We live in a world brimming with natural spaces. Why are some sacralized, made the home of rituals, and cherished by religious adherents? This chapter focuses on the creation and maintenance of sacred spaces within the natural world. In this case, we have directed our attention to natural spaces that are associated with specific religions, mostly in the form of Hinduism and Native American religions. These spaces elicit strong sacrificial qualities that serve important purposes for their visitors and thus impact the geographic landscape around them. This chapter includes three separate pieces. The first piece, written by Hannah Huggins, analyzes the process by which natural sacred spaces are created and does so with an emphasis on Devils Tower, the Ganges River, and Crater Lake. The second piece, written by Lena Beckhorn, broadly looks at Hinduism and why Hindu sacred spaces are commonly found within nature. The third piece, written by Madison McClish, looks specifically at the Ganges …show more content…
In doing so, it attempts to uncover the intricate connection between Hindu sanctification of the river and efforts to clean up the river. This paper begins by providing information on Hinduism and their platform for worship and then moves into exploring the Ganges River as a whole, including the many very important rituals that Hindus associate with the river. This piece works to provide readers with a profusion of information on the Ganges River as it relates to Hinduism, in addition to its practical purposes as well, which include the river taking on the role of a trashcan, bathtub, washing machine, etc. Thereby, calling attention to the high levels of pollution present in the river, which are extremely difficult to address given not only the sacredness of the river to Hindus, but also the practical purposes that it serves for
The English took their land and disrupted their traditional systems of trade and agriculture. As a result, the power of native religious leaders was corrupted. The Indians we...
Human beings have made much of purity and are repelled by blood, pollution, putrefaction (Snyder, 119). Nature is sacred. We are enjoying it and destroying it simultaneously. Sometimes it is easier to see charming things than the decomposition hidden in the “shade”.We only notice the beautiful side of nature, which are benefits that nature brings us: food, fresh air, water, landscapes. But we forget the other side, the rottenness of human destruction. That is how human beings create “the other side of the sacred”. We cut trees for papers, but we fail to recognize that the lack of trees is the lack of fresh air. Therefore, it is crucial to acknowledge “the other side of the
Blij has clearly put this book into historical significance by mentioning the idea of geography and how it plays a role in societies all over the world. However, the five themes of culture regions, cultural diffusion, cultural interaction, cultural ecology, and cultural landscapes are all clearly defined within a specific context to a particular nation. Through reading this intriguing piece of literature I received the underlying notion that Blij firmly believes that landscapes of the world realm are not going to change. De Blij worldview of regions, diffusion, interaction, ecology, and landscapes has allowed him to simultaneously link issues together from the United States all the way to Southeast Asia.
There is a famous quote by writer Joseph Campbell that says, “Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again”. That says, everyone has a sacred space. For some that is their bedroom, for others it is a religious or spiritual place. No matter what, however, everyone gets the same feeling, the same release from their sacred place, but some people must go further, or make a pilgrimage to get to their sacred space or spaces. I will be addressing the sacred places of pilgrimage in Buddhism.
Sacred space is one of the types of spatial condition being analyzed by Mircea Eliade’s religious journal. It is related to purification and can only be apprehended by a religious person. According to Eliade, “For a religious man, a space is not homogeneous as he experiences interruption, breaks in it; some parts of space are qualitatively different from others” (20). He also believes that a person in a sacred space will ultimately reach a threshold that personify the frontier which distinguishes and opposes the two worlds. In this essay, I will compare and contrast the concept of sacred space in the biography of Maryam Binti Imran and Alice Kingsleigh. Maryam holds an independently exalted place as a religious hero in Islam, because her name
Vine Deloria. 2003. Cluster Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. University of Oklahoma Press: Oklahoma.
There is a deep relationship between the environment and Western Apache people. The bonds between the two are so strong that it is embedded in their culture and history. Keith Basso, author of Wisdom Sits in Places expanded on this theory and did so by divulging himself into Western Apaches life. He spent fifteen years with the Apache people studying their relationship with the environment, specifically concentrating on ‘Place-names.’ When Basso first began to work with the Apache people, one of his Apache friends told him to ‘learn the names,’ because they held a special meaning with the community. (Cruikshank 1990: 54) Place-names are special names given to a specific locality where an event took place that was significant in history and crucial in shaping morals and beliefs. Through the use of place-names, the environment became a teaching tool for Apache people.
India has a characteristic of more ethnic and religious groups than most countries in the world. Despite this multiplicity of religions, there exists a broad group of interrelated traditions called Hinduism. Although other religions within the nation such as Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity have occasionally challenged its dominance, Hinduism is the most prevalent religion in the South Asian region. Some of the outstanding differences between Hinduism and other denominatio...
...nto religion, one must ponder significance in today’s modernized world. With technology and signs increasingly championing the power of reason today, many religions have seen their members and followers stagnate or decline. Considering the compromise and accommodation of temple locations and orientations in a colonial-era should one consider commodification, a similar compromise to remain relevant in the modern world? One can observe that although several principles have been compromising modernity, religion at its core has remained true to its teachings and principles. As a physical embodiment however, the architecture today presents a certain image of itself to the rest of the world. It remains to be seen as to what extent such architectural changes suit the changes of the world today and to which extent do they begin to present religion in an unsuitable manner.
My intention in this piece is to explore the development of the concepts of brahman and atman in ancient Indian culture. I intend to examine the role of the Upanisads in Vedic society and to investigate their abandonment of Vedic sacrificial ritual. I contend that the writers of the Upanisads turned towards a mystical path away from society in order to explore a viable alternate way of living that did not involve sacrificial ritual. Although the only record we have of this shift in thought is a set of philosophical discourses, I suggest that this was not solely an intellectual move. Rather, there were emotional reasons as well as logical reasons that these groups of people moved away from Vedic society in pursuit of brahman. This was a slow process that evolved over many years and although it did not banish sacrifice from Indian culture, it laid the foundation for later non-violent religious movements in India. In attempting to apply Rene Girard and Gil Bailie’s theory of acknowledgement of the victim to an ancient Indian phenomenon, I intend to show that the Upanisadic rejection of Vedic sacrificial ritual was a significant move away from the sacrificial system upon which humanity relies so heavily.
In The Sacred & The Profane: A Nature of Religion, Mircea Eliade attempts to define the sacred by stating it is “the opposite of the profane” (pg. 10). Through out the book he tries to explain this statement through the concept of hierophany (the idea that one can experience, sensorily, the manifestation of the holy/sacred), however his main explanation of the sacred being “the opposite of the profane” is the comparison of a modern religious man and a modern non-religious man (a profane man). Eliade compares the two by explaining how each would react to space, time, nature, and life. This essay will explain the idea of sacred space, how a religious and a profane man would experience it, and how the idea of sacred space might be applied to the study of medieval art and architecture.
I had to get away. I needed my alone time: space. It was nice living out here in the big open, to be able to wander around and not have to worry about the sickness going on in the cities and towns. It made me feel invincible, free.
The Ganges River is extremely important to the people of India as most of the people living on its banks use it
Classical Hindu Mythology. Cornelia Dimmitt and J. A. B. van Buitenen. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978. 38-40. Print.
Ganges River is considered one of the most polluted rivers in the world. Almost everyday around 264 million gallons of waste are dumped into the river. In the next 20 years this amount of waste is expected to increase at least 100%. The pollution in the Ganges comes both from people and industrial