Do Hindus worship money?
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007
âIâm not taking the piss, but you Hindus pray to everything⌠even money!â so said a certain acquaintance of mine, at university once.
He was browsing through a leaflet about Diwali, that was being distributed at a Diwali party which he came along to (many non-Hindus come to such events). He made his comment in reference…..
Most Hindus living in the West have an urge at one point in their lives to learn about Hinduism. Sometimes the curiosity arises from a genuine desire for guidance in life. In other cases the urge to look into Hinduism comes from a particular incident â for example being asked questions that weâre not able to answer. There may be any number of different starting points to an individualâs quest.
The reason for me writing this article stems back to an incident which occurred a few months ago. A group of friends were using a room in my house to do some filming, and one of their younger cousins was there with them. Afterwards everybody got into a discussion about religion, and one of the comments which most people agreed on was that Hinduism is not a religion in the usual sense of the word, but a path to discover your dharma. However my friendâs cousin, who was a few years younger, commented âYou keep talking about dharma, but what is dharma?â This was his first and only comment in the whole discussion.
 Hinduism as Sanatana Dharma, a universal way of knowledge does not require that we reject science or return to medieval superstitions. For example, Hinduism does not require that we believe that the world was created 6000 years ago, nor is it opposed to the theory of evolution, which it long ago formulated in a spiritual way as an evolution not merely of form but of consciousness.
The Mahabharata is in my opinion the greatest literature in the world. No other work brings out the complexity of human problems in such a profound and entertaining way. It shows us the application of philosophy when it comes to the deciding between the right and wrong in such cases where the answer is not straightforward. 
My mom normally does the daily puja in the house. And when she can’t my sister does it. But last weekend my parents were away and my sister couldn’t do the puja for some reason either, so I said that I’d do it. Well to be honest, she could but I wanted to do the puja because I had an exam I hadn’t really studied for the next day. I told her that that I’d perform the puja so long as she stayed outside the temple-room and directed me as to what to do. She said what’s the point, I wasn’t gonna listen to her anyways.