<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->convert her to Hindusim, took her to temples couple of time<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Use your super-capabilities on Indians who've wandered off from Hindu Dharma into christoislamicommunism. You will be a hero!
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I tried to convert her to Hindusim, took her to temples couple of time<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->E Asian Buddhists have Buddhist families, Buddhist ancestry. I don't see any need to convert them to Hinduism when they've temporarily wandered into the christian trap; rather direct them back to Buddhism. People are happiest in their own traditions I find.
Those outside India who become authentically Hindu tend to be people who make their own way to Hinduism. The converted always cling too hard or leave as easily as they came. But those who were led to Hinduism by their own discovery tend to be very thorough Hindus, from what I can tell.
See for instance this person, he looks to have been a Hindu in the lives prior to his Irish incarnation (meanwhile the christoBritish reaction to him is mortification, which is always amusing):
http://www.hinduwisdom.info/quotes361_380.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Major-General Charles Stuart - 'Hindoo' Stuart (1758- 1828)Â was an Irish man and a member of the Asiatic Society, who came out to India in his teens.
<b>He seems to have been almost immediately attracted to Hinduism and within a year of his arrival in Calcutta had adopted the practice-which he continued to his death-of walking every morning from his house to bathe in and worship the Ganga according to Hindu custom. </b>Â
"Incredible as it may sound," wrote one horrified officer, "there is at this moment a British general in the Company's service, who observes all the customs of the Hindoos, makes offerings at their temples, carries about their idols with him, and is accompanied by fakirs who dress his food. He is not treated as a madman, but would not perhaps be misplaced if he had his idols, fakirs, bedas, and shasters, in some corner of Bedlam, removed from its more rational and unfortunate inmates."
(I could be wrong, but IIRC Bedlam was a notorious asylum.)
Stuart's military contemporaries never quite knew what to make of their general. One of his junior colonels, William Linnaeus Gardner, himself a British convert to Shia Islam, wrote how "<b>he regularly performs his pooja and avoids the sight of beef". Later, Gardner noted that Stuart was planning to take a week off to bathe at the Kumbh Mela,</b> where he was later seen sitting "surrounded by a dozen naked faqueers who, joining their hands over his head, gave him Benediction . . . <b>Every Hindoo he salutes with Jey Sittaramjee [Victory to Lord Ram and Queen Sita]".</b>Â Â
Eccentric as he may have been, Stuart was a central figure in the history of the western appreciation of Indian art. The inventory of goods that Stuart left behind him when he died indicates the degree to which he wore Indian clothes and had taken on Indian customs such as chewing paan; it also details <b>the huge number of statues of Hindu deities which Stuart appears to have worshiped. Certainly he built a Hindu temple at Saugor, and when he visited Europe in 1804 he took a collection of his Hindu household gods with him.</b>
(Very much like a traditional Hindu, because they never leave their household Moorthies behind.)
<b>He learnt Indian languages and in his writings championed all things Indian and Hindu. He opposed Christian missionary activity and the notion that the West was morally superior.</b> He denounced James Mill's bigoted ideas of Hinduism and published a pamphlet entitled Vindications of the Hindoos by a Bengal Officer, which suggested that 'Hinduism little needs the meliorating hand of Christianity to render its votaries a sufficiently correct and moral people for all the useful purposes of a civilized society, and remarked that:
" Whenever I look around me, in the vast region of Hindoo Mythology, I discover piety in the garb of allegory: and I see Morality, at every turn, blended with every tale; and, as far as I can rely on my own judgment, it appears the most complete and ample system of Moral Allegory that the world has ever produced."
When he died, Hindoo Stuart's collection of Hindu sculpture-the largest and most important ever amassed by a European-ended up in the British Museum where it still forms the core of the Oriental collection. Stuart himself was buried in the Christian cemetery in South Park Street-but with his idols in his coffin and under a tomb which takes the form of a Hindu temple, with a carved stone gateway, the recesses on each side of which were occupied by figures of the Goddess Ganga, Prithvi Devi.
(source: India Britannica - By Geoffrey Moorhouse p. 89 and When Albionâs sons went native - By W Dalrymple and Gods and monsters â By William Dalrymple Guardian Saturday August 25, 2007).
