NARAYANSWAMY SUBRAMANIAN: Navaratri is known as the Festival of Nine Nights, and this is dedicated to the Supreme Being in the form of the Divine Mother.

The Mother is worshiped in three different forms. Each of these forms have a certain characteristic. Goddess Durga helps us overcome obstacles. Goddess Lakshmi gives us both spiritual as well as material wealth. Goddess Saraswathi is the one that confers knowledge and wisdom and ultimately takes us to the path of liberation.

We have been having a special fire ceremony. This year, in view of the calamities that are facing the world, we seek the divine grace and blessings of the Divine Mother to mitigate financial turmoil, the H1N1 virus and other diseases that are spreading.

Priests offer a variety of fruits. We offer vegetables, grains. In India, women wear what’s called saris, so we offer saris to the Divine Mother. These are all offered with clarified butter, the purest form of offering.

The fire is a carrier of all the oblations that you give to divinity. Just like when you send a telegraph money order, the fire takes what you give and converts it to the kind of food or the material things that is desired by the deity.

Material offering, when combined with chanting portions of what’s called the 700 hymns on the Divine Mother, becomes a very powerful vibrational offering to the deity. We feel that the divine vibrations will reach throughout the world and will benefit all mankind.

Water is supposed to be a very powerful way of absorbing these vibrations. They carried these silver pots filled with water that had been energized with all the powerful chantings up to the temple. The sanctified water is poured on the deities. This is one way of recharging, resanctifying, increasing the positive vibration of the deities. The deities are already very charged, but from time to time, we need to recharge it so that the vibrations increase, and it becomes more and more powerful in terms of blessing the devotee who comes to worship.

We had anthropomorphic forms, where God is deified in a human form, and as we progress in our meditation, in our spiritual exercises, the form no longer becomes important. God is no longer confined to a certain temple, to a certain deity. God is everywhere, and once you start seeing God in everything, that’s when you have reached a certain level of perfection, and that’s when we say there’s no more worth for you, because you’re now merged with the God, and this is what Hinduism is all about.

KIM LAWTON, anchor: Interfaith marriage has become commonplace in this country. But, for a long time, when it came to the wedding ceremony, many couples felt they had to pick just one religious tradition, the bride’s or the groom’s — or none at all.  Today, brides and grooms are finding new ways to incorporate both their religions. Betty Rollin has our story.

BETTY ROLLIN: Sunitha Mani is an Indian Hindu, born in America. Her mother calls her a modern girl. Even so, as she prepares for her marriage, she is going the traditional route, and then some. It begins with her getting painted with henna, a process called “mehndi.” Sanjana, the marital makeup chief, explains:

SANJANA PURSNANI (Makeup Director, Sona Salon): When it dries up and it starts flaking it gives you that mahogany, like a red burgundy color. So in India the bridal colors are red. We usually wear red, maroon, burgundy, so they say that the bride’s hand shouldn’t show color of her skin.

ROLLIN: Sunitha met her husband-to-be, Ronjit Sandhu, who is a Sikh, at college eight years ago.

SUNITHA MANI (Bride): The henna artists told me yesterday the darker the henna the more your husband and your in-laws love you, so my hands are dark, but not down here so much.

ROLLIN: The groom’s mandate on the wedding night is to find his name hidden in the design.

RONJIT SANDHU (Groom): The night of the wedding, I’m supposed to find — I’m supposed to search for my name in the henna, and then if I can’t find it, basically I’m not allowed to consummate our marriage.

Bride and groom

ROLLIN: The next pre-marriage ritual performed is the puja, where the bride’s family’s Hindu pandit prays before a sacred fire.

Pandit BALU DIXIT (Hindu Temple, Albany, NY): We pray to Lord Ganesha asking for his blessings, so that everything goes very smoothly without any obstacles.

ROLLIN: When Sunitha’s parents married, not only were they required to be of the same faith, but they were expected to marry the person their parents chose.

KANTHI MANI (Mother of Bride): We got married, what, 36 years ago. I think it was through communication between my parents and his parents, and they looked at the horoscope, and once it was agreed, he came to visit me, and that’s it. I hardly knew him until I got married.

ROLLIN: And how do the Manis feel about their daughter marrying outside their faith?

Dr. SRINIVASAN MANI (Father of Bride): Whatever makes our daughter happy and secure in the future, that’s what matters, rather than our discomfort.

ROLLIN: The groom’s father, now a widower, and his aunt also have had some concerns.

Satwant Kaur Banga

SURJIT SINGH SANDHU (Father of Groom): Not having the same culture and the language, sometimes it’s hard to interact.

SATWANT KAUR BANGA (Aunt of Groom): I think that as soon as you hear of a child marrying into a different religion, even though Sikhism absolutely tells there’s only one God and all people are equal, the cultural differences — they creep in after the children come in.

Mr. S. SANDHU: Ideally, you know, you want your kids to be raised as Sikhs, but then again once you are out of India, you know, our kids now are raised in this culture. So in this culture, their culture is the same.

ROLLIN: Ronjit has his own ideas about what his childrens’ religion will be.

Mr. R. SANDHU: I think they’ll definitely be raised under both religions. You know, they are going to go to temple, they are going to go to gurdwara, the Sikh version of a temple. They will essentially learn, you know, about the histories behind both of the religions. Her parents are very religious, so whether we wanted them or not, they will probably share everything they know. They share it with me openly, so I’m sure they will definitely do it with our grandkids.

ROLLIN: The couple decided there was one obvious way to smooth over the religious differences: two weddings — one Sikh, one Hindu.

The Sikh wedding came first, with the groom making his entrance on a white horse named Max. The procession is called a “baraat.” The bride’s extended Hindu family awaits his arrival.

The families greet each other with an elaborate garland exchange. And here comes the bride.

Wedding elephant

And three hours later, here comes the bride again.

Two weddings — one in Sanskrit, one in Punjabi. Countless rituals; two receptions; decorations involving hundreds of yards of fabric; banquets; music of two cultures; 400 guests and a costumed horse.

Putting this together takes a commander-in-chief, otherwise known as a wedding planner. That would be Sonal Shah and her small army of lieutenants.

SONAL SHAH (Interfaith Wedding Planner, Save the Date Event Consultants): Don’t forget to tell everyone to take their shoes off, cover their head.

When she began her profession one religion was the norm. Not anymore.

Ms. SHAH: In the last five years since I started doing wedding planning, interfaith marriages have just skyrocketed. Out of the 25 or 30 weddings we do in a year, right now about half of them, if not more than half, are interfaith marriages. One of the biggest problems that we face is the whole meat/non-meat issue. So, you know, we did a wedding last year where the groom was Irish and the bride was Gradrati Indian, and her family, you know, strict Jains — no meat, no potatoes. And his side of the family is Irish, so obviously they want those things. We really just try to come to a consensus.

(to Ms. Shah): What did you do?

