Giriraj Swami, Guruprasad Swami, & Rtadhvaja Swami dancing at the Sadhu Sanga Retreat 2012

TEXAS FAITH 99: Will baby boomers be the next source of growth for religion in America?

Dallas Morning News,

Each week we will post a question to a panel of about two dozen clergy, laity and theologians, all of whom are based in Texas or are from Texas. They will chime in with their responses to the question of the week. And you, readers, will be able to respond to their answers through the comment box.

Let’s return to Frank Newport’s book, God is Alive and Well: The Future of Religion in America. I did an interview with Newport, Gallup’s editor-in-chief, for our Points section on Easter Sunday. As part of the interview, he talked about the impact baby boomers could have on religion as they retire.

We’ve certainly heard a lot about how those of us who are boomers will affect entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security. But I really had not thought much about how this generation of Americans could affect religion.

Newport’s point is this: If boomers become like elderly Americans of the past, they will become more religious as they enter their senior years. Of course, boomers being boomers, they may defy that trend. But if they don’t, they could become a major source of growth for religion in general and various faiths in particular.

That would be interesting since we are reading about the decline of membership in some traditions, like mainline Protestant churches. Could boomers actually reverse those trends?

I don’t know, but I would like to hear your thoughts about this question:

As baby boomers begin to retire, what is it that your faith tradition could offer to those in that generation who do not have a particular religious belief? Or, to put it another way, could boomers be your next source of growth?

NITYANANDA CHANDRA DAS, minister of ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness), Dallas 

Our stay in the world is like staying at a hotel. Don’t spend your time trying remodel it, it is only a temporary visit.

Therefore there are four successive stages of life in Vedic culture to train one to embrace the eternal rather than investing in the temporary. Celibate student life, married life, retired life, and renounced life.

During married life, one’s life becomes entangled with so many obligations to work, society, family, and so on. Therefore it is expected in Vedic culture that, after the age of 50, one retires from active business and other pursuits and dedicates their time and efforts to bring their hearts closer to God.

For if at the time of death one is consumed with worldly thoughts: Thoughts of how their business, family, and personal projects will go on without them, they will then have to return to this mortal world. For the Kingdom of God is inhabited by only those whose hearts is fully absorbed in love for the Lord.

To see all responses of the TEXAS Faith panel click here.

TEXAS FAITH 98: “The Righteous Mind” of the Brothers Tsarnaev

Dallas Morning News,

Each week we will post a question to a panel of about two dozen clergy, laity and theologians, all of whom are based in Texas or are from Texas. They will chime in with their responses to the question of the week. And you, readers, will be able to respond to their answers through the comment box.

The last week obviously has been a difficult one, from Boston to West, Texas to Kaufman County. There are many ways to go with all the events of the last week, but the topic that I would like you all to discuss plays into what we have talked about in the past about holding strong views and yet respecting differences.

Here it is:

The part of the Boston story that mystifies me is how two brothers reportedly led fairly normal lives after they came to Boston, but then something flipped and their thinking grew rigid. So rigid that they decided to blow up innocents along the Boston Marathon route in order to make a statement.

How does something like that happen?

Jonathan Haidt argues in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion that the righteous mind can readily shift into combat mode in political and moral arguments. We launch rhetorical grenades, which impress members of our own group, writes Haidt. But that does little to change the minds of our opponents, especially if they are in combat mode, too.

Of course, the Tsarnaev brothers did more than launch rhetorical grenades. They chose murder over the hard work of persuasion.

“If you really want to change someone’s mind on a moral or political matter,” Haidt counters, ” you’ll need to see things from that person’s angle as well as your own. And if you truly do see it the other person’s way — deeply and intuitively — you might even find your own mind opening in response.”
In other words, it is risky business trying to persuade people. The exercise may prompt us to change our own minds, which can be unsettling.”

So, here’s the question for you:

Is it possible to keep the combat mode of the righteous mind from kicking in? If so, how?

NITYANANDA CHANDRA DAS, minister of ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness), Dallas 

In the Bhagavad Gītā, Lord Kṛṣṇa states vādaḥ pravadatām aham “Among logicians I am, vāda, the conclusive truth” Meaning that of all forms of debate, that argument in which the participants desire to understand honest truth is a reflection of divinity.