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Reading the above, he seems a Hindu through-and-through. More Hindu than many Indians born in Hindu families today who start talking monopolytheism and then talk about "idols" and "myths" and fables about how "originally Hinduism would have had no Gods" <!--emo&:blink:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /><!--endemo-->
The bits I highlighted in red I find important for different reasons.
1. The christoBrits were obviously freaked by the effect that Hinduism had on one of their soldiers. If the events that transpired in the Americas (where so many Europeans left christoterrorism and joined the blissful NA native Tradition, see http://freetruth.50webs.org/A4a.htm#NativeAmerica ) was in christoBritish memory at all, they would have been wary that Hindu Dharma might pose a threat too.
2. Stuart genuinely collected moorthies (like Hindus do). However it unfortunately gave the christobritish tyrants their vile idea: the christoterrorist tactic of stealing our sacred Hindu vigrahams and items, like the Portuguese did before them. Were they afraid of the effect our Gods had on people? I mean, they thought them so ugly anyway, why steal from us what they despised and what meant the world to us? Spite. 'Twould be another very christo reason.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I think you made a mistake by taking her to just temples. Rather she must be taken to Hindu philosophy, options it provides and explain that Buddhism is only a branch of Hinduism. Whatever Buddha did was what Hindu Rishis before him did.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->From my own experience, I find that E Asians are far more interested in our Gods. They have a lot of philosophy themselves - Asia is not like the christo-conditioned west which has been starved of philosophy (starved of all independent thought really) and which therefore becomes infatuated with the truths in the first statements of Eastern scripture they come across. Asia is rich in philosophy such as Tao te ching, Buddhist teachings. They are used to encountering truths in traditional teachings.
But they tend to like our Gods because our Gods are like their own. The tradition of why Lakshmi chose Mahavishnu as her spouse is something that had great impact and they also found Kumarasambhavam profoundly romantic, I heard one retelling it to their friend <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+May 19 2008, 11:03 PM-->QUOTE(Mudy @ May 19 2008, 11:03 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->well she liked prayers(Aarti) and food(Parasd) but Gods were dark color in Singapore, that was a problem. I told her in North India they are white color. <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->[right][snapback]81787[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Though I have some acquaintances who are Singaporean Chinese (mum's friends and their kids), I don't know them as well as close friends who are ethnic Chinese from Taiwan and China. I know they are not hung up on colour in the least - they find the christodialogue on colour odd, both where it concerns Gods and humans.
A Taiwanese Buddhist friend once talked to me about how there were certain traditions they had that western people would never understand. She was referring to their Vigrahams and the pictures of Gods (she and her sister carry pictures of their Gods and Bodhisattvas in their wallets and I have found them looking at their pictures regularly): a God with a Goddess on each side, similar to how we have images of Mahavishnu with Sri and Bhudevi.
I said how we had a great many misunderstood traditions as well, and told her about how KAli was so often maligned (she was even made the baddie in that old Clash of the Titans film or some similar movie where there was a claymation villain supposedly representing KAli). My friend wanted to know more, so I told her about ShyAmA and Kalidasa. She found our Goddess inspiring and ended up making a few paintings of KAli and some of the events around Kalidasa. They came out about right colour-wise and her rendition of KAli was certainly a beauty, but looked very E Asian to me and so did Kalidasa, as I am more familiar with the drawings where KAli looks Bengali (or other Indian)... In fact, her paintings looked like a very dark version of their Goddess of Mercy rather than an Indian Goddess.
A well-known millionaire Taiwanese is married to an Indian Hindu woman who apparently looks asal like Claudia Black (the very beautiful Greek-Jewish actress from Australia who played the heroine in that "Farscape" sci-fi). Should say that I've not really seen the Hindu lady myself except in a photo where she's too small to form any accurate opinion about likenesses on, but I've been told of the "striking similarity" by a huge fan of Claudia Black who's met the Hindu woman in person and I think they will be quite critical about whether anyone looks/doesn't look like their favourite actor. The beautiful Indian lady (a Patel, and from a very affluent family herself) is from Gujarat. Although people are very fair there, Taiwanese people, including the men, are much fairer than Indians in most cases. Still her colour is no barrier because Taiwanese Buddhists don't tend to care. (Also, she looks like Claudia Black!)
