The universe and the place of human beings — Hinduism

What the specification asks for

Paper 1, Section 1, 1.1 (Hinduism). Assessed on AO1 (knowledge and understanding) and AO2 (analysis and evaluation), weighted equally. Incandio is aligned to this specification. It is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson, and it reproduces none of Pearson's indicative content — the point numbers are given so you can check every unit against your own copy.

1 · Understand it

A family will not cut down the tree in their yard even though the roots are lifting the wall. Ask why and you do not get an argument about shade or oxygen. You get told that the same thing that is in you is in it. That is a claim about what the tree is, and once it has been made, harming it stops being a practical question and becomes something much closer to an injury.

What it means

Start with what kind of universe this is, because the shape of it decides everything after. Hindu accounts of origin are cyclical rather than linear: the cosmos is created, sustained and dissolved, over and over, through four great ages called yugas, and then it begins again. There is no single moment of making and no final end towards which the whole thing is running.

The specification names the creation story of Brahman and Vishnu, and Aum. Brahman is the one ultimate reality, the ground of everything that exists — not a character in the story but what the story is about. Within the cycle, Brahma creates, Vishnu sustains and Shiva dissolves; these are functions of the one reality rather than three competing powers. Aum is the sacred sound held to be the vibration from which creation arises, which is why it opens worship.

Now the claim that does the ethical work. Atman is the self, and Hindu teaching holds that it is present in every living being, not only in human beings. That makes the line between a person and an animal a difference of body rather than a difference of kind, which is a far weaker line than most traditions draw.

Ahimsa follows directly. It means non-harming, in action, word and thought, and it is not a rule bolted on afterwards: if the same reality is present in the creature you harm, then harming it is not a neutral act performed on a resource. Most Hindus are vegetarian, and the principle is wider than diet.

One correction before anything else. Hinduism does not have a single creation account, and that is not a gap in the record. The tradition has several, and the oldest of them, the Rig Veda's creation hymn, closes by wondering whether even the highest knows how it all arose. Saying Hinduism has one creation story is an error the examiners record; saying it has several and is comfortable with that is the position.

Why believers hold it

The reasoning runs outward from the self, and it is worth seeing how different it is from the argument most religious environmentalism makes. The usual religious move is trusteeship: the world belongs to God, human beings hold it on trust, and damaging it wrongs the owner. Hinduism does not need that step. If the same self is present in the creature being harmed, the wrong is not against a third party who owns it. It is against something you are continuous with.

That is a stronger ground in one specific way. A trust can be argued about, delegated or discharged; identity cannot. Nobody can be told that their obligation to something has been transferred elsewhere if the obligation rests on what that thing IS. It is also a ground that reaches animals directly, without a separate argument about whether creatures count, which is the extra step Western religious ethics has always had to make and has often made badly.

The cyclical universe does a second thing, and this one cuts both ways honestly. Because there is no final end, there is no picture in which the world may be used up because it will not be needed much longer. But a cycle can equally suggest that whatever is broken now will be remade on the next turn, and that inference is available inside the tradition rather than only to critics of it. An answer that gives only the flattering half has given half.

The hardest thing to hold together is the record. India's sacred rivers are venerated and heavily polluted, and the Ganges is the standing example. The honest reply is not that the teaching failed but that the teaching and the pollution have different causes, and that the campaigns to clean the river argue from exactly the doctrine being cited against it. That is a real defence, and it is not a complete one.

Where it comes from

• The Upanishads (shruti) — Chandogya Upanishad 6:8:7 (translated)

  Tat tvam asi — That thou art.

  One of the mahavakyas, the great sayings: the atman within is one with Brahman, the ultimate reality.

  What it is doing here: Supplies the identity claim the whole environmental argument stands on, and it is scripture rather than inference — which is why the ethics is doctrinal rather than a modern application.

• Hindu teaching — Ahimsa; Mahabharata and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (2:30) (translated)

  Ahimsa — non-violence, non-harming.

  The principle of not harming living beings, in action, word and thought. The first of the yamas.

