[Reader-list] "We Are All Hindus Now"

[Rajendra Bhat Uppinangadi]

Dear all,
 the article submitted by Sri. Kshemendra truely reflects the ethos of a
faith, which has no claim to be superior, the only way to live and attain
salvation, recognises the different ways of life, including the one in which
the faith of non-existence of God is also a way of life.That is hindu way of
life, one likes it or not !

   Perhaps the hindu way of life is the way where all the good of different
ways are merged, to constantly change for better, to tolerate the
differences in different paths that any faith followers like to follow, and
that is the main reason, hindu way of life has no one single spokesperson
for the way of life, as each can have his way as right way, as the hold of
clergies is limited only to rituals in birth, marriage and death of
individuals, thus many godmen can live interpreting the scripture as they
like to enhance the standards of their life with air conditioned ashrams,
deluxe sedans and aircrafts to travel, without actually seating for the
work.! Not that other clergies of other faiths are any different as gods
preachers.!

Regards,

Rajen.

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 4:17 PM, anupam chakravartty <c.anupam at gmail.com>wrote:

> Certainly it is one of most ridiculous articles i have read recently. this
> is what happens when devotion is confused with statistics. People in
> america
> have adopted cremation because in many of the cities there is a dearth of
> space and burial grounds.
>
> On 8/19/09, Kshmendra Kaul <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > This is an Opinion-Piece regarding America, by an American.
> >
> > Kshmendra
> >
> >
> >
> > "We Are All Hindus Now"
> > By Lisa Miller | NEWSWEEK
> > Published Aug 15, 2009
> > From the magazine issue dated Aug 31, 2009
> >
> > America is not a Christian nation. We are, it is true, a nation founded
> by
> > Christians, and according to a 2008 survey, 76 percent of us continue to
> > identify as Christian (still, that's the lowest percentage in American
> > history). Of course, we are not a Hindu—or Muslim, or Jewish, or
> > Wiccan—nation, either. A million-plus Hindus live in the United States, a
> > fraction of the billion who live on Earth. But recent poll data show that
> > conceptually, at least, we are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less
> > like traditional Christians in the ways we think about God, our selves,
> each
> > other, and eternity.
> >
> > The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: "Truth is One,
> > but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hindu believes there are many
> > paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur'an is another, yoga practice is a
> > third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The most
> traditional,
> > conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They
> learn
> > in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus
> > said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father
> > except through me."
> >
> > Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey,
> 65
> > percent of us believe that "many religions can lead to eternal
> > life"—including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group most likely
> to
> > believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the number of people who
> seek
> > spiritual truth outside church is growing. Thirty percent of Americans
> call
> > themselves "spiritual, not religious," according to a 2009 NEWSWEEK Poll,
> up
> > from 24 percent in 2005. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston
> > University, has long framed the American propensity for "the
> > divine-deli-cafeteria religion" as "very much in the spirit of Hinduism.
> > You're not picking and choosing from different religions, because they're
> > all the same," he says. "It isn't about orthodoxy. It's about whatever
> > works. If going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works,
> > great. And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist
> retreat
> > works, that's
> > great, too."
> >
> > Then there's the question of what happens when you die. Christians
> > traditionally believe that bodies and souls are sacred, that together
> they
> > comprise the "self," and that at the end of time they will be reunited in
> > the Resurrection. You need both, in other words, and you need them
> forever.
> > Hindus believe no such thing. At death, the body burns on a pyre, while
> the
> > spirit—where identity resides—escapes. In reincarnation, central to
> > Hinduism, selves come back to earth again and again in different bodies.
> So
> > here is another way in which Americans are becoming more Hindu: 24
> percent
> > of Americans say they believe in reincarnation, according to a 2008
> Harris
> > poll. So agnostic are we about the ultimate fates of our bodies that
> we're
> > burning them—like Hindus—after death. More than a third of Americans now
> > choose cremation, according to the Cremation Association of North
> America,
> > up from 6 percent in 1975. "I do think the more spiritual role of
> religion
> > tends to deemphasize some of the more starkly literal interpretations of
> > the Resurrection," agrees Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion at
> > Harvard. So let us all say "om."
> >
> > http://www.newsweek.com/id/212155
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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-- 
Rajen.