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USA, August 10, 2003: Swami Dheerananda surveyed campers as they gathered before him for story hour, begins this story in the Washington Post. “One day, a group of people wanted to find out the difference between heaven and hell. So they got on a spaceship and zoomed to hell.” The hell that the group encountered, he said, boasted the stuff of which dreams are made: food, movies and video games. But there was a catch: Dwellers in hell could not move their elbows. With stiff limbs, eating turned into a most complicated affair; most resorted to throwing food up in the air with hopes of catching some morsels in their mouths. Heaven, he said, looked exactly the same. Even there, elbows didn’t bend. So how did people eat? “They fed each other,” said Dheerananda. “Heaven means where you serve the other. Hell means where you serve yourself.” Most of the children enrolled in summer camp at the Chinmaya Mission Washington Regional Center in Silver Spring are Hindu. Their parents likely believe in reincarnation, not the idea of heaven or hell as a physical place. Dheerananda, the spiritual head of the mission, has learned to weave a story to which Hindus growing up in a predominantly Christian society can relate. Many non-Christian immigrants are keeping their religions alive in America by looking for methods from an unlikely place: Christian churches. In other examples from Buddhist temples to Sikh gurdwaras, immigrant congregations hold Sunday school, summer camps, discussion groups and singing practice –activities often unheard of or in different format in their homelands. HPI adds: Hindu temples can also benefit by acquiring the designation of “church” from the US federal Internal Revenue Service. The designation can apply to an organization of any religion that meets the requirements. The advantages of the “church” designation, acquired, for example, by Sringeri Sadhana Center (attached to Sringeri Mutt) in Pennsylvania, Barsana Dham in Texas and Saiva Siddhanta Church (parent organization of HPI) in Hawaii, will be readily apparent to a temple’s lawyer and certified public accountant.

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