Examining Religion And Belief Hindus

It’s always a privilege to look a little more deeply into a
tradition. As always, the more you look, the more you realise
there is to know. Religious education is a multidisciplinary
subject, with scope for looking at social, psychological, philosophical, theological, historical, ethical dimensions (just for starters). To begin to do that with the richness of ‘Sanatan Dharma’ is absorbing but also a huge challenge.

To an extent, we are constrained in a brief publication
like this: we have to ask what teachers are teaching and
how we can help to support that with authentic, accurate,
engaging sources and resources. Our emphasis on texts
and philosophy, therefore, reflects the current syllabus and
examination specification demands teachers face.

We do approach these from the perspective of Hindu
living and thinking, however. We hear from teenage
Hindus from various traditions (pp. 4—7) and from young
ISKCON devotees running a café in Cardiff (pp. 18—23).
We outline key Hindu texts (pp. 8—9) before going more
deeply into two that are important in the lives of many
Hindus – the Ramayana (pp. 10—13) and chapter 2 of the
Bhagavad Gita (pp. 14—15). We have included progressively
detailed explorations of Hindu philosophy – examining
ideas of rita (cosmic order), karma and samsara
(pp. 18—23), before connecting these philosophies to
two major schools of thought about the nature of God
– Advaita and Dvaita Vedanta (pp. 24—29). We then dig a
little deeper into this with case studies on Shankara and
Ramanuja (pp. 30—31).

As always, we look to engage students with a deeper
encounter with Hindus and Hindu ideas, and to offer
opportunities for them to use this encounter to reflect on
their own ways of thinking and being