Dharma Travels: American Dharma Everywhere in NYC!

Hello readers! Sorry I haven't been as attentive to this blog lately. I have been, over the last few weeks, currently relocating to New York to begin my Masters program in Religion at NYU. Well I officially moved in on Sunday and let me tell you, my interesting encounters with the American Dharma have not stopped. The first morning I was in New York I ran into a Muslim women in a Abhaya texting on a Sidekick (god bless her too...it was SO hot out), and since then I've seen just about everything: giant statues of John Paul II, Hare Krishnas with bead bags, an incredibly large statue of Gwan Yin, Ramadan fast breaking at the Mosque on the corner of my street, my roommate explaining the concept of Purim to a farmer's market vendor, and a very strange store front Hindu temple. Needless to say, I think there's a lot to see and experience here and thus I am starting a new segment called "Dharma in the Big City" which will include, but won't be limited to, chance encounters, photos, and site visits. When classes start, there probably will be a lot more book reviews and theoretical reflections (I appologize in advanced, its due to the theory classes!). I don't have the internets at home yet, so for now, I'll be signing off from some random NYU student lounge.

Until next time!

PS- If you would perhaps like to contribute to this blog as a guest, let me know. It might be nice to not hear my opinion every once in awhile. haha.

Vicaarana: College Will Make You An Atheist

This Just In: College Will Make You An Atheist

Uh oh! So much for all turning into Hindus. haha.

Vicaarana: Are We All Hindu Now?

First I wanna give a special thanks to my friend Aditya for posting this article on his facebook. So, in her article We Are All Hindu in Newsweek Magazine, Lisa Miller claims that America is not *really* a Christian nation, but actually a *Hindu* nation. Not that we are all becoming Hindus, but rather, because Americans are starting to encompass, perhaps subconsciously, Hindu Dharmic beliefs including the famous quote from the Rig Veda: "The truth is one, though sages call it by many names". As much as I can see where this is coming from, I have to put up a small argument that it depends where in America you are. On the coasts, I totally believe it. I've grown up my whole life in the Northeastern US, I went to school up here, and I am going to more school up here. I have met plenty of people from the West Coast who practice, as the author cites, Dr. Stephen Prothero's term "cafeteria style religion". I will even cite myself as guilty of this (look at the name of this blog, after all). I've met the "spiritual, not religious" and I've met the agnostics who just don't know, and those trying to create some sort of meaning. I went to college, after all, and worked in religious life, the spiritual seekers were widespread and hungry for something that wasn't their Mama's religion (often shying away from THAT word, of course). But as many of these people and views of religion in America appear, there are still plenty of the "Christian nation" to contend with (as much as Newsweek has repeatedly insisted we are a Post Christian nation). The Christian political stances on abortion, LGBT marriage rights, and a host of other issues are too hard to ignore. (On a side note, I'm also currently reading Jeff Sharlett's The Family which furthers my belief that we are far from being a post Christian nation. Woah. Its crazy.)

But despite all this, I understand the point being made, things aren't like they were. Americans now have choices and new interactions with Diaspora communities and different faith traditions that were never made available to them in the past. Even death, Miller points out, is being treated differently as more and more people, Catholics included, leave behind that old adage of body and soul = self and go for cremation for their remains (How very Hindu indeed!). So, while I don't think there's gonna be a whole rush of people to begin installing murthis (images) of Sri Rama at their new local Mandir (temple), some of the underlying philosophical ideals of the Hindu tradition are, I can agree, starting to slowly grab hold of the American subconscious.

On the other side of the coin, as Americans are becoming more Hindu, are Hindus becoming more American? It could be argued that some of the American freedom and individualism ideology is equally grabbing hold of the South Asian Hindu diaspora psyche. So how does this new Newsweek article fair for the other side? Does it make more Americans aware and accepting of their likeness to Hinduism, or does it continue to morph the continually Americanizing Hindu tradition as it makes the transformation from India to American culture. Eventually does everyone meet somewhere in the middle? Where does culture and tradition go after we make that sort of jump to the everyone's happy little bit of everything religion, or can we just accept everyone's religion as is and live together? The author claims a little bit of both is happening, and I've seen it around me, however, as I said before, I'm living in a Northeast coast world, and I wonder if these claims are true of the whole country.