How and why do the Lakota life cycle and social structure differ from the Hindu life cycle and social structure?

The Dimensions of Hinduism

Ritual:

• The samskaras (rituals), prayer, offerings, pilgrimage, the many ways of purity (including eating, bathing, kinds of work, etc.), emotional devotion, fasting

Mythological:

• The trinity of Brahma, Vishnu (also his incarnations, Rama and Krishna), and Shiva; Goddesses: the shaktas, Parvati and Shri; also Devi, the Divine Mother; Ganesha and Lakshmi

•These gods have families, they fight, they get involved in wars, incarnations, etc.

Doctrinal:

• Basic notions: painful and deceitful world, rebirth, karma, and moksha

• Various ways to do this: the trimarga: karmamarga (path of action), jñanamarga (path of knowledge), and bhaktimarga (path of devotion)

Ethical:

• Dharma: that which upholds, supports (the world). Without dharma all is chaos

• Expressed in relationship to one's varna, one's caste

Social:

• The division of the society into varnas (castes) and jatis (subcastes). The four varnas are Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra)

• Varnas in action: the Brahmins pursue their innate spirituality, the Kshatriyas pursue their heroism, the Vaishyas their skill, and the Shudras their service

• Sadhus are outside society, they show the spiritual goal even in this world

• The four ashramas as they organize life into phases with differing religious duties

Experiential:

• The union of the worshipper with the gods, the dissolution of the worshipper in brahman, the liberation of moksha (total release). How? Through following the one of the trimarga

Material:

• This ranges from the clothes one wears and food one eats all the way to the great temples and the sacred Ganges river. In a sense, India itself, the very land, is sacred and thus part of the material dimension

The Hindu Life Cycle:

The Caturashrama and its Rituals 

Correlated with caturvarga, the four aims of life, the purushartha. First kama, desire; then artha, wealth. Meanwhile dharma organizes everyone’s pursuit of the first two. Following dharma comes moksha

First a pre-stage of childhood, devoted to kama. This ends somewhere between age 8 and age 12

Student: brahmacarya, begins with the samskara (ritual) of upanayana (initiation). Here the head is shaved and the boy gets the sacred thread to be worn for life. The student learns sacred texts, ritual skills and prayers, discipline of being Brahmin (or other), how to serve the guru, etc. The aim here is dharma (law, morality, truth)

Householder: with the greatest samskara, vivaha (marriage), the student becomes a householder. Here the aim is artha, wealth, because the duty here is to raise a family. This is the highest dharma on this earth

Forest-dweller: when his hair goes gray and he sees his son's son it is time for the next stage: withdrawal into forest-dwelling (though one does not literally need to go to the forest). An older couple can do this together, stopping their work on artha and beginning to devote themselves to moksha

Renunciant: here the real devotee becomes a wondering ascetic, renouncing the world. The practice here is to possess nothing and desire nothing. Of course the aim here is moksha. Very few people reach this stage

Finally there is the sacrament of death, commonly called shraddha. Here the dead person is transformed into an ancestor, worthy of veneration. This person takes his or her rightful place in a good afterlife. This becomes a kind of post-stage and a readying for continued rebirths on the path to moksha