Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/religion-spirituality/hinduism/page/2/)
Undoubtedly we find ourselves living with the results of our previous actions, but at the same time, we have the power to change our behavior. A new book explores why we don’t we exercise that power.
When I first heard that Gandhi was viewed as “the enemy” by many Dalits in India (formerly called “untouchables”), I was dumbfounded. How and why could Gandhi be seen as having betrayed the Dalits when he opposed untouchability even in the face of active discomfort on the part of close associates? Last month, while I was in India teaching Nonviolent Communication to 120 people, including a significant number of Dalits, I had the opportunity to explore this question further. During a session called “Gandhian Principles for Everyday Living,” a topic about which I have written at length, one of the 60 people present expressed anguish, pain and anger towards Gandhi. He was a Buddhist, like many other Dalits who had chosen to follow the Dalit leader Dr. B. R. Ambedkar in leaving behind centuries of mistreatment under Hinduism.
On February 24, Rev. Paul Raushenbush issued a call for articles entitled “Dear Religious (and Sane) America” to inaugurate the launch of the Huffington Post’s new religion section. According to the article,
HuffPost Religion is dedicated to providing a provocative, respectful, and hopefully productive forum for addressing the ways in which religion intersects our personal, communal, national and international life. HuffPost Religion will demonstrate the vibrant diversity of religious traditions, perspectives and experiences that exist alongside and inform one another in America and throughout the world. Huffington is clearly trying to expand its reach and become one of the big players in religion media, much as it already has in politics, popular culture, and even business. Based on initial responses to the section, it appears to be well on its way.
My newspaper this morning gave me hope. And brothers and sisters, that doesn’t happen very often. On the front page, taking up about one third of the sheet, there was an article entitled “Trying to open the ‘inner eye.'” It was a piece that described the new Center for Conscious Living, an offshoot of the Church of Religious Science, which the pastor said is “reinventing the idea of church, with ‘stand you up music,’ meditation, singing, chanting and ‘an inclusive message of self-empowerment.'” Above this article, the top story was about our governor’s clean energy plan, in which 25 percent of the Wisconsin’s energy must come from wind, solar, biomass, or other renewable sources by 2025. My friend Jack Kisslinger, whose website is called Planet for Life, tells me that 25% might be a good number, but it has to be 25% of reduced overall energy consumption. So the governor’s goal is at least a step in the right direction.
This week’s spiritual wisdom is a selection from the Shvetashvatara Upanishad as translated by Eknath Easwaran, who is known and respected around the world for being the father of passage meditation. The learned say life is self-created;
Others say life evolved from time. In truth
The Lord brought the cosmos out of himself. He is pure consciousness, omnipresent,
Omnipotent, omniscient, creator
Of time and master of the three gunas. Evolution takes place at his command.
In one room, young Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, secular humanists, and others cluster in a circle to learn strategies for facilitating constructive interfaith discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Down the hall, more young people — bareheaded or wearing headscarves or kippot — crowd together to discuss multifaith intentional living communities, learn about the Baha’i faith, create videos about youth-led interfaith activism, and train to volunteer as advocates for undocumented immigrants. Talk about a rich space for conversation. All this happened during one morning of the Interfaith Youth Core’s 2009 conference, which took place October 25-27 at Northwestern University, just north of Chicago. The conference brought high school and college students engaged in interfaith work together with religious leaders, politicians, and authors interested in interreligious cooperation.
On October 2, 2009, we commemorated the 140th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi by having a discussion at my university. The title of the event was “Practicing Satyagraha in a Violent World: Conversations on Peace and Justice.” As Director of the Gandhian Forum for Peace and Justice, I had invited Ted Glick as one of two speakers. Ted Glick is a long-time activist and organizer who has worked on building grassroots resistance and raising the level of public debate on issues of militarism, state repression, environmentalism, tenant rights, community development and racial justice issues in the NY/NJ area. For the last four years Ted has played a national leadership role in the effort to stabilize our climate and for a clean energy revolution.
Every Monday night there is a fascinating community meeting near you: as close as your phone, in fact. You can join in from your armchair or your washing-up sink. Better still, thanks to the wonder of the web, you can listen in at any time on your computer or iPod. It’s like a Tikkun radio show for the first twenty minutes, in which I interview some of the people most interesting to spiritual progressives. Then I unmute the lines and you can offer your own questions and comments to the speaker for their response: the Q and A is sometimes the best part.
Today an email arrived that bowled me over. It’s from Shailja Patel. I love the synchronicity of its arrival. Balmurli Natrajan has been blogging about Hindu fascism from a secular perspective. Shailja Patel enlarges that point of view by adding a Goddess perspective.
Imagine that government services were designed and delivered by people who really care. Wouldn’t that have been so attractive we would have had universal healthcare by now? But what does it mean to really care for the people who receive government services? My friend Chase knows what it means for her in her office. She is a member of the covenant group my wife and I joined at our Unitarian Universalist Church.