from Huffington Post

The 2012 Sundance Film Festival began Jan. 19 and will continue until Jan. 29 in Park City, Utah. Sundance takes place annually in Utah and is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Religion and spirituality featured prominently at the Sundance Film Festival 2011, with 26 films exploring themes of ultimate meaning, bigger questions of life and the complicated role that religion plays in our world.

This year’s festival features at least nine films touching on the topic of religion and spirituality. While most of these films are set against a Christian background, “5 Broken Cameras,” directed by a Palestinian and Israeli duo, is a thought-provoking personal documentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Additionally, “Bestiaire” uses humans and beasts to explore the Hindu concept of darshan (an act of beholding the Divine).

From exposing the hypocrisy of the church to commenting on the sexual lives of rebellious religious teenagers to chronicling the hopeful story of Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop, these films explore a variety of themes.HuffPost Religion has compiled a list of films highlighted at Sundance Film Festival 2012 that explore the topic of religion and spirituality. Enjoy!

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By Gadadhara Pandit Dasa
From Huffington Post

I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely tired of encountering this attitude. Most people who make such statements don’t have deep knowledge or set of experiences within their own tradition, what to speak of other people’s traditions. I am confident that if we made even a little bit of an endeavor to understand another’s faith, it could make all the difference in the world.

The first time I watched “Jesus of Nazareth” with a group of fellow Hindu monks, we all marveled at the life of Jesus and the seriousness of his teachings, and immediately we could find similar teachings from within the Hindu tradition. The video inspired me to read the Gospels, which surprised me even more. The mood of a practitioner described by Jesus is identical to descriptions in the Gita and the Bhagavat Purana.

“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike” (Matthew 5:43-45)

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by Yaira Robinson
from State of Formation

This was my first visit to the Zen Center. One of the Buddhist priests had invited me to encourage his students to engage in interfaith environmental work. I was a little nervous, but something about this group—their open spirit, perhaps, and honest questions—quickly put me at ease and helped me speak from the heart. At some point, I found myself saying, “The Buddhist tradition has beautiful teachings about how all life is interconnected, and the world desperately needs this wisdom! Pleaseshare it.”

Global warming is a huge behemoth of a problem. It challenges us to work together across the globe in new and unprecedented ways—ways we clearly haven’t figured out yet, as international climate talks repeatedly fail to produce significant agreements. Meanwhile, individual people are waking up to the climate crisis, struggling to make sense of it, and wondering how to respond.

One of the ways that people of faith are responding is by turning to our religious traditions. From them, we seek teachings and practices that might inform our actions as we try to meet these challenges. And we are finding them! Each of the world’s religious traditions offers tremendous wisdom about how we should live in respectful relationship with the earth and with each other.

As I drove home from the Zen Center that evening, I got to thinking: If what the world in climate crisis most needs to hear from the Buddhist tradition is that all life is interconnected, what does it most need to hear from other religious traditions?

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By Eric Marrapodi
From CNN

Two days before Christmas, Imam Mohamed Magid, the executive director at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, preached about Jesus at Friday prayers.

“We live in a country with a majority of Christians, where Christmas is a major holiday… It’s a reminder we do believe in Jesus. Jesus’ position in Islam is one of the highest prophets in Islam,” Magid said, adding that Muslims view Jesus as a prophet on par with Abraham, Moses, Noah and Mohammad.

Often when he says the name of Mohammad or Jesus in conversation, Magid adds the Islamic honorific “Peace be upon him” after his name.

“Jesus is a unifying figure, unifying Muslims and Christians,” he said. The Quran, the Islamic scriptures, makes specific mention of Jesus and of his mother Mary. “It’s very interesting that there are many places where the prophet (Mohammad) is quoting Jesus.”

Christmas has a way of bleeding into other faiths in America. The Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ in a manger in Bethlehem 2000 some odd years ago is ubiquitous across the country, even if the American tradition has leaned away from the sacred and toward the secular.

Christmas at every corner can be somewhat problematic for those who are not in the estimated 246 million Christians living in the United States. But for some faiths, the season brings reminders of their own traditions.

