ncarnation this spiritual journey involves not one human life but many. The individual soul on this journey moves from desire to renunciation by passing beyond self-centeredness, to a sense of wanting to serve the community (duty), and finally to a desire for the divine or spiritual:
What we really want is those things in infinite degree. The Hindus call this fourth, final and true want for which we programmed liberation (moksha)---liberation from everything that distances us from infinite being, infinite awareness, and infinite bliss. . . . This hidden center of every life, this hidden self or Atman, is no less than Brahman, the Godhead (Smith, Illustrated, 22).
There are four paths in Hinduism to the divine goal---knowledge, love, good works, and psychophysical exercises.
Hinduism believes that by nature and by individual spiritual development each individual is destined to be a member of a particular class or caste---the Brahmins or seers at the top of the hierarchy, then administrators or organizers, artisans and farmers, and finally the laborers. While technically, Hinduism does not discriminate with respect to gender, the fact remains that the hierarchy of the religion is dominated by men, so that is fair to say that this religion is indeed sexist in its official organization if not in theory.
Whereas Hinduism is marked by many gods representing different aspects of the human condition, Buddhism is dominated by the presence of the Buddha, or Siddhartha Gautama. Buddhism is similar to Hinduism in that both believe in reincarnation and in a process of many lives through which the individual gradually awakens to reality from the state of "sleep" which is the lot of most human beings at any one time. On the other hand, Buddhism is quite different than Hinduism in the sense of its lack of a hierarchy, at least in theory. When Gautama had his awakening to the true reality of existence and was released from suffering, h...