PHILIP GOLDBERG
Author - Spiritual Coach - Public Speaker

Did you see Newsweek’s August 31 edition? In it, Lisa Miller has a short piece titled “We Are All Hindus Now.” She doesn’t mean that vast numbers of Americans are going to Hindu temples or doing pujas to Ganesh at their home altars. She means that, according to surveys, a large and growing number of people hold a pluralistic world-view, in line with the core principle of Hinduism, as expressed in the ancient Rig Veda: “Truth is one, the wise call it by many names.” (more…)

Of all the iconic images the media trotted out to remind us of Woodstock on the fortieth anniversary of that seminal event (August 15 – 18, 1969), the one that best captures what endured from the Sixties was orange-robed Swami Satchidananda addressing the multitude. It wasn’t displayed nearly as often as the writhing bodies, impassioned performers and muddy encampments, but that tableau, captured in black-and-white before the music started and before the rains came, stands as a potent symbol of the meeting of East and West that has transformed American culture. While most of the values that Woodstock was said to embody faded away as the baby boomers grew up, the embrace of Eastern spirituality has only grown stronger, changing the way we understand and practice religion, the way we take care of our minds and bodies, and the way we contemplate our place in the cosmos. Think of it this way: it wasn’t long before even the hippest of hippies stopped living communally, sharing food with strangers and dancing naked in the mud. But, forty years on, more people than ever meditate, chant mantras, read the sacred books of the East, and, participate in the six-billion-dollar-a-year Yoga industry. (more…)