Hello Everyone!

[1tim115]

I just wanted to say that many of the friends I worked with at my last job were in the Hindu religion. I am an American but they were in India. Great friends and will be forever.

 

[SATYAKI]

I just wanted to say that many of the friends I worked with at my last job were in the Hindu religion. I am an American but they were in India. Great friends and will be forever.

Hi, 1tim115 .

Nice to see that you had a good time with your friends.

Vasudeiva Kudumbhakam (The whole world is one family.)

-- Rig Veda

 

[whereismynotecard]

Hello.

 

[Aupmanyav]

I just wanted to say that many of the friends I worked with at my last job were in the Hindu religion. I am an American but they were in India. Great friends and will be forever.

Thanks friend and welcome to the forum.

 

[niranjan]

Hello.

Hi there ,bub.

 

[niranjan]

I just wanted to say that many of the friends I worked with at my last job were in the Hindu religion. I am an American but they were in India. Great friends and will be forever.

Hi there 1tim115.


And indeed,there is a long tradition of friendship and deep spiritual connection between the Americans and the Indians, even though they are on opposite sides of the globe.

America itself was first found by Christopher Colombus, who came in an audacious voyage looking for India , and believed that he found India when he discovered America.

America's greatest philosophers and poets, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman were themselves inspired and influenced by Indian philosophy, and were known as the 'Transcendental Brahmins ' in the west.


"In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny and trivial."

~~ Henry David Thoreau



"I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad-Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us."

"The Bhagavad-Gita is an empire of thought and in its philosophical teachings Krishna has all the attributes of the full-fledged montheistic deity and at the same time the attributes of the Upanisadic absolute."


~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


It is noteworthy that Mahatma Gandhi himself was deeply influenced by Thoreau's writings , especially his book Walden, and his essay ,Civil Disobedience .


Gandhi later told the American reporter Webb Miller ,"[Thoreau's] ideas influenced me greatly. I adopted some of them and recommended the study of Thoreau to all of my friends who were helping me in the cause of Indian Independence. Why I actually took the name of my movement from Thoreau's essay 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,' written about 80 years ago."


Similarly Albert Einstein , who became an American citizen later on, had correspondence with Gandhi too, exchanging letters and thoughts, and were close to each other.

Many people all over the world corresponded with Mahatma Gandhi, who used to take time out of his busy political life for India's freedom struggle , to write back to all those who corresponded with him. He stated that the largest number of letters he got was from the Americans.

The American civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr., was also himself deeply influenced by both Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi, and studied both their teachings rigorously, before embarking on his reformist career, which brought about tremondous changes in America.

Another great personality , who is a common link between America and India is Swami Vivekananda, the great Hindu sage,who had also deeply influenced the world in his own unique way.

Swami Vivekananda - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An American writer had commented that if Christopher Colombus discovered America's physical body, it was Vivekananda who discovered America's soul.

Paramahamsa Yogananda, an another great Indian sage,and the author of the majestic 'Autobiography of aYogi ' , himself lived his last years in America, spreading spiritual teachings to all and conducting meditation workshops.

A part of Mahatma Gandhi's ashes , after his cremation,were given to the World Peace Memorial founded by Yogananda, in Pacific Palisades ,California.

Paramahansa Yogananda - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The ashes had been sent to Yogananda by an old friend, Dr. V.M. Nawle, a publisher and journalist from Pune, India, who knew of the deep spiritual bond between Yogananda and Gandhi. Following the dedication of the memorial, Dr. Nawle wrote:

"Regarding Gandhi ashes, I may say that they are scattered and thrown in almost all the important rivers and seas, and nothing is given outside India except the remains which I have sent to you after a great ordeal .... You are the only one in the whole world who received Gandhi ashes outside India."

Self-realization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fellowship_Lake_Shrine



I , an Indian myself , is deeply influenced by Thomas Paine, the great American revolutionary and deist.


http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/deism-2/52518-thomas-paine
-original-american-rebel-cause.html

So, yes, there is indeed an old tradition of friendship and brotherhood between the Indians and the Americans.