<p>Hey guys, I was just wondering if there were any orthodox brahmins out there who perform trikaala sandhya while in Uni. Do your roommates find you weird? Do you still perform it in college? At home it’s easy, but just wondering what were your experiences with it in college.</p>
<p>Random question: What is “trikaala sandhya”? I’m Indian and know quite a few brahmins, but don’t know what that term means…</p>
<p>trikaala sandhya a.k.a. sandhyopasana, sandhya vandana, nitya karma, etc.</p>
<p>It’s a daily ritual every brahmin ought to perform. Nowadays most have devolved into meat-eating and total disregard for the nitya karmas, so except for the ultra-conservative, no one really performs it anymore. It starts with acamana, pranayama, aghamarshana, marjana, suryarghya, suryopasthana, and gayatri japa, all of which are multistep procedures in themselves. Different people do it the way their particular family line performs it according to which rishi you descend from and whichever veda he was the seer of.</p>
<p>Berkeley is the home of liberals. If you aren’t particularly loud or intrusive, I don’t see any reason why your roommate would object to it.</p>
<p>^Yeah I second the above statement. Just tell you roommate about it and there’s a strong chance he/she will be fine with it unless they’re against other religions or something weird like that or for some odd reason it annoys him/her. But most likely they should be fine with it.</p>
<p>Sigh I guess I’m devolved then lol (I still don’t eat red meat, but I can’t resist the occasional chicken or fish), but I still keep up with learning the philosophy, and I’ve seen many Hindus on campus who do the practices but don’t actually know the philosophies, and I personally think knowing and analyzing and scrutinizing the philosophies and ideologies of any religion is more important than just blinding following the practices of that religion. If you understand why you’re doing the practices then obviously it’s fine to practice it, but I feel a lot of people sadly just blindly follow their faith’s practices without actually asking themselves why they practice it.</p>
<p>Ah, that’s good. There’s a lot out there if you’re interested and it gets very deep. Hinduism itself is an umbrella term for so many things, it’s hard to orient yourself and know where to start. I would begin with the classic “Intro. to Indian Philosophy” by Chatterjee and Datta. Might be a little sanskrit-heavy and technical, but it’s pretty straightforward. It goes from the primitive atheistic traditions of carvaka all the way to the Vedantik commentaries of Ramanuja. Also Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s sourcebook on Indian Philosophy.</p>
<p>I’m an oddball I guess, my grandfather was a Sanskrit Pandit, so I got started early on all these things, but then again, there’s so much out there to learn. I mean, from the rather barbaric crematorium practices, to the summoning of spirits and ghosts (which I’ve personally witnessed), to the monks living in solitude in the mountains, the path of knowledge and vedanta, the path of devotion, there are some really profound thoughts, poetry, music, and culture.</p>
<p>That sounds really interesting! Honestly, even if they think it’s weird, I don’t think they’ll call out on it and tell you to stop or anything. I would think most people would be more curious than anything.</p>