veD of UNDERSTANDING veD & veDik LIFESTYLE.......A TEXAN, USA EXAMPLE HOW veDik LIFESTYLE IS SEEN BY DIFFERENT HUMANITIES....
Posted by Champaklal Dajibhai Mistry on June 14, 2004

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MATERIALISM IS GOD IN kli-yug...
BUT HUMAN SOUL IN ALL HUMANITIES
UNKNOWINGLY
STILL SEARCHES FOR THE
 TRUTH OF ONE GOD ....

 

PVAF has a primary mandate to spread knowledge of the SCIENCES OF CREATION AND LIFE to all humanity...with a prayer that this knowledge will set the humans free of suffering and pain and empower them to have happiness and joy with progress and prosperity in life they desire.....

The knowledge of SCIENCES OF CREATION AND LIFE is called veD in sNskRUt language....sNskRUt language is the oldest language known to the current humanity...and all world languages can be traced to have some origin in sNskRUt language....The sNskRUt language and the texts of its writing known to current humanity is very difficult to fully decipher even after 2500 years of endeavours...the last person to partially figure out the grammar of the extant sNskRUt language texts was pANiANi in around 500 BC....pANiANi's research has enabled the sNskRUt scholars to understand some parts of the extant sNskRUt texts of:

  •  veD,
  • veDik history of cyclic creation, sustenance, de-creation and recreation called puraaAN,
  • itihaas which is the historical compilation about certain major events in the creation cycle such as the history of raam in raamaayAN and history of mHaabhaart war,
  • upniSHD which is the try to explain creator bRH`m of veD and
  • 6 veDNg which are six appendix texts to veD of various sciences.       

The extent of current veD that is understandable by current humanity is very limited....and this is the fact and the reason by which the humanity in Europe and North America is currently focused for the last 500 years in what is called scientific research to understand how nature and the entire creation in nature works to self-create, sustain, de-create and cyclically recreate the de-created in new forms...

The peoples of bhaart (India) believe in what this world calls "religion" which is termed by the world as Hinduism....However study of the "religious" belief of Hinduism reveals that it is the SCIENCES OF CREATION AND LIFE called veD.....And this PVAF web site has been endeavouring to research, compile and share the understanding of veD in its original form among the world humanity.....

Just to keep all PVAF we visitors and participants aware of how different peoples in the world understand veD in the form of the "religion" called Hinduism PVAF from time to time publishes news reports from various sources....Please click on the next line to read a recent report in the Lifestyle page of the SALT LAKE TRIBUNE in USA about the writer's understanding of a Hindu temple in USA.....   






"Hinduism is such that,
whatever you can ask,
there's always an answer."

By Greg Garrison, Religion News Service Of Salt Lake Tribune

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The first question most people ask the tall, blond, blue-eyed Hindu swami from Texas, almost everywhere he goes on his traveling lectures, is how did he get to be a Hindu swami.

After all, most Hindu swamis seem to be from India, the home of Hinduism. "People always ask me that," said Swami Akhilananda, wearing sandals, beads, a saffron robe and a vertical red streak on his forehead called a tilak during a recent visit to the Hindu Temple and Cultural Center of Birmingham.

"Since I was a young child I was raised as a Hindu," he said. "Hinduism is such that, whatever you can ask, there's always an answer."  His father, a carpenter, was a spiritual seeker who studied Hinduism and helped oversee construction on the Barsana Dham, a Hindu Temple in Austin, Texas. Built on 200 acres near a flowing stream, it's one of the largest Hindu temples in the United States.  His parents now live at an ashram, or temple, in India.

Steeped in the history and scriptures of Hinduism, but raised in Texas, Swami Akhilananda has emerged as an eloquent spokesman for the appeal of the ancient religion to people who are not of Indian descent. "I preach at some churches, mostly Unitarian or Unity," he said. He spent a week in Birmingham for a series of lectures on "How to Reach God" at the Hindu Temple.

The swami pointed around the temple at the various representations of deities, including Shiva, Vishnu and Radha Krishna, who is believed to have spoken the Bhagavad Gita, one of the sacred scriptures of Hinduism. Some of the deities are animal representations, such as Ganesh, the elephant god, and Hanuman, the monkey god.

"Every Hindu knows there's only one god and he manifests himself in many different ways," Swami Akhilananda said. The representations of gods are to help people understand a formless reality, he said. "There are a lot of different understandings of Hinduism," he said. "We don't do idol worship. It's a way to visualize God."

The Hindu temples in Roebuck and Pelham, which serve more than 400 Hindu families in the Birmingham area, each has numerous statues that are treated like living gods and brought food every day by a brahmin, or priest. The statues require a priest who lives at the temple and conducts daily rituals to care for the statues, which are treated as the actual presence of the gods. Nallaswami Gurukkal, the resident Hindu priest in Pelham, lives in the building and conducts daily rituals that involve ceremonially waking, "feeding" -- by offering foods -- and bathing the gods.

"We are very devoted to our culture," said Andra Soni, who was born in India and moved to Birmingham in 1981. "This place here is our heritage link between us and our home country," said Anil Agawal, who left India at age nine and moved to Birmingham in 1995. "It's a sense of belonging."
During worship services, Hindus perform an Aarti, a ceremony of lights at the throne of a god, waving a silver plate with candles in front of the statue.

Hinduism teaches that souls are separated from God. Chanting meditation is one of the ways to get closer to God, he said. "We say various names of God, or his virtues," the swami said. Through reincarnation, souls have a chance to progress toward unity with God. Otherwise, each person keeps being reborn. "It's a huge, unending cycle," the swami said. "We talk about how the soul can attain perfection. We try to give our mind and heart and feelings to God. It's the living relationship between the soul and God."

Achieving the soul's reunification with God is called Moksha. "If you know God absolutely, then you're free of the cycle," the swami said.


 



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