Ms. SHAH: We ended up going with the non-meat. But obviously they weren’t happy about it because their guest list consisted of everybody that, you know, ate meat and potatoes!

ROLLIN: At the Mani-Sandhu wedding there was also a meat issue, since Hindus are vegetarians, but meat won out.

And then there is the animal issue. At a recent wedding Sonal supervised in Washington, D.C., a Hindu groom wanted to make his entrance on an elephant.

Wedding guest

Ms. SHAH: It definitely posed a lot of challenges. But, yes, we found an elephant. We had the elephant brought over on a semi to downtown Washington, D.C. on Pennsylvania Avenue. So it was very exciting. But it was, literally — the last six months of the wedding all we were worried about was this elephant.

ROLLIN: Back at the Mani-Sandhu wedding, Sonal has made sure that the two weddings faithfully represent the two religions.

At the Sikh wedding, men and women sit separately on the floor — shoes off, heads covered. The service centers around the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib.

Ms. BANGA: The bride and the groom, they go around the guru, keeping in mind that the guru or God is the center. All their life, because of this way, they will be very easily able to mend their differences if that’s what they keep in mind.

ROLLIN: At the Hindu wedding the bride groom also do a walk-around.

Pandit DIXIT: So that completion of the seven rounds around the fire signifies that they are married, and that concludes with the ceremony where the groom offers a necklace, ties a necklace to the bride and usually they put a little dot, like a kumkum, a sindur of the forehead of the bride, and that means she’s a married woman from then on.

ROLLIN: At the end of the Hindu service, the Sikh elders were invited to join in blessing the bride and groom, showering them with rice, flowers, and spices for fertility, happiness, and peace.

The bride’s hands are painted with henna.

Mr. S. SANDHU: As long as, you know, they will respect each other, not only as an individual but also respect each other’s customs and religion, you know — let the kids learn the better of both sides, and I think they will be stronger.

ROLLIN (to Mr. S. Sandhu): Did it take you awhile to come to this?

Mr. S. SANDHU: Yes. You know, your initial reaction is, you know, you would rather have things, you know, go your way, let it be simple. But reality is not always simple.

ROLLIN: This three-day celebration does come to an end, and Ronjit and Sunitha will be off to Hawaii for their honeymoon, knowing that they have the blessings and acceptance of both families.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Betty Rollin in Utica, New York.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Aravind is the world’s largest eye care center, a one-stop shop that even makes many of the lenses and instruments used by its surgeons. It looks like any of India’s high tech centers where rich Indians and medical tourists can get first-world care at third-world prices. The surgical error rate is as low here as any place in America. The big difference at Aravind is that its patients are among the world’s poorest people.

Twenty years ago, I visited Aravind’s founder, Dr. Govindappa Venkatswamy. Everybody called him Dr. V. He had retired from a government hospital in 1976 and set out to tackle “needless blindness.” Worldwide, 45 million people still suffer from preventable or reversible blindness. Twelve million are in India alone, where the extreme sun and a genetic predisposition are blamed. Many people lose their sight—and livelihood—by their early 50s.

Dr. GOVINDAPPA VENKATASWAMY (Aravind Founder, speaking in 1988): There is nothing which disables a man more than cataract and poor eyesight, and there is nothing more easier than to mend it. You just do a small operation.

DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. V began with a simple idea in a sparse 11-bed hospital with four doctors, three from his own family. It would serve patients who could pay,  but the profits would afford free care to the many more people who couldn’t afford even the bus fare. So Aravind set out to find patients, mainly through screening camps in surrounding rural areas. For those needing surgery, groups like the Lions Club provided buses to the hospital, where they entered a brisk assembly line operating room. Dr. V’s business role model was the American chain store.

Dr. VENKATASWAMY: In America you have models, whether it is Sears stores or McDonald’s hamburgers. You are able to open a chain of stores, restaurants, hotels, and you are able to organize them efficiently.

Dr. ARAVIND SRINIVASAN (Aravind Hospital Administrator): You spoke to him here. You were sitting here, and he was sitting there and talking about McDonald’s.

DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. V died in 2005, but his office is left untouched as a shrine to him. His nephew, ophthalmologist Aravind Srinivasan, manages a system that’s grown to five regional hospitals and 25 satellite clinics. This was the first one.

Dr. ARAVIND: This is a 32-year-old hospital, so we are probably geared to see about 700 patients a day. Today we are seeing about 1500 to 2000 patients a day.

DE SAM LAZARO: Each pays about one dollar for a doctor’s appointment. That helps fund an equal number of patients who go next door to a free eye hospital. There’s not much profit margin, so a heavy volume of paying patients—satisfied patients—is critical. Efficiency is also critical

Dr. ARAVIND: We call this a clinic scoring sheet.

DE SAM LAZARO: Dr Aravind, who also has an MBA from the University of Michigan, has continuous productivity reports at his fingertips.

Dr. ARAVIND: This statistic talks about service time, what percentage were seen within two hours.

DE SAM LAZARO: Patients are promised a completed appointment in two hours. A brochure details what they can expect.

Dr. ARAVIND: Registration takes about 5 minutes, vision test about 10 minutes, refraction check about 10 minutes.

DE SAM LAZARO: This is sort of a patients bill of rights almost?

Dr. ARAVIND: Exactly. So they understand what’s happening.

DE SAM LAZARO: Aravind’s reputation is drawing patients from farther and farther away.

K.G. ANGENEYULU (Aravind Patient/Voice of Translator): Whenever you say eye operations everyone says go to Madurai.

DE SAM LAZARO: Fifty-five-year-old K.G. Angeneyulu had been in a three-year depression that started when cataracts began clouding his vision. He became completely blind three months ago. Angeneyulu and his wife Shobha endured a two-day train journey to get here.

Mr. ANGENEYULU (Voice of Translator): I was a sportsman. I used to swim. After the cataract, I could no longer move around. I got stuck at home, and I started eating. Then a leg injury made me even more immobile. I had problems being overweight, and I developed high blood pressure.

DE SAM LAZARO: By nine o’clock the morning after arriving here he was being prepared for surgery. Already dozens of patients had gone ahead of him

(to Dr. Aravind): So you’ve been going for two hours and done 16 surgeries?

Dr. ARAVIND: Yes.

DE SAM LAZARO: Dr, Aravind and surgeons in several other operating theaters or OTs were first working the routine—mostly cataract—cases.

Dr. ARAVIND: The other OTs are not primarily cataract surgeons. They are primarily doing either glaucoma or cornea, and they also do some cataract to contribute to the main volume, so we are able to identify those cases that need a little extra attention are segregated from the pool.

DE SAM LAZARO: Angeneyulu was a high-risk case, given his hypertension and obesity.

Dr. ARAVIND: You just have a margin is about five to10 minutes to get the surgery done.

DE SAM LAZARO: About 10 nervous minutes later, Dr. Aravind had removed a particularly tough, leathery cataract.

