ence that guides his world view, the Hindu views all of creation as a balance between becoming and being(p. 105).
Within Hinduism, the human condition is perched somewhere between imperfection and suffering. Simply put, the way to escape imperfection and suffering was to drop desire. The completed action of escaping desire and escaping the human condition, is referred to again, as moksha. The Hindu philosophy of life, any kind or type of life, rests on the supposition that our perceived reality resembles a kochina doll. Each level of existence is nested within another level of existence, ad infinitum. There is no telling the beginning or end of things. As long as one clings to the idea that sensory impressions, thoughts or feelings are lastingly significant, then one will be trapped in this realm of affliction(samsara). The concept of samsara provides a cultural backdrop for the prevading symbolism of Hindu life; a virtually unending cycle of birth, death and suffering. Hindu(s believe that birth and death occurs many times, and that the universe itself moves through an enormous span of expansions and contractions quite like human birth and death. There is an incredible syncronicity in Hindu phenomenology between all cycles of creation. In essence, the material aspects of the universe reflects the coalescing and deterioration of itself. The perceived condemnation of dying and being reborn puts the sharpest edge possible on the Hindu notion of suffering. If humanity is in some form the universe made manifest, then only when one escapes completely from samsara can the endless cycle of birth, death and suffering be escaped(95-94).
Concomitant in this endless cycle of rebirth and suffering, is the affirmation that a person exists simultaneously in different orders of being. To use Western terminology, an individual is supposed to exist equally in his or her psyche, soma, and polis ; e.g., a person is simultaneously a self, a body and...