The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

This is another revision of my religion after another research episode. My About Me section is enough of an eye-strain already, so I don't want to make it any longer, and I've been wanting to write something about religious naturalism lately, so here I am. I've seen humanism and naturalism couched in Christian, Jewish, and Neopagan religious contexts, or presented as a separate religion, but I haven't seen anything for a dharmic (South Asian religious tradition) context, and I feel like showing ya'll what one could look like.

On the Name Itself
meaning "truth of the world," which I think functions as a way of translating "religious humanism/naturalism/etc." into Sanskrit, my choice of phrase was inspired by the legend of Brhaspati ("lord of ritual"): an rsi (seer-poet)  of the Angirasa clan who helped write the Rg Veda (between 1500 and 1000 b.c.e.), he founded the first materialistic darsana (philosophical school), called Lokayata ("turning to the world") after his father Loka. (Traces of Materialism in Early Vedic Thought: A Study, A. K. Sinha, courtesy of jstor.org [requires membership to read])

Lokayata, and the later synonymous term Carvaka, has been reclaimed/revived by the Indian rationalist movement at www.carvaka4india.com/p/who-are-carvakas.html, the darsana having died out in the early Middle Ages. Respecting and supporting this,  I went back to the legend. Considering that a priest was the founder, this suggested that materialism was not at first antagonistic to religion as it would later become after several centuries of cultural evolution. Like the teachings of Mahavira and Siddhartha Gautama, his were quickly labeled heretical, and, based on the other two, if his had survived to the present day, I think they would have splintered into a distinct dharma. Hence, again, Loka Dharma, a follower of which is called a lokatika. Below is an outline of what I've come up with.

Aditiyana
"way of infinity," the afterdeath path taken by those who don't believe in souls. Upanisads of the 7th or 6th c. b.c.e. state that there are three paths the soul can take, all of which are untenable to a naturalist. Looking elsewhere, I read about the Satapatha Brahmana, written between the 10th and 7th c. b.c.e., and how Aditi was said to rule over Yamaloka, one of the afterlife worlds, where the first human to die dwells. Aditi personifies everything in existence-to wit, the universe, and some describe Yamaloka as the place where souls go who reincarnate as non-human lifeforms. Further inspired by Rg Veda X.16.3, which expresses the wish that a person's being be scattered throughout creation, this coalesced into the idea of aditiyana to express the materialistic understanding of how the personality dies with the rest of the body and is reabsorbed in prakrti ("unconscious matter")-the processes of nature. http://academia.edu/649902/Afterlife_conceptions_in_the_Vedas

Karma Marga
"religious path of action," first mentioned in the Bhagavadgita from the 1st c. c.e., a marga is an overall plan one follows on the path to moksa (more on this later). The one of Karma involves performing one's daily chores, family responsibilities and job requirements selflessly, for the good of others, not out of fame or shame. Basically being a good, caring individual.http://archive.org/details/KarmaYogaswamiVivekanandaBook

Purusartha
"goal of life," described in the 3rd c. b.c.e., there are three interconnected goals: artha (pursuit of wealth and success); kama (pursuit of pleasure); and dharma (pursuit of duty and lawfulness).

Maya
going back to the Rg Veda, in advanced philosophical terminology, it means roughly "the true nature of the universe and how it actually functions, and often how it contradicts how humans perceive reality and wish the universe was like."  Naturalists and their fellows figure maya out through scientific theories, leading them to religious naturalism/humanism/etc. as the best way for them.http://archive.org/details/JnanaYogaswamiVivekanandaBook

Moksa
"liberation," beginning with the philosophical speculations of the 7th c. b.c.e., it came to mean saving one's soul from samsara (reincarnation). There are as many ways of going about it as there are teachers, but for naturalists/humanists/etc. it's by accepting that there isn't evidence for reincarnating souls. So in a materialistic sense it can be used to mean liberating oneself from superstitious and supernaturalistic beliefs.

Yoga
"ritual practice," these come in infinite varieties, and are aids to one's marga. The basic form upon which others can be added is a portion of the bahir-anga ("external limb") from the 3rd or 4th c. c.e.: yama (ethical restraint); ahimsa (non-violence); satya (truthfulness); asteya (not-stealing); brahmacarya (sexual restraint); aparigraha (non-possessiveness); niyama (self-discipline); and samtosa (contentment). For a broader view of yogic practices and the philosophy behind them in one of the traditions, a good introduction is Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy, by Georg Feuerstein.

Lokajnata
"knowledge of the world/universe/humankind," the kind of knowledge cultivated by humanists/etc. that informs their beliefs, which I contrast with jnana (knowledge) which is used by Vedantins/Samkhyins/etc. to specifically refer to psycheology, knowledge of the soul and how it survives death.

Samskara
"rite of passage," only four rites are common to known lists: birth, religious initiation, marriage, and death. The rest revolve around anything else that can happen in one's life. Local custom, family tradition, and personal need take precedence in how they are constructed. Unlike the Pagani of Europe, when South Asians adopted writing they wrote everything down so there is a complete record of rituals starting from the 9th c. b.c.e.. It wasn't a thing one had to convert to. Indo-Iranian- and Dravidian-speaking tribes borrowed from each other as taste permitted in a process called sanskritization.

Whether or not a particular ritual you have in mind is reconcilable with a naturalistic philosophy is a personal decision. If you are interested in what an intact Indo-European ritual structure looked like, or you want to sanskritize your own rituals, or get ideas for constructing new ones, you can track down a copy of A Dictionary of the Vedic Rituals: Based on the Srauta and Grhya Sutras, by Chitrabhanu Sen. Srauta rituals are performed by the clergy, grhya by the laity.

Miscellaneous sources for this post were Sacred Writings volume 5: Hinduism: The Rig Veda, translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith and Oxford Dictionary of Hinduism, W. J. Johnson

Hope ya'll enjoyed the show.

I'm a bit confused by this paragraph. Exactly what takes this "afterdeath path" if there is no soul?

Probably Buddhists?

Buddhists like me typically don't believe in souls as they are typically described by say, Christianity and Hinduism. The individual essence is not eternal or indivisible. It's mutable, fluid, and fragile....ultimately empty of anything uniquely "you."