Options for Official Conversion

I've been getting some lovely emails from other white Hindus. It's pretty amazing how the Internet connects people and no matter how odd a path you are on, there will be others like you.

Here are some quotes from emails I've received:

There are very, very few people who talk frankly about practicing Hinduism from the non-Indian perspective, and so it's great that you're helping to fill that void...This is one of the first times I've had the opportunity to talk to someone who's gone through something vaguely similar to my own (unfinished) story,

However, as I turned 20, I started to feel more acutely the fact that I was different [from the Indians at temple]. When I was younger, I felt it too, but I could ignore it. That wasn't the case anymore. I felt like I didn't belong, and to be honest I felt a bit foolish. I felt alien, and then confused and disheartened, wondering if I would ever want to go back.

It's not as if I dislike Christianity especially, but I prefer seeing God in all things, not just in a book here or a crucifix there.

So really, Hinduism is simply the Indian version of what Christianity displaced in Europe and North Africa. In other words, it's not just for Indians, or at least it shouldn't be.

I won't lie, I would feel a lot more comfortable if there were a few other non-Indian Hindus around my way (not counting the Hare Krishnas), but it's encouraging just to know that I'm not the only one out there.

I'm also a white Hindu, having come to Sanatana Dharma after a number of years of tumultuous spiritual searching. I've identified as Hindu for only about eight months now.

It can definitely be a lonely path to travel. Sometimes I'm alright with that. Lately, not so much.

Keep writing. It's good to hear from others.

Religious conversion shouldn't be like this. Hopefully people like you and me can gradually help change some attitudes so that those who come after us have an easier time of it.

Also, there is a practical side to being an official and recognized member of a religion. What if my boss requires me to do something in opposition to my beliefs, or expects me to work on a holiday where I should spend the day in prayer and fasting? He will expect some legitimate references, not just scriptural quotations that anyone could produce. What if I want to be part of some group or gathering of Hindus? It will be predominantly, if not entirely, Indian, and I may be expected to site sampradaya, or my teacher, or at least a priest with whom I'm familiar.

I am what I describe to people as “vaguely Hindu.” I wear Western clothing, but have an Ayervedic nose ring. I am a devout yogi but I eat beef (I can’t help it, it just tastes so good, and I don’t eat pork oddly enough). And, of course, I recite the 108 Ganapati Salutations and the Ganapati Mantra.
But your blog is wonderfully written, informed, and conscious of the issues that arise on both cultural sides about conversion.

One person asked about what kind of options there are for an official conversion, so I've done some research on different movements.

First, though, here are two perspectives on Westerners from the message boards at www.HinduNet.com:

Arjun says:
February 25, 2010 at 22:27
Well in essence everyone is born a Hindu so its not about converting but it's about awakening to that realization that decides if you are a Hindu or not. Many Indian Hindus are just Hindu in name and that’s it. So Hindu Dharma is not confined to the borders of any country, region or race or even physical form…yes even the animal kingdom are Hindus on some level because they follow the Dharmic laws in accordance to their consciousness. So if you follow and feel you are a Hindu then you are and you should say it openly. These days some Hindu temples do perform ‘Shuddi’ initiation into Hinduism. so the doors are now opening for anyone who wants to become a Hindu..

#58705 - 06/10/04 06:48 PM Re: Cultural Appropriation
SevaShakti
Unfortunately, I live in a part of the U.S. where I don't know if that would even work with all people. I remember seeing a post on another thread from someone saying "I am interested in Hinduism, New Age, etc." This is typical of a lot of people in my town -- they think Hinduism, Chinese medicine, Buddhism, and all kinds of "Easternisms" are just a cool, groovy thing -- just like New Ageism. I actually heard someone at a party say once, "Buddhism isn't really a religion, it's more like a way of life." They see only the outer trappings of our religions and beliefs, like the funky South Indian temples, and the nice-smelling incense, and they think they've got it. It's like learning the postures of yoga but never grasping anything about devotion. These people think I should be flattered that Ganesh was on a lunchbox, because it just proves how cool and popular he is! And many of them are equally superficial about other things, like their country or the religion they were raised in, so they wouldn't necessarily care if someone put the flag on a pair of panties, or Jesus on a pair of shoes. In fact, I see things like that all the time around here. I would be very offended if I were extremely patriotic, or a Christian. But I feel like a person raised Christian, for example, can desecrate their own religion if they want to. I just want them to leave mine alone!