Another case off the top of my head is a Japanese lady married to a Sri Lankan Tamizh, who are my mum's friends. In my own generation, I only know of Indians dating E Asian people, no marriages come to mind at present.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->but Gods were dark color in Singapore, that was a problem. I told her in North India they are white color. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Temple Vigrahas in S India (and hence all places in SE Asia that had Hindu influence from S Indian direction) are made of black stone. It is considered the material that Vigrahas generally <i>must</i> be made of (although there are special circumstances prescribing other materials like Pachai Lingam/Jade Lingam and natural formations in stone). The Hindu sculpting scriptures in S India prescribe this black stone, and sacred rites accompany Vigraham-making. In TN we can't make Vigraham in all materials, Agamas are very specific.
But while Temple Vigrahams are black stone, private puja rooms have Mukham in silver (perhaps Bronze and other metal too?), generally only the Queen and King will have their Mukham in Gold (just like Golasu in Gold is only worn by God and Apsaras, while humans wear silver).
The christobritish always spoke with great horror about how black the Vigraha were in India - I had so far always thought they meant it had been uniformly so all over India. I do remember that a documentary on "Afghanistan's minority" or something showed the same black Lingam being worshipped there amongst the Hindu minority.
Hindu traditional sculptures and drawings show Gods in their real colours: which is every colour under the sun - something the christobrits didn't understand at all of course, as they can't see beyond the "black stone! black stone! black hindoo, black hindoo" They thought that just because Mahavishnu's Vigraham reclining on Shesha is black stone that Mahavishnu himself - who is blue - is made of black stone too (<!--emo&:blink:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /><!--endemo--> don't ask, never did understand christologic).
Sculptures and paintings being more representative colour-wise, one can see the accurate colours like parrot-green Meenakshi with pink/fair Sundareshwara, "MegashyAma" Rama (dark rain cloud blue Rama <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> ), Golden Gowri, blue-throated purple Shiva SriKantha and the like. And at least different colour saris representing the gunas presided over by Saraswati (Shweta), Lakshmi and Durga.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I tried to convert her to Hindusim, took her to temples couple of time<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->E Asian Buddhists have Buddhist families, Buddhist ancestry. I don't see any need to convert them to Hinduism when they've temporarily wandered into the christian trap; rather direct them back to Buddhism. People are happiest in their own traditions I find.
Those outside India who become authentically Hindu tend to be people who make their own way to Hinduism. The converted always cling too hard or leave as easily as they came. But those who were led to Hinduism by their own discovery tend to be very thorough Hindus, from what I can tell.
See for instance this person, he looks to have been a Hindu in the lives prior to his Irish incarnation (meanwhile the christoBritish reaction to him is mortification, which is always amusing):
http://www.hinduwisdom.info/quotes361_380.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Major-General Charles Stuart - 'Hindoo' Stuart (1758- 1828)Â was an Irish man and a member of the Asiatic Society, who came out to India in his teens.
<b>He seems to have been almost immediately attracted to Hinduism and within a year of his arrival in Calcutta had adopted the practice-which he continued to his death-of walking every morning from his house to bathe in and worship the Ganga according to Hindu custom. </b>Â
"Incredible as it may sound," wrote one horrified officer, "there is at this moment a British general in the Company's service, who observes all the customs of the Hindoos, makes offerings at their temples, carries about their idols with him, and is accompanied by fakirs who dress his food. He is not treated as a madman, but would not perhaps be misplaced if he had his idols, fakirs, bedas, and shasters, in some corner of Bedlam, removed from its more rational and unfortunate inmates."
(I could be wrong, but IIRC Bedlam was a notorious asylum.)
