Source BANDA ACEH, INDONESIA, April 17, 2016 (Latin America Herald Tribune): The size of the Hindu community in Indonesia’s northwest Aceh province is small, but Sunday devotees made a big impression with their Thaipusam festival. About 500 people from the Tamil community joined Thaipusam celebrations since Friday for the three-day festival, which culminated Sunday with a procession of singing, dancing…
Source KATHMANDU VALLEY, NEPAL, April 19, 2016 (Nikkei Asian Review): Deftly handling tiny chisels and swabs of cloth, a dozen village women painstakingly chip away the crust and grime of centuries, restoring to life images of Brahma, Vishnu and other Hindu Deities that grace an architectural masterwork.The skilled workers are putting the finishing touches to a shrine at Changu Narayan,…
Source Upon dying, a man is greeted on the other side by Lord Yama, who immediately begins helping him determine his next step in the inner worlds. Lord Yama says, “Your karmic record is not clear to me. Is there something exceptional you have done that I should know about?” The man responded, “I was walking down the street with…
Source HAVANA, CUBA, November 24, 2016 (14y Medio): In the 90s, when some Cubans chose to flee the country on a raft, Elsa Hermida found that practicing yoga was the best way to overcome the crisis that surrounded her. It was at that time, at the gothic Sacred Heart church in the Havana city center, that she met Professor Eduardo…
Source INDIA, April 16, 2016 (Scroll.us, by Sadhu Brahmaviharidas): BAPS was severely tested on 24 September 2002. What would later be classified as one of the worst terrorist attacks on a religious place in modern India engulfed the heart of BAPS. Its renowned Swaminarayan Akshardham, a 23-acre cultural complex dedicated to Bhagwan Swaminarayan in Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat, was…
Source To the growing soul, to the spirit within us, may not difficulties, obstacles, attacks be a means of growth, added strength, enlarged experience, training for spiritual victory? The arrangement of things may be that, and not a mere question of the pounds, shillings and pence of a distribution of rewards and retributory misfortunes!— Sri Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950), Indian philosopher…
Source PAKISTAN, April 17, 2016 (Pakistan Christian Post by Saadia Haq): If like me you were born and raised in Pakistan, probably you have attended a local school where we as children learnt at an early age the “conspiracy of the non-believers against Muslims.” You may say whatever in its defense, but our reality is troubling. Just think of a…
Source PAKISTAN, April 15, 2016 (Christian Daily): Textbooks in Pakistan that are used to teach about 41 million children negatively portray religious minorities such as Christians and Hindus, referring to them as “nefarious, violent, and tyrannical by nature.” “Pakistan’s public school textbooks contain deeply troubling content that portrays non-Muslim citizens as outsiders, unpatriotic, and inferior; are filled with errors; and…
Source The atman in you is that which indwells all things.” “Tell me, Yajnavalkya, about this atman that indwells all things.” “It is that which transcends hunger and thirst, sorrow and delusion, old age and death.”— Brihadaranyaka Upanishad III, 5A
PORT-OF-SPAIN, TRINIDAD, April 14, 2016 (HPI by Paras Ramoutar): For several weeks now, Hindus in Trinidad have joined their counterparts in the Indian diaspora worldwide in the observance of Nau Raatri and Ram Nowi. Observances have been taking place at hundreds of mandirs, other public places and in homes. Devout Hindus have been abstaining from all forms of merriment, alcoholic…