OBAMA: White House Embraces Yoga amid Conservative Contortions

Obama on Yekadashi Pooja

The White House announced last week that President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will include a ‘yoga garden’ for children and their parents who attend the traditional Easter Egg Roll festivities on Monday. “Come enjoy a session of yoga from professional instructors,” the White House exhorted thousands of workaday Americans parents and their kids from across the country who will troop into the Presidential lawns, reminding participants that the event’s theme is ‘Be Healthy, Be Active, Be You!’

It is not the first time that Obama’s residence has hosted a yoga garden for Easter, but this year’s event is significant because of an ongoing lawsuit in California challenging the teaching of yoga in schools. In fact, the case came up for hearing in a San Diego courtroom on Thursday with a mirthful opening.

In an indication of how deep-rooted mainstream yoga has become in the US, it turned out that the presiding judge himself is a yoga practitioner. “Does anybody have a problem with that?” San Diego Superior Court Judge John Meyer was reported asking at the start of the case.


Dean Broyles, representing parents suing the Encinitas Union School District in a lawsuit that has gained international attention, said he was fine with Meyer presiding over the case if the judge can keep an open mind about the plaintiff’s argument regarding spiritual connections to yoga, according to reports in the local media.

At the heart of the case is the argument by some parents that yoga is inherently religious, a contention most Americans, including the judge, seem to disagree with. Judge Meyer is reported to be a practitioner of Bikram Yoga, likening it to simple stretching exercises. “If you think there’s something spiritual about what I do, that’s news to me,” he was quoted as saying.

The White House meanwhile is stretching every muscle and sinew to get Americans, including children, to get more concerned about the decline in the nation’s overall well-being and its soaring healthcare bill. The drive is led by Michelle Obama, a health and fitness, and herself a yoga enthusiast.

The yoga garden is conducted by Leah Cullis, a certified yoga teacher who the White House reached out to in 2009 as soon when the Obamas came to office. Cullis, whose husband, event producer John Liipfert, handled Obama’s Presidential inauguration, selects yoga instructors from all over the US to put parents and children through basic yoga drills.

“The mission of the event is to share ways where families and children can use simple tools for an active lifestyle — tools that require no props and no money and which they can go home and do it themselves,” Cullis told TOI, speaking of her association with the White House initiative.

In fact, the White House has taken its yoga drive one step- or one stretch — further. It has now initiated a Presidential Active Lifestyle Award  (PALA), a Obama White House Challenge designed to motivate Americans to make physical activity and healthy eating part of their everyday life. In embracing the practice, the White House also dismissed any specific religious connotation sought to be attached to yoga.

“Yoga has become a universal language of spiritual exercise in the United States, crossing many lines of religion and cultures,” the White House said without any reference to the ongoing controversies and lawsuit. “Every day, millions of people practice yoga to improve their health and overall well-being. That’s why we’re encouraging everyone to take part in PALA, so show your support for yoga and answer the challenge.”

Among the invitees for the White House Easter Monday festivities is Ajai Dhadwal, an Indian-American field hockey player, who had represented the US.



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Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Is Hinduism a Pagan Religion?

Lord : Brahma, Vishnu , Siva

Some American law-makers recently characterized Hinduism as pagan. This raises the question: is Hinduism a pagan religion?

The Abrahamic religious traditions, as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are collectively called, associate paganism with the worship of many gods, and their many idols. The former is condemned as polytheism and the latter as idolatry; and the two are viewed as inextricably intertwined forms of worship, which has been superseded in the aniconic monotheism and which these religions self-consciously uphold and propagate.

Hinduism at first blush appears to conform to paganism. It seems to worship many gods and seems to do so by worshipping different images. It thus comes across as polytheistic and idolatrous and therefore pagan. This perception fuels the missionary zeal of the Abrahamic religions to destroy such paganism.

There is only one problem with this scenario. It is based on a false presumption. It is true that there are many gods in Hinduism and that it abounds in image worship, but while these various gods are considered different gods in paganism as traditionally represented, in Hinduism they represent the various forms of the one and same God. Thus a plurality of gods does not denote polytheism in Hinduism but rather the plurality of the forms in which the same one God might appear. A new word such as polyformism may have to be coined, or an older word polymorphism may have to be invoked, to be set beside polytheism, to provide the corrective. The Hindu situation is characterized not by polytheism but what might be called at best “apparent polytheism,” because the reality underlying all the different gods is the reality of one God. Hence, ironically, the situation could also in a sense be described as one of “apparent monotheism,” in the sense that the one God appears in various forms.

Similarly, the various images of the various gods also reflect the same point. Any of the many forms, in which God might be seen as appearing, can be visually represented in Hinduism, as a way of focusing the mind on God. This should not be taken for some new-fangled apologetic exegetical sleight of hand performed by modern Hinduism. When the 17th century French traveler, Francois Bernier, was shocked by what he saw of Hinduism, this is how the pandits of Banaras explained the situation to him: “We have indeed in our temples a great variety of images. …To all these images we pay great honour; prostrating our bodies, and presenting to them, with much ceremony, flowers, rice, scented oil, saffron, and other similar articles. Yet we do not believe that these statues are themselves Brahma or Vishnu; but merely their images and representations. We show them deference only for the sake of the deity whom they represent, and when we pray it is not to the statue, but to that deity. Images are admitted in our temples because we conceive that prayers are offered up with more devotion when there is something before the eyes that fixes the mind, but in fact we acknowledge that God alone is absolute, that He only is the omnipotent Lord.’”


