I’m happy to learn about my dharma — the Sanatan dharma — from all manner of sources: teachers, books, talks, videos and friends.
The dharma is vast and inexhaustible. No point in attempting to understand it to any significant degree. One cannot drink all the waters of all the rivers and lakes of the world. Don’t even try. Take a drink as and when thirsty, and get on with other things.
I like Dr Nick Sutton’s talks on Hinduism. He is at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. I’m not sure but I believe he is a practicing Hindu. Be that as it may, he sure enjoys his scholarship.
I recommend his talk “Speaking of Shiva” (link will open to a YouTube video.) Here I present an audio extract from the question/answer part of his talk. I bet you will find his answers interesting.
In the extract above he answers questions related to the Shiva linga. Does it represent a phallus? Yes, it certainly does. He explains. Hindus understand that life is about good things, including kama. Pleasure, joy. And life is about artha. Wealth. And life is about dharma. Those three — kama, artha and dharma — are in balance in a good life.
He also addresses a question about the presence of sexual imagery on temple walls. Religious people (meaning people who are Jews, Christians and Muslims) are outraged by it. Dr Sutton explains why.
The image at the top of this post is Shiva as Nataraja dancing the Tandava — Shiva’s cosmic dance of creative destruction. There’s a very fine description of Tandava by Heinrich Zimmer from his book “Philosophies of India.”
Previously: Part 4 of Why I’m a Hindu.
To round up this post, here’s a song by the Moody Blues. The Word: OM.
This garden universe vibrates complete. Some we get a sound so sweet. Vibrations reach on up to become light, and then thru gamma, out of sight.
Between the eyes and ears there lay, the sounds of colour and the light of a sigh. And to hear the sun, what a thing to believe. But it’s all around if we could but perceive. To know ultra-violet, infra-red and X-rays, beauty to find in so many ways.
Two notes of the chord, that’s our fluoroscope. But to reach the chord is our life’s hope. And to name the chord is important to some. So they give a word, and the word is OM.
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 
I find it amusing that your lens into Hinduism is via mostly westerners and non-Hindus, and also at an intellectual level, rather than at faith/practice/ritual level. Nothing wrong with that, but it sticks out like a sore thumb, especially for someone who was born and grew up in India as a Hindu.
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