Dr. ARAVIND: The cataract was a little obstinate, but things went on well. He’ll get about 95 percent vision tomorrow, so when you see him tomorrow you’ll see a very different man—more confident.

DE SAM LAZARO: By the end of this day, Dr. Aravind and his colleagues did about 300 surgeries, about half of them free of charge. Increasingly, however, patients are seen outside the hospital. Telemedicine connects doctors to satellite clinics, and today’s eye camps offer much more on site—from grinding eye glass lenses to digital scans. Near the camp a satellite truck beamed high resolution images to specialists at the hospital. Technology has improved care, and it has also brought down costs—notably for the intraocular lenses which are implanted during cataract surgery. They used to be imported.

Aravind began making its own intraocular lenses back in the early 1990s. They used to cost between $50 and $100 each. Today they are made in this factory for as little as two dollars a piece. Aravind lenses are exported to 120 countries, and they own eight percent of the global market in intraocular lenses. This factory is an example of how Aravind turned a supply problem into an opportunity.

It’s not just business acumen that drives the mission, but also a firm spiritual basis, inspired by the teachings of Sri Aurobindo, a mid-20th century spiritual leader. He believed that good work and good ideas are a manifestation of the divine.

R.D. THULASIRAJ (Aravind Executive): Part of that is to recognize that whatever ideas you get, it’s not really your ideas. They are divine ideas. So how do you kind of act on it but are not taking the egoistic ownership to those ideas, like “I have don it?” So how do you train yourself to open up?

DE SAM LAZARO: One way Aravind has opened up, or shared its ideas, is by training some 250 hospitals in 40 nations to adopt its methods.

Mr. THULASIRAJ: In this institution we train organizations to become more efficient. We completely give our intellectual property or our store away. We open up our systems, processes, how we charge the patients, our records.

DE SAM LAZARO: It’s the ethos set by his uncle. Dr. V, who was single, never took a salary. In fact, he mortgaged his home to start Aravind, and he also coaxed or inspired 34 members of his extended family to work here, starting in 1976 with his sister Natchiar and her husband. Both left surgical careers in America to work here for about $20 a month.

Dr. G. NATCHIAR: Today, oh my God, we are very, very happy. In fact, at that time in ’80s we were not happy, even though Dr. V was happy. In the family, like me and my husband, two children, it was not easy for us. We could not even buy a cycle. At that time, we didn’t appreciate his far vision.

Mr. ANGENEYULU: God bless you, Madam.

Dr. NATCHIAR: God bless me? God bless the surgeon.

DE SAM LAZARO: She says the satisfaction of seeing patients like Angeneyulu restored to full lives makes up for any material privation, although over the years salaries have greatly improved for the 220 doctors and some 2500 other Aravind staff.

Mr. ANGENEYULU: My children are starting school on the first, so I want to get going.

Dr. NATCHIAR: We’ll give you some dark glasses just like a Hollywood actor.

DE SAM LAZARO: He’s one of 27 million patients who’ve been treated at Aravind and 3.4 million who’ve had surgery.

Over the next 20 years the goal is to raise that number ten-fold. That’s a measure of how ambitious the Aravind people are. It’s also a measure of how many people remain blind in the world whose vision can easily be restored.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Madurai, India.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: The role religion will play in the administration remains to be seen, but in Washington this past week, faith was a major part of the inauguration festivities and the days that followed. Kim Lawton has our report.

President BARACK OBAMA (swearing in):  So help me God…

KIM LAWTON: President Barack Obama was known for his God-talk on the campaign trail, and that focus on religion continued in the first days of his new administration.

“This is their first full day on the job, and the best way we could imagine to begin is by praying with them and for them.”

Obama began his Inauguration Day as many presidents before him have—with a private prayer service at St. John’s Episcopal Church across from the White House, then more prayer at the swearing-in ceremony. Megachurch pastor and bestselling author Rick Warren gave the invocation, and Reverend Joseph Lowery, the veteran civil rights leader, gave the benediction.

Obama’s inaugural address was sprinkled with several references to Scripture and to God.

President OBAMA (in inaugural speech):  This is the source of our confidence, the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

LAWTON: The two men who prayed at the ceremony are both Protestants, but Obama specifically praised America’s religious diversity.

Pres. OBAMA (in inaugural speech):  For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.  We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers.

LAWTON: Religious diversity was on full display Wednesday when the Obamas and the Bidens attended what was billed as a National Prayer Service at Washington’s National Cathedral.

Reverend SAMUEL LLOYD (Dean, National Cathedral, speaking at National Prayer Service):  This is their first full day on the job, and the best way we could imagine to begin is by praying with them and for them.

LAWTON: Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu leaders were among those who took part in the service, offering prayers and guidance from their faith traditions.

Reverend SHARON WATKINS (President, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), speaking at National Prayer Service)):  What you are entering now, Mr. President and Mr. Vice-President, will tend to draw you away from your ethical center. But we, the nation that you serve, need you to hold the ground of your deepest values — of our deepest values.

LAWTON: Not everyone was happy about all the religion that was tied to the inauguration. A group of atheists launched an ultimately unsuccessful court battle to try and stop the official inaugural prayers. But as a recent poll for RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY found, the majority of all Americans say they believe God has uniquely blessed this nation, and many expect that God should be acknowledged at big national events.

Religious groups sponsored a host of unofficial events this week as well. Prominent black leaders celebrated at the African-American Church Inaugural Ball. Many saw Obama’s election as a direct result of the black church organizing first started by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

Vincent Harding

Dr. VINCENT HARDING (Veterans of Hope Project): There would be no point in trying to really speak to the beauty and the strength and the meaning of Barack’s inauguration without finding some way to speak to the strength and the beauty and the meaning of black religion as it inspired the people who opened the way for Obama.

LAWTON: Faith-based activists at an interfaith peace service pledged to continue working toward King’s full vision for America. Many here were optimistic about a positive relationship between Obama’s administration and the religious community.

Reverend WILLIAM SINKFORD (President, Unitarian Universalist Association): President Obama really is grounded in his personal faith. I think he values the religious voice. I think it is wise of him to bring in a broad spectrum of that religious voice.

LAWTON: There was also high optimism among American Muslims, who sponsored their own inaugural gala. Many here praised Obama’s stated goal to improve relations between Islam and the West.

Pres. OBAMA (in inaugural speech):  To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

INGRID MATTSON (President, Islamic Society of North America): It’s very clear to me that many people in the Muslim world overseas are so eager for a positive message from the United States, and I’m very hopeful that we’re going to have an opportunity to convey that positive message and to do some healing.

LAWTON: But there was also concern this week in some sectors of the faith community. Tens of thousands of abortion opponents came to Washington Thursday for the annual March for Life, which marks the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v Wade decision. Obama released a statement reaffirming his support for a woman’s right to choose. But he also urged new policies to reduce the number of abortions. Still, these activists are angered by administration plans to expand federal funding for abortion and for embryonic stem cell research.

