Is Hinduism a religion?

Oh no problem. I did it on this neat website:

http://tinypic.com/

Hi Surya Asura,

[quote]So if you think that it is my lack of knowledge about Indian history that prohibits me to understand something, just provide the knowledge or a link and I will willingly accept whatever information is provided there. Historical knowledge, of course, like who built what city, who created an empire, who destroyed it, who conquered it and so forth.

You should not be participating in a discussion on Indian history if you have no knowledge about Indian history. You are discussing Indian history with Phd’s and graduates who have studied Indian history to a considerable depth. Similarly, you are discussing Hinduism with practicing Hindus with 10years of experience and who read most of the primary texts.

It is not our responsibility to educate you. If you lack credentials, then don’t join in on the discussion. This of course has not stopped you from saying ignorant things like “dancing is banned in India”

Google and wiki “Indian history” Read a few books on the matter and get back to us, then you will at least have some knowledge on the matter to make some worthwhile contributions here. As the matter stands right now, you’re making yourself look like an utter moron.[/quote]:lol: If I would be looking like an utter moron, you wouldn’t feel the urge to comment each and every word I say.

You see, pretty much noone in the West is educated about the history of India. It’s some country far far away, + Indian history is complicated. And then you Hindu nationalists pop up and spam us with how superior you are and so forth, and we should finally accept that and, dunno, bow to you and become Hindus or so. :lol: Indian history proves the necessity of all that? But we know nothing about it. What now?

Are we supposed just to believe your claims? Sit to your feet and such? Not even you are out of your mind enough to expect that. So if you want to convince us, you have to provide proof. And what you provide is inconsistent. Seems like you all fail to understand the point of me noting I need to read some. Each and every one of you says something different. According to Nietzsche, for example, the occupation of the Muslims was some sort of wonderful cultural exchange. Can you believe it? :lol: According to you it was the purest horror. What now? We all must study Indian history to verify your claims? And then we must read the right books, because some are evil conspiracy-theory-like “eurocentric” lies? Should we dedicate our lives to Indian history, culture, religion, philosophy, science? :lol:

No. You guys want to convince us. You have to provide. If you can’t, shut up, go away, leave us alone. This, in case you haven’t noticed, is what as of now most people think of you guys anyway. Most people are not interested anymore, cuz you failed to deliver. Who talks to you? It’s not even a handful of people anymore. You should be grateful to have someone like me to still deal with you, so don’t spoil this rare and wonderful opportunity to convince people of what you got with your arroganct megalomania.

Just a suggestion. :slight_smile:

[quote]That’s why I think it ain’t working out to declare a culture superior to another. Besides that I don’t even see the point. Please explain why it is important to prove a culture’s superiority.

Because we can.[/quote]It is important because you can? You write all your thousands of posts and spend hours over hours per day to prove your cultures superiority because you can? Is there nothing else you can, that might be a better use of your time? Can’t you do Yoga or so? Cuz your attempts to prove your culture’s superiorty is like totally not working out. Have you convinced a single participant of this forum who wasn’t a Hindu nationalists already? I think not.

Sam is taller than Paul. We say Sam is taller than Paul because Sam IS taller than Paul.
No, Sam isn’t taller than Paul. It’s wishful thinking.

[quote]There is the explanation missing. You just say “What may have happened and what could have been done do not matter. What matters is what did happen and what was done.” Why is that so? I have explained why it does matter. It matter not only when we evaluate the actual action, but particularly when we evaluate the person.

We do not discuss what could have happened because it did not happen. We discuss what happened because they are the facts. We don’t waste time with idle speculation. It is a pass time of fools.[/quote]If we walk down some street and by random chance you walk on the right and I on the left, and then I find a bag with a million bucks, and bam, I’m rich. And according to your logic superior compared to you. And then, cuz I’m idiotic enough to have adopted your habits, I start telling you every day for hours over hours how I am superior to you cuz I’m rich and you’re not. And if you say “yeah, but you were just lucky cuz you walked on the left side” I say “bah, this idle speculation is just a pass time of fools, so listen up how I go on for more hours over hours over hours over hours how I am superior to you!”

You’d be like :roll:, dude.

[quote]But we can’t judge who they were without considering the circumstances that made them what they were. And what they were was determined by the circumstances. And what they were decided what they did. So what they did depends on the circumstances.

