I am not the most religious man, but I do enjoy learning about new things, and religion certainly would be among the subjects that I find the most fascinating. Having largely completely ignored it when younger, always assuming it was propaganda, I now find myself more willing to expose myself to it, knowing that learning about it does not necessarily translate to converting to any particular given faith.
In the process, I have been blessed to learn more, much more about all sorts of faith. It started with an academic interest in Buddhism that led to a more pronounced interest, and eventually, I was reading more and more books on the subject, going to see the Dalai Lama in Central Park, and even taking meditation classes on my own. But this was only the beginning.
There was a burgeoning interest in learning more about the Western religions, as well. This included Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. I pursued more knowledge, and eventually, began to be impressed enough with one particular faith, Unitarian Universalism, that I tried to study it, to learn more about it, and eventually, even began to attend services and take classes at that particular congregation (Morristown Unitarian Fellowship).
I learned more and more, and enjoyed stimulating and lively discussions with people of diverse faiths and beliefs, as well as experiences. I still was learning more about each faith.
It faded away, eventually. My attendance at the Unitarian services was never consistent, but I began to stop going altogether. My work schedule in large part interfered, and my presence there just kept diminishing until it faded completely.
Yet, my interest in faith has not waned. If anything, my appetite to learn more about spirituality (and yes, I would make a clear distinction between spirituality and religious beliefs) just kept growing. I pursued it through different avenues, and my interests expanded enough to explore learning about faiths outside of what have often been referred to and recognized as the big five: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. I began to learn more about other faiths and mythology, reading various authors in this field, most notably Joseph Campbell, who spoke about the need for mythology in our culture. But it went beyond this, as well. I also became very interested in Native American spirituality in particular, and very much enjoyed learning more about animism in general – particularly by author Daniel Quinn (who also had a riveting and very different, unconventional interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve).
So, yes, my base of knowledge has expanded considerably over time, as have my own thoughts and reflections on spiritual subject matter.
However, there is one particular religion that I really never felt I had a solid enough base of knowledge in to even discuss it intelligently, and it is among the”big five” religions, and that would be Hinduism.
The thing is, it is one of the oldest religions in the world, and easily the oldest among the “big five”. It also has the most stories and such, the most Gods, and so on and so forth. A very complicated and involved faith, and it seems that practitioners have numerous different ways to exercise their faith, even more so than in other religions. So it was all very complex, and a bit overwhelming, even perhaps intimidating.
Still, I wanted to explore this subject matter enough to still pursue it, and read some material on it.
The latest was a book that I found for maybe fifty cents at a thrift store earlier this year. It is a short and small book focusing on Ganesha in particular, who is the most famous and common deity in the Hindu religion. I picked up the book right away when I saw it.
This book, although it does not look like much, is actually a quite informative little guide that offers a terrific glimpse into pertinent information about Ganesha specifically, and about Hinduism more generally. For a book that you could probably read in one sitting (it takes a couple of hours or so), it is very informative, giving you quite a bit of information about his god and the religion overall. It offers a fascinating overview, without getting bogged down in specifics, and without assuming either that the reader has a working understanding of Hinduism (which I did not), nor assuming that the reader is too dumb or ignorant to understand This was not a book for children. This is a book for adults, interested in learning more about this particular subject. As such, it was pretty solid.
It even goes into specifics, giving a general history and some related stories, then going more into detail about the mythology of Ganesha, his powers, and all the different forms in which Ganesha is portrayed.
I should perhaps mention one little story regarding Ganesha, although it really has little to nothing to do with this book, and that is this. On my weekends, I work at a financial facility that is obviously mostly closed during the weekends and other non-business hours. This place has a beautiful park, owned by the company, outside of it, that offers tennis and basketball courts, a baseball field, and a vast expanse of lawn, as well as a couple of ponds and some nearby woods (not to mention some incredible wildlife for such a small plot of land in the middle of suburbia in New Jersey. It just seems kind of strange, but let me go forward
Anyway, there was one weekend a number of years ago (maybe three of four, perhaps even five years ago, I cannot remember for sure anymore) that I noticed something weird on a park bench right next to the pond. It looked like a paper bag, although I only saw it from a distance, as I passed by driving. It was from a bit of a distance, so I did not have a clear view, or anything. I said to myself that I had better leave it alone, and did.
But the next weekend, it was still there, sitting on the bench, exactly as it had been the weekend before.
By now, I was getting curious, but I resisted again, figuring that whatever it was, if the owners had not even come back for it yet, it probably was not worth coming back to. If it was a paper bag, then probably the food would have gone bad, and would surely be consumed by animals soon, if it had been already.
Yet, the next weekend, there it was again. In the exact same place it had been the prior two weekends.
So, yes, by now. My curiosity got the better of me, and I went over to the park bench, and picked it up.
As you might have guessed, it was not a paper bag at all. It was a little statue of Ganesha. I knew who he was, of course, but really only dimly. Just a vague awareness of him, that he was seemingly the most prominent Hindu god, and that he seemed so odd. Not much more than that.
But I picked it up and took it home. It was obviously made of clay, and it looked kind of old – although not really an antique, or anything like that.
For whatever reason, I took it as more or less a good luck symbol, and have basically kept it ever since. It was actually quite fun trying to identify which Ganesha, among the 32 illustrated, that my “new” Ganesha statue was. Each has a different meaning, and the differences are often subtle.
In any case, I obviously still would have a lot to learn about Ganesha, and about Hinduism in general. But I always seek to learn more and more, as much as I can, and this book certainly helped.
It is for starters, not for experts, obviously. And just as obvious, I am a starter in this field, by no means an expert. But this little book helped me to understand not just about Ganesha specifically, but quite a bit about Hinduism in general, as far as a starter book is concerned, and I could not ask for more than that from a book that was under a dollar, or a statue that I just happened to find on a park bench.
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