Tony Perkins

TONY PERKINS (President, Family Research Council): There’s certainly some contrast here and concerns over some very fundamental issues of the respect of human life. Of course, then we get into the issue of marriage and of the traditional family — a lot of issues that raise concerns with us.

LAWTON: Family Research Council President Tony Perkins does praise the way Obama has incorporated faith-based outreach into his politics. Perkins says religious conservatives are willing to work with Obama when they can.

Mr. PERKINS: We’re not here to be adversaries of the president if he’s doing the right thing. We want to encourage him and help him do the right thing.  But we will, if forced to, take an adversarial role if he is moving the nation in the wrong direction, as it appears he is on the issue of life.

LAWTON: A spokesman for the new president says Obama is looking forward to working with “a range of partners in the faith community.” But keeping all those partners happy will be no easy task.

I’m Kim Lawton in Washington.

NIDHI SINGH (Rajdhani Mandir Temple, Chantilly, Virginia): In Hinduism we believe in one God. However, our one God has several forms — Brahma, who’s the creator, Vishnu, who is the preserver, and Shiva, who’s the destructor of all evil.

Lord Krishna is a reincarnation of Lord Vishnu.

The teachings that Lord Kirshna imparted in the “Gita” I can take from that and incorporate into my life and find hope, guidance, spirituality, peace, comfort, many different things.

The devotees come here to participate and celebrate Lord Krishna’s birth.

When we celebrate Lord Krishna — and there’s a lot of singing and dancing because that’s what he used to do when he as younger.

There’s loud chanting, and people are singing and getting very excited about the midnight hour, and we’re getting ready to welcome Krishna.

As the midnight hour approaches, we dim the lights.

The priest comes out and actually brings a live baby in a cradle, carrying him on his head, depicting how it truly happened with Lord Krishna. Lord Krishna was carried in a cradle by his father on his head to safety, to keep him safe from the evil king.

What we do is called “ardi,” which means we take a flame, rotate it clockwise around the God, and worship him with that flame, and then that flame is offered to the congregation to take the blessings.

Lord Krishna

The priest start handing out “prasad,”which is God’s offerings — food items, typically milk-based products, because Lord Krishna was very fond of milk and butter.

I come with all my worries, my thoughts from the outside world, everything that’s on my mind. I’m giving up my ego. I’m leaving behind my worries and being reminded of God’s love, of not feeling defeated by any hardship that I might be facing and getting strength to continue to do my dharma as Krishna taught — continuing to do the right things, not questioning why or what I’m going to get in return for it.

Q: You’ve been here 18 years. How do the students at Brown today compare with the students who were here when you first came to Brown? Are they the same?

A: They are both the same and different. They are the same in the sense that Brown has long attracted an entrepreneurial intellect, somebody with a lot of imagination, somebody who tends to be engaged, and that’s still true. I would say these students have been raised with an unusually strong sense of responsibility, which tends to make them more conservative. They are less likely to just raise an issue and protest about it. They are more concerned about how you build structures, and how people get along, and what the complexities are of that.

Rev. Janet Cooper Nelson

Q: Why is that?

A: I think their world has done some falling apart. I think they are less secure about the fact that if they simply raise a concern in a strident way that there are institutions around them that can support that protest without their also being engaged in some kind of construction. But maybe it is because they are my children by age — my own son is 24. I watch, I think perhaps those of us who went through college in the ’60s and the ’70s had the attitude of the strident raise the voice, raise the protest. I’m not sure we appreciated what the construction piece was about. As we’ve gone along in our lives we’ve probably taught them that.

Q: Are students more interested in spirituality than in joining organized religion, as the surveys suggest?

A: I think that’s true. I also want to push back against some of those surveys just a little bit because I think one of the reasons those surveys are showing that is because surveys are finally being taken of these attitudes, and I’m not so sure that is a change as it is that we are noticing it. The Astin studies [by UCLA professor Alexander Astin] out in California didn’t used to ask these questions about spirituality. Once they started asking, they began to see numbers like 70 percent of the student body thought issues of spirituality were important issues.

Q: Why do you think college students are more interested in inner spirituality than in attending religious services or belonging to a church or synagogue?

A: I think that distinction is important, and I think it’s verifiable. If you took a group of Brown students and did what we call a forced choice exercise — go to one end of the room if you are religious, go to the other end of the room if you are spiritual — two-thirds of the students would be on the spiritual end. But if you asked people along the spectrum to speak about why they stood in the position they stood in, the kids on the religious end would say “I’m not so sure about whether you can be spiritual if you are not religious somehow,” and the students on the spiritual end would [say] the institutions of religion have failed, they seem coercive, they seem disingenuous, so we’ve gone to this end because the sacred content of life is still important, but we don’t really trust the institutional conveyance of that. And then we of course would bug them with, well, does that mean you don’t want to read the sacred literature? “Oh no, no, no, we think those are important.” I think there’s a new probing of the way people develop spiritually and religiously which is new to the academy. I think it’s new to the press. I think it’s somewhat new to the public, and I think it’s actually revealing some very interesting aspects about this generation which are truly different — not so different than when I arrived at Brown in 1990, because it was already underway. This generation is much more eclectic in its practice. We have students currently studying for the rabbinate who would tell you that the reason they are doing that is because they sat Zen while they were at Brown. Their grandparents probably wouldn’t have done that, and their grandparents might worry about whether that’s a legitimate way to arrive at rabbinical study. So we are seeing much more borrowing of practice across lines of tradition, and I think that’s a function of the invitation these universities have made to people from a variety of places in the world, cultures, languages, religions. Students become each other’s teachers.

Q: How can students who were teenagers at the time live through 9/11 and not have it affect them spiritually, not make them more vulnerable?

A: There I think you’re completely right. That’s what I meant to say with some strength earlier about the fact that they are very much more unsure of how the future will unfold. They feel as though there could be some great challenge to them personally, ethically, morally, and how will they be ready for that challenge? We don’t have to convince them that could be a question for them. They know it is a question already, and for many of them the resources they want to probe are the ones their families introduced them to by birth. They may have been raised and confirmed in traditions, but now as adults [they are] standing away from their families, but not in opposition [to] their families. That’s actually the piece I mean to point to. Students are much more likely to have rich and warm relationships with their families that they are continuing to develop. We see students far more religiously engaged than their parents.

Q: Are more of them more interested in service and in doing good works for others?

