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Thread: Common misconceptions and pet peeves

  1. #1
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    Common misconceptions and pet peeves

    Vannakkam all: I wonder what other people's experiences are when trying to explain Hinduism to non - Hindus. what are the most commonly held wrong ideas about out faith? Maybe there is insight to be had for all of us for those days when we're answering.

    For me it's this one: Hinduism is just another religion (read Abrahamic) and can be understood easily by reading a few paragraphs from Wiki.

    My pet peeve is when others see it that way, lumped in with Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans, and all those other religions. So if we're religious, we're only religious in the sense of being religious in the Abrahamic way.

    I'm looking forward to our Indian responses ... what do the tourists (visiting the Taj Mahal with a camera) think?

    Aum Namasivaya
    Last edited by Eastern Mind; 21 June 2011 at 07:41 PM.

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    Re: Common misconceptions and pet peeves

    That there are anywhere from 330,000 to 300,000,000 gods and goddesses. I tell people there is only One God who manifests in many forms, either male or female. God is not limited. People don't get it.
    śivasya hridayam viṣṇur viṣṇoscha hridayam śivaḥ

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    Re: Common misconceptions and pet peeves

    That it's the goal of every Hindu to dissolve self into the impersonal Brahman.

    And

    You have to be Indian to follow SD

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    Re: Common misconceptions and pet peeves

    Personally, for me it's the 'idol worship'. They just don't realize that we don't worship the statue of Lord Vishnu, or Durga. We worship the great god that uses the statue as a vessel. Nope. They still don't get it. And the caste system. They don't understand that either.
    Jai Maa Durga

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    Re: Common misconceptions and pet peeves

    Namaste EM
    thankfully i never had the privilege to explain hinduism to any westerner in all my say 20 or so years, in west.

    Iam sure you have had a plenty of explaining to do for almost your entire adult life. Feel bad for you.

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    Re: Common misconceptions and pet peeves

    Quote Originally Posted by charitra View Post
    Namaste EM
    thankfully i never had the privilege to explain hinduism to any westerner in all my say 20 or so years, in west.

    Iam sure you have had a plenty of explaining to do for almost your entire adult life. Feel bad for you.
    Vannakkam: Actually its pretty rare. But still I like to be prepared. Because of our natural keeping stuff within, we're not like the proseletysers constantly having to explain. It usually takes quite awhile for someone to figure I'm a Hindu. Even then they mistake it for Islam or Buddhism. Listening does help, but some days I wonder.

    Aum Namasivaya

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    Re: Common misconceptions and pet peeves

    Namast, all.

    My times of annoyance come from prejudice against/ignorance of India, rather than Hinduism. I've been asked by folks how my studies of "Hindu" are going, because they believe that's the name of the language I'm learning. A few people are deeply frightened and concerned that I'm going to be murdered or kidnapped in India because "things are so volatile in the Middle East right now" or because "you never know what will happen to you in those kind of countries," and I've also had expressed to me worries about my health because "it's the Third World, and their primitive medical facilities won't be anything like ours here, if you get sick." I'm also asked at least once a week if my sticker-bindi is a piercing - an understandable query about the jewelled ones, but kind of weird for the red velvety dots - and once I was asked why I had a sticker of a "number 30" on my forehead.

    Unexpectedly, my religion never comes under question, even from the few people who seem to think - based on the above remarks - that it originated from savages or something. In fact, people seem to respect it, asking questions and expressing admiration. But I wonder if there's a bit of inherent prejudice here as well; I've noticed that others feel "safer" talking to me than they would an Indian person, and sometimes preface questions with "I've always wanted to ask this--".

    It doesn't make me angry; it makes me sad. We internalize in the West this attitude that the rest of the world is something to be afraid of, that anyone who doesn't speak our language or do as we do is somehow either "primitive" or "volatile" and can't be approached, that even knowing about other places is pointless and not worth the bother. I try to simply give knowledge - to correct misconceptions wherever I find them, and remember that getting annoyed is egotistical and won't educate anyone.

    Indraneela
    ===
    Oṁ Indrāya Namaḥ.
    Oṁ Namaḥ Śivāya.

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    Re: Common misconceptions and pet peeves

    Quote Originally Posted by cmorel02 View Post
    Personally, for me it's the 'idol worship'. They just don't realize that we don't worship the statue of Lord Vishnu, or Durga. We worship the great god that uses the statue as a vessel.
    It's also a window into the other world. Humans are very dependent on the senses. For some faiths it was seeing their gods personified as a tree or a mountain. It's the constraints of the world we live in, and we need a connection to the other world. People don't get it.
    śivasya hridayam viṣṇur viṣṇoscha hridayam śivaḥ

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    Re: Common misconceptions and pet peeves

    In regards to my sticker bindi - 'are you married?' and 'you know that means you're married?'

    In regards to my current non-vegetarian status - 'yu can't be Hindu if you eat meat!'

    'Don't you worship cows?'

    'I thought you could only be Hindu if you were Indian?' this one was from a friend in class who is a Turkish Muslim so the comparison explanation 'you're Muslim but you're not Arabic' helped her to understand.

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    Re: Common misconceptions and pet peeves

    Quote Originally Posted by Divine Kala View Post
    In regards to my sticker bindi - 'are you married?' and 'you know that means you're married?'
    Vannakkam: I find that one kind of funny. No offense intended. One time I when it came out that I was Hindu (because of my name) this guy just told me I couldn't be one.

    So there's me: having been practicing 30 years or so, on a pretty regular basis,

    and then there's uh, you (this guy I was talking to) ... you've read a one page article in an encyclopedia, and you discussed it over a beer with some guy from India who wasn't a Hindu...

    Now clearly, from that background, it is YOU who knows far more about my religion than I do. You're the expert, and I'm just the idiot bumbler bumbling blindly through some religion I'm trying to fake I know.

    Yup, that's it. Sorry to have bothered you, Sir. Thanks for the valuable information. I shall cease and desist.


    Aum Namasivaya

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