The explanation may not have convinced Bernier but Hindus apparently have no difficulty with it. Sometimes Abrahamic parents wonder whether this plurality does not end up leaving the Hindus confused, and particularly their children. For the Hindus, however, such plurality does not create any confusion of identity, no more than several pictures of us in our album, taken at different stages of our life and in different forms and dresses, causes us to become confused about our identity.

Thus no matter how paganesque Hinduism might appear, it is not pagan in the sense attributed to the word by Abrahamic religions. As a well-known scholar of Hinduism, who was also a missionary in India for a while, Klaus K. Klostermaier observes: “Many Hindu homes are lavishly decorated with color prints of a great many Hindu gods and goddesses, often joined by the gods and goddesses of other religions and the pictures of contemporary heroes. Thus side by side with Śiva and Viṣṇu and Devī one can see Jesus and Zoroaster, Gautama Buddha and Jīna Mahāvīra, Mahātmā Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, and many others. But if questioned about the many gods even the illiterate villager will answer: bhagvān ek hai – the Lord is One. He may not be able to figure out in theological terms how the many gods and the one God hang together and he may not be sure about the hierarchy obtaining among the many manifestations, but he does know that ultimately there is only One and that the many somehow merge into the One.”

This then is the great difference between Hinduism and the Abrahamic religions. Monotheism in Abrahamic religions represents the denial of gods in God, while the monotheism of Hinduism represents the affirmation of gods in God. Failure to recognize this tempts the followers of Abrahamic religions into branding Hinduism as pagan.



Source: Mr Arvind Sharma

Birks Professor of Comparative Religion, McGill University, huffingtonpost.com

Hindu-Americans have the highest socioeconomic levels

U.S President Barack Obama With Indian Hindu Traditional Dancers

Don't Ignore
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Hindu-Americans have the highest socioeconomic levels among all religions in the United States, according to a new study by the Pew Research .

* 36% NASA's scientists are Hindu.* 38% Doctors of America are Hindus
* 34% Officers of Microsoft are Hindus
* 28% Officers of IBM are Hindus
* 17% Officers of Intel are Hindus
* 48% American-Hindus have Post-graduate degree. And the rate of divorce is very low.
* 48% Hindu-American's monthly income is more than 1,00,000 american dollar. 52%'s income is at least 75,000 dollar.
* "Yoga" became the part and parcel of America's learned society.
* 24% Americans have believe in re-birth, law of Karma etc. 

Source-
1.http://www.voanews.com/content/hinds_most_educated_highest_earning_religion/1449355.html )

2. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/36-of-scientists-at-NASA-are-Indians-Govt-survey/articleshow/2853178.cms?intenttarget=no

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism_in_the_United_States

California Declares October as Month for Hindu Awareness

It was a historic moment for California’s Hindu American community, when the senate floor at the Capitol unanimously passed the resolution on Monday designating October 2013 as Hindu American awareness and appreciation month.

The bill was authored by state Senate Majority Leader Ellen M Corbett, who said, “As the senator representing the 10th state senate district, I am honoured to represent constituents from many diverse backgrounds including a significant number of Hindu Americans” She said California is home to a thriving community of over 3,70,000 Hindu Americans that enrich “our state’s diversity and professional assets in fields as diverse as academia, science, technology, business, arts and literature”. She thanked her colleagues for supporting the bill that recognises the contributions of Hindu Americans as well as designates October 2013 in their honour.

“It’s great to see that the contribution the Indo-American community is making is now being recognised at the highest levels of the state,” Ro Khanna, former deputy assistant secretary at the US department of commerce in the Obama administration and 2014 Congressional candidate from California district 17 told rediff.com. He said that the Indo-American community was contributing to the economy by creating jobs in California, through entrepreneurship and innovation.

According to Khanna, about 105 people along with various interfaith groups were present at the Capitol on Monday. “I am very proud to see that the community believes in religious pluralism. I am running from the 17th Congressional district and I am fortunate to have people of strong faiths from different backgrounds that make our state and country stronger. I am a big believer in religious pluralism and also that people of various faiths should have a voice in public debate. “

“I am a proud American and like an American I think all different faiths should be respected,” he added. Answering a question on why it took so long for the state to recognise the Hindu community, Khanna said it takes a community’s decades of involvement. “It takes a decade to start and to establish a political voice.”

“This is the first time any resolution recognising Hindus has ever been passed in the entire country,” said Samir Kalra, director and senior fellow for human rights, Hindu American Foundation. “It is the beginning of the great movement for Hindu Americans in California” Kalra told rediff.com. “It was historic, so it feels great.” He said today it’s at the state level and hopes one day it will reach at the national level.

Kalra said the Foundation helped draft the bill and the measure would “recognise and acknowledge the significant contributions made by Californians of Hindu heritage to the state.”

Starting October, the HAF will work with the City Hall in California and schools and help them commemorate the event by hosting educational actives and teach and create awareness about Hinduism in general. “The HAF is doing this for next generation, so that they feel proud about their culture.”

source

California Hindu Textbook Controversy
Part 1



Part 2