Instead it states that the way to true happiness is to follow a certain set of rules over and over again until you have built up enough good karma to be reincarnated as an Indra or a Brahma.
Hindus view the world as maya, or illusion. They view time as a circular thing instead of linear as we do in the west. Hindus believe that life is one big recycling project that goes on and on forever. They believe that there are four yugs, which can last anywhere from 1,728,000 years down to 432,000 years. All of these four yugs added together equal one Maha yug (4,320,000 years). One thousand Maha yugs is equal to one Brahma day and a Brahma lives for one hundred years. Our current Brahma is supposedly fifty-one. This span of time in the long run is supposed to show us how insignificant we really are. To know that we only live for seventy-five to one hundred years, while a Brahma will live for 154,395,000,000,000 (or 154 trillion years)(based on a 365-day year). The goal of this daunting figure is to show us how insignificant we are, and thus to make us stop whining about how bad things are. If the amount of time that we spend here on earth is so short, then why would we complain about how bad things are? In "The Parade of Ants" this is the entire point of the whole story. Two gods Shiva and Vishnu come to tell Indra about how insignificant he really is in the long run. Vishnu, who is in the form of a small brahmin boy tells Indra about all of the Indras that he has seen come and go, and how he has seen the worlds themselves come and go. He says this to get Indra to see how insignificant he really is. Vishnu explains to Indra how each person's karma falls into the grand scheme of things, and Indra realizes that he doesn't really need the elaborate palace that he is living in.
Dharma is the center of Hinduism, and says that there are specific rules for each type of person in each caste, or Varna.