Vāda is distinguished from other forms of argument, jalpa and vitaṇḍa, wherein there is a desire to display skill in debating but no practical result, simply a desire to win. This type of honest approach comes with spiritual maturity or for those practice applying it for they intensely desire to become more and more spiritually mature.

To see all responses of the TEXAS Faith panel click here.

Kirtan Dance Show at Irma Rangel High School

TEXAS FAITH 97: Can baseball bring you closer to God?

Dallas Morning News,

Each week we will post a question to a panel of about two dozen clergy, laity and theologians, all of whom are based in Texas or are from Texas. They will chime in with their responses to the question of the week. And you, readers, will be able to respond to their answers through the comment box.

A tip of the hat to Daniel Kanter for this question. He sent along a link about New York University President John Sexton’s book, Baseball as a Road to God.

Sexton has taught on a course on this subject for more than a decade, where, as this review suggests, he uses “baseball to illustrate the elements of a spiritual life.” I have not read his book, but the link I am sending along — along with this E.J. Dionne column — report that he uses writings about the game, its characters and its rituals to suggest that “we can touch the spiritual dimension of life” through baseball.

His co-author, former Boston Globe columnist Thomas Oliphant, put his own twist on this in a CBS essay. Oliphant talked about “the special feelings in seemingly secular settings that suggest the spiritual. The feelings can be as powerfully simple as having a catch with your dad, or watching the St. Louis Cardinals come back twice from being one strike away from elimination in the World Series, or actually hearing Jackie Robinson breathe as he sprinted home.

Now, some of us who are Texas Rangers fans may equate watching the Cardinals come back twice from being one strike away from losing the World Series — to us — as a near-death experience. But there is a point here worth discussing:

Do secular settings like a baseball game lead us to the spiritual dimension of life? If so, what are those for you? In what ways does the secular lead you to a deeper spiritual understanding?

NITYANANDA CHANDRA DAS, minister of ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness), Dallas 

Both matter and spirit are God’s energies. If our relationship with matter is seen in the light of spirit, meaning that if we are conscious of matter’s connection to God, then yes, that will lead us to a higher spiritual understanding.

What is that consciousness? If one looks at matter, or a secular event, in the mode of personal or extended personal enjoyment, then that is materialistic. Such consciousness further binds the soul in his competitive attitude towards God. On the other hand, if one sees matter in the mode of service to God then such vision is liberating.

For example a materialist may look at a forest as a place to rob resources and the servant of God may see it as a place to meditate on the Lord. It is simply a difference in vision.

Games such as baseball are not enacted in mode service to God, but rather one’s own personal separate enjoyment. Therefore, that situation may be hard pressed to lead one to higher spiritual understandings.

However, that is it not to say that other secular events, such as star gazing, cannot be seen in a God conscious manner.

To see all responses of the TEXAS Faith panel click here.

Abortion and enslaving the African Americans

Abortion supporters have the same mentality of those who support slavery. “Blacks could be enslaved because they have no soul.”

Similarly women have been abused throughout history under the idea that women do not have a soul, or have something like a half soul.

Similarly millions of animals are murdered mercilessly because of this same mentality, that the animals do not have a soul.

So similarly people people of the same mentality see an unborn child as a soulless being, unworthy of rights and protection.

“It is just a Nigger/ a human fertilized egg/ beef /a Jew so it can be killed.”

Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 3.31.1
śrī-bhagavān uvāca
karmaṇā daiva-netreṇa
jantur dehopapattaye
striyāḥ praviṣṭa udaraṁ
puṁso retaḥ-kaṇāśrayaḥ
Translation:
The Personality of Godhead said: Under the supervision of the Supreme Lord and according to the result of his work, the living entity, the soul, is made to enter into the womb of a woman through the particle of male semen to assume a particular type of body.

The Saints: Gangam style

dṛṣṭaiḥ svabhāva-janitair vapuṣaś ca doṣair
na prākṛtatvam iha bhakta janasya paśyet
gaṅgāmbhasāṁ na khalu budbuda-phena-paṅkair
brahma-dravatvam apagacchati nīra-dharmaiḥ

Being situated in his original Kṛṣṇa conscious position, a pure devotee does not identify with the body. Such a devotee should not be seen from a materialistic point of view. Indeed, one should overlook a devotee's having a body born in a low family, a body with a bad complexion, a deformed body, or a diseased or infirm body. According to ordinary vision, such imperfections may seem prominent in the body of a pure devotee, but despite such seeming defects, the body of a pure devotee cannot be polluted. It is exactly like the waters of the Ganges, which sometimes during the rainy season are full of bubbles, foam and mud. The Ganges waters do not become polluted. Those who are advanced in spiritual understanding will bathe in the Ganges without considering the condition of the water.

