What is the difference between brahman and brahma

It only takes a minute to sign up. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. The word Brahman is derived from the root ' brh ' which denotes greatness, and is therefore applicable to all objects which have the quality of greatness, but more aptly to that object which by nature and qualities possesses this greatness to an infinite degree Brahman is not a name, but rather a way to refer to the Absolute, the Supreme Reality of the Vedanta philosophy.

The word Brahma can refer to two things depending upon where it is being used. First, Brahma is the first being created with every new cycle. All beings in a particular cycle are created by Brahma.

A different soul becomes Brahma in every new cycle. Brahma is a god, but the gods are office holders so to speak and new souls take the stations in every new cycle. Second, Brahma is one of the three gods making up the Hindu trinity, called the Trimurti, which can be thought of as Brahman Isvara. Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva make up the trinity and stand for the creative, sustainer, and destroyer aspects of the Godhead. Atman is the soul of man. According to the Advaita Vedanta philosophy the soul of man is one with and the same as Brahman.

When Brahman within an individual is referred to, it is referred to as the Atman. There are differences between what is meant by 'soul' in Hindu philosophy and Christian philosophy. Swami Vivekananda says Complete Works , V6, p 85 :. One of the chief distinctions between the Vedic and Christian religion is that the Christian religion teaches that each human soul has its beginning at its birth into this world; whereas the Vedic religion asserts that the spirit of man is an emanation of the Eternal Being and had no more a beginning than God Himself.

A person has an individual 'soul' in Hinduism - the jiva that survives death and is the 'soul' that passes from one birth to another.

The innermost part of the soul is the atman. For a good description of the the Atman see the following link. Brahman is an abstract concept with a wide meaning. One of its meaning is a hypothetical principle of the universe. Atman again has a wide meaning. One meaning is similar to soul. That's difficult to understand. But a good metaphor for it is Indra's net, even when the latter is from Buddhism.

The Hindu caste system has four Varna :. The Brahmin caste are thus the caste that produced the clergy in traditional Hindu society. Hinduism has three primary Gods, known as the Trimurti. These Gods are references to the three primary forces in nature that hold the universe together :. The Atman and Brahman are concepts from the Vedanta branch of Hinduism that represent respectively your individual consciousness and universal consciousness.

The Brahman is thus a pantheistic perspective on the divine. Advaita Vedanta , a school of thought within the Vedanta branch, stresses the notion that the Atman and Brahman are just different manifestations of the same divine essence, which is basically just simplified Animism. See also my article The Atheistic approach to God… or how to bridge the gap between Atheists and Theists where I explain how Atheism, Pantheism, Hinduism, Animism and Shamanism are really just different perspectives on the same core concepts.

At hinduism. Here the answers are more likely to be etic. As a side note, as a linguaphile I discourage concurrently learning words that either sound similar or have totally opposite meanings. In my experience, I forget or am apprehensive about which is which. Whatever your study and memorization methodology is, I'd recommend learning other things in between or risk losing certainty about the meaning of these words. These answers will be short enough to memorize and further research, but are in no way comprehensive.

Volumes have been written on these topics. Brahman : the totality of the cosmos; the non-anthropomorphic monad; Ultimate Reality, i. Brahma : the deva of creation and thus anthropomorphic ; often spoken of in context of the trimurti —creation, preservation, destruction; the generative aspects of reality. Brahmin : a social caste whose members have the dharma sacred life-duty of theology. That's it. Not surprisingly however, Satcitananda has a Wikipedia!

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They say he lives in a separate world called the Satyaloka. Saraswati is considered as his wife and the sage Narada as his son. Narada is a firm devotee of the lord Vishnu. There is no Brahma temple built in the world. And he is depicted with beard and four side face. Brahma is described in mythology as the work God who has depicted sitting on the lotus. The Brahman can not be seen with naked eye as it can be felt when one attains such deep knowledge.

It can only be experienced. It is said that Brahman is all-pervasive. It invades every part of existence and is present everywhere. The sages of the past have experienced the Brahman and became realized souls. According to Advaita of Sankara, Supreme Brahman is made up of all the individual souls. After the natural death, individual souls become one with Brahman.

Death is only for the body and not the soul. Upanishads praise the Brahman and said that it is indestructible. The Brahman can not be burned, made wet or washed away. He has no form, no color. It can not be seen and can not be felt too.