August, 2013 visit to India

I spent 10 days in India the beginning of August.

At first I presented a paper to the conference hosted by the Swami Narayan Sampraday at Akshardam in New Delhi

I then spent several days at the Radha Raman Temple Ashram in Vrindavan with Shri Shrivatsa Goswami and his family

I had a brief visit to a magnificent marble inlay gallery of Dinesh Chand Bansal near Mathura

Shrivatsa and I stopped at the tomb of Moghul emperor Akbar on the way back home

I briefly stopped at Gobind Sadan, founded by Baba Virsa Singh, to visit devotee and author Mary Pat Fischer

Here below are some images from my time

Conference with the Swaminarayan Sampraday at Akshardam, New Delhi

Conference with the Swaminarayan Sampraday, at Akshardam, New Delhi by Frank Kaufmann

Here is the paper presented at the conference: http://bit.ly/164J38U

Conference: “Sahajanand Swami and the Swaminarayan Sampraday: Historical, Social and Cultural Perspectives”

Karzai Scuttles Obama’s Taliban Plans

Karzai Scuttles Obama’s Taliban Plans

communities.washingtontimes.com

Taliban attacks, U.S. talks peace and Afghanistan President Karzai says no.

Lectures at D.O.N.E - May, 2013

D.O.N.E (Development of New environments) is a European based youth leadership program.

Participants train themselves through service, spiritual regimen, seminars and education, and fiscal and life-style responsibility and self-sufficiency.

The program trains participants to forge and develop cross cultural competence and relationships through travel and interpersonal collaboration in all areas of training.

I have been blessed with the opportunity for the past many years to teach during the classroom education component of the program.  I teach on self-development, social harmony, environmental sensibility, and self-sufficiency.

This year my son Frone is in the program.

Here are a couple of shots taken at the end of our studies this year:



Just prior to my time teaching, the group toured Israel and Palestine on a peace and service mission.

Here is a lovely video of their travels in the Holy Land

The most and least Christian states in America

A study measuring religious bodies in the United States called the, "2010 U.S. Religious Census: Religious Congregations; Membership Study (RCMS)" was recently released by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB). The most comprehensive study of its kind, it provides detailed county-by-county information on congregations, members, adherents and attendance for 236 different faiths groups. (The survey differentiates between specific denominations within the same tradition.)

The researchers found Utah to be the most Christian* state with around 78 percent of population identifying as Christian adherents. The researchers found Maine to be the least Christian state with only about 27 percent identifying as Christian adherents.

Read the whole article, and see a beautiful slide show of churches in America here 

Technology and ethics

Technology moves faster than ethics

communities.washingtontimes.com

Tech changes out-pace spiritual foundations for their ethical use.

Read the entire article here