Re:The Spiritual Center Of the Earth (1999)
by vijayr on Saturday July 11, 2009 @09:27AM
(#699145)
I know I may be downmodded for saying this, but:
the kind of "Indian spirituality" you see outside India is totally different from the actual stuff. most gurus open their "ashrams" in the US exactly for the same reason most entrepreneurs want to move to silicon valley - more money and visibility. sadly, these "ashrams" aren't ashrams in the true sense, more like religious businesses.
Re:The Spiritual Center Of the Earth (1999)
by OperaLover on Saturday July 11, 2009 @03:19AM
(#698931)
He meant the "Spirituality Marketing Center..." But what the hey. Close enough for spiritual work ;)
And of course, by "San Francisco" he meant "Bay Area", which of course means "California." Again: the energy (spirituality) looks pretty much the same from Dakshineswar.
Re:The Spiritual Center Of the Earth (1999)
by alex_c on Saturday July 11, 2009 @12:05PM
(#699311)
"It used to be in India, but now it is San Francisco. All our gurus are moving there to open ashrams."
That made me laugh. Maybe I'm too cynical, but my explanation is a lot less noble than what the author implies...
Also note the date of the article. A good reminder that maybe a bit of humility and some critical thinking (in the sense in which it contrasts "automatic openness to new ideas") can be a good thing now and then.
Re:The Spiritual Center Of the Earth (1999)
by rjurney on Sunday July 12, 2009 @05:22AM
(#700001)
Like the whole 'dunk Ganesha' thing, for one. Teams of young men group together and compete between groups to buy/build/decorate the grandest elephant man to dunk in local ponds and rivers. Thats surreal.
Re:The Spiritual Center Of the Earth (1999)
by vijayr on Sunday July 12, 2009 @06:31AM
(#700034)
yeah, that is great fun. sometimes those are huuuuuuuuge, would take months to make and paint, only to be dunk in the sea. apart from polluting the water, its great fun.
Re:The Spiritual Center Of the Earth (1999)
by vijayr on Sunday July 12, 2009 @12:08PM
(#700263)
Yes I agree. A whole lot of rituals would seem funny/bizarre to westeners. An american friend of mine found "arranged" marriages very very strange, he couldn't comprehend it at all. But it has been working very well for centuries in India.
Similarly, when I came to US, I was shocked at the size of shopping malls, had never seen such mega malls in India (India does have big malls, but nothing compared to the ones in US). Also I found the pointless lawsuits very amusing (like the guy who sued his drycleaners for some 50 mil USD).
Well, I guess these differences is what makes life interesting :-)
Re:The Spiritual Center Of the Earth (1999)
by sielskr on Saturday July 11, 2009 @12:25PM
(#699334)
One of the blog entries of independent journalist Michael Yon describes an informal interview of a young Kurdish woman soon after the overthrow of Saddam.
Yon said that the Kurds had no material resources, but a can-do attitude. He described the young woman as extremely self-confident.
Asked about her plans for the future, she said she wanted to emigrate to France, hang out with the cool people there for a while, then move to San Francisco. (France and SF are respectively the number one and two tourist destinations, BTW.)
So, by "the spiritual center of the world," what the Indians in the article might have meant is that SF is the best place they know of for a person to live.
Re:The Spiritual Center Of the Earth (1999)
by gjm11 on Saturday July 11, 2009 @05:31AM
(#699025)
So you're saying the author gets "a little bit of ++" for posting something that you don't think is worth reading, and on a topic that's seldom if ever appropriate on HN? That seems a bit odd. Maybe I'm just insufficiently enlightened.
the kind of "Indian spirituality" you see outside India is totally different from the actual stuff. most gurus open their "ashrams" in the US exactly for the same reason most entrepreneurs want to move to silicon valley - more money and visibility. sadly, these "ashrams" aren't ashrams in the true sense, more like religious businesses.
Prepare... for the day before the day after tomorrow!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8601342@N03/sets/72157605272220...
But what does it mean that the CoU is so rectilinear?
And of course, by "San Francisco" he meant "Bay Area", which of course means "California." Again: the energy (spirituality) looks pretty much the same from Dakshineswar.
That made me laugh. Maybe I'm too cynical, but my explanation is a lot less noble than what the author implies...
Also note the date of the article. A good reminder that maybe a bit of humility and some critical thinking (in the sense in which it contrasts "automatic openness to new ideas") can be a good thing now and then.
Ah, that explains a lot. I totally missed it.
Similarly, when I came to US, I was shocked at the size of shopping malls, had never seen such mega malls in India (India does have big malls, but nothing compared to the ones in US). Also I found the pointless lawsuits very amusing (like the guy who sued his drycleaners for some 50 mil USD).
Well, I guess these differences is what makes life interesting :-)
Yon said that the Kurds had no material resources, but a can-do attitude. He described the young woman as extremely self-confident.
Asked about her plans for the future, she said she wanted to emigrate to France, hang out with the cool people there for a while, then move to San Francisco. (France and SF are respectively the number one and two tourist destinations, BTW.)
So, by "the spiritual center of the world," what the Indians in the article might have meant is that SF is the best place they know of for a person to live.
And I do not scoff at that notion.