
The Spiritual Center Of the Earth (1999) - mariorz
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/11/23/DD78283.DTL
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vijayr
I know I may be downmodded for saying this, but:

the kind of "Indian spirituality" you see outside India is totally different
from the actual stuff. most gurus open their "ashrams" in the US exactly for
the same reason most entrepreneurs want to move to silicon valley - more money
and visibility. sadly, these "ashrams" aren't ashrams in the true sense, more
like religious businesses.

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gruseom
The center of spiritual self-satisfaction is more like it. (Notice what paper
this is appearing in.)

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swombat
When the cloud of smug from SF meets the cloud of smug from DHH's acceptance
speech, all hell will break loose!

Prepare... for the day before the day after tomorrow!

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sown
Actually, the center of the universe is on the campuses of the University of
New Mexico, next to the guy who sells burrito cheese-burgers.

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/8601342@N03/sets/72157605272220...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/8601342@N03/sets/72157605272220053/detail/)

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OperaLover
"The Center of the Universe" at UNM. Nice photos. Fairly cool concept.

But what does it mean that the CoU is so rectilinear?

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astine
That the artist's budget was limited?

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OperaLover
He meant the "Spirituality Marketing Center..." But what the hey. Close enough
for spiritual work ;)

And of course, by "San Francisco" he meant "Bay Area", which of course means
"California." Again: the energy (spirituality) looks pretty much the same from
Dakshineswar.

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alex_c
"It used to be in India, but now it is San Francisco. All our gurus are moving
there to open ashrams."

That made me laugh. Maybe I'm too cynical, but my explanation is a lot less
noble than what the author implies...

Also note the date of the article. A good reminder that maybe a bit of
humility and some critical thinking (in the sense in which it contrasts
"automatic openness to new ideas") can be a good thing now and then.

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gruseom
_note the date of the article_

Ah, that explains a lot. I totally missed it.

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rams
The things attributed to the regular Indian folks appears very "made up" ...

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rjurney
In my experience, real things from regular Indian folks do too. Much of Indian
culture is simply unbelievable :)

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vijayr
like? :) can you give examples? :)

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rjurney
Like the whole 'dunk Ganesha' thing, for one. Teams of young men group
together and compete between groups to buy/build/decorate the grandest
elephant man to dunk in local ponds and rivers. Thats surreal.

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vijayr
yeah, that is great fun. sometimes those are huuuuuuuuge, would take months to
make and paint, only to be dunk in the sea. apart from polluting the water,
its great fun.

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rjurney
Haha, I know I love it! But its very bizarre to an outsider stuck in a traffic
jam because of the big elephants.

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vijayr
Yes I agree. A whole lot of rituals would seem funny/bizarre to westeners. An
american friend of mine found "arranged" marriages very very strange, he
couldn't comprehend it at all. But it has been working very well for centuries
in India.

Similarly, when I came to US, I was shocked at the size of shopping malls, had
never seen such mega malls in India (India does have big malls, but nothing
compared to the ones in US). Also I found the pointless lawsuits very amusing
(like the guy who sued his drycleaners for some 50 mil USD).

Well, I guess these differences is what makes life interesting :-)

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rjurney
Indeed :)

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sielskr
One of the blog entries of independent journalist Michael Yon describes an
informal interview of a young Kurdish woman soon after the overthrow of
Saddam.

Yon said that the Kurds had no material resources, but a can-do attitude. He
described the young woman as extremely self-confident.

Asked about her plans for the future, she said she wanted to emigrate to
France, hang out with the cool people there for a while, then move to San
Francisco. (France and SF are respectively the number one and two tourist
destinations, BTW.)

So, by "the spiritual center of the world," what the Indians in the article
might have meant is that SF is the best place they know of for a person to
live.

And I do not scoff at that notion.

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arfrank
Before I even read the article it reminded me of the spiritual center of the
universe. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Hill,_New_Zealand>

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Pistos2
Not really an article I'd mark as worth reading, but a little bit of ++ for
daring to post something remotely to do with spirituality or religion.

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gjm11
So you're saying the author gets "a little bit of ++" for posting something
that you don't think is worth reading, and on a topic that's seldom if ever
appropriate on HN? That seems a bit odd. Maybe I'm just insufficiently
enlightened.

~~~
Pistos2
\-- on the article itself, ++ for being daring. (I neither up- nor down-voted,
BTW.)

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danielj
It's funny how we (americans) keep thinking that we are the center of the
world ;)

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henning
San Francisco is a pretty cool guy. eh is famous for stuff and doesn't afraid
of anything.