Stuart's military contemporaries never quite knew what to make of their general. One of his junior colonels, William Linnaeus Gardner, himself a British convert to Shia Islam, wrote how "<b>he regularly performs his pooja and avoids the sight of beef". Later, Gardner noted that Stuart was planning to take a week off to bathe at the Kumbh Mela,</b> where he was later seen sitting "surrounded by a dozen naked faqueers who, joining their hands over his head, gave him Benediction . . . <b>Every Hindoo he salutes with Jey Sittaramjee [Victory to Lord Ram and Queen Sita]".</b>Â Â
Eccentric as he may have been, Stuart was a central figure in the history of the western appreciation of Indian art. The inventory of goods that Stuart left behind him when he died indicates the degree to which he wore Indian clothes and had taken on Indian customs such as chewing paan; it also details <b>the huge number of statues of Hindu deities which Stuart appears to have worshiped. Certainly he built a Hindu temple at Saugor, and when he visited Europe in 1804 he took a collection of his Hindu household gods with him.</b>
(Very much like a traditional Hindu, because they never leave their household Moorthies behind.)
<b>He learnt Indian languages and in his writings championed all things Indian and Hindu. He opposed Christian missionary activity and the notion that the West was morally superior.</b> He denounced James Mill's bigoted ideas of Hinduism and published a pamphlet entitled Vindications of the Hindoos by a Bengal Officer, which suggested that 'Hinduism little needs the meliorating hand of Christianity to render its votaries a sufficiently correct and moral people for all the useful purposes of a civilized society, and remarked that:
" Whenever I look around me, in the vast region of Hindoo Mythology, I discover piety in the garb of allegory: and I see Morality, at every turn, blended with every tale; and, as far as I can rely on my own judgment, it appears the most complete and ample system of Moral Allegory that the world has ever produced."
When he died, Hindoo Stuart's collection of Hindu sculpture-the largest and most important ever amassed by a European-ended up in the British Museum where it still forms the core of the Oriental collection. Stuart himself was buried in the Christian cemetery in South Park Street-but with his idols in his coffin and under a tomb which takes the form of a Hindu temple, with a carved stone gateway, the recesses on each side of which were occupied by figures of the Goddess Ganga, Prithvi Devi.
(source: India Britannica - By Geoffrey Moorhouse p. 89 and When Albionâs sons went native - By W Dalrymple and Gods and monsters â By William Dalrymple Guardian Saturday August 25, 2007).
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Reading the above, he seems a Hindu through-and-through. More Hindu than many Indians born in Hindu families today who start talking monopolytheism and then talk about "idols" and "myths" and fables about how "originally Hinduism would have had no Gods" <!--emo&:blink:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /><!--endemo-->
The bits I highlighted in red I find important for different reasons.
1. The christoBrits were obviously freaked by the effect that Hinduism had on one of their soldiers. If the events that transpired in the Americas (where so many Europeans left christoterrorism and joined the blissful NA native Tradition, see http://freetruth.50webs.org/A4a.htm#NativeAmerica ) was in christoBritish memory at all, they would have been wary that Hindu Dharma might pose a threat too.
2. Stuart genuinely collected moorthies (like Hindus do). However it unfortunately gave the christobritish tyrants their vile idea: the christoterrorist tactic of stealing our sacred Hindu vigrahams and items, like the Portuguese did before them. Were they afraid of the effect our Gods had on people? I mean, they thought them so ugly anyway, why steal from us what they despised and what meant the world to us? Spite. 'Twould be another very christo reason.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I think you made a mistake by taking her to just temples. Rather she must be taken to Hindu philosophy, options it provides and explain that Buddhism is only a branch of Hinduism. Whatever Buddha did was what Hindu Rishis before him did.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->From my own experience, I find that E Asians are far more interested in our Gods. They have a lot of philosophy themselves - Asia is not like the christo-conditioned west which has been starved of philosophy (starved of all independent thought really) and which therefore becomes infatuated with the truths in the first statements of Eastern scripture they come across. Asia is rich in philosophy such as Tao te ching, Buddhist teachings. They are used to encountering truths in traditional teachings.
But they tend to like our Gods because our Gods are like their own. The tradition of why Lakshmi chose Mahavishnu as her spouse is something that had great impact and they also found Kumarasambhavam profoundly romantic, I heard one retelling it to their friend <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--><!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+May 19 2008, 11:03 PM-->QUOTE(Mudy @ May 19 2008, 11:03 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->well she liked prayers(Aarti) and food(Parasd) but Gods were dark color in Singapore, that was a problem. I told her in North India they are white color. <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->[right][snapback]81787[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Though I have some acquaintances who are Singaporean Chinese (mum's friends and their kids), I don't know them as well as close friends who are ethnic Chinese from Taiwan and China. I know they are not hung up on colour in the least - they find the christodialogue on colour odd, both where it concerns Gods and humans.