A: In [the chaplains and religious life] office we actually have a rabbinical colleague who is placed at our Center for Public Service. Our students, particularly the ones whose religious engagement and religious identity was more in the liberal world — Reform Jews, mainline Protestants, somewhat secular Catholics and Muslims — we found those students in record numbers engaged in all kinds of community engagement and service. They were building homes. They were responding to disasters. They were organizing tutoring. They were working literally in all kinds of relief occasions in the city. We felt it was very important for them to have somebody working with them who would help them reflect about those activities. Brown University has attracted people who want to ameliorate human wrong. The worth of life is not a topic that I have to raise with students. It’s one that they want to probe in their classes; they want to probe it in religious organizations. Whether I am teaching, whatever it is I’m doing, that is a question that captivates students here. I think it captivates this faculty. I think that’s a continuing passion here. People are really fired up here to do the good. They are not opposed to making money. I don’t mean to say we have saints who have come, and we are going to be totally unmaterialistic. We definitely have a business culture that’s percolating, but it feels to me that it’s percolating around how do we do the good and make a living?

Q: It seems like we’re going through a period of religious intolerance. Has that affected college students?

A; It has affected us. I mean, for instance, right after 9/11 we had students coming to the chaplain’s office saying I’m concerned about my woman friend who wears a hijab. How will it be for her here? Will she be okay passing through the airport in Rhode Island? Would it be appropriate for me to offer to travel with her? I want my friend who I don’t know so well to be safe. Well, why would you make such an offer except that you really thought there would be trouble for that person, or you had observed it? And we did what all universities did. We reached out to people and said we need you to tell us if you’re having trouble. But I think those moments have affected our students, and I think quietly they may well be nervous about each other’s beliefs, concerned about whether there is understanding sufficient in the world for there to be peace, awkward about asking questions they need answers to. So that’s actually at the core of what we’re trying to do.

I think students more determined to solve the problem than to exacerbate it — but they are affected by it and affected by the tension. We had a meeting with our Muslim students after a bit of a blowup over [free] expression here a year ago. They talked about what it was like to be at Brown, what it was like to be in the world, and I think many of the senior administrators who were there were deeply moved that these very young lives were having to navigate some pretty acidic commentary about Muslims generally and that many of those freedoms we talk about in America that we think everybody should take for granted were not theirs. They didn’t really feel that they could count on their safety, their freedom from harassment of a kind of garden variety.

Q: What about student interest in the environment and global warming?

A: Brown is an environmentally fired up place. We have environmentalists that come to that with a spiritual passion….When I was in college we used to frequently be confronted with the nuclear clock: How close was it to midnight? Was it three minutes? Was it five minutes? These students are likely to use those images in their papers. I was listening to someone tell me about a management book that’s just come out and it’s called “My Iceburg is Melting,” and it literally apparently uses a fictional piece about penguins having a meeting about their iceburg melting and how are they going to solve these problems, and this becomes a management tool at a Harvard Business School sort of place.

Q: Do you think involvement in issues like that increases their spirituality or their search for spirituality?

A: I think it exposes that deficit if they feel as though they aren’t grounded spiritually in something that may transcend their age or these problems. I hear students saying all the time, “My parents were — one person was this tradition and one person was that tradition, so we weren’t raised with anything. I have arrived at college, and I don’t know this world. I look at my friends who have a spiritual practice, and I really would like to have one.” But how do you go about doing that when you are 18? People my age thought that the best thing to do was to raise children without religious background and then let them choose when they were 18. In my mind that’s like raising children without table manners and then expecting that you can hand them a knife and fork and a napkin when they’re grown and they’ll know what to do with it.

I think religious literacy, some sort of way of approaching a set of issues, needs to be a part of a person’s formation. They will then decide as they move through their life, as you do, as I do, what does that mean in this moment? How do I appropriate that? Is it adequate? One of the things, of course, in the university we are endlessly trying to say is your spiritual tradition, the literatures of your tradition, have to be interrogated. Not all my clergy colleagues agree with me about that. Some people think nope, the Bible said it, I believe it, that’s all there is to it. We don’t subscribe to that theory, so we are actually taking a position with respect to religious texts and traditions that says they have to change. These students will be their leaders.

Q: What differences do you see in this group of students and those in the past, religiously and spiritually?

A: These students live historically in a different time. The context around them — as you’ve already pointed out they have seen 9/11. My son said to me on the phone the day of 9/11, “Remember how I said to you, Mom, our generation didn’t have a historically defining moment? Well, now we do.” He’s right about that. They do, and that does change everything for them. I don’t think it’s made them more religious. I think it may have made the whole world around them, as well as them, more conscious of spiritual questions and religious questions, which is probably why they are being surveyed more about it. The surveyors have noticed, too, and thought, maybe these kids are praying.

Q: Do they have a sense of vulnerability, of needing help from any source they can get?

A: I think there’s also a piece that’s contextually very different. When I was in college, and we laid out the newspaper at Wellesley, we did it with spray glue and a light table. When our Brown Daily Herald students lay out the daily newspaper, they do it on the Internet. They have a computerized system. Our students know so much more about Darfur, about what’s going on when a tsunami hits. They know more about whether there’s tolerance in China toward religious expression or there isn’t. They see the tragedy of Iraq unfolding in front of them, and I think they are asking themselves the question, what is it I am going to have to do about that, and how will I do that? We were beginning to have that knowledge in the ’60s and the ’70s, but their immersion in the world is far more nuanced than ours was because of what’s around them informationally. It doesn’t surprise me that they are worried.

Q: They are aware that we are a part of the world, and there’s no getting around that.

A: Those oceans on either side of the United States don’t separate us quite the way they used to. They’re spanned all the time electronically, and our students are wanting to propose to students around the globe that they work together on something, especially environmentally.

Q: Have scandals in religious institutions made them more skeptical and cynical?

A: I would say in the same way they look to Washington and see a thoroughly inadequate government system for responding to contemporary challenges, in many religious structures, especially Protestant Christian ones that have become very much a part of the popular and political culture, they see inadequacy. Then it means as a 20-year-old I’m not only confronted with sorting out my own beliefs, but I’ve actually got to think about what would the communitarian structure look like through which those beliefs could come integrity, because it’s clearly not that. But I don’t know if they’re faced with any different problem with respect to the governing structure that they live with in this country or many others. I think there’s a real sense of “we have much rebuilding to do and we need it while we are in college.” And we also say the word “leader” here a lot. Brown students are endlessly told — identified for their leadership, entrepreneurial qualities. I sometimes want to wrap my arms around them and say “You know what? Today you are off-duty. You don’t have to lead today,” because there is so much pressure on their shoulders. When the news comes on in the morning, and one of our homeless shelters is about to be closed, and the three people standing in the way of that are Brown students, I am very proud of them for being there, because I know that they wouldn’t even know to be there if they weren’t spending endless hours enmeshed in issues of homelessness and care for the homeless. But how many issues are there like that? They do need to say their prayers in the middle of the night to keep going with that kind of energy.

Q: Do you get the sense that their pastors and religious leaders are up to date or in tune with what’s really concerning them?

