Bollywood movies can be intimidating to get started with when you’re a westerner with no background in them. But watching Indian movies is a great way to learn more about the birthplace of Hinduism and begin to understand some of the cultural context of our religion. Plus watching movies from other parts of the world expands our horizons and it’s lots of fun. There’s lots of great Indian movies out there and a bunch of them are on Netflix streaming.... Read more
I’ve mentioned now and then that I’m working on a new book and now it is almost ready to be released. My previous book was a collection of posts from my blogger blog, but this one is going to be entirely new material. It’s short and to the point! The idea is that it is designed to guide you gently into a Hindu faith community and give you easy steps to take to get started with bringing Hinduism into your... Read more
Netflix recommended this documentary to me about beauty contests in India: The World Before Her. It juxtaposes girls in India getting ready for a beauty pageant against girls going to a camp for conservative Hindus and how these different groups view women and beauty differently. It’s powerful. It brought up a lot of emotions and thoughts for me. To start with, the people at the conservative camp suggested that the idea that men and women are equals is a western... Read more
I apologize to my new Mormon friends that your efforts have not converted me. I have been open-minded and I’m glad that I was because it is wonderful to learn about other people and other beliefs. More knowledge can’t be a bad thing, in my opinion. I also think there’s a big benefit in interfaith dialog because we can pool our resources and see different sides and aspects of God. Together we might get a more complete picture than alone.... Read more
Today I am going to be practicing using Hindi. I am probably going to be very bad at it, so if you know Hindi, come on over to Twitter and correct my sentences! One thing to note is that I really need Hindi in devanagari script. A weakness that I currently have is that I have a really hard time recognizing Hindi words written in English characters. It really throws me off. So if you want to correct a sentence... Read more
I did observe Maha Shivratri last year, but I did it alone and there’s no way I can stay up all night when I’m by myself! This year I was able to have a more complete experience by participating in the event with my brothers and sisters at the Sathya Sai Baba bhajan singing group. That was Friday evening, but first was Friday during the day. Perhaps I should have taken the day as a holiday from work, but I... Read more
First of all, Happy Maha Shivratri! Wish me luck on the fasting and staying up all night! *** In my experience there are few things more difficult than walking into a new place where you don’t really fit in or know the protocol. Going to the Indian grocery store is like that for me. Or at least, going to a new one is. There’s one really close to my home and I feel pretty comfortable there. I know where things... Read more
My friend Beth was visiting recently and we got into an interesting conversation. She has been a loyal reader of my blog since it first started on Blogger in 2010 and so she always asks me interesting philosophical questions. This time she asked about the word “Supernatural” and it was something that I had never thought about before. If everything is God and the world is created from God, how can something be more than natural? What does it mean... Read more
When I told you about the Mormon girls coming to visit us, I mentioned Hindu hospitality off-hand and I wanted to return to that subject today. From what I understand it is very normal for people in India to drop by friends’ houses unannounced and there’s an atmosphere of always being ready to entertain guests should they show up. It’s not like that in most of America. Usually here people expect that you will make an appointment to visit. Your... Read more
I have not read The Hindus. I had not heard of Wendy Doniger before this controversy came up. There’s a lot of opinions, a lot of thoughts.I, as usually, am not sure what I think about all this. In an effort to try to get as much information as possible, I have been reading articles from a wide variety of viewpoints. If you’d like to do the same, here is a roundup of a whole lot of articles I found... Read more
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