Hindu Studies Foundations

The Hindu Studies Foundations area is a collection of Core Courses, including many Graduate level mandatory courses, required for most graduate degrees. They provide a basic understanding of the central themes and ideas of Hinduism that constitute the common foundations of the great variety of traditions and practices within the umbrella of Sanātana Dharma. This area includes courses in the various primary texts of Hindu Dharma such as the Vedas, Vedānta, Yoga, Bhagavad Gita, the Dharma Shastras and the Systems of Hindu Philosophy called the Ṣaḍ-Darśana.

These courses examine the concept of “Tradition” (i.e. Sampradāyas) as distinct from “Religion”, “Oral” versus “Textual” traditions, and develop insight into the great diversity of forms, expressions, and practices that have emerged within Sanatana Dharma. The mechanism through which Hindu Dharma adapts itself to different places and times, psychologies and dispositions, and manages plurality while enabling a Dharmic life and the unity of thought underlying the seeming diversity of forms and manifestations is explored.

Emphasizing continuity of thought as well as discontinuous developments, this area of study provides a grounded understanding of the Vedic Hindu Civilization and Culture as a living tradition with a unique perspective on the cosmos and our place as humans within it i.e. the Vedic Hindu Cosmology. In addition, the foundations also include some comparative study courses that include a preliminary examination of other world religions and philosophies as well as critical contemporary issues in Hindu Studies. This area of study carefully distinguishes between the Hindu paradigm or cosmology from a western paradigm or cosmology and how each yield different understandings of the same phenomena.