Himalayan Academy
This is the branch that our friend at Western-Hindu belongs to. They have an entire book available in hard copy or online called How to Become a Hindu.

These are the steps:
1. Begin practicing Hinduism, performing daily pujas and participating in a community with other Hindu events and rituals.
2. Write a comparison of one's former beliefs or religion to Hinduism. Discuss each promise made in another religion and when and why it was dropped. Present this document to a Hindu elder to show a true understanding of one's undertaking.
3. Sever ties with former religions. You must try to get a letter from any former pastor or rabbi, etc. saying that you have been released from your duty to their path by meeting with them in person and explaining why you are leaving and going to Hinduism. However, first you attend several of the services to see if you really want to leave this religion.
4. A legal name change to a Hindu name and that name should be used in all areas of life.
5. The namakarana samskara is performed. This is a naming ceremony. This must be done by a priest in the sect that you are joining. Also, you must inform your friends and family and have at least three witnesses to the ceremony. (Lots of details about this ceremony in the link above). A certificate will be provided which will help the individual with any times he needs proof of being a Hindu (such as for admittance to certain temples in India).
6. A three-day announcement is placed in a local newspaper telling the name and religion change of the person.

This is something the guru called "Ethical Conversion" and it seems like a great idea for any religion one is going to or from. It makes sure that a person is willingly choosing the new religion and has not been badgered into it and it requires a high level of commitment to the new religion. I think it's a great idea. The only reason I haven't done something like this is because I feel it is disrespectful to my parents to change my name. I might change my mind about that at some point, though.

ISKON
I haven't been able to find any details about how one joins ISKON (Hare Krishna). If any readers here practice it, I would love to hear from you in the comments. Please tell us how one joins, what kind of conversion process there is, etc.

ISKON does have a bit of a bad reputation. My only experiences with them have made me feel like the Western members are just Christians who basically call Jesus "Krishna." I've only had a couple of interactions, however, so I wouldn't want to judge all of them based on that alone.

Amma
Amma is a holy woman who has been touring the world and spreading a teaching of love. She seems to have many Western followers. In fact, I was a bit disappointed when I realized that the only members of the Santana-Dharma group at Ravelry.com were Amma followers. There don't seem to be any other Hindus there!

I don't know if they have any particular conversion, but I know several people spoke of meeting Amma and her giving them a Hindu name. Again, if anyone follows her teachings, I would love to have comments from you about what exactly is involved in joining.

She is called the "Hugging Saint" because she is known for hugging everyone at her talks.

Shuddi
This is something that is part of a movement called Arya Samaj, which is about returning to the Vedic roots of Hinduism and letting go of social class problems and other issues that have come up over time in society but are not part of the Vedas.

One website to learn more about them is Arya Samaj 101.

Their Shuddi is more of a reconversion, for those whose families were originally Hindu and were converted away to Islam or Christianity. It isn't clear whether a white person could undergo this ritual, but they seem to believe that Hinduism is the true religion, so that suggests to me that they would be open to more people joining.

They are working against the practice of untouchability and many Hindus converted away to other religions because they could have full status as people in the other religions. Of course, in Hinduism they should have had that, untouchability being a social construct and not part of the religion, but it is a very ingrained social construct.

I haven't been able to find anything online about what this ritual actual involves or how to do it, but I think I will write to one of the centers and ask them about it as an option for white Hindus.
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There is also a really nice essay about why non-Indians should be fully allowed into the Hindu fold here: Becoming a Hindu is Easy

Love and Respect

I think maybe I'm too negative on this blog.

