The Hindu religion is lacking the uniting belief system; however, that does not mean that is is made

up of nothing. The Hindu religion is made up of many different beliefs of what is good in the world and for a person or a society it includes everything from duty, natural law, social welfare, ethics, health, and transcendental realization . The term Hinduism does not actually portray the religion correctly. This is because the term Hinduism was introduced by the British during their reign on the region in which India resides. The term Hinduism was placed on their census, the correct and preferred term for this religion is actually Sanatana Dharma . The religion focus's on many different extremes that are tailored to the individual persons belief. Sanatana Dharma can range from the extreme removal of worldly and luxury items to the extreme sensuality, to the heights of personal devotion to a single deity to the heights of abstract philosophy, to the from metaphysical proclamations of the oneness of things in the material world to worship of images representing a multiplicity of many deities . The idea to this is that in India and in the Santana Dharma religion there are many different faces and many different deities that are all individual to a person or persons.

The cultural and societal influences that have made Hinduism or Santana Dharma vital to the region in which it originated from are very important to the religion and the every day life of the people. From the beginning of the religion to today they still practice the spiritual rituals and ways to cleans ones self to be completely enlightened to their deity. The central government of India recognizes sixteen religious holidays. This is so the people can go and celebrate with the crowds of people to express spirituality in its happiest form. The belief is that the crowds energy will bring the gods closer and allow them to overcome evils and transform their fears into something good. Their are still some traditions that have carried

over into todays society, take for instance the Castes. These were the people who were trained to preform the rituals and were always held to a high standard of spiritual cleanliness. After a period of time the castes took more and more control over the religion and the status of castes became inherited instead of learned. They were then placed into their own level in the society and being a higher class the marriage outside of that class was forbidden. Even in todays society there are claims of families killing a boy and girl who fall in love outside of the class to avoid embarrassment even though it is only frowned upon now. The Cultural still thrives for the spiritual enlightenment and being close and experiencing a deity through the devotion to the religion. It is believe that the longing for a lover or beloved is the strongest path that one can take in order to be spiritually connected with a deity. This is called the bhakti path. The belief is that every person from birth to death, must continue one a journey to better themselves every step of the way from what their basic animal nature.

The desire for liberation from earthly existence is to one day be a vessel or even a deity themselves. The Hindus believe that if you are clean in spirit and soul you will be reincarnated, and may even be used by a deity as a vessel to which they are reborn. They also believe that if you follow these paths to bring yourself closer to your deity or deities that you will one day enlightened by them and that they will show themselves to you in their purest of forms. Thus it will make you happy and bring you to live a better and fuller life without sin. They also desire to be liberated from earthly existence because they believe in reincarnation and in the common Karma, which can be passed through from this life to the next life. So by living without their earthly possessions and luxuries they can better ensure that bad karma will not follow them into the next life.