A Jewish-Hindu connection

Jeffrey Stanley, 7/23/13

Talk about a crazy commute. After a spiritual encounter, a stranger and I spent the next 90 minutes discussing the nature of the universe.

Not so long ago after nearly 25 years as a hidebound New Yorker I moved to Philadelphia for my wife Pia’s career needs, inadvertently becoming part of a popular regional migration known to urban statisticians as the 6th borough phenomenon. She’s Indian-American and we’re raising our child in a bilingual home. I’m a writer and professor. She’s a scientist by day and an Indian classical dance professional by night. Religiously we are at best agnostic but culturally we are Hindus, and will identify ourselves as such when pressed, like on the hospital intake form the first time we took our baby in for a routine doctor’s visit.

This identification sits well with me. Despite growing up Nazarene in the Bible Belt I had long ago developed an affinity for Hindu philosophy—ever since I’d come across a used copy of the Bhagavad Gita at a flea market in high school and realized how similar it was to the New Testament. I still remember the perplexed look on my Sunday school teacher’s face the morning I brought the Gita to church. I had marked the sections that reminded me of Christ’s words in the Sermon on the Mount with an orange highlighter and asked him why Hindus were all going to Hell and we Christians weren’t. Suffice it say I quit going to church not long after that. Christianity just wasn’t speaking to me. When I met my wife-to-be years later while canoeing in Brooklyn’s fetid Gowanus Canal I fell in easily with her cultural worldview. We were a match made in moksha.

Imagine my surprise when, on a recent Friday afternoon while returning to Philly on a crowded New Jersey Transit train out of Manhattan’s Penn Station I came face to face with the power of YHWH.  (continue reading…)

[10/31/13 – Supernatural Skeptics Don’t Know What They’re Missing.  “I try contacting the spirit world before live audiences to keep an element of hope simmering on the back burner of my mind.” - read Jeffrey Stanley’s latest in the Washington Post]

Built in 1850.  Also called Ghum or Ghoom Monastery in the town of Ghum just outside of Darjeeling in northern India.   Dig the wrathful deities.  Photos taken January 2013.

Cheepu

That's Cheepu guarding the gate. Cheepu eats snakes and is one of the Tibetan Buddhist "wrathful deities."

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Ghum Monastery

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Giant prayer wheel about 8 feet tall.

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Another giant prayer wheel about 8 feet tall.

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Maitraya Buddha (the Coming Buddha) in the main temple.

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Awesome wallpaper, eh?

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Maitraya Buddha up close.

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Amazing.

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Tibetan "wrathful deity" Mahakala; the Buddhist version of Hindu god Shiva.

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Green Tara, a female version of the Buddha.

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Cheepu eating snakes again.

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Another of the Tibetan wrathful deities.

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Yet another of the wrathful deities.

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IMG_1027.JPG

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Prayer wheels.

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Mahakala again.

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That's no painting. That's Mount Kachenjunga, the 3rd highest peak in the world after nearby Mt. Everest and K2 in the same range.

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(News Flash: Jeffrey Stanley’s BONEYARDS reincarnates in Philly this June at the Art Church of West Philadelphia as part of the 2015 SoLow Fest. Tickets and full details here.)

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Enjoy these 16 images I took in January, 2013 at the Tibetan Refugee  Self-Help Centre in Darjeeling, West Bengal, India in the foothills of the Himalayas just over the mountain from Tibet.  And if you support the idea that it’s time for China to get out of Tibet and leave the people and their natural resources alone then feel free to share the images with others.

Tibetan Refugee Self-Help Center Orphanage

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Welfare Center for Tibetan Children

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"Welfare Centre for Tibetan Children, donated by National Christian Council, Aug. 1963

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Refugee Centre Store

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Workshop where some of the handicrafts are made that are sold in the store.

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Your purchase will help the people of this centre; our products are not sold outside shop.

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This site of 3.8060 acres is the gift of The American Emergency Committee for Tibetan Refugees, September 1964. Save Tibet.

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Original site of the centre started in October 1959 with four workers and two rooms.

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Intro to the Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheels on the premises.

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Om Mani Padme Hum (or hung)

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Prayer wheels.

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Refugee handicrafts worker.

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More refugee handicrafts workers.

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Another refugee handicrafts worker.

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Rug in progress.

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Rug in progress.

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