Spirituality/Culture

It started with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the UN General Assembly last September when he expressed a “wish” that June 21 should be adopted as the International Day for Yoga. Nine months later, the entire government in India — and all Indian embassies/high commissions abroad — are preparing for a Yoga spectacle. And [...]

a whole industry has grown up in the name of ‘secularism’, ‘progress’ and ironically ‘tolerance’ to disassociate yoga from being Hindu. In this warped universe, Hinduism and the term Hindu only gets associated with Sati, caste, rape, human sacrifice and other ‘savagery'. [...]

NEW DELHI: No temple, but here’s a museum. The Narendra Modi government is planning to build a state of-the-art Ram museum in the politically charged town of Ayodhya. Tourism minister Mahesh Sharma told ET that the museum will be part of the proposed ‘Ramayana circuit’. The locus of past and possible political battles — the [...]

Yoga has become a diverse phenomenon throughout the world from spiritual gurus and meditation methods to physical fitness programs. Yet there is no doubt that Yoga as a term and as a movement overall has its roots in the Hindu and Vedic tradition over the last several thousand years and its prime texts like the [...]

There could be no more appropriate day for honoring Yoga throughout the world then on June 21, the day of the summer solstice. Yoga’s connection with light and with the Sun goes back to Yoga’s very origin thousands of years ago in India. The system of Yoga philosophy or Yoga Darshana, on which the Yoga [...]

For the first time, an International Yoga Day will be celebrated on 21st of June this year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had suggested this honour for yoga and his suggestion got overwhelming support from 177 countries. Yoga has indeed become popular all over the world. Many millions practice it – from schoolchildren to senior citizens [...]

Monotheism – particularly as viewed from the perspective of those who follow pluralistic traditions – often appears as a kind of arrogance, not as a type of true spirituality. That there is only One True God, and all other Gods, are false, sounds like a statement of arrogant intolerance, not an experience of higher consciousness. [...]

“Swami Chinmayanda was an exemplary teacher – clear, convincing and with a lot of humour. On one of his Jnana Yajnas I took notes and wrote a long article for a German magazine. Later I gave its English translation to him. Swami Chinmayananda read through it and acknowledged that I had conveyed the teaching well, [...]

Growing up in San Bernardino in the 1980s a child of immigrants from Gujarat, India, Pixar Animation Studios artist Sanjay Patel straddled two worlds. Like many American kids of the era, he played with Transformers, watched Looney Toons cartoons and read Superman comics, but he also performed a daily Hindu ritual of meditation and prayer [...]

When my son (who at the time of writing is 4 years old) was born, I felt connected with the vastness of eternity in a way that I had never felt before. Having a a child of your own is an amazing experience – seeing someone who looks like you playing, learning, being mischievous in [...]