  What it is doing here: Turns the metaphysical claim into a binding practice, and shows the obligation reaching every living being rather than stopping at human beings.

• Hindu scripture — Shruti and smriti; the four Vedas — Rig, Sama, Yajur, Atharva (translated)

  Shruti — that which is heard; smriti — that which is remembered.

  The two classes of Hindu scripture. Shruti (the Vedas and Upanishads) is revealed and carries the highest authority; smriti (the epics, the Gita, the Puranas) is remembered and is more widely read.

  What it is doing here: Establishes which texts carry the weight when accounts disagree, which matters here because the creation material is spread across several of them.

Where it bites

It shows in diet before anything else. A large majority of Hindus are vegetarian, and the reason given is not health or environmental impact but the presence of the same self in the animal. It shows in the veneration of cows, rivers and particular trees, which makes damaging them a religious matter rather than a regrettable one.

And it shows in organised action. In the Chipko movement, villagers in the Himalayan foothills put themselves between the trees and the loggers by embracing them, and the language of the protest was religious rather than ecological. River-cleaning campaigns on the Ganges and the Yamuna are framed the same way: the argument made to Hindus about the river is an argument about what the river is.

What people get wrong

People think: Hindus worship thousands of separate gods.

Actually: Many Hindus understand the deities as forms or aspects of one ultimate reality. Describing them as separate rival gods misrepresents the tradition's own account of itself, and the examiners name this flattening specifically. It matters here because a universe held together by one reality grounds an environmental ethic that a pantheon of competing powers would not.

People think: Hinduism has a creation story, like Genesis.

Actually: It has several, they do not agree, and the tradition has never treated that as a problem to be solved. The Rig Veda's creation hymn ends by asking whether anyone knows how it arose. Presenting one account as the Hindu creation story loses the considered position about the limits of language that the plurality expresses.

People think: Brahman and Brahma are two spellings of the same word.

Actually: They are two different things and the difference is examinable. Brahman is the ultimate reality, the ground of everything. Brahma is the creator deity within the Trimurti. Using them interchangeably makes an answer read as though the ground of all being were one god among three.

What the examiner expects you to understand

• General environmental material with no Hindu vocabulary in it is capped as generic, so atman, ahimsa and the cyclical cosmos have to appear by name.
• The four-mark question wants development rather than a second belief: state that the self is in every living being, then say what follows for how an animal may be treated.
• Never describe Hinduism as the worship of many separate gods; the examiners record it, and the specification's own wording contradicts it.
• For the twelve-mark question, the strongest available move is that identity grounds the duty more directly than trusteeship does, and that identity gives no way to weigh one creature against another.
• The condition of the sacred rivers is the sharpest test anybody can put, so meet it rather than avoiding it: separate what the teaching says from what has happened.

2 · Grade 9 Notes

Core belief / issue

The specification names the creation story of Brahman and Vishnu, and Aum. Hinduism does not have one creation account but several, and the tradition is comfortable with that — the Rig Veda's creation hymn ends by wondering whether even the highest knows how it arose. What the accounts share is that the universe is cyclical rather than made once, and that everything living shares in the same reality.

Key terminology

Incandio's mark schemes credit the religion's own vocabulary; spelling variants are accepted, a vague paraphrase is not.

Brahman (also Braman)

The ultimate reality; the ground of everything that exists.

Aum (also Om, Pranava)

The sacred sound held to be the vibration from which creation arises; chanted at the start of worship.

Atman

The self or soul, present in every living being and ultimately identical with Brahman.

Ahimsa

Non-violence or non-harming; the ethical consequence of atman being present in all beings.

Yugas (also yuga)

The four ages through which the cosmos cycles before dissolution and renewal.

What Hinduism teaches

• shared — The universe is cyclical: it is created, sustained and dissolved repeatedly rather than made once and running to an end.
• shared — Brahman is the ground of everything, and Vishnu's role as sustainer is part of a cycle in which Brahma creates and Shiva dissolves.
• shared — Atman is present in every living being, which makes all life continuous with human life rather than a separate category.
• shared — Ahimsa follows: harming another creature harms something in which the same reality is present.