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By Philip Goldberg
From Huffington Post

Last month I attended the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). Comprised mainly of scholars who teach and do research at North American universities, the AAR is, according to its mission statement, “dedicated to furthering knowledge of religion and religious institutions in all their forms and manifestations.” I was one of the few non-academics among more than 10,000 participants dashing from venue to venue in downtown San Francisco, clutching their Starbucks cups and AAR tote bags.

If you practice religion, or you’re curious about religious subjects, or you’re interested in religion as a citizen of a nominally religious country, your head would have been spinning trying to figure out which of dozens of concurrent speeches, panels and discussions to attend. Once you decided, you might have found the scholarly jargon as indecipherable as Sanskrit, and at times you might have dozed off. The talking heads were the opposite of the ones you see on TV: long on substance, short on sound bites.

That said, what takes place at the annual AAR meeting is of considerable importance outside the ivory tower. The theologians, philosophers and social scientists in attendance determine how religion is taught in colleges, universities and seminaries; they dictate to a large extent what is included in textbooks at every level of education; and they affect what is said about religion in public forums and in the mass media.

Given the nature of American culture — and the fact that the conference was co-hosted by the Society of Biblical Literature — it is not surprising that the vast majority of topics addressed center on the Judeo-Christian traditions. However, to the delight of people like me, the historical dominance of the Abrahamic faiths has diminished in recent years. The number of sessions devoted to the four so-called Dharmic religions born in India — Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism — has increased considerably, as AAR Program Units in areas such as Tantric Studies, Jainism and Yoga Philosophy and Practice were added to the roster since the late 90s when, amidst opposition, Drs. Rita Sherma and Cynthia Ann Humes spearheaded the introduction of the Hinduism Group.

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By Tara Bahrampour
From Washington Post

On a balmy November night, a busload of eighth-graders spilled out onto Massachusetts Avenue NW, the girls tentatively pulling on head scarves they had been instructed to bring.

“Does mine look normal?” one asked, cinching it tightly under her chin.

“Mine looks really ugly, doesn’t it?” said another, tugging at a billowy confection of material.

Suitably attired, more or less, they trooped into the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. Many of the students, who belong to an after-school Hebrew program at Congregation Beth El in Bethesda, had passed by the large mosque with the columns and minaret, but they had never gone inside, until now.

The youths are part of a cultural exchange between Beth El and AFS Intercultural Programs (formerly the American Field Service), which brings teenagers from all over the world to live with host families in the United States and sends American teens abroad.

For the program, in its fourth year, eight foreign students being hosted in the Washington area were teaching the Beth El students about Islam, the religion of four of the exchange students; Hinduism, the faith of two of the students, was added this year.

The students — from Indonesia, Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt, Armenia, India and Germany — are here on State Department scholarships and had visited Beth El last monthto give a classroom presentation. Later in the month, the Beth El students joined them on field trips to a mosque and a Hindu temple.

Inside the mosque, the girls and boys removed their shoes and were separated in different rooms. Cucut Syati, 16, a student from Indonesia wearing a purple satin tunic, showed the girls the elaborate pre-prayer washing ritual — hands, mouth, nose, face, arm, head, ears and feet.

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By Sai Kolluru
From State of Formation

“Know thyself.” -Aristotle

“Meditating on the lotus of your heart, in the center is the untainted; the exquisitely pure, clear, and sorrowless; the inconceivable; the unmanifest, of infinite form; blissful, tranquil, immortal; the womb of Brahma.” -Kaivalyopanishad

“Who am I? What is this body I am in? Where do my thoughts come from? What is the mind? Why do I feel something in my heart? What attracts me to things and creates emotions of like and dislike? What is the very essence of my existence?” -The Human Mind

A curious start. The search for the Self.

These are all the questions I have asked myself since I took my first plane ride from India to the United States at the age of eight. I was so astonished by the Boeing jet. My face was plastered to the windows as I saw constellation Orion from 30,000 feet. I was amazed by the tranquility of our Earth. Every night I looked through my telescope, my mind was in awe constantly asking, “How can this universe be so vast? So beautiful? So perfect in order? I mean, this Earth itself is unfathomably incredible in creation but the universe?”

