|
Spirit of the West — Page 2
1. Prameyaji Chaitanya
Priest, Shree Mahalakshmi Temple
Deciding on a deity can be difficult when there are
330 million to choose from. After meditating on the
needs of the Vancouver Hindu community, Prameyaji Chaitanya
chose Mahalakshmi, goddess of wealth and love. While
we stand before her image, Chaitanya offers prasad—blessed
water tasting of ginger, and a mixture of raisins, almonds,
and rock candy—and explains his choice. “In
the community the root problems were financial struggle.
A lot of things can be solved by action, but you also
need grace, and Mahalakshmi brings great fortune.”
Priest of the temple since it was established in 1990,
Chaitanya had come to Canada after training for five
years at the Sivananda Ashram in Rishikesh, northern
India’s holy city at the base of the Himalayas.
“People have criticized Hindus for not worshipping
one god, for having millions of gods. But every Hindu
knows that ultimately these are all aspects of one power.”
A member of the Multifaith Action Society since the
’80s, Chaitanya is patient in explaining his faith
to non-Hindus. “We’ll all be better off
if people of faith have good communication,” he
says. “The Hindu religion is very broad-minded.
The first concept is that every being on this planet
is one of the children of the almighty Lord, and you
should treat them equally.”
2. David Mivasair
Rabbi, Ahavat Olam Synagogue
“No religion is an island. Religions have acted
like they’re islands, that they alone have the
one absolute supreme truth,” says Rabbi David
Mivasair. “They do all have the truth, but not
exclusively.” Rabbi Mivasair was raised in a non-observant
Jewish family in Baltimore. As a teenager in the late
’60s, with the Vietnam War on and the draft looming,
he began attending synagogue on his own, attracted to
the prophetic messages of peace in Isaiah and Micah,
where lions will lie down with lambs and swords will
be beaten into plowshares. The exhortation for social
action in Torah—“Justice, justice you shall
pursue”—moved him to want to become a rabbi.
Unable to find a rabbinical college with a progressive
outlook, he set the dream aside until he was 30, when
he stumbled on the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
during a conference for Jewish peace activists. Now
the spiritual leader of Ahavat Olam synagogue, Mivasair
and his congregation have broken rugelach with Muslims,
Christians, Sikhs, and Hindus. Rabbi Mivasair himself
is a founding member of the InterSpiritual Centre, a
planned “shared sacred space” that will
provide a sanctuary for congregations of many faiths.
This kind of cross-pollination, says Mivasair, is crucial
for pursuing justice, whether in the Middle East or
the Downtown Eastside. “Those of us who are attached
to a tradition have a duty to get over the walls between
us,” he says. “In our time there’s
a kind of crisis. The damage we’re doing to the
earth, for instance, is absolutely clear. Dealing with
it takes a totally united approach. We can’t be
divided up anymore.”
|
SUBSCRIBE 
