WHY AM I A HINDU? -MUST READ

WHY AM I A HINDU? -MUST READ
Author - Unkown


Four years ago, I was flying from JFK NY Airport to SFO to attend a meeting at Monterey , CA An American girl was sitting on the right side, near window seat. It indeed was a long journey - it would take nearly seven hours.

I was surprised to see the young girl reading a Bible unusual of young Americans. After some time she smiled and we had few acquaintances talk.I told her that I am from India

Then suddenly the girl asked: 'What's your faith?' 'What?' I didn't understand the question..

'I mean, what's your religion? Are you a Christian? Or a Muslim?'

'No!' I replied, 'I am neither Christian nor Muslim'.
Apparently she appeared shocked to listen to that. 'Then who are you?' 'I am a Hindu', I said.

She looked at me as if she was seeing a caged animal. She could not understand what I was talking about.

A common man in Europe or US knows aboutChristianity and Islam, as they are the leadingreligions of the world today. But a Hindu, what?

I explained to her - I am born to a Hindu father and Hindu mother. Therefore, I am a Hindu by birth.

'Who is your prophet?' she asked.

'We don't have a prophet,' I replied.

'What's your Holy Book?'

'We don't have a single Holy Book, but we have hundreds and thousands of philosophical and sacred scriptures,' I replied.

'Oh, come on at least tell me who is your God?'

'What do you mean by that?'

'Like we have Jesus and Muslims have Allah - don't you have a God?'

I thought for a moment. Muslims and Christians believe one God (Male God) who created the world and takes an interest in the humans who inhabit it. Her mind is conditioned with that kind of belief.

According to her (or anybody who doesn't know about Hinduism), a religion needs to have one Prophet, one Holy book and one God. The mind is so conditioned and rigidly narrowed down to such a notion that anything else is not acceptable. I understood her perception and concept about faith. You can't compare Hinduism with any of the present leading religions where you have to believe in one concept of god.

I tried to explain to her: 'You can believe in one god and he can be a Hindu.. You may believe in multiple deities and still you can be a Hindu. What's more - you may not believe in god at all, still you can be a Hindu. An atheist can also be a Hindu.'

This sounded very crazy to her. She couldn't imagine a religion so unorganized, still surviving for thousands of years, even after onslaught from foreign forces.

'I don't understand but it seems very interesting. Are you religious?'
What can I tell to this American girl?

I said: 'I do not go to temple regularly. I do not make any regular rituals. I have learned some of the rituals in my younger days. I still enjoy doing it sometimes..'

'Enjoy? Are you not afraid of God?'

'God is a friend. No- I am not afraid of God. Nobody has made any compulsions on me to perform these rituals regularly.'

She thought for a while and then asked: 'Have you ever thought of converting to any other religion?'

'Why should I? Even if I challenge some of the rituals and faith in Hinduism, nobody can convert me from Hinduism. Because, being a Hindu allows me to think independently and objectively, without conditioning. I remain as a Hindu never by force, but choice.' I told her that Hinduism is not a religion, but a set of beliefs and practices. It is not a religion like Christianity or Islam because it is not founded by any one person or does not have an organized controlling body like the Church or the Order, I added. There is no institution or authority..

'So, you don't believe in God?' she wanted everything in black and white.

'I didn't say that. I do not discard the divine reality. Our scripture, or Sruthis or Smrithis - Vedas and Upanishads or the Gita - say God might be there or he might not be there. But we pray to that supreme abstract authority (Para Brahma) that is the creator of this universe.'

'Why can't you believe in one personal God?'

'We have a concept - abstract - not a personal god. The concept or notion of a personal God, hiding behind the clouds of secrecy, telling us irrational stories through few men whom he sends as messengers, demanding us to worship him or punish us, does not make sense. I don't think that God is as silly as an autocratic emperor who wants others to respect him or fear him.' I told her that such notions are just fancies of less educated human imagination and fallacies, adding that generally ethnic religious practitioners in Hinduism believe in personal gods. The entry level Hinduism has over-whelming superstitions too. The philosophical side of Hinduism negates all superstitions..

'Good that you agree God might exist. You told that you pray. What is your prayer then?'

'Loka Samastha Sukino Bhavantu. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti,'

'Funny,' she laughed, 'What does it mean?'

'May all the beings in all the worlds be happy. Om Peace, Peace, Peace.'

'Hmm ..very interesting.. I want to learn more about this religion. It is so democratic, broad-minded and free' she exclaimed.

'The fact is Hinduism is a religion of the individual, for the individual and by the individual with its roots in the Vedas and the Bhagavad-Gita. It is all about an individual approaching a personal God in an individual way according to his temperament and inner evolution - it is as simple as that.'

'How does anybody convert to Hinduism?'

'Nobody can convert you to Hinduism, because it is not a religion, but a set of beliefs and practices. Everything is acceptable in Hinduism because there is no single authority or organization either to accept it or to reject it or to oppose it on behalf of Hinduism.'

For a real seeker, I told her, the Bible itself gives guidelines when it says ' Kingdom of God is within you.' I reminded her of Christ's teaching about the love that we have for each other. That is where you can find the meaning of life.

Loving each and every creation of the God is absolute and real. 'Isavasyam idam sarvam' Isam (the God) is present (inhabits) here everywhere - nothing exists separate from the God, because God is present everywhere. Respect every living being and non-living things as God. That's what Hinduism teaches you.

Hinduism is referred to as Sanathana Dharma, the eternal faith. It is based on the practice of Dharma, the code of life. The most important aspect of Hinduism is being truthful to oneself. Hinduism has no monopoly on ideas.- It is open to all. Hindus believe in one God (not a personal one) expressed in different forms. For them, God is timeless and formless entity.

