Hinduism is somewhat ugly
Once upon a time, an office worker missed the scheduled delivery date for a piece of output. Like most office workers, he spent all day in meetings, just nodding and saying, "Mmmhmm I'll take care of that". This piece of output was the only thing next to his name in the task-management software his team used. It was a relatively good piece of output to be assigned, because it wasn't core to the company's core business priorities, so nobody was too concerned about it. The output was an accessibility report—he was supposed to draft guidelines on how to make their headquarters more accessible to people with lapses in executive function.
He looked into the problem a little bit, but found it pretty boring, so he shot off emails asking for a stakeholder meeting. Nobody ever responded to the emails, and without the meeting could you even write the report? Every month, his boss said, "What're you working on?" And the man would change the name of the task a little bit to make it sound like there'd been progress, but he realized something: his boss didn't want this report to be delivered. Nobody did!
One time, the man (whose name was Gavin) got a message from his boss, saying, "Terrence wants a meeting." That was his boss's boss. Gavin went into the meeting, terrified of losing his job, but Terrence just said, "I hear you're our accessibility chief!"
"Yep."
"Just give me the bullet-points."
"Well accessibility is hard," Gavin said. But he said it wryly, like it was a bit of a joke, and it did in fact get a laugh from Terrence.
"We've got ramps. We've got elevators,” Terrence said.
"Yes, but there are mental disabilities. What we want is for people who've got mental issues to be able to seek accommodations, so we can use their time effectively and keep in compliance with the law."
"Ahh yes, the law," Terrence said, winking. "So give me the precis. Cynthia's been asking questions." That was the CEO's wife.
"We create an office to confidentially handle inquiries," Gavin said. "Then we set up meetings between the employee and manager..." He went on, just bullshitting.
"So the usual sort of thing!" he said. "When are you thinking it'll come out?"
Gavin took a shot in the dark, naming a date two years in the future.
"That long!? What if we made it your only responsibility?"
"Then just a year."
"Good man," Terrence said.
With that, Gavin was freed from all responsibilities for a year. He wandered into meetings, drank coffee, read novels. A few days a week he worked from home. The problem was telling his wife. Whenever he tried to imply to her that, you know, maybe he didn't have a real job, she said, "Then shouldn't you ask for more work?"
He saw her point of view. He just didn't agree. He started exercising more: he hit the gym and went on runs. He got paid faithfully every two weeks. One day he came to work and learned three hundred people had been let go by email during the night. Their badges were disabled, and facility services was packing up their desks. He didn't understand how he hadn't been laid off.
In the months to come, everyone besides Gavin was quite overworked. His boss sometimes came to him and said, "Have any spare time to help with..." And he just said, "Nope. Still working on the report.”
“Ahh, didn’t we say that was due in June?” (i.e. six months ago)
“Yeah, but’s it’s actually going to take a few more months.”
“Hmm, okay, we’ll have to look into assigning you more help with that…”
The vexing thing was that this situation was quite stressful! He was very aware that he had no purpose in this building. He was a ghost, people looked at him with a feral expression, like he was an interloper. He had nowhere to sit at lunch. No place in the world.
Finally he sat down and banged out the report. Was it good? No, of course not. But it's also not like they were going to actually implement any of its recommendations. He wrote it up, complete with executive summary, and sent it to his boss. After two weeks, he was called into a meeting with his boss and with Terrence. An HR rep was there. They were putting him on a performance plan (basically starting to build a rationale for firing him for cause).
Almost immediately, he was loaded up with impossible tasks, assigned all kinds of directives and deliverables, and called weekly into meetings where his boss berated him. "What do you do all day! Why are you here? Is this the kind of person you want to be?"
Something hardened inside him. He understood now the mindset that made people walk into their office with a machine-gun. He tried looking for jobs, but he was so beaten-down, so demoralized. He was useless: he'd spent three years not working. Three years doing nothing! They were right. He'd drawn a salary for doing nothing, absolutely nothing. The company was a stupid one and shouldn't exist, but still, that didn't excuse his own inaction within it. And besides, although nobody actually mentioned this, he'd failed the disabled people! It was his job to make life better for them, and he hadn't.
The man stopped eating, stopped exercising, and one day, thankfully, his heart gave out.
He woke up on a river-bank. There were pretty girls and trees laden with delicious fruits. His body was smooth and young. He walked up to a wooden pavilion, where men were playing games of chess. He wandered through this place (which was clearly Heaven) for a few months, making friends and learning things. He read the holy scriptures in the libraries and had conversations with the sages. When the moment was right, he went to speak to the Lawgiver.
"Why am I here?" he said. "My life wasn't very good.”
"You fulfilled your dharma," the man said. "You took upon yourself the evil of your company's callousness, and you purified it through your inaction. If you had only died without releasing that sin, you would've achieved Godhood. But since you wrote the fucking report, instead of just dying with it unwritten, you'll only get to dwell with us for one thousand years, and then be reborn again."
"That's not a vision of morality that I subscribe to," he said. "I would like to live in a world where people act, where they do something to make the world better for other people."