Emotions would run through me and I would get goosebumps at the thought of the creation of the Universe. Reminiscing over the past twenty one years of my life: I grew up in a traditional, orthodox Brahmin Hindu family. When my family bought our first home, my mother made sure to refer to the “Vaastu Shastra”-an ancient Hindu doctrine that has an archaic view on how the laws of nature affect human dwellings. She would set down the compass as we entered our future home and say “Ha ha, it’s facing North-Northeast, this is a good front entrance for the house.” This showed me how holistic my mother’s approach to living was.

As for myself, I just looked at how big the house was and made sure that I had my own big room. As I grew up, my mother would teach me many rituals and ceremonies followed in the Hindu tradition. “After all, you are a Brahmin [a person of spiritual knowledge in a community],” she would insist.

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by Anju Bhargava
CPWR Trustee

Deepavali popularly known as Diwali, literally means a row (avali) of lights (deepa). In essence it is the celebration of the victory of good over evil and the awakening and awareness of the Inner Light. This Inner Light, though not seen outside, outshines all darkness by removing all obstacles and dispelling all ignorance. When this inner realization blossoms then there is universal compassion, love, and the awareness of the oneness of all things. It awakens the individual to one’s true nature, not in the physical, but as the unchanging, infinite, and transcendent reality; the Sat (Truth), Chit (Consciousness) and Ananda (Inner Joy). This, for the Hindus, is the very goal of life. Monotheistic Hinduism’s original name is “Sanatana Dharma” or Eternal Order.

At its heart, Hindu philosophy emphasizes the presence of that which is pure, infinite, and eternal, which is something beyond the physical and mind. The Vedic prayer (Brhadaranyaka Upanishad — I.iii.28) captures the spirit of Diwali: Asato ma sadgamaya. Tamaso ma jyotirgamaya Mrtyorma amrtam gamaya…: “Lead me from the untruth to Truth. Lead me from darkness to light. Lead me from death to immortality.”

The foundation of Indian civilization is the pluralistic acceptance embodied in the ancient Vedic scriptures; the perennial Vedic thought: “Ekam Sat, Vipraha Bahuda Vadanti”: “The Truth is One. The Realized Ones (rishis) describe the One Truth in several ways.” Acceptance of this Truth gives people a way to express their differences while finding a common ground. And, Diwali shares a special connection with American values. It exemplifies the ideals of “E Pluribus Unum” — out of many, one.

The ancient ones (rishis) creatively brought Vedas to life through the festivals. The Festivals serve an important link between philosophy and the practical application for people in all walks of life. They exemplify the struggle between good and evil and that ultimately victory is of good and it needs to be celebrated. These joyous occasions remind us, and future generations, that it was only through the selfless service of those who sacrificed that the victory was attained. Service and giving, being a karma-yogi, are an integral part of multifaceted Vedic Hindu traditions.

Diwali is a holiday uniting the world cultures. Celebrated by Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists (commonly referred to as Dharmic/Indic traditions) and the by those of any, “all and no faith,” the different aspects of Diwali create an interlocking, global mosaic. Often, Muslims and Christians participate, and artisans of all faiths make the lamps, fireworks and sweets that are used to celebrate the occasion. The lights shine and illuminate the small mud homes and the palatial mansions, which now both dot India’s landscape. In America, many homes celebrating Diwali are decorated with Christmas lights as well as Shabbat candles.

For Hindus themselves, the festivities of Diwali are celebrated through the recitation of many stories. Universally, the celebration is the triumph of Good (Lord Rama or Lord Krishna) over Evil (Ravana, Narakasura, etc.).

For Jains, the philosophical significance is similar to the Hindu perspective. Diwali reflects the joy of Lord Mahavir on attaining liberation through the path of right knowledge, right faith and the right conduct; known as three Jewells for Liberation.

The Sikhs, who were the protectors of Hindus, have also always celebrated Diwali. Its significance increased when, on this day the Sixth Guru, Guru Hargobind, was freed from captivity of the Mughal Emperor Jehangir, along with other political prisoners.

Buddhists in India and Nepal honor Emperor Ashoka who, on this day, took to Ahimsa (non-violence), a key Vedic principle which became an integral part of Buddha’s teachings. King Ashoka sent his emissaries to many parts of Asia, and they spread Buddha’s teachings.

