Dichotomy of Different Beliefs

Temples are places where pilgrimages and offerings are made. wherefore the veneratepers achieve blessing by consuming the food ("leftovers") that was offered to the graven image or goddess and then blessed by those gods or goddesses. additionally while priests, who are typically men, offer up prayers for the worshippers in the temple, it is the women of the family line who offer up prayers for their household when before the household shrine.

This leads to the most interesting part of the read for me -- the role of women in the Hindu society. This role seems to be as complex and divers(a) as the religion itself. For example, before the writings of Manu, it appears that women had much to a greater extent latitude in what they studied and the types of lives they chose to live. Girls studied the sacred texts and went with the student ritual, just as boys did. In addition, once they went finished renunciatory rites, they could choose to live the life of an aesthete as opposed to getting married. There is in addition the choice for the woman to " sweep up" a deity and fulfill her female dharma as a temple prostitute. There are even ancient writings where the women are the heroines of the story or are the writers of sacred prayers and texts. By the time the Laws of Manu were distributed, however, women had become servants of the husband and family and the only religious leadership they displayed was before the home shrine.

Despite this apparent misogyny, however, there does seem to be a separatio

Finally, reading about the established temples and worship sites in the United States was very(prenominal) intriguing, particularly the way the worshippers would almost recreate a toy India where ever the site happened to be, whether it be in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania or in Malibu, California. One of the interesting problems that Hindus have in recreating these temples is base in the very nature of Hinduism itself. The nature of Hinduism is that one whitethorn decide to worship the god or goddess of one's choice from the Indian pantheon. In India or other Hindu countries there are usually a number of different temples one may choose from. However, in temples built in the United States, a choice must be made as to which god is to be honored and worshipped. Oxtoby points out that sometimes brings about disunity in immigrant works that want to work on forming a adhesive unit in a foreign land.

In the end, this instalment of the reading on the Hindu religion answered many of the questions that I had from the last reading. Of particular interest was the section on how women live, worship and interact their daily lives. Of course, the section on the forehead markings also helped to clear up a curiosity I had
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