Source UNITED STATES, September 16, 2020 (RNS by Tara I. Burton): One hundred years ago on Sept. 19, the Indian yogi and guru Paramahansa Yogananda arrived in Boston as the Indian delegate for the Unitarian Conference of Religious Liberals. Yogananda’s arrival, along with an earlier visit by another Indian teacher, Swami Vivekananda, began yoga’s rise on these shores into a…
Source When culture is flooding out of the temple, our actions are productive and our minds are creative, our speech is pure, our hearts rejoice and we become good citizens. Religion makes us good citizens, because we are peaceful inside and want peace in our land. Peace comes first from the individual. It is unrealistic to expect peace from our…
Source JAMMU/KASHMIR, September 12, 2020 (Opindia): A year after the effective abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A and the administrative reorganization of Jammu and Kashmir, the government has decided to restore the lost glory of the centuries-old heritage shrine — Raghunath Temple situated near Fateh Kadal in the heart of Srinagar city, reported the Hindi daily, Jagran. The renovation work…
Source Like the household fire, devotees seek the glory of the Lord even from afar and enshrine it in their inner chamber for enlightenment. The glory of our Lord is full of splendor, all-illuminative and worthy to be honored in every heart.— Rig Veda 7.1.2
KAUAI, HAWAII, USA, September 8, 2020 (HPI): A common experience of college-age Hindu youth in the West is to be questioned about their religious beliefs. Hinduism Today is developing a project to provide students with responses to the standard criticisms and challenges. As part of this, we’re intending to explain the “issues behind the issues” for common topics, such as…
Source USA, September 12, 2020 (YouTube, with Rajiv Malhotra): Very informative video interview of Siddhartha, a 19-year-old student at Stanford University in California, one of the world’s foremost universities. Having been raised in a strict Hindu home in India, he found the initial situation at the Stanford dorm made his normal daily spiritual practices impossible. Watch him tell in his…
Source VATICAN CITY, September 9, 2020 (Religion News Service, excerpts): According to one priest, Martin Lasarte, the COVID-19 pandemic saw a “large reduction” in the realm of missionary work, aggravating an ongoing decline in the number of vocations and priests seeking to become missionaries. But while Catholicism may be waning in many Western countries, new communities are emerging in other…
Source Try to treat with equal love all the people with whom you have relations. Thus the abyss between ‘myself’ and ‘yourself’ will be filled in, which is the goal of all religious worship.— Anandamayi Ma (1896-1982), God-intoxicated yogini and mystic Bengali saint
Source UNITED STATES, September 8, 2020 (India Currents): Madhavi Prabha, a teacher with a vision, quit her regular teaching job after 10 years to start an After School Education Center for cultural enrichment, GuruKool, in 2018. An immigrant to this country and unfamiliar with the government system, her entrepreneurial spirit was met with red-tape. Frequently redirected from city to county…
Source BHUBANESWAR, INDIA, September 11, 2020 (Hindustan Times): With 167 of the 2,000 priests of the 12th century Jagannath temple in Puri infected by Covid-19, the opening of the temple to the public now seems to be shrouded in uncertainty. On August 31, the state government had decided that none of the religious places in the state will be opened…