Ancestors of today's Hindus believe in eternal truths and cosmic laws and these truths are opened to anyone who seeks them. But there is a section of Hindus who are either superstitious or turned fanatic to make this an organized religion like others. The British coin the word 'Hindu' and considered it as a religion.

I said: 'Religions have become an MLM (multi-level- marketing) industry that has been trying to expand the market share by conversion. The biggest business in today's world is Spirituality. Hinduism is no exception'

I am a Hindu primarily because it professes Non-violence - 'Ahimsa Paramo Dharma' - Non violence is the highest duty. I am a Hindu because it doesn't conditions my mind with any faith system.
A man/ woman who change 's his/her birth religion to another religion is a fake and does not value his/her morals, culture and values in life.Hinduism was the first religion originated. Be proud of your religion and be proud of who you are.
Om Namo shiva……………

The 99 Club

The 99 Club
 

Once upon a time, there lived a King who, despite his luxurious lifestyle, was neither happy nor content.  

One day, the King came upon a servant who was singing happily while he worked. This fascinated the King; why was    he, the Supreme Ruler of the Land, unhappy and gloomy, while a lowly servant had so much joy. The King asked the   servant, 'Why are you so happy?' The man replied, 'Your Majesty, I am nothing but a servant, but my family and I don't   need too much - just a roof over our heads and warm food to fill our tummies.' 

The king was not satisfied with that reply.    Later in the day, he sought the advice of his most trusted advisor. After hearing the King's woes and the servant's'   story, the advisor said, 'Your Majesty, I believe that the servant has not been made part of 'The 99 Club'.' 'The 99 Club?   And what exactly is that?' the King inquired. The advisor replied, 'Your Majesty, to truly know what The 99 Club is, 

place 99 Gold coins in a bag and leave it at this servant's doorstep.'

When the servant saw the bag, he took it into his house. When he opened the bag, he let out a great shout of joy...

So many gold coins! He began to count them. After several counts, he was at last convinced that there were 99 coins.  

 He wondered, 'What could've happened to that last gold coin? Surely, no one would leave 99 coins!' He looked 

 everywhere he could, but that final coin was elusive. Finally, exhausted he decided that he was going to have to work  

 harder than ever to earn that gold coin and complete his collection.

From that day, the servant's life was changed. He was overworked, horribly grumpy, and castigated his family for not

helping him make that 100th gold coin. He stopped singing while he worked. Witnessing this drastic transformation, the  

 King was puzzled. When he sought his advisor's help, the advisor said, 'Your Majesty, the servant has now officially  

 joined The 99 Club.'

 He continued, 'The 99 Club is a name given to those people who have enough to be happy but are never contented,

because they're always yearning and striving for that extra 1 telling to themselves: 'Let me get that one final thing

and then I will be happy for life.'

We can be happy, even with very little in our lives, but the minute we're given something bigger and   better, we want even more! We lose our sleep, our happiness, we hurt the people around us; all these as a  price for our growing needs and desires.

That's the 99 club !!

How long does it really take to change a habit?

This column will change your life:

How long does it really take to change a habit?

'Self-help culture clings to the fiction of the 28-day rule'

Illustration: Chris Haughton

Everyone knows that it takes 28 days to develop a new habit, or perhaps 21, or 18, depending on who you ask; anyway, the point is that it's a specific number, which makes it sound scientific and thus indisputably true. We probably owe this particular example of pop-psychology wisdom to Maxwell Maltz, the plastic surgeon who wrote the 60s bestseller Psycho-Cybernetics. He claimed to have observed that amputees took an average of only 21 days to adjust to the loss of a limb. Therefore, he reasoned – deploying the copper-bottomed logic we've come to expect from self-help – the same must be true of all big changes. And therefore it must take 21 days to change a habit, maybe, perhaps!

This is, of course, poppycock and horsefeathers, as a new study by the University College London psychologist Phillippa Lally and her colleagues helps confirm. On average, her subjects, who were trying to learn new habits such as eating fruit daily or going jogging, took a depressing 66 days before reporting that the behaviour had become unchangingly automatic. Individuals ranged widely – some took 18 days, others 245 – and some habits, unsurprisingly, were harder than others to make stick: one especially silly implication of the 28- or 21-day rule is that it may be just as easy to start eating a few more apples as to start finding five hours a week to study Chinese. 

Self-help culture clings to the fiction of the 28-day rule, presum–ably, because it makes habit change sound plausibly difficult enough, but basically easy. The first problem with this is dispiritingly simple: changing habits is hard. We're all "cognitive misers", our brains  designed to take short cuts, rendering as many behaviours as possible automatic. "Really," asks the psychologist Ian Newby-Clark, "what would be the point of having a habit that didn't free up your mind to crunch on more pressing matters?" Habits are meant to be difficult to change.

The subtler problem is that we tend to think about habit change wrongly. (I'm not talking about physiological addictions.) We get trapped in a paradox: we want to, say, stop watching so much TV, but on the other hand, demonstrably, we also want to watch lots of TV – after all, we keep doing it – so what we ­ really want, it seems, is to stop wanting. We're mired deep in what the Greeks called "akrasia": deciding on the best course of action, then doing something else. The way round this, says Newby-Clark and others, is to see that habits are responses to needs. This sounds obvious, but countless efforts at habit change ignore its implications. If you eat badly, you might resolve to start eating well, but if you're eating burgers and ice-cream to feel comforted, relaxed and happy, trying to replace them with broccoli and carrot juice is like dealing with a leaky bathroom tap by repainting the kitchen. What's required isn't a better diet, but an alternative way to feel comforted and relaxed. "The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken," Dr Johnson observed gloomily, but maybe by looking at the problem differently we can still, Houdini-like, slip out of them.

Source: 

• 
• • Oliver Burkeman
  • The Guardian