We judge people on their actions and not their circumstances. Hitler may well have been molested by his uncle and been bullied by jews at school, but this has no bearing on judging his action. He commited mass murder so we judge him as a mass murderer. [/quote]Who, “we”? We people with no black-and-white worldview judge people not simply by their actions, we take into consideration what led them to their actions. To us this is the most natural perspective.

[quote]We can at any time judge what they did. In case of Hitler, it was bad. In case of Gandhi, it was good. But to judge Hitler the person and Gandhi the person does not go without considering the circumstances. And there I already provided this explanation

You do not need to know the circumstances of somebody to judge an action that has been done. In a court of law we do not need to know the entire history of a man who commited rape to convict him of rape, the present action is enough to make a judgement.[/quote]You fail to understand the difference between judging an action and judging the one who acts.

You judge a person by their character. Hitler had a perverted and savage character he was a mass murderer and a lunatic. Gandhi had a noble and saintly character he was a peaceful freedom fighter who commited himself to selfless service to his people and taught them self-reliance.
That’s a description, not a judgement.

If a person is mistreated their whole life, it’s no wonder they behave questionable. This has to be taken into consideration when judging a person, because the treatment they had to endure in their life reduces the range of the decisions they can make. A person for example who only knows violence will obviously use violence to resolve a problematic situation instead of talking it over. A persons who does not know violence, will obviously not become violent in a problematic situation, but do talk it over.

Is that really so hard to understand for you? I think it’s rather simple.

[quote][quote]Indian civilisation did some things and Western civilisation did some things. They have to be judged on the basis of those actions/achievements alone.
No, why? Why do they have to be judged at all? What makes you the judge?[/quote]
Because we can.[/quote]What kind of argument is that? We can do all sorts of things, should they all be done? That’s idiotic.

We have a faculty of judgement that allows us to discriminate between what is right and wrong. We know Hitler was wrong because he was a perverted savage person who was a mass murderer who killed innocent people. We know Gandhi was right because he was a noble and saintly person who dedicated himself in selfless service to the upliftment of his people.
We’re talking about Indian and Western civilisation here.

[quote]See, it’s a good point. And you say that it should not be considered when we - for reasons yet to be explained - judge a culture. Any achievement of a culture that has to live under much harder circumstances: Isn’t it worth a lot more than the achievement of a culture that lives an easy life? Because it is much harder to achieve something surrounded by ice-storms?

An achivement is measured not by what environment or which people it was developed by, but by its use value and degree of complexity/sophistication/development.[/quote]Why? Explanation missing. It’s just the dogma of some random asshole on the internet. Who cares for those: Noone.

For example a caveman stick man drawing painting is less sophisticated than a picasso.
According to your logic, we would not care for cavepaintings then. We would not be interested in cave-paintings, cuz we got something better.

But really, we’re totally interested in the cavemen’s paintings. We find them even more amazing than the paintings by modern painters. We think they are a greater achievement than some photorealistic painting of 2011. Because of the circumstances.

This is instantly clear and logical for anybody who reads this. Instantly. Because anybody instantly understands that it’s a greater achievement for a person who knows no art at all to pick up paint and draw some stick man, than it is for a modern person who grows up surrounded by all sorts of art to paint a photorealistic scenery.

Indian classical music which has 22 microtones is more sophisticated than Western classical music which has 12 semitones. Indian classical music has greater use value because it gives its artists more range and expression.
So when I create an instrument that allows the usage of 20 micrcotones, that makes Indian classical music inferior? Do you think western musicians and instrument-builders weren’t aware that there are mor microtones?

Your logic is one huge failure, my friend. :wink:

It is possible to measure how developed something is by its extent of sophistication. It goes without saying a picasso represents a significant extent of development over a stickman drawing. To say otherwise would be idiotic.
Noone says that. You miss the whole point of the dicussion. Not because you’re too stupid, but because you’re having an agenda.

[quote]Of course does any achiefment matter, I never would say anything different. If you judge only the achievement and it’s value: That’s mostly quite simple. But to judge the culture that came up with it, is much more difficult.

A culture can be judged just like anything else can be. It depends on context and degree of development. A culture is the totality of the habits, values and institutions of a society, such as language. If we compare a culture whose habits include killing babies, who value crime like rape and murder and speak in grunts to one another with a culture whose habits include social welfare, who value wise philosopher and sages and speak a refined language with the precision of a computer language, it is clear to see by contrast which of these cultures is more evolved. Again, to not see this, would mean one is an idiot. [/quote]There is no natural language known to be more sophisticated than any other natural language, they’re all known to be equally precise. The only advantage a language might have over another is the number of words. If a civilisation does not know a car, it does not have a word for it. That’s all.

