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sanatanadharma

(3,780 posts)
Fri Mar 20, 2015, 09:33 PM Mar 2015

My Hindu view of Original Sin

One whuman's (sic) point of view, spoken through an Advaita Vedanta perspective

There is original sin (so to speak)* and we are all born with it.

Prior to the time that the earliest knowledge, later to became the Judaic Christian tradition, was written down in Hebrew, Vedic sages had deep understanding of the mystery of Maya- that magic shakti (power) of avidya (not-knowing). This is the power that we might posit is prior to the "Big Bang". That so-named scientifically-known birth of our universe, may be seen as the projective power (avarna shakti) by which all this is seemingly around us.

Avidya, ignorance, is the root misunderstanding of the self. We are born into it. We are born with it. We are born as it.
However, ignorance can be dropped. Ignorance ends with knowing, with true knowledge, with complete understanding.
Everyone reading this has dropped reading-ignorance. Not everyone has dropped sanskrit-terminology ignorance.

Original sin is "ignorance", not knowing.
From birth, so much ignorance of this and that drops off. We learn.
Hopefully we learn to objectively know reality as is, and reduce our subjectivity of "as-I-want-it-to-be" to a socially tolerable level (granted this is a sliding scale).

Too much socially intolerable projection of personal-private worlds of subjectivity might be named socio-pathology.

Greater than original sin is deliberate ignorance. I will call it "mortal sin".
To willfully choose 'not-knowing' in the face of reality is, essentially a mortal sin. The miserliness, the stinginess of having human mind and not using it for true understanding was spoken of in the ancient Upanishads as the greatest loss.

This "mortal sin" of deliberate ignorance seems to be especially prevalent in certain right-wing/Republican/conservative/evangelical/racist/rapist/turned inward/ misogynistic cults and politicians. None of us is immune. Some of us are aware.

*The Christian concept of sin is unknown to Advaita Vedanta. Other understandings are there to explain the innate truth (manifestly obvious- like gravity) of dharma (ethics/morality/more) and kama (desires and aversions); as well as their conflict (Bhagavad Gita).

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