A Taiwanese Buddhist friend once talked to me about how there were certain traditions they had that western people would never understand. She was referring to their Vigrahams and the pictures of Gods (she and her sister carry pictures of their Gods and Bodhisattvas in their wallets and I have found them looking at their pictures regularly): a God with a Goddess on each side, similar to how we have images of Mahavishnu with Sri and Bhudevi.
I said how we had a great many misunderstood traditions as well, and told her about how KAli was so often maligned (she was even made the baddie in that old Clash of the Titans film or some similar movie where there was a claymation villain supposedly representing KAli). My friend wanted to know more, so I told her about ShyAmA and Kalidasa. She found our Goddess inspiring and ended up making a few paintings of KAli and some of the events around Kalidasa. They came out about right colour-wise and her rendition of KAli was certainly a beauty, but looked very E Asian to me and so did Kalidasa, as I am more familiar with the drawings where KAli looks Bengali (or other Indian)... In fact, her paintings looked like a very dark version of their Goddess of Mercy rather than an Indian Goddess.
A well-known millionaire Taiwanese is married to an Indian Hindu woman who apparently looks asal like Claudia Black (the very beautiful Greek-Jewish actress from Australia who played the heroine in that "Farscape" sci-fi). Should say that I've not really seen the Hindu lady myself except in a photo where she's too small to form any accurate opinion about likenesses on, but I've been told of the "striking similarity" by a huge fan of Claudia Black who's met the Hindu woman in person and I think they will be quite critical about whether anyone looks/doesn't look like their favourite actor. The beautiful Indian lady (a Patel, and from a very affluent family herself) is from Gujarat. Although people are very fair there, Taiwanese people, including the men, are much fairer than Indians in most cases. Still her colour is no barrier because Taiwanese Buddhists don't tend to care. (Also, she looks like Claudia Black!)
Another case off the top of my head is a Japanese lady married to a Sri Lankan Tamizh, who are my mum's friends. In my own generation, I only know of Indians dating E Asian people, no marriages come to mind at present.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->but Gods were dark color in Singapore, that was a problem. I told her in North India they are white color. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Temple Vigrahas in S India (and hence all places in SE Asia that had Hindu influence from S Indian direction) are made of black stone. It is considered the material that Vigrahas generally <i>must</i> be made of (although there are special circumstances prescribing other materials like Pachai Lingam/Jade Lingam and natural formations in stone). The Hindu sculpting scriptures in S India prescribe this black stone, and sacred rites accompany Vigraham-making. In TN we can't make Vigraham in all materials, Agamas are very specific.
But while Temple Vigrahams are black stone, private puja rooms have Mukham in silver (perhaps Bronze and other metal too?), generally only the Queen and King will have their Mukham in Gold (just like Golasu in Gold is only worn by God and Apsaras, while humans wear silver).
The christobritish always spoke with great horror about how black the Vigraha were in India - I had so far always thought they meant it had been uniformly so all over India. I do remember that a documentary on "Afghanistan's minority" or something showed the same black Lingam being worshipped there amongst the Hindu minority.
Hindu traditional sculptures and drawings show Gods in their real colours: which is every colour under the sun - something the christobrits didn't understand at all of course, as they can't see beyond the "black stone! black stone! black hindoo, black hindoo" They thought that just because Mahavishnu's Vigraham reclining on Shesha is black stone that Mahavishnu himself - who is blue - is made of black stone too (<!--emo&:blink:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /><!--endemo--> don't ask, never did understand christologic).
Sculptures and paintings being more representative colour-wise, one can see the accurate colours like parrot-green Meenakshi with pink/fair Sundareshwara, "MegashyAma" Rama (dark rain cloud blue Rama <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> ), Golden Gowri, blue-throated purple Shiva SriKantha and the like. And at least different colour saris representing the gunas presided over by Saraswati (Shweta), Lakshmi and Durga.