Hinduism
Thou art that — Atman is Brahman
The Tradition
Hinduism is less a single religion than a vast ecosystem of spiritual traditions, philosophical schools, devotional practices, and cosmological visions that have evolved over more than four thousand years on the Indian subcontinent. Its diversity is staggering, from elaborate ritual worship of specific deities to radical non-dual philosophy that denies the ultimate reality of anything except pure consciousness.
For the perennial conversation, the most significant strand is Advaita Vedanta, the non-dual school systematized by Adi Shankaracharya in the 8th century CE, drawing on the Upanishads. Its central claim is that Atman (the individual self) and Brahman (the universal ground of being) are ultimately identical. This is not a metaphor, it is a description of what is already the case, obscured only by Maya (the illusion of separateness).
The four Mahavakyas, Great Sayings of the Upanishads, distill this recognition into four phrases: Consciousness is Brahman, I am Brahman, Thou art That, and This Self is Brahman. When Jesus says I and the Father are one, when Meister Eckhart says my ground and God’s ground are one ground, when Al-Hallaj cries I am the Truth, they are making the same claim in different cultural dialects.
The Bhagavad Gita adds the crucial practical dimension: how to live this recognition in the midst of the world. Krishna’s teaching to Arjuna, act fully, love fully, engage fully, but without the ego’s claim on outcomes, is the householder’s path, the teaching for the person with children, work, and responsibilities who cannot retreat to a monastery.
Tat tvam asi. — Thou art that.Chandogya Upanishad VI.8.7
Teachings from this tradition 19
Neighbours on the Map
Hinduism is among the most connected traditions on the Map. Beyond the perennial moderns, its nearest neighbours are Christianity, where action without attachment meets the commandments as koan; the Christian mystics, where aham brahmasmi meets Eckhart’s God and the Godhead; and Taoism, where the same unforced action is called wu wei.
Who Met Whom
Travelled with: Buddhism, Sikhism, Sufism, Zoroastrianism · Unsure: Gnosticism, Greek, Neoplatonism, Shinto · Arose apart from: Christianity, Confucianism, Egyptian, Hermeticism, Indigenous, Judaism, Stoicism, Taoism
Whether ideas moved between Hinduism and each other tradition, by what the record shows. The whole grid, with dates and sources →