"Gavin, are you an actor? Have you ever in your life acted heroically? No. If you were born to be a hero, you would've been a hero. You were born to be a clerk, a vessel for the potential to action. Because you existed and lived so inneffectually, someday someone will be put in a place where they’re able to actually do something. You are as necessary as they."
"But...this vision of morality seems like a license to act selfishly."
"Did you enjoy your actions?"
"Not particularly. They filled me with...with shame."
"Yet you persisted in them anyway."
"Because I needed money for my family."
"What else is dharma other than that, Gavin? Go and enjoy Heaven, sheesh. Like, I'm totally willing to talk, I have an eternity to talk, but trust me, you did the best you could—I totally get it. I'm sorry your society embraced a vision of heroic self-sacrifice that most people are totally incapable of meeting. That is the real harm. Don't worry, we are working on fixing that too."
So Gavin went to the garden and enjoyed himself. In his next life, he was reborn as a housecat.
Afterword
After I wrote my last post, some people were like...this makes Hinduism sound kind of, err, unappealing? Can't there be a Hinduism shorn of all these purity taboos and all this caste stuff?
Well, I guess there could be, but that's just not Hinduism. The religion, as practiced in India, isn't really meant for outsiders! If you want something with an entry-point for outsiders, you've got Buddhism.1
Like, can you walk into a Hindu temple and pray? Probably, yeah! Can you study with a guru or yogi? Definitely!2 Can he call you a Hindu? I suppose, but would he? Would the term even have any meaning? Not really, no. Any form of Hinduism that you could call Hinduism has, almost by definition, no room in it for outsiders. Nor, I find, would any outsider even want to be part of it! Like, does any outsider really want to be a party to the caste system? Is that really something you want on your conscience? If you were a Hindu, you'd have a responsibility to do something about the caste system. No... you should feel happy you don't need to deal with that!
It's kinda like with Judaism. Yeah, some rabbis will supervise a conversion to Judaism, but…do you then become one of YHWH's chosen people? Are you actually included in his covenant? And if you are, do you even want to be? Like do you actually want to be in a religion where you think you're chosen and set aside, and other people are sort of ancillary? And even if that's okay with you, then do you want your offspring subjected to the punishments YHWH periodically metes out against the Jews?!? As a tradition, Judaism is very old and impressive and worthy of respect, but there's just something very unappealing about it as a belief system. And you know what? That's fine. It's not meant for me!
On the other hand, Hinduism is very durable. And I think partly it’s just not as morally demanding as other religions. It meets people where they are. When I look at other religions, the demand for moral purity and self-sacrifice seems to set people up for a lot of unhappiness. And this is just as true of Buddhism as Christianity. Buddhism basically advocates that a person's prime goal should be moksha—release from the cycle of reincarnation. In Hinduism, this is one possible goal, but there are others (dharma, artha, and kama). Most Hindus prioritize dharma: basically dharma means doing your best, given your current position in the world. Through dharma you accumulate merit that influences both your worldly position in this world and in the worlds to come (which can include heaven, hell, or rebirth). I think dharma is just a lot more achievable than either enlightenment or whatever it is Christians say you should do.3
The very sense of existential mobility that attracts people to Buddhism and to Christianity, the sense that regardless of your birth, you can achieve a heroic outcome (either heaven or enlightenment), is also their greatest flaw, because if anyone can be a hero, then what're you doing if you're not one? You see this with Christians all the time—they just feel bad that they're not perfectly self-sacrificing, like the saints and martyrs. But, like, you're not a saint or a martyr! You're an IT guy! And that's fine—the world needs IT guys—but there's just no way to make being an IT guy heroic.
The most distasteful aspect of Hinduism—its recognition of human variety and the fact that some people are born into a situation that dooms them to have a lesser or worse life—is inextricable, in my view, from its strength, which is how accepting it is of moral frailty and weakness. Yes, the world has weak people like Gavin, and that's okay. They are not doomed forever. Their goodness, although it is faint and flickering, still serves a purpose and deserves to be honored.
So yeah, I would not have chosen to be Hindu, and if I could redesign it from the ground up, it wouldn't look the way it does, but the very things I despise about Hinduism are also its most interesting and consolatory aspects.
That's literally what Buddhism is—it's a religion that started as a reaction against all the annoying taboos and purity practices in India at the time.
Many of my white friends have gone to ashrams in India and done…something or other! It seems to make them very happy. I’m glad they had such a meaningful experience. This is not something I’d ever do, personally. My grandmother has so many times tried to get me to speak to her guru: I’m always like…no thank you. Because…what, am I really going to come and take classes with you? Pay you money? Enter into some sort of student relationship with you? It seems so unappealing! Indian gurus have always struck me as just being…guys. Like, they’re just Brahmins who (hopefully) know a lot of Sanskrit and spent years studying the Hindu holy books at the knee of…some other guys. What’re they gonna teach me? I have no idea, and I don’t really care to find out. Not to mention now that I’ve transitioned, the guys would really have no idea what to do with me! Like, I just don’t fit anymore into the schemas. I’m quite literally in the same position as a white person! I can’t be Hindu either!
