Religion Ethnography Essay

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Kayla Akers ATH 185 Professor Cinnamon 27 April 2014 Religion Ethnography 1.) Intro: I decided to focus my Religious Ethnography on a friend whom I recently have become close with. Adhita Sahai is my friend’s name, which she later told me her first name meant “scholar.” I choose to observe and interview Adhita, after she invited me to her home after hearing about my assignment. I was very humbled that she was open to this, because not only was it a great opportunity for this paper, but it also helped me get to know Adhita better. I took a rather general approach to the religious questions that I proposed to the Sahai family because I didn’t want to push to deep, I could tell Hinduism is extremely important to this family. Because this family does not attend a religious site where they worship, I instead listened to how they do this at home as a family instead. Listening as the family spoke to me about what is important in their family I couldn’t help but refer back to Marcus and Conner’s idea of interdependence versus independence. As the family spoke to me on how important it is that the soul reincarnates itself, which is when all bad karma is out of the body, I kept referring to the independent self. But often again when they spoke of theologies and learning constantly from what they take from others around them, I found interdependence. Both selves balance each other out but do not reside on one more than the other. Adhita kept telling me the main goal of being a Hindu is “self-realization or just to be free from any type of suffering or hardship/bad karma,” (You achieve this through reincarnation) you have to acknowledge the simultaneous efforts that take place to achieve this goal. “You can’t just set a high sta... ... middle of paper ... ...carnation. After speaking to her about my religion ethnography, she offered that she practices Hinduism with her family and would be more than happy to open her home to me. I was honored that they gave me this opportunity, and understood that I truly was interested and not just writing a silly paper for a class. This information on Hinduism gave me more respect for my friend Adhita, as she plans to stay committed to Hinduism her entire life. I gained appreciation to the devotion, as well as the loyalty to good and bad karma. When first approaching the Sahai home, I felt slightly uncomfortable. Hoping the family wouldn’t judge my religion, and would be open about talking about theirs was my biggest concern. While this doesn’t even start to touch on the entire religion, I am confident I captured what was truly important about this religion to the Sahai family.

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