Posted on 09/04/2006 8:36:21 PM PDT by voletti
To be Hindu in America is much more an intentional choice than it is in India," said Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion and Indian studies and director of The Pluralism Project at Harvard University. "Even if you're first generation, you have to decide if you perpetuate it or if you just kind of let it go.
That reality has created a challenge for Hindus here - and for their temples and cultural organisations - as they try to pass the faith on to a younger generation.
At the Ganesh Temple in Queens, founded in 1977 and one of the oldest temples in the country, there's a community centre that people can use for weddings, performances and other events; education activities from religious instruction to language lessons and academic tutoring; and the youth club that Shivraj is part of.
Those are not elements commonly found at temples in India, said Dr Uma Mysorekar, one of the temple trustees. But in India, she pointed out, they don't need to be - because Hindus are surrounded by their religion.
"We just observed and followed and never questioned," she said.
When Indian immigrants started coming to the United States in larger numbers, in the years after the 1965 revamping of immigration laws, they carried their religious traditions on as best they could, meeting for prayers and worship at one another's homes, or renting public spaces, said Anantanand Rambachan, professor of religion at St Olaf College in Minnesota.
That realisation came from seeing how religion is done in the United States. Here, Christian tradition relies heavily on doctrine, on what people believe, Rambachan said, rather than what they do. In India, the emphasis goes the opposite way, since Hinduism covers a wide spectrum of gods and beliefs, and ritual is very important.
In America, Hindus "are increasingly being challenged to articulate the Hindu tradition in a manner that places more emphasis on doctrine," Rambachan said. "People will ask, 'What do you believe?'" Rambachan said.
Faced with that, temples and cultural organisations that had been working to make outsiders understand more about the faith realised they needed to help young Indian Americans know what they believed, if the religion was going to be passed on.
"If we don't do our part, we will lose these youngsters,' Mysorekar said.
"There was a lot of foundation we had to lay even to exist as Hindus among non-Hindus," she said. "Now it is for us to do the job within our own community."
In some cultures, asking "What are the core beliefs that define your religion"...
With all due respect Sourcery...
I never said a thing about "Core Beliefs", that's a straw man you set up and then masterfully knocked down.
I think we could have a better discussion if you did not put words in my mouth, er, ah, keyboard.....
I said when asked "What do you believe" they should be able to come up with what some explanation of they believe, EVEN if it is belief in multiple deities, or believe in a system of religion that has no central beliefs or what ever.
The article lamented the fact that when asked what their belief is most of them could not express it at all. If their view if their "religion" is the exercising of long established rituals, even in the absence of a deity, than that is something they should be able to express and relate to others.
Even Atheists have SOME beliefs.
Too many by who's reckoning?
Are ten gods too many? Is one to few? Is No god, but rather a centuries old tradition of ceremony and ritual somehow evil?
How can you pass on a religion that you can not even express?
I really don't care how many gods someone prays to or how many traditions they honor, as long as their religion does not harm anyone else and does not demand obedience of others its fine with me. Even Atheists don't bother me as long as they are not strapping on bombs.
Immigrants from India are immediately stripped of their old identities and put into Seven-Eleven shirts and directed to begin selling beer and cigarettes.
Gad.
Their own story is that Krishnaism has an ancient origin as a sort of rebellion against the ancient Hindu belief in the individual being part of the godhead. Which may or may not be true and may depend on the sources referenced. Still, whatever its roots, Abhay Charan De Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada founded ISKCON here, in the United Stes, in New York, in 1965.
He did not found ISKON "there". Besides, that was back in the bad old days in India when the Socialists still ruled the roost and individual initiative was frowned on.
Guess folks in India finally got tired of starving to death and threw Congress Party out in the streets.
Anyway, ISKON definitely has a flavor that is purely American.
So much for the "benefits". All you can think of is food.
World's greatest mathematician in modern times, Srinivasa Ramanujan, would have undoubtedly survived London's winters much better if he was given to eating rootcrops ~ 'cause that's what they had then.
I don't know if he was a Jain, but his dietary preferences were similar to those of the more Orthodox Jains, the Digambara.
He'd definitely have had a problem going naked there.
Was he a Jain?
No.
I don't think that all Jews would agree. Zionism is all about the land; Judaism is about Torah.
Animal sacrfice, as performed in pre-Kali Age time (when it was recommended, after the commencement of the Kali Age is is no longer recommended, along with some other acts, such as brothers begetting children in one's wife if the actual husband was sterile or deceased, as in the case of Vedavyasa begetting children with his deceased brother's wives), had very particular rituals involved. Specialized brahmans to oversee the whole proceedings, to make sure everything went according to the directions. The animal sacrificed gained (visibly) a new animal life, or sometimes even a human life.