Christianity is so confusing on a moral level. Like it seems to work for people, but it's so confusing. It makes no sense. Why do good things if it doesn't matter, and if all human beings are sinful and doomed by nature to hell? I understand that lots of very smart people have tried to make this make sense. I went to Catholic school, so believe me, I know it. But if you were going to design a religion from the ground up, you could probably do a better job of grounding its moral system. Which maybe is a good argument for its being divinely inspired. Like, it’s so ridiculous that it must be true!
Very interesting post. But I found your description of Judaism unrecognizable. (Another commentator said this about both Judaism and Buddhism, but I don't know enough about the latter to comment.) To explain why, let me take it bit by bit. I should say that, for all that our numbers are small (compared to, say, Hindus), Jews are famously quarrelsome—"two Jews, three opinions" goes the old Jewish joke—so I am sure you could dig up *someone* who would disagree with me about one point or another. But I feel confident that what I am saying is a very, very strong majority view.
"Yeah, some rabbis will supervise a conversion to Judaism"
It is (as I said) *possible* that there are some exceptions, but as far as I know, *every* Rabbi will supervise a conversion. Some might not have time or whatever, but *everyone* thinks its an important in central practice. It is true that Jews don't seek converts the way Christians and Muslims do; if someone comes to a rabbi to convert he (or she) is supposed to discourage them three times. But *if* they come back, you accept. (I don't know if most rabbis actually discourage people or not.) Not all rabbis will accept *other* rabbis conversions, especially the orthodox towards the non-orthodox. But this sentence implies a hesitation which is absolutely unwarranted.
"do you then become one of YHWH's chosen people? Are you actually included in his covenant?"
Yes, without any question or doubt. Converts are *full Jews*. It's forbidden to mention someone's conversion status lest they feel uncomfortable. The Jewish midrash (roughly, myth) that all Jews stood at Sinai and accepted the covenant includes converts as well. Jewish tradition holds that king David is descended from a convert (Ruth)——and thus that the messiah (a who is supposed to be a descendent of David) will be too. So yes: converts are fully part of the covenant, just as much as anyone born Jewish.
"And if you are, do you even want to be? Like do you actually want to be in a religion where you think you're chosen and set aside, and other people are sort of ancillary?"
Judaism does not hold that other people are ancillary in any sense. Again, yes, you can probably find the odd sentence here and there from some rabbi saying offensive things (usually, I would point out, due to rather horrific circumstances) but the overall trend of the religion is overwhelming.. Exactly what "chosenness" means is complex, but one central part of it is that through the Jews God will bless *all* nations. He says this to Abraham, the first Jew, in multiple ways, from the first time God speaks to him ("through you all families of the Earth shall be blessed", Genesis 12:03) to almost the end ("through your children all the nations of the Earth shall be blessed", Genesis 22:18). In the Talmud it says that the righteous of every nation has a share in the world to come, and at one point uses the image that all people shall point from different directions saying "this is my God". And so on. What you said is simply false (and is most common ly found in anti-Jewish propaganda, not that I am saying you meant it badly, but that could be where you heard it).
"And even if that's okay with you, then do you want your offspring subjected to the punishments YHWH periodically metes out against the Jews?!?"
This is at least slightly closer to right: one of the questions that the Talmud says to use to scare off potential converts (if memory serves, it's been a while) is something like "Don't you know that Jews are despised everywhere? Is that what you want?" But note it's the non-Jews, not God, that is the threat, (And, given Jewish history, seeing that threat is not unrealistic). It's true the bible portrays God as punishing Jews, but of course there is the opposite too, and in general, there is held to be good reason to be Jewish, should someone want to.
"As a tradition, Judaism is very old and impressive and worthy of respect, but there's just something very unappealing about it as a belief system. And you know what? That's fine. It's not meant for me!"
As for the notion it's unappealing, "de gustibus non disputandum est". But I will say this: while Judaism may be more of a belief system than Hinduism (I don't know enough about the latter to say) it is much less one than either Islam or Christianity. What you said of Hinduism is actually true of Judiasm: it's a *practice*. An atheist religious Christian seems like a contradiction in terms, but I have met atheist religious Jews, and far more agnostic ones. It's about practice. This doesn't mean, as you say it does in Hinduism, that people can't join: the practices are very learnable and (actualliy) have a lot of good points as well as plenty of bad ones. But what i would say to anyone who says it's an *unappealing* belief system (rather than, say, false, which is another issue), is that you can't really judge it until you've lived it, or at any rate experienced it. (I'm sure you could find someone to host you for a shabbat if you're curious.)
Anyway, that's one Jew's view (one not very observant, non-beliving Jew who nevertheless is clearly Jewish and loves Jewish texts and traditions). What you said really sounds like something said out of ignorance. To say I have only scratched the surface here is to wildly understate the matter. But that's my reaction.
Really enjoying these essays/stories about Hinduism. Too many people think that all other religions are just Christian with different gods on the top--like corporations with different CEOs.