Hindu Priesthood Changing With the Times

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

RAJASTHAN, INDIA, July 19, 2009: The movement to bring Dalits into the priesthood is gaining steam in India. Following the lead of the Tirupati Devasthanams (TDD), The Jagadguru Ramanandacharya Rajasthan Sanskrit University is setting out to train Dalits as priests.

Last year, Tamil Nadu’s state-run priesthood training institute graduated 207 priests, including 76 OBCs and 34 Dalits. They are now getting inducted into some of the 36,000 temples run by the government, under a 69% job quota for backward castes Dalit priests. This came as part of the DMK government’s 2006 order that all qualified Hindus, regardless of caste, would be allowed to become priests.

Rajasthan’s new priesthood training is a one-year diploma program. Pundit Yugal Sharma, the vice chancellor, says: “Admissions are on and classes start next month. The only prerequisite is clearing the senior higher secondary exams.” The university will turn out at least 50 qualified priests per year.

Sociologist Shiv Visvanathan sees reason for concern in the transition of priesthood training from gurukul to universities. “It looks progressive, but how it affects the sense of sacredness and morality of the priesthood is to be seen.”HPI - Jul 24, 2009

Forum For Hindu Awakening Meets

Source: www.forumforhinduawakening.org

VIRGINIA, U.S., July 18, 2009: The first ever Hinduism Meet in North America was held by the Forum for Hindu awakening at the Durga Temple of Virginia, near Washington DC. The aim of the Meet was to promote an understanding of the unique spiritual science and scientific history underlying Hinduism, awaken to the misconceptions about Hinduism, demonstrate living simple practices and concepts of Hinduism in day-to-day life and preserve the sanctity of Hinduism from denigration and malpractices.

The Hinduism Meet had the presence and blessings of many noteworthy people from various religious organizations. The media was also represented by the presence of members of press from a local newspaper, an online radio station, an Indian newspaper and a TV station. The Meet was also broadcast live over the Internet.

There were thought provoking speeches, presentations and videos on maintaining a Hindu identity. Topics included Hindu practices, temples and the spiritual science underlying them and the various challenges faced by Hinduism.HPI - Jul 24, 2009

HPI - Jul 24, 2009

Malaysia Glass Temple

 Set To Become Major Tourist Attraction

Source: www.themalaysianinsider.com

JOHOR BARU, MALAYSIA, July 29, 2009: The Arulmigu Sri Raja Kallamman temple in Jalan Tebrau will not only be a boon to Hindu devotees but would also be a major tourist attraction. Built at the cost of 850,000 dollars, it is the first glass temple of its kind in the world, said temple chairman S.Sinnathamby. 

He said 95 per cent of the temple’s walls, ceiling, domes and pillars were adorned with more than one million pieces of colorful glasses imported from Thailand, Japan and Belgium. 

“The glasswork is carefully placed together by nine Myanmar workers. Motifs and symbols like Swastika, Namam and Sri Chakra were created from the glasswork in seven colors,” he told reporters after inspecting workers putting finishing touches to the temple today. 

HPI - Aug 01, 2009

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

MUMBAI, INDIA, July 30, 2009: Over 300 children from various city schools attended the Young Environmentalists’ Eco Ganesha Workshop at Powai on Wednesday to make biodegradable murtis, that will be immersed in rivers during the next Ganesha Chaturthi festivities. 

Mayor Shubha Raul inaugurated the workshop. Speaking on green initiatives like these, she said, “I’m proud of the efforts the Young Environmentalists’ Programme is making towards empowering the next generation to help sustain the planet. Motivating the youth regarding going green during the Ganesh Utsav is vital in order to save our water bodies.” 

“Children easily understand this ‘green’ concept; we have also told them how harsh chemical colors and sprays, along with plaster of Paris, harm our lakes and creeks,” YEP founder-president Elsie Gabriel said.

HPI - Aug 01, 2009

World’s Largest Solar Steam Power In Shirdi

Source: blog.taragana.com

SHIRDI, INDIA, July 30, 2009: Hindu and Muslim pilgrims visiting the shrine of Shirdi Sai Baba in this town will be served food cooked with the help of a solar steam system, inaugurated by New and Renewable Energy Minister Farooq Abdullah Thursday, that officials say is the world’s largest. 

The solar steam system can generate 3,500 kg of steam every day - enough to cook food for 20,000 people. It has been designed for cooking food for devotees visiting the shrine devoted to Sai Baba, a 19th century Sufi saint who was revered by Hindus and Muslims alike. 

The system will result in annual savings of 100,000 kg of cooking gas. It has been designed in such a way that it will generate steam for cooking even in the absence of electricity to run the feed water pump for circulating water in the system. 

The ministry offers support of up to 50 percent of the cost of such systems for non-profits and 35 percent to businesses.

