The Vedas and Upanisads: What does it mean to be religious?

In discussion of the Vedas and the Upanisads, one element of the text and conversation in class that particularly stood out to me was the shift from a more extrinsic, materially motivated attempt at explaining the eternal in the Vedas to a more liberated, self-motivated ’solution’ characteristic in the Upanisads. Because I do not personally identify with any religion, spirituality serves as a foundational practice in my daily life. With such external motivation and disconnect from the self, the Vedas beg the question, ‘What does it mean to be religious?’. The dominant role of males within Vedic sacrifice, the exclusion of women in reciting oral traditions and the high regard to status and wealth among the Aryans seems to emphasize the importance on the material and personally translates to a lack of connection to the inner self when attempting to define what is eternal. Under the text Rg Veda of  “Origins of Sacred Speech” , it is noted that ‘friends rejoice in the friend who emerges with fame and victory in the contest.’, which points directly to the importance of status and nobility. In addition, the class discussion surrounding the symbolic weight of the cow represented in the Vedas is yet another example of wealth that seems to transmit the eternal with the material. On page 42 of “Hindu World”, Patton notes how each sacrifice was an outward display of wealth among the Aryans and how the participating tribes would verbally compete, continuing to emphasize status among the Vedas. In retrospect, the Upanisads seem to represent a more philosophical solution at explaining the eternal, with greater attention and connect to the self. The elaboration of the self (atman) and the universal or truth (brahman) characteristic of the Upanisads seem to be more personal, and the self more central, which I feel is a closer representation of spirituality among the two traditions. Among the two texts, what is more religious? And who decides?