If we judged a culture just the way it is, then it would be more than obvious that Indian culture is waaaaaay backwards compared to western culture. It’s an inferior culture, corrupt, violent, the people are poor, hungry, they lack of education, and so forth.

Here, though, you find considering the circumstances that caused India to fall behind the West totally important and hyper-relevant. Interesting, isn’t it, you uber-genius and master of debate? :lol:

I hope vimoh has something to say that’s superior to your boring stuff. :slight_smile:

No, Sam isn’t taller than Paul. It’s wishful thinking.

FAIL. Moving on.

[QUOTE=Quetzalcoatl;61167]My remark is this: I think you intent to play the education-card a lot. Cuz I said it myself. You know? I said it myself, so how would I know anything about India being superior and what-not. What I know only little about, is India’s particular history. That’s all the education I lack.

So if you think that it is my lack of knowledge about Indian history that prohibits me to understand something, just provide the knowledge or a link and I will willingly accept whatever information is provided there. Historical knowledge, of course, like who built what city, who created an empire, who destroyed it, who conquered it and so forth.

Deal? :)[/QUOTE]

See that’s the point. You being uneducated with regards to Indian history and culture is only part of the problem. The other part is that you seem to think that I can provide you a link that will take care of everything. The study of history is a long, time-taking process that people spend years on. When the subject is something as complicated as the history of an entire sub-continent, it becomes even more complicated. There are scores of views, and interpretations powered by different levels of cultural awareness and various other measures. I myself have been a student of Indian history for many years and even my own understanding is fragmentary. What helps is that I live in India and the subject of my study is all around me. I can access first-hand sources and things like that. You say you do not lay much emphasis on academics and I accept that. You should be free to evaluate things according to your own criteria. But it is also important to note that your frame of reference is limited. Mine is too, but I have read more than you have. Fact.

Maybe, but you would have to prove the significance of the number of criteria, and I’m pretty sure that’s impossible when we talk about a culture. Why don’t you demonstrate it?

I said this before. I define a civilisation based on certain criteria. It is a group of people who, on the whole, have devoted a sizable part of their physical and mental resources to the pursuit of humanity’s higher goals. By higher goals, I mean things that are unique to the human condition – knowledge, science, music, language, etc. Think of them as things that separate man from animals. Hunting and killing are common elements, but there are things that man does and animals don’t. Let us consider these as our criteria, if that’s alright by you.

Sure. But if you need something to build a house, the rock is superior. Or if you want to crack a nut. Or if you need a weapon. Or all sorts of other context. So not only do you have to count criterias, prove the number to be significant, but you also have to evaluate each criteria in a context. There you have the problem that someone else could evaluate the criteria differently or come up with different context, where the criteria have a completely different value.

As I said, the context is civilisation. The rock can indeed be used to crack a nut, but we need to evaluate the worth of a rock based on what it can be used for when in pursuit of a certain goal. That goal, in this case, is civilisation. Refer to previous paragraph for how I define civilisation.

That’s why I think it ain’t working out to declare a culture superior to another. Besides that I don’t even see the point. Please explain why it is important to prove a culture’s superiority.

Important is a tricky word here. Why it is important depends on both our perceptions. It is obviously important. That is demonstrated by the fact that you and I are both discussing it. If you didn’t think it was important, you would not be here discussing it. Same goes for me. Our reasons may be different, but it is important to both of us.

There is the explanation missing. You just say “What may have happened and what could have been done do not matter. What matters is what did happen and what was done.” Why is that so? I have explained why it does matter. It matter not only when we evaluate the actual action, but particularly when we evaluate the person.

This is quite the opposite of how historians work and how the historical method works. Whatever we have today by way of civilisation, is a result of concrete happenings in the past. Things happened and as a result of those happenings, other things happened and so on and so forth. To say that it was all some sort of event-soup which may have gone any which way is muddling matters up. Things could indeed have gone in some other direction, but they didn’t. They took one course and as a result of that, we have what we have. You will balk again when I bring up your levels of education in these matters, but it is relevant here. You really need to learn how history is investigated and studied.