A: No, I don’t think their preachers and rabbis and priests are up to speed, and I’m actually on a tear to hope that we can find in this generation many new such folks among Brown students, around the university culture across the country, because one of the reasons our religious institutions have failed in this country is that they have not been able over the last 25, 30 years to draw into their leadership positions people of the very first rank. That sounds, I’m sure, elitist, but in my own denomination [United Church of Christ] we have commented about it, and I think that we are really reaping the whirlwind of that, when you look at the evolution discussion like we’ve seen in this country recently. These students have all studied science. Most of them have not, in secondary school or in college, had the kind of rich opportunity to study religion, philosophy, ethics and really think about those issues, and we need to bring those strands together or we are going to be faced with everything from stem cell decisions to genetic engineering to evolutionary questions to moral questions in this society, about whether there should or shouldn’t be torture. Can we really be facing that question — in America?

Q: You think religious institutions ought to be dealing more with issues like that?

A: I think they must deal with them. When they don’t, students then say that religion is inadequate, spirituality is where I belong, and they are right if religion is not about those issues that are framing the human life. That’s always been the province of what is a worthy life, and how would I live it and articulate it? So our students are actually taking themselves quite seriously and, I think, calling on the institutions that they will be a part of to be somewhat reflective of the kind of integrity and coherence that they are being taught in a university to acquire. It’s a tough standard.

Q: Do you find students questioning their own beliefs?

A: That question is our question. It’s not theirs. They are questioning their beliefs the way you did, the way I did, of course. But their purpose in questioning them is not to throw them out. Their purpose is to understand them better, to probe the foundations of those questions. My friend Scotty McLennan, who is my [chaplain] counterpart at Stanford, wrote a book a few years ago called “Finding Your Religion: When the Faith You Grew Up With Has Lost Its Meaning.” It’s a great title, but as I said to him, writing my review in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin — we both went to school there — I said has the science of your childhood held up? Has the math of your childhood held up? Why would the religion of your childhood work in your adult life? It doesn’t. It doesn’t have to be discontinuous, but it seems to me that what you are taught as a kid — where there’s thunder in the sky that’s God bowling — is not going to fly when you are 22. You are going to have probed the physics, you are going to know a little meteorology, and you are going to have moved along. I don’t think it’s about giving up something you were taught when you were a child. It’s about doing what grownups have always had to do, which is to reappropriate traditions now that they are past innocence. They know more. Sept. 11 is not just something your parents shield you from. It’s something where you think, my God, the guy I used to play football with was on the 86th floor of that building. That could have been me. What does this mean? Could my life end that quickly? What would it have been about? Is it worthy? That’s not a question most children are asking. And I don’t think it’s questioning in the sense of giving up. I think it’s about probing deeper and making sure that what it is you are laying claim to and articulating is something you can really stand by, live by, speak for.

Q: These students want religion to become more active in current affairs, in issues that affect the least among them, like the poor.

A: They absolutely do, and they are measuring religious institutions against the very articulated beliefs of those organizations. If a Christian organization is saying the measure of who we are is whether we fed the hungry, responded to the homeless, showed up when there was a war to do anything peace-making about that — and students said, “Look, you said all these things, you said Jesus said those things. You are not doing anything about that. In fact, none of those issues can come up.” In one segment of Protestant Christianity there’s been a real effort to bring about a certain social agenda through the church, and those congregations and those pastors and those traditions have become very mired in that. There’s actually an internal critique that’s been developing in that very movement. Randall Balmer at [Barnard] is probably the person I would look to there, because he is a card-carrying evangelical, and he really feels the evangelical church has thrown the baby out with the bath water by becoming so enmeshed in politics. I think the tension between how spirituality is sufficiently political and concerned with the amelioration of human wrong on behalf of the great spiritual traditions and yet not so enmeshed in lobbying specific political action, that in fact the pulpit becomes confused with the soap box — that’s a really tough tension, and it takes very wise leaders, smart leaders, careful leaders, thoughtful leaders, and they need to come from places like Brown. We need our rabbis to begin to come out of our best institutions. We need our pastors, our preachers, our monks, our nuns — they need to come from places where we’ve been really able to — I don’t mean just elite institutions can do that. I mean that we really need to be speaking to each generation about the need for it to produce exactly what those who founded Harvard College said: Pretty soon our leaders we brought from Europe are going to be moldering in the ground. We need a new generation of those leaders, so we founded a great university here. We need, in our great universities across the country, to keep calling forward the leaders of our traditions. In Islam, for instance, in the United States there isn’t a single institution yet where one can study to be an imam. The American Muslim experience is percolating. There are people coming from many different countries. They are settling in the U.S. for all of the promise that this offers. We need to create the educational institutions, and these students will be in the generation that will do that, as their Jewish forebears of the ’30s created the great Jewish educational institutions of this country. I think it’s a very exciting time, but it’s a serious time. We need our very, very brightest and most engaged or rooted students to do that, and we need to say that’s honorable. We’ve spoken to them about being politicians and doctors and lawyers and all those things. We haven’t talked to them so much about being religious leaders, and we need to do that. I think we are doing better at it. I think they are becoming each other’s teachers in important ways

I often feel like we open the door in the morning and get out of the way. [The students] are our teachers. I think one of the things we care most to model for them is a kind of collegiality not based on how erudite you are or how new you are to the question, because frequently the newest scholars have the most innovative, imaginative questions to ask, and we need to hear them. They are proposing syntheses among traditions that were not dreamed before. They come together around an issue like Burma overnight. My advisee from two years ago walked in the door and was the person organizing the entire campus on Darfur, led the university faculty in divesting our portfolio from Darfur. He’s a sophomore in the college. There’s a certain humility we all need about who’s smart around here. But I also think there is an extremely lovely blessing we’re receiving by looking over the shoulders of these students, seeing where their eyes are taking them for the things that need to be worked on and then trying to offer our tools, our history, our background in ways they can make better use of. I sometimes think we are surgical nurses or midwives in an operating theatre where the surgeons are very young, very skilled, but surprising for their precociousness in terms of where we need to go, and they’re not listening sometimes to all the old arguments about why you can’t go there. They’re there.

Professor SRIKUMAR RAO (”Creativity and Personal Mastery,” Columbia Business School, to class): I would like you to give me a list of things that you need to get in order to be happy.

LUCKY SEVERSON: The answer to Professor Srikumar Rao’s question would seem obvious. These are, after all, MBA students at Columbia University Graduate School of Business. Some already have their Master of Business Administration degrees and are working on Wall Street or in corporate America.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE STUDENT #1: Laughter and strong support structure.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE STUDENT #2: I need hugs and sunshine.

Prof. RAO (to class): None of this is necessary for you to be happy. None of it. Most of us function under the model we have to get something in order to do something, in order to be something. If this happens then I will be happy. And I’m suggesting to you that we live our entire lives based on that model, and that model is fundamentally flawed.

SEVERSON: The answer, says Professor Rao, is that you can’t get happiness. It’s something inside you.

Prof. RAO: I don’t think you need to get anything in order to be happy.

SEVERSON (to Prof. Rao): So that’s the answer?

Prof. RAO: Oh absolutely. Anything you can get you can lose.

