Mm-hmm

... that there have been so many figures over the last, um, well over 200 years who have been, uh, whose lives have been shaped by and influenced and transformed by their interactions with Indian thought, with, uh, Hindu teachings, uh, Hindu practices.

And so my book, uh, really narrates, uh, that alongside the story of the immigrant communities that have come and brought, uh, their practice of Hinduism into America, and how that is also integrated now into American life.

Um, the end of the book, I have a list of, uh, my research assistants and I came up with as complete a list as we could, and we, we knew even then it was not gonna be complete.

Um, but, uh, as complete a list as we could of Hindu temples in the US.

And, uh, there's hardly a state in the US that doesn't have, uh, multiple Hindu temples, and there's six temples in Pittsburgh alone.

So, uh, you can see, uh, how the tradition has grown here.

So how do the transcendentalists figure into this? Who were they, and what are we talking about there?

Yeah.

And, uh, this partly is because that's my own life experience as well, uh, going back to my childhood.

Uh, I'm, after a, a tragedy, my father passed away when I was quite young.

Uh, this led to, uh, sort of your stereotypical spiritual quest, spiritual search, and, uh, read the Gita when I was 14, and just from there, uh, it took off.

And, uh, I'm currently a practitioner in, uh, the Vedanta Society that is, uh, in India called the Ramakrishna Mission.

That's my tradition.

That's my sampradaya.

So how do the transcendentalists figure into this? Who were they, and what are we talking about there?

The subject of his talk today is the reality and unreality of rebirth.

Thank you for your very kind welcome.

It's always a great joy to be speaking here at the Vedanta Society of New York.

The original Vedanta Society, the first, started by Swami Vivekananda in 1894.

Not in this building, but there's the institutional continuity.

And so it's always a great honor to speak here.

And I always feel that I'm with family when I'm here with all of you.

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