Baba Question! (priests, rituals, moral, soul, grace)

[Doktormartini]

I have a question...why do some people worship Baba? I work at this Jewish camp, and not all groups are Jewish! When summer is ending we get this really big Indain group that worships Baba. Too my knowledge, Baba is the man that brought free schools and hospitals to India, am I correct? Do any of you here worship him? If so, can you tell me a bit about him and his significance?

And on a side not this is another question I have...Is it considered rude to go up to an Indian and ask them what Caste they are? Like if an Indian did it to another Indian as opposed to an American going up to an Indian?

Thanks very much!

[Ardhanariswar]

You mean Sai Baba? There are a few "baba's" out there in india, the majority of them are involved in scandals and abuse. Its basically an attempt to making a new sect of hinduism which is more organized and *community* based. I disagree with this because after some time, instead of helping the devotee, it completely disables them to only serve this master and forget about thier other needs/desires, and family, God, and themselves. Its scary and it almost becomes cult like. People are peer pressured to donate money and lodging to serve thier master, and they get sucked in.

HInduism gives the personal a lot of freedom. it basically accepts many paths to God. One of them is having a guru. Im not sure if a baba would be considered a guru, Im not quite knowledgable about babas training process. I think most babas come about because they do supposed *miricles*. I dont think people need miricles in order to believe, but thats just me. Hinduism believes that every person, regardless of their importance in society or caste, or even morality, has a little *god* inside of him because they possess the soul (atman). it makes everyone holy. when you do namaskaram to someone, you basically worship the god in them.

Yeah, its rude to ask an indian what their caste is, period. It doesnt matter if you are indian or not. Though you can sometimes tell a person's caste by their last name. Like Chatterjee is a Bengali brahmin name... Iyer, Iyengar are tamil brahmin names.

[Doktormartini]

Thank you very much for your post! I was thinking that asking an Hindu what Caste they are would kinda be similar to going up to someone and asking what religion they practice. Thanks for you clarificaton!

Now I just thought of one more question: Say someone is whatever religion and they want to convert to Hinduism and devote their life to it and what not...how would they determine their caste then? Since a Hindu is born into a caste...this person is born into whatever religion they were born into and then became a Hindu...

Thank you so much!

[Ardhanariswar]

The caste is more social than religious. Different castes may have different religious practices. The idea of the caste system came from the vedas. The only difference is that the vedas just described groups of people and their various vocations. It catagorized them by color (varna). This caste system was not heriditary, nor was it heirarchal. Each group was appriciated equally for its importance. Without one group, society couldnt function. This was adopted into daily life by the people, but (as usual) humans tend to be corrupted. So the caste system became more seperatist, heirarichical and hereditary.

So to answer your question, no, a foreigner cannot have a caste. Technically no one has a caste because the system was abolished when India got its independence. But due to affirmative action, it remains. Another reason why it still remains is because people's last names reflect their caste, as well as their dress and in some cases profession (hindu priests have to be from the brahmin caste, though many brahmins do not become priests). Make sense? To be even more technical a caste is a label of what your profession is. So if your name was John Smith, your caste is blacksmithery (sp?).

I'm not into labels. Neither is hinduism (which is ironic, obviously). There is no specific *conversion process* for becoming a hindu. Basically you just *believe* it, and it becomes who you are. You become Hindu. I'm sure there are some extraneous rituals out there, but its pretty unneccesary.

Hope that answers your questions.

[Moses the God Archetype*]

Yes it is very good that india abolished its caste system after it regain it's freedom from the brits, for i feel the caste system is very restrictive to ones personal development certainly spritually, for a person can be born of low birth as it were but yet still become a brahmin thru spritual development and closeness with bhagavan vasudeva sri krsna's(God) grace, krsna welcomes all who seek him for shelter and the blessings received therein are great indeed if done with a humble heart and not looking for results or a certain outcome to your likeing, for that is unnessesary attachment and can stumble one on the road to Godhead indeed.

[Moses the God Archetype*]

Well it seems that my fellow devotees of bhakti-yoga(prema-toga) do not wish to come to this area of the forum......i will post a thread soon to try to start dissicusions about hinduism the veda's the bhagavatam etc for our people in this forum is lacking indeed.....

[Doktormartini]

Oh wow, I didn't know the Caste system was abolished. That is interesting! In my non-western Mythology class we just finished are India unit and we talked about the caste system. We read the excert from "The Song of Purusha" where it talks about how his head became the Brahmin.......etc. Our teacher didn't say anything about the Caste system being abolished....
Thank you all for your replies!

[Moses the God Archetype*]

Yes this is true the caste system was abolished beloved, also i sincerly hope you find what you seek, as long as it is done with a humble heart, beloved many blessings to you indeed.

[Doktormartini]

Thank you very much! =o)

[Jyothi]

and the teachers, well i doubt how much they know