My Parents' Guru

I was startled to find out that my parents' guru, Sri Bharati Tirtha, is being featured in Hinduism Today as Hindu of the Year! This is the man that we went to India to see. We spent a week at his ashram and went to see him two to three times a day (well, my parents did. I went once a day, occasionally two).

It's here! The book is here!

It is available both in print and in Kindle

In Print $14.99
In Print at Amazon $14.99
Kindle $3.99

Eventually it will be on all ebook formats. It is over 400 pages long! So, that's a lot of material that's probably much easier to read in book format than digging through this website.

It would be so awesome if all the regulars here would head over to Amazon and write some reviews! :D There is also a Facebook fan page! And, you know, tell all your friends!

The blog itself will no longer be active. I may, perhaps, occasionally post something that catches my attention, but for the most part I will stop posting. I have come to a point where I have said what I wanted to say, I have engaged and discussed with you all, and arrived happily at a place where I am content with my religion, no longer feeling any need to prove myself to anyone.

I believe the book will be valuable for others who are following a similar path to mine. If you are newly arrived here, all the information is in the archives, but the book packages it together in an easier to manage format.

For all my wonderful friends here, thank you! Thank you for your support and kindness and engagement with this subject.

I love you.

Ambaa

Book Imminent

I have been busy, busy, busy preparing to turn this blog into a book. There's a lot of formatting and referencing and such to do. It should be done very soon, so stay tuned! :D

Also get updates (and make me happy!) by "liking" the Facebook page:

Clothes and Politics

It turns out, apparently women's clothes is symbolic and a topic for debate and difficulty. I was chatting with a guy recently who said that he noticed from my blog that I wear Indian clothes frequently and that he wasn't sure, as a feminist, how he felt about that.

I don't tend to think about the political implication of my clothes.

I wear clothes because they suit my mood, they make me feel a certain way (elegant or cute or graceful), they are pretty, they are comfortable.

But clothes have other meanings, particularly female's clothes. Clothes can be a sign of oppression, they can be forced on a woman (such as a burka, or Hindu daughters-in-law who can be required to wear sari).

When I get dressed, I never worry about those things. I'm not a very political person, I guess. I just do my thing and I don't always see the big implications of it.

I don't believe that salwar kameez are clothes of female oppression, what do you think?

To avoid forcing women to wear certain types of clothes, doesn't it make sense to allow us to wear what we like best? Are there reasons not to do this?

For me, the clothes of oppression are the ankle length skirts that I used to wear in SES. I still sometimes wear ankle-length skirts, but it's rare. I only own two now, when that used to be my entire wardrobe. I've never forgotten the humiliation of being sent back to my room to change when I wore a skirt I borrowed from my mother that was mid-calf length instead of all the way to my ankles.

I don't want it to sound like I'm upset by this, I just thought it was an interesting topic to talk about!

Edited to Add: Picture of me at work today, this kurta is from my trip to India and the biggest problem with it is that it makes me look fat!

More on Hindi

It is ridiculously frustrating that I've been studying a language for two years, and steadily studying it, and still can only say very basic things.

However, languages are not easy to learn, particularly for someone who has only one language.

I think perhaps I need to let go of the goal of speaking and focus on a goal of understanding. If I take the pressure off myself to produce something and just be happy with how much my ability to understand is improving, maybe someday, after a lot of listening, I'll begin to be able to speak.

I've wanted so badly to be bilingual, and I chose this language because it's one that would have practical purpose in my life!

I will attempt some more simple sentences at some point soon, but I'm going to try not to get angry with myself when they're wrong!

Hindi Practice

My Hindi learning has slowed way down. It's hard to maintain enthusiasm across the long haul of getting fluent. I'm at a point where I can understand the gist of a lot that I hear, but that's about it and it's not good enough!

Sometime I would like to do is start writing a few posts or parts of posts in Hindi for practice. I tried doing this through lang-8, a website designed for you to write in your target language and get corrections, but I feel frustrated there that I can't explain myself in English. I don't trust the corrections I'm getting because there is no "why" included.

So I'm going to occasionally post little stories and things in Hindi and if you know the language, feel free to correct my usage in the comments, and it would be really helpful to say something like "the reason for this correction is that 'ki' is only used for..." etc. But I trust you guys to be making changes based on real need, rather than on cosmetics.

When I do Hindi posts, I'll plan to also do English posts with them.

So, here we go...

अब जो गर्मियों में यहाँ है, मैं बाहर व्यस्त हूँ. पिछले शनिवार मैं दोस्त के साथ चिड़ियाघर के पास गए. मैं धूप की कालिमा है.

कल रात मैं अच्छा आदमी के साथ रात का खाना खाया. मैं भी कल उसे देखती हूँ.

Review: The Jedi and the Lotus

This book was not what I was expecting.

I have long been telling people that the religious aspects of the Star Wars movies (as least the original ones) are based on Hindu philosophy. I point out the direct quotes from the Gita that Yoda spouts. I vaguely try to explain how the force is very much related to the Hindu idea of all things being connected by energy.

When I was sent this book, The Jedi and the Lotus, to review, I expected to find a few more tidbits to support my assertions at parties. I thought it would support a fun little preoccupation, but it is so much more than that.

This little book is much denser and more heavily researched than I anticipated. It is packed with fascinating information. More than just showing how Star Wars was influenced by Hinduism, it takes beliefs and experiences from Eastern philosophy and shows how both Star Wars and Hinduism support them. It goes into tremendous depth.

There is an introduction about Joseph Campbell and his connection to the making of Star Wars and there are quotes from George Lucus, but it is also full of footnotes and research and information about some of the most advanced and mystical of the Hindu practices.

Chapters are subtitled: "Star Wars and Brahman," "Nature in Hinduism and in Star Wars," "Spaceships and the Vedic Literature" and more.

This book is a really fascinating read and I definitely recommend it. It is much bigger than it appears at first!