Brotherhood Dharma, Destiny and the American Dream Read Online Free PDF Page B

we were lying in the dark when this young friend spoke up.
    “Sanjiv, can I ask you a question?”
    “Of course.”
    “What are the chances the new pope will die tomorrow?”
    We were raised as Hindus, which is as much a culture and a way of life as it is a religion. Unlike the major Western religions, there is no formal structure to our worship; we don’t have to go somewhere at a specific time to take part in a specific ceremony. We go to the temple when we want to. There isn’t even any accepted definition of what a Hindu is or any agreement on whether Hinduism is a religion, a culture, a philosophy, or a way of life. The chief justice of the Indian Supreme Court once said, “Unlike other religions in the world the Hindu religion does not claim any one prophet; it does not worship any one god; it does not subscribe to any one dogma; it does not believe in any one philosophic concept; it does not follow any one set of religious rites or performances; in fact, it does not appear to satisfy the narrow traditional features of any religion or creed. It may broadly be described as a way of life and nothing more.”
    We were raised in a rich tradition, a mythology filled with hundreds of gods and warriors and moral tales, taught to us from a very young age. During summer vacations our mother would read and sing verses from the two major scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana, sometimes while playing a small, hand-pumped organ called the harmonium. Many of these stories were thrillers at heart, and as she read them or sung them we could visualize the wars, the chariots, the gods and demigods, the beautiful heroines and the courageous heroes. Usually she would stop reading at a cliff-hanger: Sita has been abducted by the Great Demon and an army is being assembled to rescue her. Deepak and I would ask her to explain the story she’d read and tell us how it applied to our lives. And, of course,like almost all educated young Indians, we read the comic books that retold these stories of gods and epic battles, monsters, myths, and legends. Our mythology was also our popular entertainment. There were hundreds of these comics, and every kid read them. We read about Buddha, Ravana the Demon King, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, and Krishna. We read the Bhagavad Gita. We read the Mahabharata, the epic tale of India and Ganesha, the god who is the remover of all obstacles. Together with all this, we read everything from Superman and Archie to the writings of Gandhi and the works of Tolstoy.
    India is a nation in which the reality of daily life and the influence of mystical forces are commonly accepted as equally true. In addition to karma, many Indians also believe in the concept of Dharma. In Hinduism and Buddhism, dharma has various connotations, but generally it means cheerfully fulfilling your moral and ethical duty. Doing the right thing.
    In a village in the foothills of the Himalayas, there was one family that had refused the smallpox vaccine. The Indian government and World Health Organization had successfully vaccinated the rest of the population, but the head of this family, Mr. Laxman Singh, steadfastly refused. The Indian government decided for the good of the country that the Singhs had to be protected against this terrible disease, so they sent a medical team and law enforcement to their house.
    “Why won’t you be inoculated?” Laxman Singh was asked.
    “God ordains who will be diseased and who will be healthy,” he responded. “I don’t want this injection. If I have to get smallpox, I’ll get smallpox.”
    The team restrained him, forcibly pinning him to the ground. Singh fought them while screaming bloody murder, but they successfully inoculated him and then did the same to the rest of his family. When this was finally done, Laxman Singh calmly said, “Now please sit down in my hut.” He went to his plot, picked some vegetables, cleaned them, and served them to the medical team along with some fresh tea his