I have a fear of being thought naive and so I make sure to let people know that I'm not all stary-eyed about things.

But really, what's so bad about being naive?

I can think of people I have known who have seemed very naive and devoted to this flowery, unrealistic idea of hugs and love and just frustratingly cheery. As much as I might think they were strange or misguided, I couldn't help having respect for their conviction and their general happiness. Maybe they have been right all along.

In Hinduism there are four ages, called Yugas, of the world. They get progressively worse. Right now the world is in the last age, the Kali Yuga. This means that it is very hard to sort out the truth and that people in general have become more self-centered and greedy. It is a dark world.

But I remember a talk once at my organization growing up where someone said that we can choose to live in the Golden Age. A lot of the negativity is perception only. We can see a better world and live there.

It's like one of my favorite TV shows. My idol and hero is a character named Delenn from Babylon 5. I would like to be just like her. She is calm and full of faith and strength. Once someone said of her, "Delenn does not walk in the same world that you and I walk in. She does not see the same world that you and I see. In her world, we are better than we are. We care more than we care. We act towards each other with compassion. I much prefer her world to that of my own, and I will not allow anything to threaten that."

As part of letting go of what other people think, I need to be okay with people thinking I'm stupid. If I live with conviction toward what I love, people will have to grudgingly respect that on some level!

Sometimes going out into the world feels combative and that is a terrible attitude to have in my mind. I need to remember that I am doing what I do out of respect.

I love Hinduism with all my heart and I love Indian culture and I'm not going to let a fear of looking naive, misguided, or stupid dampen that.

Why don't I just date/marry an Indian?

The only other time in life that I have encountered Indianized white women is those who have married Desis.

The stories I have heard have all involved Indian parents in India who were delighted that the new American daughter-in-law was open to Indian culture, having an Indian wedding, etc.

In these cases a white woman being a Hindu would be encouraged for family unity and continuing culture.

If I had planned my life more carefully, maybe I would have been more on the lookout for an Indian husband.

Then I'd have an Indian last name, and people would totally understand why I was "acting Indian," right? Well, I'm sure it's more complicated than that, as I'm learning from an awesome blog called Gori Girl (means "white girl," so I'm not the only one who labels herself based on her race).

I remember when I was living in Arkansas with a fiancee. I had moved there to be close to him and he was not all that interested in Indian culture. That was the period in my life when I was separated from Indians and I learned how much I missed being surrounded in that culture!

However, he did agree to go with me to a Holi celebration taking place an hour's drive away. I went up to the park while he parked the car and the people were surprised, but happy to see me. When I mentioned that my fiancee was coming, I know they were expected an Indian man. They were expecting that he had brought me here to experience culture. I could see the startle on their faces when a white guy who knew nothing at all about Indian culture arrived. I'm the one who brought him.

Not surprisingly, it was hard to be in a relationship where my culture was not appreciated. It has always been hard for my white American boyfriends to accept that we are actually in an intercultural relationship. My current boyfriend is great with that. He is endlessly supportive and kind and interested in Hindu things. When I tell him about something, he goes and researches it.

Life has not really presented me with a chance to marry an Indian man. The only one I came close to dating was a Sikh that I went to the movies with a couple of times but felt no attraction to. That would not have solved my problem, anyway, since I'm not a Sikh!

And the thing is, I don't want to date or marry someone just to give me the legitimacy to be myself.

How well would a relationship work if I had gone out looking for an Indian husband, no matter who he was, just so that people wouldn't find my religion as weird?

If I had fallen in love with an Indian man, that would have been great. But I didn't.

So even though we are the same race and have very similar ethnic backgrounds, my sweetheart and I are in an intercultural relationship.

Immitation and Flattery

Lately I've been reading a lot of language blogs, written by people who are becoming fluent in many languages. I'm going to talk about two of them today.

The first is Fluent in 3 Months. The writer, Benny, picks interesting linguistic challenges for himself every 3 months and the one I just finished reading is becoming Brazilian.

Not just to speak Portuguese fluently (and at the start he already knew it very well), but to speak it so well and behave so Brazilian that Brazilians would think he was a native.

