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Reincarnation
A Key to Understanding Hindu Reincarnation
When one thinks of the concept of a divine trinity, the first thing that most Americans would think of would be the Christian trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. However, there are other equally important trinities within other religions, for the number three has had religious relevance since ancient times. The sanctity of the number three might arise from the fact that it can be seen to represent the essential triad of life: Families and the species itself continue from past to future as each pair of parents gives rise to a child, who in turn joins with another to produce another child, and so humans step their way three by three into the future.
Hinduism also has a central trinity that in important ways parallels the Christian trinity -- or that is paralleled in important ways by the Christian trinity, depending upon which way one wishes to view the analogy. This concept is expressed as the Trimurti, a Sanskrit word that can be translated into English as "three forms." This trinity takes two related but distinct forms within Hindu thought and practice.
The trimurti is incorporated in the forms of three different gods:...
These three ideas of creation, maintenance, and destruction are intimately linked for the Hindu to these three gods, but they also exist separately from them so that the trimurti also expresses these general ideas apart from their divine representations.
This triad of deities is also sometimes referred to as Great Trinity and may be addressed as "Brahma-Vishnu-Mahesh." The trimurti is sometimes depicted in art as three heads on one neck or as three faces on a single head, each looking in a different direction (Zimmer, 1972, p. 36). It is important to note that while there are clear parallels between the Hindu idea of trimurti and the Christian Trinity, there are also clear differences since within Hinduism there has never been a true equality among the three gods. Each strain of Hinduism and indeed each worshipper tends to value one of the gods more than the others.
The concept of the trimurti is fundamentally linked to the idea of reincarnation, which is at the heart of all Hindu belief. The concept of reincarnation is simple: A soul is born into one body, lives a…
References
Flood, G. (Ed.) (2003). The Blackwell companion to Hinduism. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Jansen, E.R. (2003). The book of Hindu imagery. Havelte, Holland: Binkey Kok Publications BV.
Zimmer, H. (1972). Myths and symbols in Indian art and civilization. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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