Godspeed - 06/20/10

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Yoga; Dharma; Karma! Where do these ideas and practices come from, what are their purpose, and how have they come to be the religious foundation of more than 1 billion people?

On this show, Michael Hallundbaek interviews Dr. Arvind Sharma of McGill University in Montreal, one of the world's foremost scholars in the field of Hinduism.

Professor Sharma has published a wealth of books and academic articles in the fields of Crosscultural Philosophy of Religion, Religion and Human Rights, Methods in the Study of Religion, Hinduism, Women and Religion and
Sanskrit. He has also promoted the McGill Annual Sanskrit Conference since 2005, in which all presentations are made in Sanskrit.

In this hour, topics include: the history and development of Hinduism; the different branches of it and their distinct beliefs; the Vedas, the sacred scriptures and their key figures and lessons; Hindu concepts of virtue and vice; successive lives; manifesting our desires; karma; dharma; the material and immaterial world; ultimate reality and "truth"; the spiritual path of Yoga; concepts of a good life and the afterlife; salvation pre-and post-mortem; daily practice; the project World Religions After 9/11; and more.