Car broke down Tuesday night. We got it pulled into a parking lot and I went into the Subway restaurant to wait for a tow. (It was a long wait, the weather here has been a bit intense, though it’s much worse in other parts of the US). I ordered a veggie sub and then an Indian woman came out of the back. She wasn’t directly serving me, but stood next to the girl who was and we kept smiling... Read more
Currently I am 31 years old. It feels as though I have already lived at least four completely different lives and that I have been different people in my different stages of life. Who I am today is radically different from who I was at 18. When I was a kid I was legalistic about morality. Now I’m sometimes accused of being too open-minded (Yes, the accusation of “moral relativism” has been leveled against me)! It strikes me sometimes that... Read more
Confession: I don’t always manage a daily puja. I really want to. That’s a priority in my life to get to pujas every day. I want it to always be the first thing I do in the morning. Though I have my puja cards with various pujas for different deities (and it includes a basic 16 steps that can be applied to any God or Goddess), one of the challenges is time. We’re busy people and part of what gets... Read more
Whenever I talk about clothes, someone always mentions that Indian clothes are not the same as Hindu clothes. You don’t have to wear a sari or a dhoti to be a Hindu. Which is true, of course. But it gets a little more complicated than that. Because Hinduism is so closely tied to India and became what it is within the backdrop of Indian culture, Indian clothes are pretty ubiquitous at temples. My experience has been that if I don’t... Read more
For a while, you’re a lucky person who has never had anyone close to you die. You feel bad for friends who have struggled with a tragedy. You wish them well. You don’t relate to what they’re going through. You are the star of the show that is your life and these tragedies are subplots to your story. Always happening to someone else. Then one day death becomes part of your story. It surprises you; going from person who is... Read more
As a (relatively) young person who is also religious, I often feel like a very odd duck. Maybe it’s part of the separation of “church” and “state” (for which I am enormously grateful), but religion doesn’t come up very much in the day to day life of American society and culture. For most people, religion is a very private matter. Often relegated to a particular time and place, not spilling out into every day interactions. It’s odd to hear a... Read more
Heaven Is For Real is the title of a book that was written based on the real life story of a little boy who had a near-death experience. He apparently reported to his family that heaven was real and that he had met long-dead relatives. The book is now a movie and Brad and I were subjected to a preview for it when we were in North Carolina. I’m a little saddened that this story and the experience of this... Read more
The word “honest” is used in strange ways these days. When someone wants to say something cruel, they justify saying it by using honesty as an excuse. “I just have to be honest.” Those who practice “radical honesty” often seem to use that to say whatever mean thing comes into their heads. Do those same people also say all the good things that come into their heads? It doesn’t seem like it. To me radical honesty would involve telling people I... Read more
There are so many sides to every story and all we know, as people who weren’t there, is what the media decides to tell us. That’s a recipe for disaster, in my opinion. Whenever I hear a crazy story about something that happened and people are getting worked up about it, my first thought is, “There’s more to this story than what we’ve been told.” Let’s take the example of the current situation with the arrest of Devyani Khobragade. This is... Read more
Generally, when meditating, one seeks out a peaceful and quiet environment to do it in. Makes sense. Meditation requires focus and concentration. Complete silence, though, is never really possible in this world. Even if you go out into nature and sit beneath a tree, you’ll still hear birds chirping and leaves brushing one another. When doing a meditation in which the goal is to focus inwardly and to keep one’s attention on a mantra without thinking, do we need as... Read more
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