Why it teaches this

The reasoning runs from atman. If the same self is present in every living being, then the boundary between human and animal is a difference of body rather than of kind — which is why Hindu environmental ethics is grounded in identity rather than in stewardship. And because the cosmos is cyclical, Hinduism has no doctrine of a final end towards which history is running, which changes what environmental responsibility is FOR.

Sources of authority

• The Upanishads (shruti) — Chandogya Upanishad 6:8:7 (translated)

  Tat tvam asi — That thou art.

  One of the mahavakyas, the great sayings: the atman within is one with Brahman, the ultimate reality.

  How to use it: If the self and the ultimate reality are one, then harming another harms what you are — which is the metaphysical root of ahimsa rather than a moral rule added on top.

  What it does not settle: Advaita reads the identity as complete; Vishishtadvaita holds the soul distinct while dependent on God. Presenting one as 'the' Hindu view is inaccurate.

• Hindu teaching — Ahimsa; Mahabharata and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (2:30) (translated)

  Ahimsa — non-violence, non-harming.

  The principle of not harming living beings, in action, word and thought. The first of the yamas.

  How to use it: Because all beings share in the one reality, ahimsa follows from metaphysics rather than from sentiment — which is a stronger answer than 'Hindus are peaceful'.

  What it does not settle: It is not absolute pacifism in the tradition — the Gita has Krishna urge Arjuna to fight, and kshatriya duty complicates it. That tension is the evaluation.

• Hindu scripture — Shruti and smriti; the four Vedas — Rig, Sama, Yajur, Atharva (translated)

  Shruti — that which is heard; smriti — that which is remembered.

  The two classes of Hindu scripture. Shruti (the Vedas and Upanishads) is revealed and carries the highest authority; smriti (the epics, the Gita, the Puranas) is remembered and is more widely read.

  How to use it: The higher-authority texts are the less-read ones, which is why an argument from the Gita is popularly powerful and technically secondary — a distinction that scores well.

  What it does not settle: The classification does not settle which text a given tradition treats as decisive in practice.

• The Bhagavad Gita — Bhagavad Gita 4:7–8 (translated)

  Whenever righteousness declines ... I manifest myself.

  The doctrine of avatar: God descends into the world when dharma is threatened. Rama and Krishna are avatars of Vishnu.

  How to use it: It explains why Rama and Krishna are worshipped as God and not merely admired as heroes, which is what Paper 2 at 1.1 requires.

  What it does not settle: The doctrine is most emphasised in Vaishnava traditions. Shaiva and Shakta Hindus centre Shiva or the Goddess instead.

Different interpretations

• The creation hymn of the Rig Veda read as agnostic about origins — it ends by asking whether anyone knows — and read as pointing beyond what can be said; both readings are ancient.
• Multiple creation accounts read as inconsistency and read as a tradition comfortable that no single story exhausts the subject; Hindu thought characteristically takes the second view.
• Ahimsa read as vegetarianism and read as a broader principle of non-harm; most Hindus are vegetarian and the principle is wider than diet.

Differences within Hinduism

All hold the cosmos cyclical, atman universal and ahimsa binding. The genuine philosophical difference is whether the world is ultimately real, and it produces two different routes to the same environmental conclusion.

• Advaita Vedanta — The world is ultimately non-different from Brahman; the appearance of separateness is maya, so environmental ethics follows from recognising identity.
• Vaishnava — The world is real and is Vishnu's creation to be cared for; devotion to the creator grounds responsibility for what is created.

Application to the issue

It shows in vegetarianism, practised by a large majority of Hindus; in the veneration of cows, rivers and trees, which makes environmental damage a religious matter rather than a prudential one; in the Chipko movement, in which villagers embraced trees to prevent logging; and in river-cleaning campaigns framed explicitly in religious terms.

