Misrepresentations of the Hindu Tradition : Talk by Pravrajika Vrajaprana
Misrepresentation of Hindu tradition in academia and media:
About The Speaker:
Pravrajika Vrajaprana has been a sadhvi at the Sarada Convent of the Vedanta Society of Southern California since 1977, taking her final vows of monasticism or sannyasa in 1988.
Vrajaprana is the author of Vedanta: A Simple Introduction as well as A Portrait of Sister Christine and My Faithful Goodwin. She is editor of the Vedanta compilation Living Wisdom: Vedanta in the West and the editor of Swami Shraddhananda’s Seeing God Everywhere. In 2010 Vrajaprana co-authored with Swami Tyagananda Interpreting Ramakrishna: Kali’s Child Revisited. Vrajaprana’s books and articles have been translated into a number of European and Indic languages. Her most recent publication is a chapter entitled “Interfaith Incognito or What a Hindu Nun Learned from Christian Evangelicals” inMy Neighbor’s Faith: Stories of Interfaith Encounter, Growth and Transformation.
Vrajaprana was the Hindu representative at both the Dalai Lama’s 2006 “Gathering of Hearts/Illuminating Compassion” conference as well as the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu’s 2008 “Seeds of Compassion” conference. She has presented papers on topics relating to the Hindu traditions at the American Academy of Religion and at the East/West Philosophers’ Conference. She has spoken as well at Boston University’s Institute for Philosophy and Religion. An active participant in Santa Barbara’s interfaith movement, Vrajaprana is the Hindu chaplain at Cottage Hospital.
We live in a global society in which the religious and the nonreligious live door to door, yet the prevailing social trend is toward increasing secularization. Along with it have come competing for truth claims concerning who is qualified to speak for a religion. Perhaps more than any other religion in the United States, Hinduism has been subject to intense debate over who is qualified to accurately represent its philosophy and practice. The contending groups are primarily two—one, Hindu practitioners (“insiders”), and second, non-practitioners (Hindu or not) such as academics and journalists (“outsiders”), whose presumed objectivity is deemed to give them greater insight and intellectual freedom. The debate has played out painfully and with great controversy in recent decades. Pravrajika Vrajaprana examines a number of issues in the debate as well as what is at stake for the American Hindu community.
About The Speaker:
Pravrajika Vrajaprana has been a sadhvi at the Sarada Convent of the Vedanta Society of Southern California since 1977, taking her final vows of monasticism or sannyasa in 1988.
Vrajaprana is the author of Vedanta: A Simple Introduction as well as A Portrait of Sister Christine and My Faithful Goodwin. She is editor of the Vedanta compilation Living Wisdom: Vedanta in the West and the editor of Swami Shraddhananda’s Seeing God Everywhere. In 2010 Vrajaprana co-authored with Swami Tyagananda Interpreting Ramakrishna: Kali’s Child Revisited. Vrajaprana’s books and articles have been translated into a number of European and Indic languages. Her most recent publication is a chapter entitled “Interfaith Incognito or What a Hindu Nun Learned from Christian Evangelicals” inMy Neighbor’s Faith: Stories of Interfaith Encounter, Growth and Transformation.
Vrajaprana was the Hindu representative at both the Dalai Lama’s 2006 “Gathering of Hearts/Illuminating Compassion” conference as well as the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu’s 2008 “Seeds of Compassion” conference. She has presented papers on topics relating to the Hindu traditions at the American Academy of Religion and at the East/West Philosophers’ Conference. She has spoken as well at Boston University’s Institute for Philosophy and Religion. An active participant in Santa Barbara’s interfaith movement, Vrajaprana is the Hindu chaplain at Cottage Hospital.
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