Judging Personality in Hinduism Part 1

If I were asked under what sky the human mind...has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions to some of them which well deserve the attention even those who have studied Plato and Kant - I should point to India.

-- Friedrich Max Müller, the German scholar of comparative religion.

There are many wisdom traditions across the world, and each has its own thoughts and rules as to judging personality, including Hindu thought.

Sometime c. 3000 BCE, in the Indus River Valley, a civilization with its own written language, and architecturally advanced cities existed, with multi-level dwellings, fortified walls, below-ground drainage, all laid out in elegant and carefully designed patterns. The Indus River now is a part of western Pakistan near the northwestern border with India.

Little is known about the Indus Valley civilization, in part because its written symbols have yet to be deciphered by linguists. About 3000 BCE, the cities declined, perhaps due to a drought or perhaps due to a migration or invastion of Aryan tribes from the Caucausus. Cultural conflicts arose, either between Aryan tribes and the Indus civilization, or solely within the Indus civilization itself. During this time, a Hindu form of worship emerged.

Earliest Hinduism consisted of Vedic hymns in praise of Gods such as Vishnu and Indra. Priests and priestly families emerged who systematized the hymns, which were in part collected as the Rig Veda by 1000 BCE. The sounds of these hymns were referred to as their mantras - and these mantras were themselves regarded as sanctified and able at times to bring forth the reality of the words.

Hindu beliefs developed gradually over thousands of years. Although new writings and thinking were introduced, earlier philosophies persisted as part of the overall system. This makes any simple summary of Hinduism almost impossible; still, something of its beliefs are accessible, particularly as concerns judging people.

By 800 BCE, in the early Upanishad-era of Hindu thinking, an individual's personality was seen as divided into two parts. There was the individual's day-to-day functioning, including worldly interests and desires, on the one hand, and the person's innermost essential reality - the ätman - that was distinct from the physical part the person played on this earth.

"Our [Western] word 'personality'," notes Huston Smith, an authority on world religions:

...comes from the Latin persona, which originally referred to the mask an actor donned as he stepped onto the stage to play his role, the mask through (per) which he sounded (sonare) his part. The mask registered the role, while behind it the actor remained hidden and anonymous, aloof from the emotions he enacted. This, say the Hindus, is perfect: for roles are precisely what our personalities are, the ones into which we have been cast for the moment in this greatest of all tragic-comedies, the drama of life itself in which we are simultaneously coauthors and actors...Where we go wrong is in mistaking our presently assigned part for what we truly are...

Both the inner ätman and the everyday personality have their own development and unique characteristics. According to the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, an early Hindu religious work, a person becomes what he or she does. So a good-doer becomes good. An evil-doer becomes evil. Although the actual person performs the acts, the inner, true self or ätman, becomes associated with these acts. These collected actions are considered the individual's karma. If the karma is good, the person will be reborn in a higher state; if bad, the person will be reborn in a lesser state.

The self, in other words, becomes associated with this karma. True knowledge of oneself, that the inner self is truthfully one with the great Brahman or Universe, brings the life, death, and rebirth cycle to an end - to a final awareness of oneself and the universe as part of a single beingness. Anything less than this involves desires and wants, which lead to rebirth.

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Consequently, in the Hindu religion, there are potentially two personalities that might be judged: The inner ätman -- the true personality -- or the outer, illusory personality. In one sense at least, the highest level of judgment in Hinduism involves simply knowing that the two different personalities exist.

My interest here is prosaic and rests more with the daily, active personality: that manifest personality-of-this-world that performs (and is the subject of) judgments of personality I am pursuing here. At the same time, it is impossible to judge this everyday personality without some awareness and recognition of the innermost self.

Within the Hindu tradition, more enlightened people keep in mind the distinction between their ätman and manifest personality. Keeping the distinction in mind helps a person detach from the outer manifestations of one's own and others' personalities. In the Hindu tradition therefore, more enlightened individuals, relative to the less-enlightened, may make more detached and better judgments of others.

In an upcoming post, I will consider further the judgments that enlightened versus unenlightened people make of personality according to Hindu thought.

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Notes. Muller is quoted on p. 12 of Smith, H. (1991). The world's religions. San Francisco: Harper Collins. The quote, "Our [Western] word ‘personality'..." is from p. 30 of Smith (1991). The pre-history of Hinduism comes from Hopkins, T. J. (1971). The Hindu religious tradition. Encino, CA: Dickenson Publishing. Also from there is the description of Vedic hymns (p. 17), their meanings, the Rig Veda (p. 20), the puzzlement of existence (p. 21) and the power of the mantra (p. 36). The concept of the essential self or ätman is p. 37. Early Upanishad thought, from which this belief dates, is described on p. 38-40. The discussion of the teachings of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is on pages 41-43.

(c) Copyright 2009 John D. Mayer