It cannot be performed properly now, and it had nothing to do with slaughterhouses killing en masse.
You've become completely untrustworthy, I don't know if it's strange books you read or just your own mind.
That's not what the Vedas say. I believe Vyasadeva, not lying British indologists.
For example, the Sumerian language has living cognate languages ~ all are Dravidian, or, almost unaccountably, Sa'ami.
It's typical of a certain class of Hindu to argue any position he can get his hands around that no Dravidian group could possibly have founded civilization in India, or anywhere else.
Modern research, though, is tending away from the primacy of the Aryans to the primacy of the Dravidians in the background of Indian religious thought and culture, with the linguistic element clearly being developed by Dravidian speakers who migrated to Mesopotamia.
A couple of Freepers have in earlier posts noted that there is the "Sundaland Theory" that posits the existence of human habitation and settlement on the continental shelves of India and SE Asia during the last Ice Age (period of maximum glaciation). Presumably those folks were Dravidian speakers.
In English?
Additional note:
I have read writings of previous saints going back many hundreds of years, as well as three Puranas, the Mahabharat (unfortunately, only three condensed versions as a complete edition is very hard to find in English, I'm working on finding one), of course the Bhagavad Gita (which is one chapter of the Mahabharat), assorted Upanisads, and three versions of the Ramayan (finally found a verse by verse translation). I can assure you that the writings of modern swamis like Bhaktivedanta Swami and Siddhanta Saraswati (early 1900s) as well as previous gurus all teach the exact same basic truths. Nothing invented.
Interesting stuff, lots of it is deadly dull, boring, turgid priestly misdirection ~ but, they have their moments.
I must have been 14 or 15 when I'd read all of them.
Although I've read through the Bhagavad Gita several times (and noted that it does seem to contain the Jewish "Book of Proverbs") I haven't read the entirity of either the Ramayana or the Mahabarata. Still, I've seen the 3 video version of the Mahabarata (far too brief) and the full 26 or so tape version of the Mahabarata in Hindi (with English subtitles).
Truly great literature, and the obvious source for a myriad of other theatrical productions, movies, and so forth.
You might want to check out the movie "Platoon" some time and see if it doesn't strike you as a barely disguised rework of "Arjuna's Celestial Journey".
The Ramayana (and various Chinese versions of the "Tales of the Monkey God") led me to wonder exactly what was the Garden of Eden in the Torah (the most ancient texts of the Jews).
Seemed to me that before writing, the ancients would have needed to memorize a tremendous amount of stories about life in the jungles (such as the Ramayana has running in the background of the main story line), so why not a Memory Palace.
I haven't found the answer to this question, but before writing, how did the ancients in India go about memorizing the Ramayana? Are there signs of a hidden memnonic structure in the full text? Next time you pick it up for a good night's read, check it out. Think about "how would someone memorize this". Get back to me.
According to the Puranas, various disciplic lines had the responsibility for learning and memorizing various Vedic texts. Previous to the degradations of the Kali Age, people had much better memories and were more long lived. Various practices of yoga and meditation were common and even ordinary people conquered breath control, with its concommitant increased mental ability as well as other benefits.
Vyasadeva knew the Kali Age was approaching, so he put all the Vedic literature into writing, for our benefit. Those learned in Jyotish know the exact date the Kali Age started, many of my books are packed so I don't have it in front of me. But it was more or less 5000 years ago. After the Kurukshetra War, with many dead, including many great kings, and the subsequent departure of Bhagavan Krishna and the Pandavas, the world descended shortly into chaos, and much of the Vedic knowledge and culture was forgotten. The population decreased, and culture declined all over the world.
Previously, the kings of India basically had control over most of the world, and that ancient Vedic influence can be discerned all over the world via language, customs, mythology and tales, religious beliefs, and so on.
In between each Age (Yuga) there is a chaotic couple of hundred years, until the next age kicks in. A lot is forgotten or twisted about the past at such times, especially so when Kali appears, since it is the most degraded and miserable of the ages.
I have never read an example of a kshatriya in the Mahabharat eating a cow. But I have read two translations of the Manu Samhita, as well as extracts from other Vedic texts, condemning even the mistreatment of cows and bulls, what to speak of slaughtering them.
Also the Puranas roundly condemn the slaughter of cows.
No doubt the invention of writing was absolutely devastating to the existing order.
Writing was already known, it's just that there was no particular need to write everything down.
The beginning of the Kali age ruined a lot of things.
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