Kalidas
Well-Known Member
So I started this World Religions course at ym college. I am thoroughly enjoying it, and was pleasantly surprised with the Hinduism portion of the class. Our teacher ( a Catholic) said the class will be focusing mostly on the academics of the religions with some side notes from practitioners to tie it all together. Hearing that I was dreading we would hear from the likes of people like Wendy Doniger and her ilk, boy was I wrong and damn happy I was. First off everything I learned has been mostly mentioned by all of you, so apparently were all a pretty intelligent bunch that agrees with academics apparently . The ONLY issue I had was the part where she showed the video of a practitioner, and it was really only one issue. The practitioner said that Hinduism deep down is monotheistic. I guess I could see that from a vedanta point of view but that is only one small part of Hinduism. Even our professor had said that there are many "paths" under the Hindu umbrella and it all DID start as a polytheistic religions that later formed new ideas such as vedanta. She(our professor) further said that Hinduism isn't so much as monotheistic(Brahman) but more or less monistic(everything is God). She had good things to say about Hinduism, and feels that it is a great religion that she feels many in America can learn from, yes my catholic professor believes America should look to hinduism for lessons on spirituality and morality.
The author of our college text book was actually a half Hindu(I'll explain lol). He was born in China was raised by his Christian missionary parents and studied world religions. He decided to adopt Hinduism into his religious life and and became a pseudo Christian/Hindu. At one time he was a minister of a church and the president of the vedanta society in his state (Massachusetts I believe). So our text book is VERY pro Hindu. Actually the book has this approach of telling the truth without being "rude".
Well now I have a question. we have a final project where we will present something, I have 2 ideas and am curious which would be the "better" option. I either want to explain puja and what puja means to practitioner. OR I want to give a presentation of Kali Maa. Feeling she is the most misunderstood and misrepresented of the deities (not to mention she is my main gal) to educate the students on her mythology and what she REALLY means to us her children I feel is important. What do you all think?
The author of our college text book was actually a half Hindu(I'll explain lol). He was born in China was raised by his Christian missionary parents and studied world religions. He decided to adopt Hinduism into his religious life and and became a pseudo Christian/Hindu. At one time he was a minister of a church and the president of the vedanta society in his state (Massachusetts I believe). So our text book is VERY pro Hindu. Actually the book has this approach of telling the truth without being "rude".
Well now I have a question. we have a final project where we will present something, I have 2 ideas and am curious which would be the "better" option. I either want to explain puja and what puja means to practitioner. OR I want to give a presentation of Kali Maa. Feeling she is the most misunderstood and misrepresented of the deities (not to mention she is my main gal) to educate the students on her mythology and what she REALLY means to us her children I feel is important. What do you all think?