For example, if a historian goes studies the Roman empire and concludes they were awesome based on their achievements, he would be alright. What he can’t do is conclude that they were stupid because if the circumstances had been different they would not have made these achievements. That’s just not how it is done.

But we can’t judge who they were without considering the circumstances that made them what they were. And what they were was determined by the circumstances. And what they were decided what they did. So what they did depends on the circumstances.

We can at any time judge what they did. In case of Hitler, it was bad. In case of Gandhi, it was good. But to judge Hitler the person and Gandhi the person does not go without considering the circumstances. And there I already provided this explanation:

How do you for example evaluate Hitler and Gandhi? Demonstrate.

Fine then. Judge them on the basis of circum stances. Yes one civilisation had it bad becasue of the climate and the weather and the other had it easy because of the sun and the rivers. It’s simplistic, but I am still going with it to make a point.

Even after all this, one civilisation DID make a whole lot of achievements and the others didn’t. That much is fact, is it not? And on the basis of those achievements, in the civilisational context, one civilisation can indeed be called the better of the two as far as current understanding of history is concerned.

No, why? Why do they have to be judged at all? What makes you the judge? This is dogmatic.

We judge because that is what we do. It is not only the human thing to do, evaluating ups and downs is a matter of historical study. Judging people on morality is dogmatic, judging history on the basis of events is not dogmatic, it is just scholarly work. History is just a long process of judgments passed by current scholars on people and places long gone.

See, it’s a good point. And you say that it should not be considered when we - for reasons yet to be explained - judge a culture. Any achievement of a culture that has to live under much harder circumstances: Isn’t it worth a lot more than the achievement of a culture that lives an easy life? Because it is much harder to achieve something surrounded by ice-storms?

Of course does any achiefment matter, I never would say anything different. If you judge only the achievement and it’s value: That’s mostly quite simple. But to judge the culture that came up with it, is much more difficult.

The conditions argument is valid, but it is also simplistic. People lived all over India. India has snowy lands, desert lands, sea-side beach places, and even land-locked areas where it rains A LOT. All India has achieved has been in spite of these hardships. It was never so that Indians had cushioned existences. On the whole, India perhaps had as much natural harshness laid upon her, if not more, as Germany did.

Having said that, history is a measure of things as they finally did turn out, not of things that may have happened or could have been done. Circumstances play a role yes, but their impact can’t be measured by the historical process (nor the scientific process) insofar as counter-factual arguments and scenarios are concerned. History is a bitch because it has already happened. :slight_smile: Can’t be changed.

[QUOTE=Quetzalcoatl;61285]Hi Surya Asura,

:lol: If I would be looking like an utter moron, you wouldn’t feel the urge to comment each and every word I say.[/quote]

We are responding to your posts to demonstrate their absurdity. As a representative for the West you are doing such a job on the West, that it makes us look like sages in comparison. Keep going.

You see, pretty much noone in the West is educated about the history of India. It’s some country far far away, + Indian history is complicated. And then you Hindu nationalists pop up and spam us with how superior you are and so forth, and we should finally accept that and, dunno, bow to you and become Hindus or so. :lol: Indian history proves the necessity of all that? But we know nothing about it. What now?

If you don’t know anything about it, then shut up and listen to what those who do know about it say. However, you are not doing that, you are making one ignorant statement after the other about it such as "dancing is banned in India"
Sorry, this does make you look like a moron.

No. You guys want to convince us. You have to provide. If you can’t, shut up, go away, leave us alone. This, in case you haven’t noticed, is what as of now most people think of you guys anyway. Most people are not interested anymore, cuz you failed to deliver. Who talks to you? It’s not even a handful of people anymore. You should be grateful to have someone like me to still deal with you, so don’t spoil this rare and wonderful opportunity to convince people of what you got with your arroganct megalomania.

Loads of people talk to us on this forum. In fact, there are less people talking to you, and after your antics in these threads I don’t think many people would like to talk to a neo-nazi who thinks murderers, rapists and looters are the equivalent of sages; who thinks Hitler is the equivalent of Gandhi; who thinks Nazis were innocent victims of circumstances, and who takes glee in the suffering of the Indian, black, Native American people.

To be honest nobody even in real life would want to talk to you if they knew what you really thought.

No, Sam isn’t taller than Paul. It’s wishful thinking.

Then nobody is taller or shorter than anyone. Now you are just being stupid.