TEXAS FAITH 96: Do we believe differently about different kinds of truths?

Dallas Morning News,

Each week we will post a question to a panel of about two dozen clergy, laity and theologians, all of whom are based in Texas or are from Texas. They will chime in with their responses to the question of the week. And you, readers, will be able to respond to their answers through the comment box.

Texas Monthly has a profile in its current issue of West Texan Christian Wiman, who has edited Poetrymagazine for the last decade in Chicago. The story describes his journey of faith, which started in a fairly fundamentalist way in Snyder, Texas, evolved into full rebellion against his early beliefs, and ended up in a loss of faith for Wiman for a long period of time.

Then his religiosity started slowly reemerging, but in a different shape. Now, he is on his way to becoming a full-time lecturer at Yale Divinity School and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music.

You can read more about him at this Texas Monthly link.

For our purposes, the part of the piece that caught my eye was when the reporter, Tom Bartlett, writes:

“When asked if he believes that the son of God, the Word made flesh, was actually crucified and placed in a tomb only to rise again after three earthbound days, Wiman glances up at the ceiling of the perfectly quiet conference room in the stylish offices he will soon vacate. His eyes close behind his rectangular glasses. It’s probably unfair to ask a poet and a conflicted Christian , a man who writes carefully and slowly and wonderfully, to opine off the cuff about a topic so weighty. He does believe it, he says, though not in the same way that he believes in evolution or in the fact that the earth revolves around the sun. It is a different sort of belief, a deeper kind of truth. Finally, he finds the words, ‘I try to live toward it.’”

I am not asking you to comment on the particulars of Wiman’s beliefs, but I would like to hear your thoughts about this part of the passage: “He does believe it, he says, though not in the same way that he believes in evolution or in the fact that the earth revolves around the sun. It is a different sort of belief, a deeper kind of truth.”

What does it mean that we may believe differently about certain issues, particularly about ultimate questions? I’m not looking for a discussion about how Jews differ from Christians or Christians from Muslims or Buddhists from Taoists or some other contrasts. Rather, what does it mean that as individuals we may believe differently about different kinds of truths? How, for example, do your beliefs in history or science differ from your religious beliefs?

This is a more theological and even philosophical question, so I look forward to your answers.

NITYANANDA CHANDRA DAS, minister of ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness), Dallas 

The Vedic literature’s Ṛk Veda’s Sayaṇa Bhāṣya accounts for the speed of light as 2,202 yojanas per 0.5 nimeṣa = 21,144.705 miles per .0114286 seconds = 185,016.169 miles per second. Which is 0.0067% different from modern calculations. Ṛk Veda accounts for the elliptical path of all celestial bodies. Surya Siddhanta accounts for the modern circumference of the Earth. Planetary gravity is discussed in the Siddhānta Śiromaṇi. Śrīmad Bhāgavatam accounts for modern measurements of the distances between planets in our solar system. The Bhāgavatam also delineates measurements of time that go from 1687.5 part of a second to 311 trillion years (the span our particular universe). Pythagoras theorem was around 1000 years in India, before it was discovered in the West, as well as the value of Pi. Similarly photosynthesis is discussed in the ancient Mahābhārata.

While these facts are certainly interesting, they are not the cause of my faith. Faith become verified through experience.

For example when DART tells me that bus number 60 takes me to Kalachandji’s I may have faith in that claim. But when that I ride that bus and do end up at Kalachandji’s, that faith becomes realized. Because of that experience, it is reasonable for me to accept the other bus routes shown by DART go to their desired destinations.

Similarly the Bhagavad Gītā explains how the soul is different from the body. Not only is this conclusion given with logic but also with a practical experiments by which one can experience the conclusion directly. Faith verified.

No one should accept or reject anything blindly.

To see all responses of the TEXAS Faith panel click here.