Eastern faith finds a place in everyday Western life

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Eastern faith finds a place in everyday Western life

By Linda Morris Religious Affairs Writer

January 28, 2006

HINDUISM is the predominant religion of India but in the global

spread of eastern religions it has been Buddhism that has found a

firm foothold in the spiritually barren lands of the West.

 

But as the revered American-born Hindu monk Satguru Bodhinatha

Veylanswami likes to remind his students, Hinduism is far more

pervasive in ordinary Australian life.

 

Hatha yoga, vedic astrology and ayurvedic healing are all practices

borrowed from the Hindu faith, stripped of their religious ritual and

reinvented respectively as a form of physical exercise, fortune-

telling and healing. It is part of a phenomenon, the saffron-robed

swami suggests, that others have labelled buffet spirituality.

 

"There is a general shopping for meaning," he said, "of pulling out

parts that are easily accepted and understood and avoid other parts

that are harder to study but produce deeper results.

 

"Yoga is a series of postures that in its purest form prepares the

body and mind for meditation. As a purely physical form of exercise

it is good for overall health, but you are limiting its value to the

physical. The Hindu concept is God is within and meditation trains

you to look into the soul and see God."

 

Hinduism does not have an organised hierarchy but to followers of the

Saiva tradition of Hinduism Sri Bodhinatha is a pope-like figure. He

is the head of the English-language Saiva Siddhanta Church, founded

in 1957 with headquarters in Hawaii, and is the publisher of the

magazine Hinduism Today.

 

He is leading a party of 45 pilgrims and monks on a tour of the east

coast and of New Zealand, and will give the keynote address to the

world Saiva conference in Sydney this weekend, focusing on the

opportunities and challenges facing his religion.

 

As in every mainstream Christian denomination, Hindu leaders like the

swami are wondering how to engage a new generation, many of them the

children of Indian and Sri Lankan migrants, who hold little interest

in Sanskrit chants and temple rituals.

 

The answer lies with parents and priests and their ability to draw

Hinduism into family life.

 

"Religious routine needs to be integrated with family routine," Sri

Bodhinatha said.

 

Increasingly, the faith was dealing with marriages where one partner

was not an adherent of Hinduism.

 

Sri Bodhinatha is a proponent of daily spiritualism - of

spiritualising everyday relationships at the office and home, and

acting in service of others. By submitting to the law of karma,

people could more easily deal with emotionally upsetting events. And

rather than setting a day a week for worship or church attendance,

they needed to treat each day as a holy day.

 

Sri Bodhinatha acknowledged the thirst for spirituality in the West.

Unlike some evangelical Christian denominations, Hinduism was not the

kind of religion to stand on a street corner and proselytise. The

path towards spirituality was an intensely personal experience, but

having decided to "learn to dance, you need to select a dance and

have a good teacher".

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/eastern-faith-finds-a-place-in-

everyday-western-life/2006/01/27/1138319450075.html