Nature of Hindu Landscape
Divinity: Brahman/Atman - Infinite, Formless, Singular, Changeless, Pervades, Equal in all things, Transcendent and beyond personification, Precipitous of all Creation. A drop of water in an in endless ocean
Image of Infinite of Imageless: Gita 7:4-12, 9:4-19, 10:20-42, and 11:5-14
(Krishna to Arjuna: while indefinable, no other sacred text spends more time in attempting to describe)
Robert Oppenheimer July 16, 1945 in response to first atomic bomb, - Gita 11:12 and 11:32
"Could a thousand suns blaze forth together, it would be a faint reflection of the radiance of the Lord God"
"I have shown Myself to you as the Destroyer who lays waste the world, and whose purpose now is destruction. In spite of your efforts, all these warriors gathered for battle shall not escape death."
Manifest World: Maya - material, waking state, changing, diversity, impermanent, ("non-dualistic" given precipitation/causality by the Infinite; non-Cartesian "mind" connected with "body") - Gita 7:4
manifest Maya world made up of gunas (the phenomenal world, world of senses, and basis of one's personality): 1. tamas - inertia, ignorance; 2. rajas - energy, passion; 3. sattva - knowledge, law, harmony, purity - Gita 14:5-11
Maya has the power to at once:
obscure and hide - delude - veil Gita 7:24-25
a projection of the finite diverse forms Gita 7:6
yet also reveal the hidden, through art, song, poetry, etc Gita 10:19-41 (20)
Example: Wayang Shadow Puppets
self is made up of three interrelated parts: 1. the gunas (current personality given karma/samsara), 2. a personal soul - jiva (current spiritual state given karma/samsara), and 3. the infinite Spirit - Atman (Infinite; Changeless)
One's current state reflected in accumulated karma (accumulation of morally-based past deeds, both bad and good), at one's stage along the cycle of samsara (reincarnation)
One's present incarnation is the result of all past lives, and one's future incarnations will be the result of all present decisions, i.e., one's incarnations are each individual's responsibility - choices; but it is not a not deterministic or fatalistic world.
Remember: the Bhagavad-Gita is a book all about "choices," not commandments.
Relation of self (gunas, jiva, Atman) to God (Brahman)
"as above, so below" - Self is microcosm of Infinite macrocosm - experience God directly, i.e., Moksha, and hence, Darshana - "to experience and see"
Time: great re-occurring cycles and not a creation point; a day for Brahma is equal to 4,320,000,000 human years.
Story of the Raven and Mountain, Every 1000 years, One Grain of Sand - a moment in the life of the Cosmos.
Example: Balinese Time