By Rick Westhead
from Toronto Star

BASTI MAHRAN, PAKISTAN—A single act of kindness, profound because it was so rare and unexpected, transformed this sun-bleached village in a remote corner of the Punjab.

A Hindu man gave his blood to save the life of a Muslim woman who had lost too much in childbirth.

In the seven years since, the 1,600 Muslims and 1,400 Hindus in this town live in peaceful co-existence, extraordinary because sectarian violence has marked the histories of Pakistan and India since the bloody partition of 1947.

“I was afraid, for sure. But it was the right thing to do,” says Bachu Ram, the blood donor. He is smoking a cigarette in the home of a Muslim village elder, who once was so steeped in hatred that he led the charge on the clinic to take Ram’s life.

Hatred and violence once defined life in Basti Mahran. Muslim men routinely raped Hindu girls — “we would have 20 cases a year,” says one local. Muslim men beat Hindus with sticks and fists, seemingly with tacit approval of the local police. Cattle belonging to Hindu families were slaughtered if they strayed too close to Muslim homes.

Mahar Abdul Latif, the host who now pours Ram tea, spent three years during the late 1990s as a member of the extremist religious group Jaish-e-Mohammad. He patrolled the rugged mountain passes and valleys of Kashmir, a region claimed both by India and Pakistan, killing Hindus when they crossed his path.

“I have done much I am ashamed of,” says Latif, a 37-year-old father of three. “But we are friends now. Our kids are friends, too. They study and play together.”

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by Kim Lawton
from Religion & Ethics Newsweekly

Nestled in the hills between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is a small village called the Oasis of Peace—in Hebrew, Neve Shalom and in Arabic, Wahat al-Salam. While the Middle East conflict continues to churn all around, here they are trying to create a different reality, one that says Israelis and Arabs can live side-by-side in peace.

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Find an event to join at internationaldayofpeace.org

from BBC

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By Anthony Umrani from CNN

On a cool spring evening just outside Washington, a steady stream of worshipers arrive at Sri Siva Vishnu Temple for prayers. People are dressed in a mixture of colorful Indian attire and customary Western clothing.

In this residential Maryland neighborhood about 12 miles from downtown, the temple stands out with a striking white exterior adorned with statues depicting Hindu gods.

In India, a temple is typically dedicated to one particular god, but the Sri Siva Vishnu Temple has many gods to accommodate the diversity of Indian people in the area.

“We have a wide variety of congregation and each one of them says, ‘I want this god’ or ‘I want that god,’ ” said S. Krishnamurthy, one of the founder/trustees of the temple.

The idea to build a temple to bring together the burgeoning Hindu population near the nation’s capitol began with a few friends in 1976. Fourteen years later, the Sri Siva Vishnu Temple was born.

The consecration and installation of the first shrines were viewed by 1,400 people. The growth has continued over the years, evidenced by the current construction of a new adjacent parking lot to handle the crowds.

There are a number of special days in the Hindu calendar, but worshipers may come at any time during temple hours to offer prayers…

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from Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera’s Donata Hardenberg interviews filmmaker Raffaele Brunetti about his look at the cult of beauty in the era of globalization.

For centuries Hindu pilgrims have donated their hair in a ritual of purification. Today this hair has become a precious commodity and an extraordinary economic resource.

Hair India follows the journey of human hair from the holy temples of Southern India to the production lines of Europe and on to high class beauty salons around the world.

To watch a short documentary about the film and to read an interview with the filmmaker, click here

from the New York Times

Laurie Goodstein reports on Zoroastrianism, an ancient religion on the verge of extinction.  In this video article, Goodstein reports on her interviews with practicing Zoroastrians and the future of the faith.

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by Andrew Blackmore-Dobbyn
from Huffington Post

“The best way to find your self is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Mahatma Gandhi

What we seek from religion is a sense of meaning, purpose, belonging; a stronger connection to each other. This is what seva is and this is what seva does. When we speak of seva, we mean ego-less service in which we put ourselves to work in aid of the greater community. It answers all these needs in a profound way. Vikas Khanna and I began exploring seva in True Business, our first Holy Kitchens film about Sikhism. We were intending only to show how people shared food but quickly discovered that sharing food was just the beginning of seva. This work of quiet dignity allows its practitioners to directly benefit from the work they do in that they can see its effect in front of their eyes. Hungry people come and they are fed. The fear of starvation is removed from their lives. When you take away someone’s hunger, you make it possible for him to think about his existence on a higher spiritual plane. In the secular world we refer to this as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In a spiritual setting it is putting someone in reach of the divine. When you put a roof over someone’s head, provide access to clean water, give children medicine to keep them alive, this is seva. It is keeping the promise of the covenant that we are all our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers.

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The Teenage Interfaith Diversity Education (TIDE) Conference is planned and led by teens who want to have their voices heard and their presence felt as a positive force in the global community. A three-day event planned by fifty high school students of diverse backgrounds, the conference seeks to train teens to communicate respectfully and use their skills in discussions about highly charged issues; develop leadership and facilitation skills; and foster bonds and friendships among the youth in attendance that will continue after the conference. Conference attendees will participate in workshops, dialogues, and other activities throughout the weekend that allow them to discover more about themselves and their own understanding of personal identity; learn about the beliefs and identities of others; and make their voices heard at a conference that has been planned by high school students specifically for their peers. This is an exciting opportunity to see future leaders in action! Adults working with teens attend a parallel but separate adult track at the conference. The conference is sponsored by Interfaith Action, Inc. in collaboration with the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University.

Click here for more information and registration

Karen Armstrong spoke this past month at a special gathering hosted by the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions in Palo Alto, California. The celebrated author and founder of the Charter for Compassion addressed the ethos of compassion and the work of the Charter.

“Compassion is not just an attitude of sloppy benevolence, it requires practical action. It requires a sense of responsibility,” said Armstrong. “It’s not an impratical dream. It’s a necessity for our survival. We have to treat people, whoever they are, with respect.”

Armstrong also lifted up the collaborative nature of the work of the Charter for Compassion, and highlighted the partnership between the Charter and CPWR, particularly the integration of the Charter with the work of the Council’s Partner Cities Network

“This is the task of our time…to make the compassionate voice of religion, spirituality, morality a clear, luminous, and dynamic force in our troubled world.”