Arguments supporting

• Grounding environmental ethics in shared atman is stronger than stewardship. — You are not caring for something entrusted to you; you are recognising yourself in it. (hinduism)
  Answered by: Identity claims give no way to weigh one being's interests against another's, which practical decisions require.
• A cyclical cosmos discourages the idea that the world is disposable. — There is no final end after which the world will not be needed. (shared)
  Answered by: Cyclical time can equally suggest that damage will be repaired in the next cycle, which is a real risk in the reasoning.

Arguments challenging

• Hindu environmental teaching has not prevented severe pollution of sacred rivers. — The Ganges is heavily polluted despite being venerated. (non-religious)
  Answered by: That is a failure of practice and of governance rather than of teaching, and Hindu campaigns to clean the river appeal to exactly the teaching being cited.
• Treating the world as maya could make it seem unimportant. — If the world is appearance, why protect it? (non-religious)
  Answered by: Maya means the world is not ultimately real rather than that it is unreal or unimportant, and Advaita teachers have consistently rejected the inference.

Secular / non-religious perspective

Non-religious people hold that the universe requires no creator and no cycle, that its history is one long process, and that human beings are one species among many. Responsibility for the planet is owed to other people and to sentient animals. Humanists reach conclusions close to Hindu ones about animals without the metaphysics, arguing from sentience rather than from shared atman.

Examinable throughout Paper 1. Nothing here earns a mark on Paper 2.

Evaluation

The hinge: Whether environmental responsibility is best grounded in duty to a creator or in identity with what is harmed. Hinduism is the clearest case of the second on this specification.

Defensible conclusions

• The atman argument is the strongest religious ground for animal ethics available here, because it does not need a separate step to reach creatures.
• Identity-based ethics is weaker on hard cases, since it gives no principle for weighing competing interests.
• The gap between teaching and the condition of the sacred rivers is the sharpest available test of whether religious environmental teaching does any work.

Not defensible

• Describing Hindus as worshipping thousands of separate gods — the examiners name this flattening specifically.
• Saying Hinduism has a single creation story; the tradition has several and is comfortable with that.

Exam use

• Identify · 3 marks — Three ways religious people can care for the planet, or three Hindu beliefs about the universe. Short phrases only.
• Outline · 4 marks — Two beliefs developed. 'Hindus believe atman is in every living being (1) — so harming an animal harms the same reality that is in oneself (1).'
• Explain · 6 marks — Explain why Hindus believe they should care for the environment: atman in all beings, ahimsa, the cyclical cosmos, and what a Hindu therefore does.
• Evaluate · 12 marks — 'The world would be a better place without humans.' The atman argument makes human distinctiveness harder to assert, which is a genuinely different starting point.

Common mistakes

• Describing Hinduism as worship of many separate gods.
• Writing about the environment generally with no Hindu vocabulary, which the grid caps as generic.
• Naming Brahman and Brahma interchangeably; Brahman is the ultimate reality and Brahma is the creator deity.

“Hindus worship thousands of separate gods.” — Many Hindus understand the deities as forms or aspects of one ultimate reality, Brahman. Describing them as separate rival gods misrepresents the tradition's own account of itself.

Write instead: Many Hindus hold that Brahman, the one ultimate reality, is worshipped through many forms — Vishnu, Shiva, the Goddess and their avatars. Some are strictly monotheistic in practice; others are more comfortable with plurality. The specification's 1.5 explicitly names monotheism and polytheism and asks why people believe in one God or many, so the question is live and the accurate answer is that Hinduism does not fit either label cleanly.

Grade 9 insight

The Rig Veda's creation hymn ends by asking whether the one who oversees it in the highest heaven knows — or perhaps does not know — how it arose. A Level 4 answer notices what an extraordinary thing that is for a scripture to say: the tradition's oldest text about origins closes on a question mark. It establishes that Hinduism's comfort with multiple creation accounts is not carelessness but a considered position about the limits of what can be said, which is the same instinct that produces nirguna Brahman at point 1.5.

Carry on through Hinduism

• Next unit: 1.2 · Human nature and the human condition
• The universe and the place of human beings in the other religions: Buddhism · Christianity · Islam · Judaism · Sikhism
• All of Hinduism · Incandio Religious Studies · The 4RS1 specification