SEVERSON: Imagine discussing happiness in a business course 25 years ago when some were proclaiming greed was good. Professor Rao was a player during that high flying era, a marketing consultant to several blue chip companies.

Prof. RAO: I reached a point where I said there has to be something more.

SEVERSON: When he found his answer in the teachings of Hinduism, he created a course called “Creativity and Personal Mastery.” It’s an extremely popular course with five times more applicants than can be accepted.

Prof. RAO: Probably 90 percent or more of my students have already been out in the business world. They have worked for some of the largest corporations in the country, and they say, “This is nice, there’s a lot of money, there’s a lot of prestige” — quote, unquote — “there’s career success, but there is something more that I’m looking for. I’m looking for fulfillment and I haven’t found it yet.”

SEVERSON: His is not the only course offering Eastern philosophy as a road map to personal fulfillment. Professors at the top six business schools are blending Hinduism and Buddhism into their classes.

Prof. RAO: One of the core concepts of the [Bhagavad] Gita, which is a very important scripture in Hinduism, is the notion that you have some control over your actions, but you have no control over the outcome. So if you make your happiness contingent upon a particular outcome, it may or may not happen. It frequently doesn’t happen, and therefore you condemn yourself to living perpetually in frustration.

SEVERSON: The class is so popular that would-be students are willing to go through Professor Rao’s grueling acceptance process and pay an extra thousand dollars tuition fee. They get no course credit, huge writing assignments, a 62-page syllabus, and the class meets all day on Sundays. The course is so well-liked graduates even formed an alumni association. Stewart Glickman is a teaching assistant.

STEWART GLICKMAN (Teaching Assistant, “Creativity and Personal Mastery”): I took the course last year, and it really made an impact on me. It just made me a better husband, a better dad. It made me a better person at work just to be more sensitive to people and really understand me better.

SEVERSON: The professor emphasizes the value of expressing gratitude and appreciation.

Prof. RAO: Whenever you’re feeling grateful, you are not feeling frustrated and angry and all those negative states that we go into. And that’s a big benefit in and of itself.

SEVERSON: Ainsley Hines is an MBA student.

AINSLEY HINES (Student, “Creativity and Personal Mastery”): It has had immense impact on me in so many different sort of realms. Personally, it’s reinforced a lot of what my parents taught me as a young person, but which I never believed.

SEVERSON: If you’re a CEO and immediate happiness and fulfillment are your goals, Marshall Goldsmith is your man, providing you can afford him.

MARSHALL GOLDSMITH (Executive Coach, speaking to U.S. Chamber of Commerce group): Everybody I work with is megasuccessful, yet they want to get better. The behavior that led to the success they have is not necessarily the same behavior that’s going to lead them to get better.

(Clapping) Go! Go, go, go, go, go.

SEVERSON: His job description is “executive coach” and he’s earned almost nine million frequent flyer miles traveling and speaking mostly to executives and CEOs of major corporations. Goldsmith’s mantra is “be happy now.”

Mr. GOLDSMITH: When I work with my clients I say now everything else is what’s called “feedforward,” not feedback. “Feedforward” is a very Buddhist concept. We’re not going to talk about the past. The past is over. Basic Buddhist philosophy: Every time I take a breath, it’s a new me. I believe people can change.

SEVERSON: His fees are said to be substantial, but they come with a money-back satisfaction guarantee.

(to Mr. Goldsmith): Do you help make them a better corporate citizen?

Mr. GOLDSMITH: I think I help make them a better human being. A lot of people have the right values. Their behavior doesn’t match their values. I just try to help their behavior match their values.

SEVERSON: He gathers feedback from the executive’s family and employees and then coaches his powerful clients to lead by example, to listen to those around them, how to apologize and be a decent person.

Mr. GOLDSMITH (to class): Take a deeper breath. I want you to imagine you are 95 years old. You’re just getting ready to die.

Mr. GOLDSMITH: I tell all my clients you may think your employees like you when you are 95 years old. Look around your deathbed. Ain’t no employees waving goodbye. You realize that friends and family matter. And the other one is if you have a dream, go for it.

SEVERSON: From the classrooms to the executive suite to private homes, like this one in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, you will find people in the financial world searching for some sort of spiritual grounding. In the basement of this home of a Wall Street executive we found Gautam Jain, an instructor of an ancient Hindu philosophy known as Vedanta, which offers a life strategy to improve productivity, reduce stress, and find true happiness.

GAUTAM JAIN (Vedanta Instructor): Today’s concept of enjoyment is getting away from work. Now what Vedanta is all about it transferring your happiness to work. If you can’t find happiness in your work, you’ll never find it.

SEVERSON: Most of those attending this little gathering are successful business executives and other professionals.

Mr. JAIN (to class): Do you have a control over your mind’s obsession for success? That determines, first of all, whether you will be peaceful, second of all, whether you will be successful.

SEVERSON: Dr. Sharad Wagle is a psychiatrist who has been practicing for 32 years. He says Vedanta has enhanced his work.

Dr. SHARAD WAGLE (Psychiatrist): A patient that had been with me for a number of years now asked me — reached in her pocketbook, took out some paper and asked me if she could borrow a pen. And she started taking notes. And I said, “What are you doing?” And she said “What you’re saying now makes more sense than anything you’ve said to me in the past two years.”

Mr. JAIN: Vedanta is not against possessions. It is against possessiveness towards your possessions. It is the attachment to your possessions that destroys you.

SEVERSON: Jonathan Lewis runs a home mortgage company in Fairfield, New Jersey.

JONATHAN LEWIS (Allied Home Mortgage): I can tell you that a number of very, very wealthy people back in the early ’80s and late ’70s who had tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, and they were seeing psychiatrists, drinking and had problems with suicide and other things. So I don’t think money or bonuses make one happy.

SEVERSON: Some of his employees might disagree with the money and bonus part, but Lewis says since he’s learned to serve others through the teachings of Vedanta, he’s convinced he’s a better boss.

Mr. LEWIS: I want to improve my life and help people around me as best I can. In order to do that I need to understand and learn to deal with more complex issues and help employees who are stressed and myself as well.

SEVERSON: The host of this class, Sanjiv Sobti, offers a word of caution from someone on the front lines of corporate America.

SANJIV SOBTI (Investment Banker): Regrettably, I think greed is still very much alive and well. And I think people are continuing to fill – try to fill the lacuna that they feel in their lives with material wealth.

EVAN GALBRAITH: Living your life day-to-day and just doing your best can have enormous repercussions in areas we just don’t understand. So, you know,we can all make a difference.

SEVERSON: On that point, the student and the master agree.

Prof. RAO: MBA students at top business schools are going to reach positions of power in a relatively short time, and then their actions are going to have a tremendous impact on tens of thousands of persons in, you know, many, many, many different countries. So it’s particularly important that they reexamine their values and notions of what makes the world work.

