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    Some Personal Thoughts

    Namaste,

    When someone in the forum has a question, we attempt to answer it to the best of our abilities. Since we all come from different backgrounds, the responses are also varied and sometimes conflicting. It appears that we have different specialities - some are very literate in scriptures, others have a lifetime of experience to draw upon, and some possess a mix of the two. Some questions are area specific - the answers may be applicable either to residents of India or of those residing in the Western world. Would it not be advisable to choose questions pertaining to our area of expertise, or at least areas we have some knowledge of before jumping in to make a post. For example, I am a HDF shudra who tends to stay near the feet of the forum section listings, leaving the hallowed upper reaches to those who have deep scriptural knowledge. I tend to mix the general Hindu philosophy with a lifetime of personal experiences and intuition to make posts. People with brahminical qualities/bend could opt out of tackling mundane posts on everyday news events/politics. People with actual yoga/ayurveda/jyotish etc. experience could choose to answer questions from their fields. Of course, many a times, questions involve overlapping backgrounds, in which case there will be advice from different perspectives. This is just an observation/suggestion and HDF being an open forum, I am not suggesting that anyone should refrain from making any posts; but being disciplined would produce better results.

    Another item is that many a times consulting 'your guru' is suggested for answer to a question. Common sense tells us that in the West, you can hardly find learned people capable of serving as gurus. Many people are fortunate even to have a mandir in their neighborhood, and often have to drive long distances just to have a darshan of the deities. Even in India, one could find many fake pandas (guru type material) ready to take your money, but unable to provide anything tangible. So, we should take that into account for our answers. Somebody once asked about yoga positions and out came the answer to consult your guru. Are you kidding me? What guru? Where can you find one in Timbuktu? Assuming that everyone lives in a large metropolitan area with tons of gurus to choose from is a big fallacy.

    The answers to 'area specific' questions become very amusing at times. Someone from Australia expressed disappointment at not being able to connect with divinity through bhajans because of the language barrier. In came the answer from a senior member, 'start speaking Hindi'. Now, one would be hard pressed to learn Hindi (or one of the other Indian languages) in the West, much less 'start speaking' from today onwards. It is laughable to expect a person from a Western country with no one around him/her to teach Hindi to 'start speaking Hindi'. What does that mean? The person does not even know the Hindi alphabet, has no one to teach it to him/her; how in the world do they 'start speaking Hindi'. Obviously the brains need to be put in gear before we start pounding on the keyboard, else something extremely stupid could come out and be posted for all to see. Another person wanted help in identifying the available avenues to go to India and learn Hindi. The premise was to be able to become a Hindi teacher for Hindu kids at some mandir in the US. But one of the answers was that it was not worth learning Hindi (or any other India language) as people on the street in India speak a version of Hindi which is highly contaminated with Arabic/Farsi/Turkish/English words. Overlooked was the fact that it was a Westerner wanting to learn Hindi to teach it to the Hindu kids in the US, and not to converse with people on the streets of Delhi or Mumbai or Hyderabad.

    Many more thoughts come to mind, but I will stop with these for now.

    Pranam.
    Last edited by Believer; 13 April 2013 at 10:56 AM.

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