This issue, taking you around the Hindu world, begins in exotic Java and then travels to a grand festival in Nepal then pauses to see the West’s largest Hindu temple complex now being built inNew Jersey before taking off for to Southern India to meet a masterful, traditional sculptor of Deities. In these pages you will visit a dazzling Krishna museum in Kurukshetra, then enter Japan for a report on Hindu Deities that immigrated there and became part of the culture centuries ago.
This issue also explores the role of women and the Vedas in ancient India. You’ll find an illuminating 11-page comparison & contrast article on the core beliefs of the world’s twelve major religions — a truly rare and valuable resource for thinking, sensitive people in an age of growing pluralism.
Page 47 presents an contemporary piece by a young writer on how to NOT alienate the youth at your temple, but engage them instead. This advice cries out to be known, thought deeply about, shared, discussed and applied. We hope many temple elders will read it.
A devotee offers her moving testimonial on how the guru, even when he is far away, can inspire families and individuals their whole life long, and give them the security that he will always be there to help and guide, through thick and thin.
And there is more: an inspired writing by the publisher, Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami, on the key practices of Hinduism and how we can make them work to lead us to our life’s goals.
The title of a page from the Agamas, “I Am the Supreme Self,” says it all. Here is the ultimate teaching of all teachings, that of the Self, the knowledge passed on since time immemorial about the true, divine, magnificent-beyond-words nature of each one of us, the goal of us all, our destiny wherein all human longings and aspirations converge in perfect and total fulfillment.
