My high school was a very small all girls, Catholic, private school in the outskirts of Boston.\u00a0 When most people hear this they imagine a few things: uniforms (which we didn’t have), nuns roaming around the halls (which we didn’t have), and very strict Catholic religion classes (which we also didn’t have).\u00a0 It is the last of those things that I am most proud of, at my school I was fortunate to study all different religions during my time and my senior year I was exposed briefly to Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism. This being said, I had previously visited a Hindu temple and experienced the lives of those Hindus living and adapting to life in Central Massachusetts. I assumed that my visits to the Hindu temple and the Sikh gurdwara would be easy, peaceful, and educational as other locations that I had visited, however I was surprised when both of these visits took a different turn for me.<\/p>\n
We visited the Sikh gurdwara first, before our journey I investigated the BBC religion site to learn some of the basics of the Sikh religion.\u00a0 Learning that Sikhism was a practice where its worshipers were completely and totally devote to one God.\u00a0 They believe everyone is equal to one God, and dedication to ones community is of the utmost importance.\u00a0 The man who took us around the temple was just a local from the community rather than a trained tour guide.\u00a0 For me this was a valuable experience because instead of just learning about Sikhism from a book we were getting an inside perspective of the religion.\u00a0 His opinions, feelings, fears, and love of this one belief.\u00a0 He discussed his community, and the special place the Sikh temple holds in the community. They were very open and receptive to us coming in and appreciated our interest.\u00a0 There aren’t many Sikh gurdwaras outside of India, and so making a place outside of India will take some time, and open minds.<\/p>\n
Going to the Hindu temple I expected a similar experience to visiting the Sikh gurdwara or the Hindu temple I visited three years ago in Massachusetts, however I was shocked by what I saw instead.\u00a0 Walking through the London neighborhood not knowing exaclty what to expect I almost stopped short when I saw the enormous temple rising above eyesight.\u00a0 We put our bags in security, walked through a metal detector, and then met up with an official temple tour guide.\u00a0 There were so many people in the area, old and young, Hindus and visitors– it was a strange discovery.\u00a0 And then walking around and listening to the guide talk about all of the large Hindu temples around the world and seeing all of the famous visitors I realized that Hinduism is really beginning to be a major player in worldwide religions, especially in London.\u00a0 I felt that the Hindu temple I visited before was in a place where they were struggling to find their place.\u00a0 I did not feel like it was as much as an issue here.\u00a0 I don’t mean to sound cynical, but with so much funding and exposure to me this community is widely accepted in London society.\u00a0 Some may argue with me, that the Sikh temple we visited also received large sums of money, but from my own personal eye I felt that this community was not as acclimated to society as the Hindus.<\/p>\n
Both are religions that initially came from India.\u00a0 Sikhism is more surrounded around communal prayer, and Hinduism around individual prayer.\u00a0 Although similar , they are also very different, and I think these differences may play a factor in how they fit in with London society. Both religions came to London relatively around the same time, Hinduism may have more followers which is why I feel it fits in with society better, but I don’t think I’ll ever truly know.\u00a0 I’m also fairly certain my opinion on this matter could change from day to day as I am exposed more to these two religions, but this is what I thinking\/feeling now after much contemplation and a little research on the BBC website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My high school was a very small all girls, Catholic, private school in the outskirts of Boston.\u00a0 When most people hear this they imagine a few things: uniforms (which we didn’t have), nuns roaming around the halls (which we didn’t have), and very strict Catholic religion classes (which we also didn’t have).\u00a0 It is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[730,1],"tags":[1164,1123,753,1122],"class_list":["post-1574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amanda","category-uncategorized","tag-community","tag-hinduism","tag-london","tag-sikhism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}