SEVERSON: And now the world can wait and see if this philosophy of corporate responsibility and personal fulfillment actually trickles down.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson in Washington.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Also today, Belief and Practice. This past week has been the Hindu festival of Diwali, celebrating the end of the year and many events in the lives of the some of Hinduism’s most important deities. Hindus believe in one ultimate God, but also worship and ask for help often at home from the many thousands of more familiar gods and goddesses. Last weekend we visited Monu Harnal in Burke, Virginia, as she helped prepare her parents’ home to welcome the Goddess Lakshmi.

Monu Harnal

MONU HARNAL: Diwali, Deepavali are one of the same thing. It means “the festival of lights.” During Diwali, we want to illuminate our house so that the Goddess Lakshmi can find her way.

The whole family gets together. We celebrate in our homes. Everyone gets to wear new clothes. It’s similar to Christmas plus New Years all at once.

In our house, we have the puja room, the prayer room. My Dad, he chants and we follow him. First, we pray to Lord Ganesha, who is the removal of all obstacles. And then, we pray to the Goddess Lakshmi to bring in both material and spiritual prosperity.

In Hinduism, the nice thing is all the gods like are your board members in your life. They act like board members. And you can call on one of them whenever you need something for a certain problem or issue or whatever it is. You can call on them to say, “Okay, Goddess Lakshmi, I need a little cash here. So help me, give me some energy to remove this problem for me.”

We don’t see prosperity as anything negative. It’s actually very fortunate that you’re prosperous. You’ve done good deeds and you’re being rewarded with prosperity.

Because the coins are a symbol of Lakshmi, the goddess of abundance, we wash her in milk and decorate her with vermilion, the red what’s on my forehead right now.

It’s called a “tika.” It’s a confirmation of us performing puja – the actual prayers that we do to evoke the goddess.

I’m striving to eliminate ignorance, become more spiritually awakened. That’s my goal as a Hindu.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: This weekend, Hindus around the world celebrate Diwali, the Festival of Lights. For some Hindus, Diwali coincides with a special worship service for the powerful goddess Kali, who represents opposites such as life and death, creation and destruction. We spoke about Kali with Kamanashish Chakraborty, a founding member of the Washington Kali Temple in Burtonsville, Maryland.

KAMANASHISH CHAKRABORTY (Washington Kali Temple): Goddess Kali we consider to be the prime cosmic energy. She is the creator. She is the sustainer. She is the destroyer.

We Hindus believe, our philosophy says that creation comes out of destruction. And, what is created is destroyed again. The prime example would be the seed and the tree and the seed. The seed destroys itself to be able to germinate and sprout, which evolves into a tree, bears fruit, and you destroy the fruit to get to the seed. That’s the cycle.

The basic image that we worship — she has four arms. The right side, two arms that offer fearlessness to her devotees. The left deal out death and destruction.

Her garland is 50 severed demons’ heads. Each head represents a letter in the Sanskrit alphabet.

She’s standing on her divine husband, Shiva — with her right foot on his chest; left, on his thigh. Shiva is very white; she is stark black. It’s the perfect union of the opposite.

The puja includes certain rituals. The priest, the Pujari, has to invoke the divine within himself. He has to become the divine to be able to offer to the divine. He has to think of himself as the god and then offer himself to the prayer.

The deities are taken care of with utmost affection, like one would for one’s own child.

We would wake up the deity in the morning, as any one of us would wake up after a good night’s sleep. We’ll give her a bath. We’ll give her fresh clothes. We’ll give her food. We’ll comfort her, allow her to rest for a while. And then again in the evening, we’ll offer the final of the day’s prayers and let her go back to bed.

We prostrate before her who is most gentle, as well as most terrible. We salute her who is the support of the world. We pray, “May the Devi, the Mother, bring forth benefits for all who sing her praises.”

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Finally, as people of faith learn more about each other’s religions and wrestle with inter-religious differences, a visit to a Hindu temple where worshippers are accustomed to seeing many forms of one god. Deryl Davis reports.

DERYL DAVIS: Some things are still done the old way in one of the world’s most ancient religions — like the fire ceremony, offering gifts to divinity.

And the ritual preparation, bathing and feeding of numerous deities — several times a day.

Hinduism and its rituals go back thousands of years. Now, one of the world’s oldest religions can be seen in the New World.

Like this temple outside Washington, D.C., with its 56-foot tower, or Rajagopuram. It’s built, as are all Hindu temples, in the shape of a reclining human being.

Dr. SIVA SUBRAMANIAN (Sri Siva Vishnu Temple): To us, the temple itself is God. It is as though God is in a lying-down form. And the feet represent the front towers, or the Rajagopuram.

DAVIS: But Sri Siva Vishnu is different from most Hindu temples. It is dedicated to two major gods, Siva and Vishnu, who represent rival Hindu traditions. Dr. Siva Subramanian is one of the temple’s founders.

Dr. SUBRAMANIAN: It is not common in India to find a united Siva and Vishnu temple under one roof. And so, one of the things that has been accomplished here in Sri Siva Vishnu temple in Maryland is to bring the concept of unity in this diversity here.

DAVIS: One side of the tower depicts Vishnu, preserver of life, and his many forms. On the other side are the forms of Siva, destroyer and re-creator. At the top of the tower, both gods become one — illustrating what worshippers here say is their religion’s fundamental monotheism.

Dr. SUBRAMANIAN: Hinduism believes in one god, called Brahma, and all the gods and goddesses are reflections of this one god.

DAVIS: Many of these “reflections” illustrate human ideas or attributes. Ganesha is the remover of obstacles. Dancing Shiva represents the endless and recurring cycle of time, part of the Hindu concept of reincarnation.

Many Hindus worship more than one “personal deity.” Salvia Giridhar says this helps her see the divine in everything.

SALVIA GIRIDHAR (Hindu Devotee): If I can look at the books and look at people, look at money, look at trees, and look at animals in the form of lords and gods and goddesses, it helps me to realize that God is all around me, whether it’s man, woman, Christian, Muslim, Hindu.

DAVIS: Matoin says the concept of numerous deities enables Hinduism to transcend regional differences.

MATOIN (Hindu Devotee): The different gods are specifically set up for the purpose of identifying with different cultures, different ethnicities, different groups of people.

DAVIS: With its altars to many different deities, Sri Siva Vishnu temple has become a meeting place for American Hindus of all traditions. And with no weekly services or set liturgy, adherents are free to worship when and how they choose.

MATOIN: We give everybody an opportunity to see God the way you like it, or like God.

DAVIS: Dr. Siva Subramanian says that idea extends to other religions too.

Dr. SUBRAMANIAN: We believe that all religions are different paths to the same god, but also within Hinduism there are multiple paths to reach God.

DAVIS: Hindus here say when they escape the cycle of reincarnation, there’ll be no need for words, chants, and outer forms of worship. But until then, they’ll keep their doors, like their altars, open.

I’m Deryl Davis in Lanham, Maryland.