Students Observe the Hindu Way

In Calabasas’ horse country on a recent Saturday, the breeze carried the mingled sounds of whinnies and Hindu chants. Twelve students of world religions and teacher, James Santucci, followed the chanting to Lord Venkateswara’s temple where a ceremony to the god, an incarnation of Vishnu “the preserver,” was about to begin.

Through a gate thick with images from Hindu myths, the class entered the “sacred abode of the gods,” a courtyard around the temple, and removed their shoes. Inside they crowded in with 100 or so temple members, most of them first- and second-generation Indian Americans. Women dressed in saris, men in long kurta shirts, many had rubbed turmeric paste on their foreheads as a purification symbol.

The white stone temple is part of a complex owned by the Hindu Temple Society of Southern California, founded 23 years ago for the teaching and practice of the religion and which now has about 1,000 members. Set among rolling hills, the landscape glimmers with smaller shrines as well, including one to Shiva, regarded as the god of destruction and regeneration.

Offerings of mangoes and roses often are placed before these shrines whose stone images of the gods are dressed in sarongs, and devotees can be seen praying before them.

On this Saturday, a family of four generations gathered around an open fire in the shrine to Shiva for a private devotion. Indian music overflowed from a wedding party in the nearby social hall.

“The center is a gathering place,” said Engan Natarajan, a lifelong Hindu who worships at the temple and works in finance at UCLA Medical Center in Westwood. “It’s a place to meet other Hindus.”

The visitors, some from Cal State Fullerton and others from Hsi Lai University in Rosemead, were among the few non-Asians at the temple that day.

Little that happened during the ceremony was familiar to the visitors, most of whom were Christian or Buddhist. Not the gold statue of Venkateswara that the priests bathed in milk and dabbed with saffron paste--the symbols of prosperity and power for many Hindus--nor the Sanskrit chants from sacred Vedic texts, nor the scent of incense blended with rose and spices perfuming the room.

“In ancient times Indian kings were bathed, dressed and had condiments pressed on them before they were entertained,” Santucci later explained. At this temple, Venkateswara gets the same royal treatment. “This is not idolatry,” he said. “The statue itself isn’t being worshiped; it is only a symbol of the god.”

Most devotees who attended the ceremony brought half-gallon containers of milk that they passed forward toward the cave-like sanctuary for the god. “Milk is the main menu for humans,” Natarajan said.

“What we consume we offer to the god as a way of thanking him for those things in our life.”

Milk was the main theme in the ceremony too. People were doused by priests shaking saturated roses at them, and were given milk in tiny spoonfuls ladled into their hands to drink as symbolic blessings from this mothering Hindu god.

Every time he teaches Hinduism, Santucci said, his students have questions about the Hindu idea of god. Is there one, or are there many? “It depends on who you ask,” he said. “The intellectual and the folk traditions present it differently. Better-educated Hindus see the various gods as expressions or manifestations of Brahma, the one transcendental being.” Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are the religion’s three main gods.

Natarajan compares the lesser gods to saints. “In Hinduism, people become gods the way they become saints in the Catholic religion,” he said. “Gandhi is seen as a god because he attained wisdom and brought freedom to the people. Mother Teresa is a goddess; she worked lots of wonders for the poor.”

Santucci led his students on a tour of the temple complex after the service, pointing out differences and similarities between Hinduism and the other religions they study-- Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism, which blends elements of Hinduism and Buddhism.

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Hinduism dates from about 1500 BC. The name comes from the Indus River that flows through modern Pakistan and the people who lived along the banks. About 1 million Hindus live in the U.S., an estimated 200,000 in Southern California.

“There are a few generalities we can make about the two major religious groups, East and West,” Santucci said. “In Western thought it is the will, or sin, that gets us off track. In the East it is ignorance. But there is a way out, a path to follow.” For Hindus that path leads to Nirvana, a state of bliss in the afterlife.

Of all the religions he teaches, Santucci said, Hinduism allows for the widest range of beliefs and practices. Weddings are among the only religious ceremonies most Hindus honor. Reincarnation is one of the few beliefs that most Hindus accept. “We imagine all Hindus think and act the same, but they don’t,” Santucci said. “I ask my students, how many Christians do they know who act and think exactly the same?”

Jessie Chiang, 43, a Buddhist born in Taiwan and an MBA student who studies religion with Santucci at Hsi Lai, said her visit to the temple reminded her that Buddha was raised a Hindu. Some traditions are the same but they are treated in different ways, she said. Sanskrit chanting compares with Mandarin chanting in Chinese Buddhism, and gongs in Buddhist ceremonies compare with the tinkling bells of the Hindus.

But chants and bells are rarely used in Buddhist ceremonies compared with Hindu ceremonies, she said. Offerings of fruit and flowers are part of both religions, but she usually makes such offerings at her home altar. “We Buddhists only bring our heart to the temple,” Chiang said. “Our feelings are kept inside. In Hinduism it is important to show things on the outside. That’s a different approach.”

Calabasas is about an hour’s drive from Fullerton, where John Mayberry, 19, is a math major at the state university and a student in Santucci’s class. “I was struck by the nearness of different cultures,” said Mayberry, who is a Christian. “I’ve known that Hindus practice their religion in California, but I’d never thought of Hinduism existing here in its pure form. The service had an ancient power.”

He said he was impressed by the expressiveness.

Some of what he learned puzzles him. But the Hindu idea that the essential truth is shared by all religions confirmed for him the essentials of his Christian faith.

“I’ve gone through a lot of questioning in this course,” Mayberry said. “But there’s no reason for stressing and worrying. I want to learn more about how all religions relate to the big picture. I don’t plan to understand everything.”