Source: www.chron.com
HOUSTON, TEXAS, USA, September 3, 2009: Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami, 66, is the spiritual leader of Kauai, Hawaii’s Hindu Monastery, and the publisher of Hinduism Today, a quarterly magazine in its 30th year of publication. During his recent visit to Houston for the Hindu Janamashtami celebration, marking the birth of Lord Krishna, Bodhinatha was interviewed about the growth of Hinduism in America. Following are some excerpts; read more at Source above.
Regarding the role of a satguru: The word guru just means teacher, so satguru is a teacher of sat, or truth, someone who teaches you about God rather than about arithmetic or dancing.
Regarding the mission of Hinduism Today magazine: It’s an effort to provide knowledge about the whole of Hinduism, not just a part of it. Most Hindu magazines promote a specific organization, a specific teacher, a specific philosophy, as they should. We do that with other publications, but not this one. This one promotes all Hindu organizations, all Hindu philosophies, and as such tries to provide an overview and knowledge that you would only find in scholarly books, which very few people are inclined to read.
Regarding the challenges for Hinduism in America: The real challenge is in the future generations, so a lot of our effort goes into trying to alert the immigrant generation that you’re in America now, and for the religion to continue on it has to be presented to the children in a certain way, otherwise it’s going to diminish. Immigration patterns are such that the Hindu community is just starting something that Irish Catholics, Italian Catholics faced 100 years ago.