India does not need to become anything else. India must become only India. This is a country that once upon a time was called the golden bird.
India somehow constantly rivets and inspires me, and I feel very relieved to have come from this country which has a very 'lifeist' approach to living fully, no matter what one has or doesn't have.
We Indians do not teach that there is only one god. We know that everything has power, including the most inanimate, inconsequential things. Stones have power. A blade of grass has power. Trees and clouds and all our relatives in the insect and animal world have power. We believe we must respect that power by acknowledging it's presence. By honoring the power of the spirits in that way, it becomes our power as well. It protects us.
The Indian was a religious man from his mother's womb.
If you want to know India, study Vivekananda. In him everything is positive and nothing negative.
Trying to capture the essence of India is almost like trying to bottle magic, which is hard to do because India is so broad and diverse - it's controlled chaos. But there's spirituality and wholeness to the people.
I grew up around a lot of various religions, so it's a part of my consciousness in a way. Everything from heavy Catholicism to followers of Indian spiritual masters to Unitarian universalists - all in one family. Though the family aspect was stronger than any particular dogma.
Now we say there's, well, another place in the world-there's India. Wonderful place - except for its people.
I am Indian, and I'm proud of it. Indian life is mythologically rich and powerful.
My first was a Hare Rama Hare Krishna pendant bought in 1976. The other pendants I wear are Balaji from Tirupati, a pendant of my guruji Shri Krishna and Lord Ganpati.
India. From Goa to Kerala and Mumbai, it gets me every time. It's the food, the people, and the colours. The magical atmosphere and the accepting nature of the locals.
I wanted to make a movie once at Lake of the Woods, where my parents had a cabin, which I now have. We actually planned, we wrote a whole screenplay about a kind of Indian spiritual group that was at Lake of the Woods. We weren't calling it that but it was Lake of the Woods. We wrote a whole screenplay about it but we couldn't get funding for it.
With 'Peradam', the nature of the project was such that it was deeply immersed in spiritual concepts in India and is based on the works of French poet Rene Daumal.
Not until we see the richness of the Hindu mind and its essential spirituality can we understand India
Whenever I do something, it is rooted in the Indian opportunity.
I am very much of an Indian by heart.
India has an unbroken tradition of nonviolence from times immemorial.
You are a true representative of the spirituality of our home, India. Ever since I met you for the first time, the link between us has always grown in strength. I want to say how much I value the meaning of that bond, because it is one of true dedication to the service of God.
Of all the places I've been, India is the one that's on the top of my list to return to.
The great Vaishnava religion of India has also sprung from a Tamil Pariah - Shathakopa - "who was a dealer in winnowing-fans but was a Yogin all the while".
India has the purity, the innocence. India knows what it wants. There is a direction. It has so much to offer.
Whatever else India may not be, she is at least one thing, She is the greatest storehouse of spiritual knowledge.
Indians, of course, have no "theology," and indeed no word for the system of credulity in which the white priests arrange for God, who must be entirely bewildered by it, a series of excuses for his failures.
