We hope you've enjoyed and we will catch you on the next podcast. Bye from me.
And bye for myself.