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10 Universal Principles from Hindu Mythology That Can Guide Us Today

Srinivas Rao
11 min readSep 22, 2020

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Photo by Rahul Dogra on Unsplash

Throughout my childhood, I dreaded going to the temple on Sunday. Every experience I had with religion was a time-consuming obligation to my parents that felt more like superstition than faith.

While talking to one of my dad’s friends, I was surprised to find that the three most well known texts from Hindu Mythology (The Bhagavad Gita, The Mahabharata and The Ramayana) contain universal principles that can still guide us today.

Most Indians who grew up in the US know these stories because we read them in comic books during long summer vacations in India. This was our parents’ way of keeping us from driving them insane.

But many of these principles are buried under idol worship and rituals with no rhyme or reason. This causes many people to overlook real purpose of their faith: to cultivate virtue, to understand the meaning of having a moral compass and to find love within their hearts.

1. Do What’s Honorable

The Mahabharata is a story of a battle between two sets of cousins, the five Pandavas and the 100 Kauravas.

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Srinivas Rao
Srinivas Rao

Written by Srinivas Rao

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