If we walk down some street and by random chance you walk on the right and I on the left, and then I find a bag with a million bucks, and bam, I’m rich. And according to your logic superior compared to you. And then, cuz I’m idiotic enough to have adopted your habits, I start telling you every day for hours over hours how I am superior to you cuz I’m rich and you’re not. And if you say “yeah, but you were just lucky cuz you walked on the left side” I say “bah, this idle speculation is just a pass time of fools, so listen up how I go on for more hours over hours over hours over hours how I am superior to you!”

It does not change the facts that the person has a million bucks. We are talking facts here. A person may have found it lying somewhere or they may have earned it through hard effort. It still does not change the fact that they have a million bucks.

Who, “we”? We people with no black-and-white worldview judge people not simply by their actions, we take into consideration what led them to their actions. To us this is the most natural perspective.

No, we do not. Most people condemn Hitler simply by what he did. Few people care what Hitler’s childhood was like and that he was a vegetarian and animal lover - they judge him for the actions he did: mass-murdering his own people.

You fail to understand the difference between judging an action and judging the one who acts.

The action comes from the one who acts. They made a conscious decision to do the action thus they are responsible for it and wholly accountable for it.

If a person is mistreated their whole life, it’s no wonder they behave questionable. This has to be taken into consideration when judging a person, because the treatment they had to endure in their life reduces the range of the decisions they can make. A person for example who only knows violence will obviously use violence to resolve a problematic situation instead of talking it over. A persons who does not know violence, will obviously not become violent in a problematic situation, but do talk it over.

Wrong, because people can be born and bought up in violent circumstances and not turn out violent themselves. Your past is not an excuse for your violence. You alone are responsible and accountable for it.

What kind of argument is that? We can do all sorts of things, should they all be done? That’s idiotic.

I am judging because I have a faculty of judgement. I can tell what is shorter and what is taller, bigger/smaller, less/more. It is a wonderful faculty and I would suggest you use it more.

Why? Explanation missing. It’s just the dogma of some random asshole on the internet. Who cares for those: Noone.

According to your logic, we would not care for cavepaintings then. We would not be interested in cave-paintings, cuz we got something better.

But really, we’re totally interested in the cavemen’s paintings. We find them even more amazing than the paintings by modern painters. We think they are a greater achievement than some photorealistic painting of 2011. Because of the circumstances.

This is instantly clear and logical for anybody who reads this. Instantly. Because anybody instantly understands that it’s a greater achievement for a person who knows no art at all to pick up paint and draw some stick man, than it is for a modern person who grows up surrounded by all sorts of art to paint a photorealistic scenery.

We measure something by its objective criteria and not its subjective criteria. In art we can study a piece by its level of sophistication/complexity. In literary theory there is a field known as stylistics where poetry is analysed in terms of structure, complexity. Sanskrit poetry is uber-complex, where a poem can be arranged into geometric arragements like the lotus bandha. They can be read forwards to give a thesis, and read backwards to give an antithesis or forward to ask a question, backwards to answer the question. Don’t believe me? Educate yourself and read up on Sanskrit poetry.

From an objective point of view we know any idiot can make stickman drawings but it takes a genius to make a picasso. That is because a picasso shows more objective development. If we compare Western poetry with Sanskrit poetry, it is easy to see how vastly superior the latter is. That is because it is more developed.

So when I create an instrument that allows the usage of 20 micrcotones, that makes Indian classical music inferior? Do you think western musicians and instrument-builders weren’t aware that there are mor microtones?

No, because you would still be 2 microtones behind :stuck_out_tongue: (I said 22 microtones, read carefully) The fact remains that Indian classical music is objectively more developed because it has 22 microtones and Western music is less developed because it has only 12 semitones. There are other considerations as well which show the superiority of Indian music:

I don’t care subjective criteria. I care about objective criteria.

There is no natural language known to be more sophisticated than any other natural language, they’re all known to be equally precise. The only advantage a language might have over another is the number of words. If a civilisation does not know a car, it does not have a word for it. That’s all.

Yes, there is, it is widely acknowledged that Sanskrit is the most advanced language on the planet. It has a completely artificial grammar which generates sentences and words by algorithms. There are several scientific papers on this subject. Again educate yourself, look up Sanskrit.

If we judged a culture just the way it is, then it would be more than obvious that Indian culture is waaaaaay backwards compared to western culture. It’s an inferior culture, corrupt, violent, the people are poor, hungry, they lack of education, and so forth.