This seemed a little shocking to me, a little like what I get accused of doing. "You can't ever be Indian, so why are you acting like it?"

I wondered if the Brazilians would be offended by what he was doing.

They were not. They were delighted and told him he was certainly "Brazilian at heart." When he started, Benny listed his reasons why he loves Brazilians and their culture and he said that he wanted to imitate them because he admired them. "I highly respect Brazilians, and even idolise them. Their way of living and enjoying life is something that Europeans and North Americans could learn a lot from...[B]ecoming Brazilian is an important attempt for me to try to understand the culture a little better; from the inside. Also, imitation is the best form of flattery! There is no culture that I have grown so fond of as I have with the Brazilian one, so I want to learn as much as I can about how they think, and how they live their lives. I’ll try to adapt my outward appearance and general behaviour to the Brazilian style."

Here is his list of what he loves about Brazilians.

This is a parallel to me in so many ways. I'll have to put together a list of what I love about Indians and Indian culture. It's hard to classify. I know that I love time spent in the Indian community and I miss it tremendously when I'm not around it!

Could I ever blend in? Well, as I said to K when she told me I looked "almost Indian" in my sari, maybe with some self-tanner. :)

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The other inspiration that I've been taking from these language blogs is being unafraid.

They talk about being brave enough to speak a language you are learning and to not worry about embarrassing yourself. That's something I need help on with language (I still pass up great opportunities to test out my Hindi out of shyness and nervousness), but also in general life. That is a major part of what I have been trying to learn, to live without the fear of what people are thinking about me.

Great inspiration for that here:

Nobody's Judging You

Secret to Overcoming Shyness

Embarrassing Mistakes


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Lastly, a great message from the owner of Gnaana.com, a speech about the importance of passing on Indian culture to one's children when living in America.

http://www.gnaana.com/newsletter/KCA_Speech.htm

A Summary, for those who are new

If you haven't been reading this blog from the beginning, I'm going to link to some of the key posts here.

If you're here to read about my experience learning language, you can go to the right-hand bar and click on the "Hindi" tag and that will take you to all Hindi related posts.

First of all, the Introduction post is an important one, to give you an idea of my background and how this all started. And More Specific Background is a continuation of the story.

Then, Conversion and a discussion of people's point of view on that issue. The Caste post is also related to that and Reactions. Also Makes Me Sad and Issue of First Impression continue the discussion of conversion. Zealous explains how converts can be overly enthusiastic.

Why follow culture as well as religion? Posts related to that are: Eccentric, Wearing a Bindi, Religion v. Culture , Appropriation, Labels , Bindi Update

Other people in my situation: People Similar to Me, Westerners Choosing Different Paths

You can't please everyone: Family, Having the Answer, Feeling Deflated

There are many more posts about technical aspects of being a Hindu, those posts are labeled "religion" and/or "philosophy." There are some fun posts and some quick posts, some recipes and songs, etc. But these are the core of what I've been talking about since I started in Decmeber 2009.

I've added some of these as links on the side bar for future new visitors as well.

Reader Questions

Basu had some questions that I am going to attempt to discuss. I won't say answer, because I am not any kind of expert. This is my take on it and I welcome you to put your own beliefs or understandings in the comments.

1. attaining moksha breaks the cycle of rebirth . but after a soul attains moksha through the law of karma , what happens?

I believe that we tend to think about our souls in too limited a way. We are so connected to this idea of ourselves, that we imagine that we go to join God with all our thoughts, feelings, personal history, opinions, grudges, etc.

We leave our body behind when we attain moksha and we also leave our mind behind. Our mind is not who we are any more than the body is. It is the soul only which attains moksha, and the soul is a part of God already.

It is described as being like coming home. We rejoin the rest of ourself, and so it's not like we're a little piece hanging out thinking about being bored while we are in the midst of moksha.

There is no mind to be bored and we are not a separate piece, we become the whole.

