Religion vs Lifestyle

Religion vs Lifestyle June 11, 2014

A lot of times when someone talks about Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma as being a religion, several people will jump in to say that it’s not a religion, it’s a “way of life.”

So this always makes me stop and wonder, what is the difference between a religion and a way of life? Aren’t all religious people striving to live their religion throughout their life?

What is this distinction between a religion and a lifestyle?

I know that there are some who compartmentalize their religion into a slot and only think about God during that particular time, like at church on Sunday. But most people, of all religions, think about how their religious beliefs are part of their life every day and make their choices in life based on the filter of their religion.

Hinduism is absolutely a way of life.

But so are all the other religions that I know of!

I wonder if saying “lifestyle” is a way of saying that Hinduism is not centralized. There’s no pope, no one holy book, no one way of seeing it. There are thousands of variations on what it means to be Hindu and what Sanatana Dharma is. Of course even in religions where there is a known founder and one holy book, there are still lots of variations on how to interpret and live its scriptures.

It’s okay for Hinduism, for Santana Dharma, to be a religion. We don’t need to make an arbitrary distinction between ourselves and other religions. It doesn’t lessen our way of life at all to say that it is a religion. Religion is a way of life. That’s what it should be.

Not to mention, as Himalayan Academy points out, there are legal protections for religions and those are things we don’t want to argue our way out of!

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