Diwali traditionally marks the beginning of the New Year for Hindu businesses and the last harvest of the year before winter. Many celebrants close their books and open new accounts with prayers for success and prosperity. Symbolically it is a new start – forgive and forget – in all aspects of life, including relationships with family and friends. It is the time for community and family celebration with prayers through puja, of togetherness, of sharing all resources.

Many Hindus also invoke Goddess Lakshmi, (from sanskrit word lakshye which means aim) for blessings at the outset of this process of worldly and spiritual accounting. Prayers of thankfulness, (Lakshmi Puja), are offered for future prosperity by people of all faiths. Lakshmi Puja is another common factor in Diwali celebrations which connects the people of the Indian subcontinent and now globally.

Today Diwali is enjoyed by most Indians, regardless of faith, and by people of Dharmic faiths globally. Everyone celebrates it through festive fireworks, lights, flowers, sharing of sweets, and worship as is customary for each religious and/or non-religious group. No house is too big or too small for illumination.

While the story behind Diwali varies from region to region, the essence is the same: to rejoice in the Inner Light and understand the underlying reality of all things. Diwali unifies and lights the lamp of understanding within us. Seva (communal service) during Diwali means bringing in light, especially in the life of those less fortunate than us.

May the spirit of Diwali bring Joy, Health, Wealth, Prosperity, Peace, and Spiritual Enlightenment!

Loka Samastha Sukhi Nau bhavantu – May the Lord bless the whole world with eternal peace and goodwill…

Anju Bhargava was a member of President Obama’s Inaugural Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and is the founder of Hindu American Seva Charities.  She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions.

Vivekananda in Chicago, 1893. (Vedanta Society of Southern California)

by Ann Louise Bardach
from New York Times

Ann Louise Bardach is a writer at large for Newsweek. She is working on a biography of Vivekananda.

The party planning is in full swing throughout India. Never mind that the big day, Jan. 12, 2013, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vivekananda, is more than 15 months away. Not too long ago, Vivekananda, a household name in his homeland, was famous here as well, as the first missionary from the East to the West.

If you’re annoyed that your local gas station is now a yoga studio, you might blame Vivekananda for having introduced “yoga” into the national conversation — though an exercise cult with expensive accessories was hardly what he had in mind.

The Indian monk, born Narendranath Datta to an aristocratic Calcutta family, alighted in Chicago in 1893 in ochre robes and turban, with little money after a daunting two-month trek from Bombay. Notwithstanding the fact that he had spent the previous night sleeping in a boxcar, the young mystic made an electrifying appearance at the opening of the august Parliament of Religions that Sept. 11.

For most of the rest of the month, Vivekananda held the conference’s 4,000 attendees spellbound in a series of showstopping improvised talks. He had simplified Vedanta thought to a few teachings that were accessible and irresistible to Westerners, foremost being that “all souls are potentially divine.” His prescription for life was simple, and perfectly American: “work and worship.” By the end of his last Chicago lecture on Sept. 27, Vivekananda was a star. And like the enterprising Americans he so admired, he went on the road to pitch his message — dazzling some of the great minds of his time.

Yet precious few of the estimated 16 million supple, spandex-clad yoginis in the United States, who sustain an annual $6 billion industry, seem to have a clue that they owe their yoga mats to Vivekananda. Enriching this irony was Vivekananda’s utter lack of interest in physical exertions beyond marathon sitting meditations and pilgrimages to holy sites.

“You are not your body,” he often reminded Americans, who tend to prefer “doing” over “being.” More distressing, for some, was his other message: “You are not your mind.”

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By Anya Cordell
from Washington Post

Hatred is a current ‘cool’ fad—but a terribly dangerous one.

Four days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, three innocent men, (Sikh, Muslim and Egyptian Christian) were murdered. The killer of the Sikh victim vowed to “kill the ragheads,” shooting the first person he saw wearing a turban.

A Hindu man was murdered October 4, 2001, and we just marked the 10th anniversary of the day an extraordinary young Muslim, Rais Bhuiyan, was blinded in one eye and left for dead.

Even now, most articles mentioning Muslims continue to elicit strings of comments, many of which genocidally proclaim, “Kill them all.” The anti-Muslim cloud permeates our atmosphere; coloring perceptions, inciting bullying, assaults and policies.

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