The White Hindu has moved

The White Hindu has moved! This blog is no longer updated, but Ambaa is still writing The White Hindu every weekday at Patheos.com.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Wedding Gowns

Even though I'm not engaged, I LOVE weddings (Hey, I'm a girly girl, what can I say?) I read www.apracticalwedding.com every day and today I saw a post that made me think of you guys.

This is the story of a western woman who converted to Islam and planned to wear a Pakistani wedding outfit, but found that she fell in love with a western style white dress.

http://apracticalwedding.com/2012/07/intercultural-wedding-clothing-pakistani-american/#

This is interesting to me, as I am looking forward to wearing red to my own wedding.

When I was a little girl, that was not my plan. Despite the Hindu philosophy in my upbringing, I knew nothing about Indian culture at that time. (I don't think I was even aware that my Early Life of Krishna comic book was Indian. It was just...mine).

I thought it would be so romantic and wonderful to wear my mother's dress. At eight years old, that was the plan.

That idea has changed a lot. My mother's dress is an ivory gown with full sleeves that is very, very, very dated at this point! (Congrats to my parents on a very long marriage!)

And once I immersed myself in Indian culture and began to blend Indian clothes into my wardrobe on a regular basis, a traditionally Hindu gown became more and more appealing.

For one, I look good in red! That's the one color that every time I wear it, someone compliments me.

Unlike the woman who wrote this post, Indian clothes are a big part of my life. I wear salwar kameez frequently and sari for special occasions.

For another thing, I love bling. I love the sparkly and intricate details of wedding lenghas!

Here are some of the gowns that I've discovered and pinned onto my Pinterest account as, twenty two years after my eight year old self began wedding plotting, I continue to hope for a wedding in my future.

http://www.cbazaar.com/bridesmaid-and-family/lehenga-choli/gorgeous-net-embroidered-lehenga-choli-p-ghsfd9028.html

http://www.utsavfashion.com/store/sarees-large.aspx?icode=LSA3

http://www.cbazaar.com/brides/lehenga-choli/rich-zardosi-art-red-net-lehenga-choli-p-ghdda224.html

{I was watching a Whose Wedding Is It Anyway? show with an Indian wedding on it. I'm glad they finally represented something different than they usually do, but they were clearly out of their element. They kept talking about the things that are done at Indian weddings and I thought: you do know that there's no such thing as a typical Indian wedding, right? There's different rituals and traditions based on both religion and region.}



Friday, July 13, 2012

Reviews for my Book

I just wanted to let you all know that it would mean so much to me if you'd take a minute to leave a review for the book that is based on this blog!

Here's a link to the book on Amazon...



 I would love for the people who stumble across the book to see what a vibrant and rich community this is. Hinduism touches the lives of so many people, both Indian and non! 

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Can Androids Have Souls?

This is the sort of question that has come up for me a lot as a religious person surrounded mostly by engineers. At one time I dated a roboticist.

It was his belief that if we continue to develop computers to be more and more like the human brain, we will eventually have a robot who is effectively human.

But what about consciousness?

To him, if the machine could imitate consciousness, then it was conscious. I was not so sure.

Talking about this question with my current guy, he had an interesting way to look at it. He pointed out that I believe that consciousness is one thing that permeates all of reality. His thought was that it is one consciousness everywhere, but there are certain places in which it pools. One of the places that consciousness pools is within individual human beings.

A robot in that theory could be developed to do the same thing. If so, it doesn't feel nearly as sacrilegious as the "building consciousness into a machine" did to me.

But is consciousness the same thing as a soul?