Category Archives: Easy Categories

March 31, 2015 · 12:37 PM

Introducing Hinduism

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Indian Sadhus

It was especially difficult to introduce Hinduism to the students of the World Religion class. The many religious traditions of India are intertwined throughout a long and complex history; and maybe we are wrong in our attempt to discern a single religion that we can call Hinduism.

Until the diverse traditions of Indian religion are properly separated by their history, practice, origin or language, we are left with the modern habit of introducing Hinduism as a single, multifaceted religion with dozens of important texts, and practices, spanning over three thousand years.

The following post presents an easy-to-follow orientation to studying Hinduism. Please feel free to comment.

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June 8, 2014 · 2:55 PM

Transcendental Meditation

I recently went to a screening of a film entitled Meditation, Creativity, Peace for the promotion of the David Lynch Foundation For Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace. The film was put together by film students and featured David Lynch as he toured and talked about Transcendental Meditation.

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For anyone interested in understanding religion, in an attempt to start with clarity, I recommend a category of ‘Modern Religion.’ Any religion that has a founder or foundation after the beginning of the nineteenth century should be arranged for study in the category of Modern Religion.

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May 22, 2014 · 12:41 PM

Modern Religion

To help you remember the many and diverse religions of the world, my seven categories of all religions past and present offer you assistance and support.

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The Mahikari-no-Waza Temple at Takayama, Japan.

 

Modern Religion – the last of my categories – allows you to easily isolate the more recent religions from their ancient inspiration. A modern religion is any and all religion that has a founder or foundation after the beginning of the nineteenth century. Modern religion contains at least one, but most often several, of the following: Continue reading →

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January 2, 2014 · 12:44 PM

Too Many Religions! part II

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The objective of my categories is to orient the student once and for all into religion as a topic of study.

The seven categories are:

  • Prehistoric Religion
  • Indigenous Religion
  • Ancient Religion
  • The Hindi Religions
  • Religions of China
  • The Abrahamic (or Revealed Religions, if you like)
  • Modern Religion

It is very important to note that, in my system of categories, I ignore the claims made by any one religion. Many of the modern religions, for example, consider themselves to be a continuation of – or, often, a singularly orthodox expression of – Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, or one of the ancient religions. Continue reading →

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December 29, 2013 · 8:10 PM

Too Many Religions! part I

I had often wished for an improved system of categories when I began my study of the world religions. The categories offered were frequently unhelpful due to oversimplification, or they were difficult to remember, or simply excluded some religions all together.

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