HPI - Aug 02, 2009 

iYoga

Source: www.examiner.com

UNITED STATES, July 29, 2009: Who could have known? Yoga, a practice that was once reserved for the initiated, is now everywhere in America — even in one’s iPhone. These are some of the hatha yoga-related new apps:

Pret-a-Yoga helps you choose your sun salutations for the day, with real-life illustrations that can be seen at different angles. Yoga Trainer Pro showcases all the basic hatha yoga poses. Patanjali Yoga Sutras, a classic that now may be studied while on the go. Finally, Yoga Finder is the mapquest of yoga, helping you find yoga studios within reach. 

HPI - Aug 02, 2009

Heaven? Sure. Hell? Not so much.

Source: Religion News Services

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA, USA: Only 59 percent of Americans believe in hell, compared with 74 percent who believe in heaven, according to the recent surveys from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. 

The Rev. Fred Johns, pastor of Brookview Wesleyan Church in Irondale, Ala., said that pastors shy away from the topic of everlasting damnation. “It’s out of fear we’ll not appear relevant,” he said. 

Pope John Paul II stirred up a debate in 1999 by describing hell as “the state of those who freely and definitely separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy.” But some U.S. evangelicals expressed misgivings about the implication that hell is an abstract separation from God rather than a literal lake of brimstone and everlasting fire, a concept they favor. 

[HPI note: Hindu cosmology encompasses celestial realms, where the Gods live, and also a lower plane of hellish suffering called the Narakaloka. But in the Hindu view no one is condemned forever, because of reincarnation and the natural evolution of all souls.]

HPI - Aug 02, 2009 

Honoring Sri Lakshmi During Varalakshmi Vratam

Source: www.daijiworld.com

DUBAI, UAE, August 2: Devotees across the United Arab Emirates attended a vibrant Mahalakshmi Vratam festival held today at Karama Centre Recreation Hall and participated with full of devotion. This pooja is being held every year at the same premises. More than 800 devotees attended this event to get themselves blessed by Goddess Lakshmi. 

Varalakshmi Vratam is a sacred day in Hinduism. Married ladies celebrate this day on the Friday just before the full moon day in the month of “Sravana” - July/August- according to Hindu calendar. This ritual is more commonly performed in Southern Indian States, Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Maharashtra and Orissa. On this day Hindu women invite all the neighboring laides to their homes and perform puja for seeking the blessings of the goddesses of wealth and prosperity. 

Traditionally, on Varalaksmi Vratam, Hindu women decorate the floor of the front yards of their houses with colorful designs. They wear beautiful clothes and jewelry and sing devotional songs. The main pooja begins with the worship of Lord Ganesha and the offering of a pot filled with rice, water, mango and betel leaves. On the next day, mango rice is cooked and eaten as prasadam.

HPI - Aug 03, 2009

Source: religionclause.blogspot.com

OKLAHOMA, USA, July 31, 2009: By a vote of 6 - 6 yesterday, the judges on the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals denied a rehearing in a Ten Commandments case. 

The case in question was a June 8, 2009, decision called Green v. Haskell County Board of Commissioners, in which the court held that a display of a Ten Commandments monument on the lawn of the county courthouse in Stigler, Oklahoma, violated the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution (”Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” –US Const., Amend. 1). The court concluded that the particular history of this monument– including the religious motivation of its backers– meant that a reasonable observer would view the monument as having the impermissible primary effect of endorsing one particular religion. 

Judge Gorsuch wrote in a dissent, “displays of the decalogue (the ten commandments) alongside other markers of our nation’s legal and cultural history do not threaten an establishment of religion.”

HPI - Aug 03, 2009

Source: news.bbc.co.uk

UNITED KINGDOM, July 31, 2009: India is facing more hunger and malnutrition, a report by Indian campaign group, the Navdanya Trust, says. Prominent environmentalist Vandana Shiva, who runs the trust, said there were now more hungry people in India than in sub-Saharan Africa.

The government has not responded to the report which was released on Thursday. But it has repeatedly pointed out that huge progress has been made in recent years to improve the country’s food security as its population grows by an estimated 18 million people a year.

The trust’s report follows a UN study released in June which said that hunger in South Asia had reached its highest level in 40 years because of food and fuel price rises and the global economic downturn.

HPI - Aug 03, 2009

Hindu Bracelet Tradition Forms Unique Bond Among Siblings

Source: www.sj-r.com

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, USA, August 2, 2009: Dr. Dharmendra Nimavat says he doesn’t expect his children to fully understand all of the meaning behind Raksha Bandhan, a Hindu festival the family will celebrate Wednesday. But when his young daughters tie bracelets of silk, cotton and plastic — called rakhis — around the wrist of their brother, they will be tapping into a tradition more than 6,000 years old, a ceremony that is performed annually all one’s life. 

The festival celebrates the affection and love between brothers and sisters. Brothers promise to protect sisters from whatever harms and troubles life throws their ways, while sisters pray for their brothers’ protection from evils. These traditions also take place between cousins, especially when one has no brother or sister. The name Raksha Bandhan comes from Sanskrit and literally means “bond of protection.” 

While it is cause for festive merrymaking, particularly in northern India — a sort of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve all rolled into one — the day will be more low-key in Springfield, with the rakhi ritual in the morning and a trip to the Hindu temple in Chatham later in the day. “It’s a family festival,” says Ramesh Genge, a Springfield Hindu. “It promotes good things about siblings.” 