No, if we looked at India today which is like it is, because of what the British did to it, it would be shown India is backwards compared to the West in wealth. This is changing anyway now, and India is now predicted by most economic analysts to be an economic superpower by 2030-2040. It will have overtaken all of Europe. Lets put it this way: while all European economies have been hit by a recession and are experiencing negative growth; Indian economy is still soaring.

In other indices we do a lot better than you too. We have a 1% rate of divorce - you have a 50% rate. You beat us in crime rates too.

Here, though, you find considering the circumstances that caused India to fall behind the West totally important and hyper-relevant. Interesting, isn’t it, you uber-genius and master of debate? :lol:

I hope vimoh has something to say that’s superior to your boring stuff. :slight_smile:

10,000 years of Indian history vs 200 years of Western occupation is nothing. It is barely a blip in the history of our civilisation. In 60 years we have recovered to a large extent considering how badly we were looted and raped. Now we are touted by the whole world to be the superpowers of this century. Why else do you think America is coming to India with a begging bowl?

Hinduism is not a religion. There are many different religions within Hinduism.

"Why else do you think America is coming to India with a begging bowl? "

They like Basmati rice.

Read up on Hinduism. And, read up on cooking while you’re at it female!

[QUOTE=GORI YOGINI;62382]"Why else do you think America is coming to India with a begging bowl? "

[B]They are broke and came to beg for defense contracts[/B].[/QUOTE]

There. Fixed it for ya.

"Why else do you think America is coming to India with a begging bowl? "

They like Basmati rice.

They are broke and came to beg for defense contracts.

There. Fixed it for ya.

Whaaaaaat? No sense of humor, yaar? Chaddis in a twist?

“And, read up on cooking while you’re at it female!”

My saasur and devar does all the cooking.

Haven’t you heard?

Bahus are liberated these days!

:smiley:

Hi ,

Hinduism is hardly a religion. Any religion has to be founded… someone come up with a set of rules… but I guess there was no founder for hinduism.

You cant even date it back to one person founding it…

It was just a way of life… i think everyone is hindu without any choice!!

Ashwin

[QUOTE=TatTvamAsi;62404]Read up on Hinduism. And, read up on cooking while you’re at it female!
.[/QUOTE]

Are you Hindu? I find this really offensive!!
I am Hindu and I am male.
In the epics even Ravana and Duryodhana would not talk like this.

In Indian civilization yoga is one of the most important thing . and there are many good place his provided good atmosphere in India which is suitable to do good yoga. Hinduism has a lot of religion inside it. Just like it has a lot of science and philosophy inside it also. But on the whole, Hinduism is better described a label for everything that has come out of classical Indian civilization.

Hinduism is a group of religions. Some Hindus are panentheists, some are pantheists, some are polytheists. If I was going to be a Hindu, I would be a panentheist. Yes I did think about it. I have a curious mind. LOL.

[QUOTE=Nietzsche;61075]True.

But it is undeniable that the majority of Westerners have supremacist biases to various degrees.

I just get a lot more of it because I live in Retardica.[/QUOTE]

Can you please define ‘Westerner?’ A ‘majority’ of Westerners? Strong words…

See, I find the same things with a lot of South Asians (Indians) that I am in contact with on a day to day basis. Many of them think that ‘white North Americans’ have no history and no culture. Furthermore, they lump anyone with white skin as the generic westerner category. They do not differentiate between Russians or the English, or Italians or the French…and that is a problem. It is just as bad as ‘white supremacy.’…maybe we should label it ‘brown supremacy.’…because it does exist in great numbers…racism and discrimination are no longer words that we can attach to people with white skin…it is, unfortunately, universal, and comes from the mouth of a person with olive, brown, black, you name it skin color. It is a sad reality.

Quick note: I have white skin. I was born in Poland. My mother is Polish, and my father is Russian. I have been living in Canada since I was 5 years old. I consider myself Eastern European/Slavic due to my upbringing, family values and traditions. I love Canada, don’t get me wrong, but I do not consider myself a ‘Westerner.’…that, to me, is an insulting and shallow label that oh so easily forgets and fails to mention all of the other very important and interesting things about my ethnicity and the culture and history behind it.

I don’t see the point of the accusations floating around, the hatred, the ‘my people are being attacked by your people’ and the ‘my people are better and smarter than your people’ nonsense. Does yoga not mean unity? With this being a forum on yoga, this thread is presenting everything but that…