Of course, since we can never prove that any messages have come from people who have attained enlightenment, it's hard to be sure about these things. Life or lack thereof after death is a very tricky concept to pin down because no one really knows.

2. you said you follow advaita vedanta . which i suppose says god, a supreme being is beyond all our senses. and the personal gods visnu, durga, lakshmi etc are result of an illusion/maya. in that case how do you relate to myriads of mythological stories? do you think all of them are symbolic stories?
i found it difficult to get the symbolism of all our mythological stories.

I don't know if I would say that personal gods are maya. There's two ways of looking at them. 1) The gods are living creatures like us, but on a different level or 2) the gods are symbolic ways of understanding different aspects of the one God who is too big a concept for us to comprehend. This second one is my own belief.

Also, the one God can go by any name. "He" is ultimate reality and you can call that Atman, or Brahma, or Shiva, or Cosmic Energy, or Shakti. Any of those names can name the Absolute.

I find mythology very interesting. I rarely think that the stories "really" happened, but I don't find that means that they are any less valid or any less real. Being a trained fiction writer, I sometimes find more truth in fiction than in real life.

I don't need for religious stories to make sense or follow a linear progression. Contradictions are not a problem for me. Rather than analyze them, I usually just let them wash over me and see what I get from it.

Take Krishna and Radha and the rest of the gopis. Is it weird that there's a story of a God who is lustfully desired by hundreds of young women? Not really. I think that we are all gopis, longing for unity with God. And all of us can be beloved of God, not just one.

What about Krishna stealing butter and being a difficult child? I think it shows the joy and zest for life in children and encourages us to seek unity with that kind of delight.

Are there particular stories that trouble you?

3. you surly heard the phrase "33 koti devas/deities" in hinduism. wikipedia says that it is possible that 330 million is a mistranslation . and it is actually 33 kinds/types of gods. do you have any reference on this issue for further reading? or if you yourself can explain it to me .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptions_of_God#Conceptions_of_God_in_Hinduism

I read recently that 330 million is more like a way to express infinite. Like in English we might say "There were like a billion flies at the picnic." We have no idea of the number, so we pick a really big one to represent it.

On a DVD I watched about Going to a Temple (from Appu Series) they said that 330 million is not a literal number, but a way to express that every single thing in creation is a god (right down to blades of grass and fruit flies).

Of course, as mentioned about Advaita, in reality there is only one. One God who is everything.

I disagree with some of the things written in that Wikipedia article. To say that God is generally considered female in Hinduism is ridiculous and there are no footnotes to support that claim. There are those who worship Shakti primarily or Kali, but they are not the majority. I think most Hindus (and probably most Christians) would agree that God does not have a gender. Again, we break the Absolute down into parts so that we can understand the whole, so there are both male and female parts that balance each other. Each major male God has a female counterpart.

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I'm happy to discuss anything that anyone wants, but it is a good idea to put the questions in an email to me or a comment on the current post. I don't get any alert of new comments, so it can sometimes take a while before I discover new comments on older posts.

Tomorrow I'm going to post a summary linking to some of my key older posts so that new readers can get a quicker introduction to what's going on around here and not have to read through every post.

Additional Reflections From the Last Post

A friend made some comments to me about my complaint about the speaker at the dance performance that made me think about some things in a new way.

He pointed out that I am often unhappy at feeling like an outsider at Indian events and how difficult and frustrating that is. The woman may have had a point, although I think she chose a very poor way to express it and could have discussed the advertising possibilities with the director in private.

However, it also made me think that the dance school is not responsible for making her happy. They are there to put on an event of their beloved music and dance and it is not a failing on their part to not consider how to make sure that white people like it or are there.

And that leads back to me. It is not the responsibility of Indians at temples or in my daily life to make sure that I feel comfortable. That is entirely on my own shoulders. No one else should have to alter his life because I want validation!

I had not noticed this mindset in myself until it was pointed out and that is one of the great values of having a blog like this. The flow of ideas and the discussion of lifestyle leads me to important insights.

Thanks, everyone, for reading and for giving opinions!