Hindus celebrate Raksha Bandhan during the Hindu month of Shravan (usually late July or early August on the Western calendar), the monsoon season, or holy season. Many Indian festivals are celebrated during this season. 

HPI - Aug 04, 2009

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

INDIA, August 2, 2009: Rakhi is celebrated in various ways all over India. In the West, Rakshabandhan is celebrated as Nariyal Purnima. Coconuts are thrown into the sea as a mark of respect and offering to Lord Varuna. In the South, the day is celebrated as Avani Avittam. This day is auspicious, especially for the Brahmin community as they change their Janeyu (Holy thread) amid chanting of mantras. In the North, Rakhi Purnima also called Kajri Purnima. It is celebrated when wheat seeds are sown. Goddess Bhagwati is worshipped and the farmers seek her blessing for good crop cultivation. And in the East, the custom was initiated in 1905 by Rabindranath Tagore; the students in Shanti Niketan follow it religiously. 

And now, there’s e-Rakhi. These special rakhis have no strings attached to them. Similar to e-Holi and e-Diwali, it’s time to check out e-Rakshabandhan. With technology meeting tradition, e-Rakhis are common on the occasion of Rakshabandha for the tech-savvy youngsters. With different sites offering rakhi greetings, some sisters are opting for e-rakhis, which also means a virtual tilak and virtual laddoo for your brother. “Who wants to go to the trouble of packing the kalewa-chawal and queuing up in line at the post office to send the rakhi via mail, when cyber-rakhi is available at the click of a mouse,” says Sunidhi, who would be sending e-rakhi to her brother in Singapore.

HPI - Aug 04, 2009 

Long-Awaited Savior, Yet To Return

Source: www.smithsonianmag.com

TANNA, VANATU, February 2006: Every year, February 15 is John Frum Day on the remote island of Tanna in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. On this day, devotees descend on the village of Lamakara from all over the island to honor an American messiah, called by the locals “John Frum.” 

The island’s John Frum movement is a classic example of what anthropologists have called a “cargo cult”–many of which sprang up in villages in the South Pacific during World War II, when hundreds of thousands of American troops poured into the islands from the skies and seas. 

Anthropologist Kirk Huffman, who spent 17 years in Vanuatu, explains: “You get cargo cults when the outside world, with all its material wealth, suddenly descends on remote, indigenous tribes.” The locals don’t know where the foreigners’ endless supplies come from and so suspect they were summoned by magic, sent from the spirit world. To entice the Americans back after the war, islanders throughout the region constructed piers and carved airstrips from their fields. They prayed for ships and planes to once again come out of nowhere, bearing all kinds of treasures: jeeps and washing machines, radios and motorcycles, canned meat and candy.” To this day, many villagers pray to John Frum, and the cult has even priests, a few village elders that claim to be closer to their protector and preach John Frum will return soon. 

Although almost all the cargo cults have disappeared over the decades, the John Frum movement has endured.

HPI - Aug 04, 2009

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

BHUBANESWAR, INDIA, July 21, 2009: Torrential rains have lashed Orissa since Sunday, and the Sun Temple at Konark, a world heritage site, is now nearly inaccessible due to flooding. Officials have been trying to pump out the water, but to little avail. On Monday, the bravest devotees waded through water two to three feet deep to reach the 13th century temple, known as the Black Pagoda; other pilgrims could only look from afar.

Rabindra Kumar Bahinipati, a social activist, blames the Archaeological

Survey of India for failing to install a proper drainage system. Although the temple suffers damage from the rains every year, he said, the authorities are doing nothing about it.

Although the ASI refused to comment, other sources said ASI is collaborating with state government agencies and Indian Oil Foundation to finalize a master plan, which will include installation of a proper drainage mechanism for the monument.

HPI - Jul 25, 2009

Source: www.stuff.co.nz

NEW ZEALAND, July 21, 2009: New Zealand employees could choose to swap existing public holidays for celebrations or holidays of other religions, under an idea put forward as part of a review of holiday legislation.

Parakash Soma, president of the Wellington Indian Association, said that as he celebrated traditional New Zealand festivities, he hoped the general population could join in celebrating the festivals of other cultures, such as the Indian festival of Diwali, or Indian New Year. “If it’s recognized nationally then everybody recognizes each others’ culture.”

New Zealand’s main statutory holidays are closely tied in with traditional Christian days off, such as Christmas and Easter. Presently, if an employee wants a day off for some non-Christian holiday, he must either take it out of his annual leave or take the day off without pay.

Although many companies close their doors over the Christmas-New Year period and Easter, “there’s no reason why employees should not be able to swap the same number of days off to celebrate their own religion’s holy days… they should be able to work the current traditional public holiday at their usual pay rate and get the day they really want off on pay, said EMA chief executive Alasdair Thompson.

Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson said that it is an issue worth exploring. New Zealand is becoming more multi-cultural and it is appropriate to survey people’s views on their holidays, she said.

HPI - Jul 25, 2009