The topic I am going to discuss is pilgrimages and more specifically I am going to compare the traditional pilgrimages of the Hindu traditions with modern pilgrimages in America. My research question is that pilgrimages are present in many cultures and have been for thousands of years, are these places then intrinsically sacred or do we give them meaning? To answer this I will analyze the traditional Hindu pilgrimage in Hardwar and various untraditional pilgrimage sites in America including natural wonders and tourist attractions. I will be using sources specifically about American pilgrimages and Hindu pilgrimages as well as some sources about spiritual places and the geographies of pilgrimages in general. I will first give a general overview …show more content…
Contemporary pilgrimage incorporates a whole range of culturally or nationalistic motivated journeys and despite a general decline in religious practice in the Western world, pilgrimage has witnessed a revival in recent decades. American pilgrimages are more unique because we don’t have as much history, so I will focus more of my paper on these. I will use the source Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions to discuss how different tourist attractions in America are sacred and have cultural value. Many of these attractions are natural wonders which is similar to how Hardwar’s religious identity is inextricably tied to the river Ganges. Many of my sources discuss how America has a wide range of religions as well as many people who don’t identify with any particular religion but who still consider themselves spiritual. There are numerous different types of pilgrimages in America that religious and nonreligious people frequent. An example of these types of pilgrimage from the book “Choosing Our Religion” is a labyrinth which was popularized in the United States in the 1990s. People will go on journeys from one labyrinth to the next all over the country to practice walking meditation and spirituality. The labyrinths are typically modeled on medieval designs that were meant to provide a localized experience of pilgrimage to the Holy
Rituals are held as a very important part of any society, including ours. They go back to ancient times or can be as simple as maintaining one’s hygiene. Non-western societies have rituals that may seem very foreign to us, but they have been engrained in their communities and are essential to their social structure. This interpretation will focus on the Great Pilgrimage, a ritual performed by Quechuan communities. We will be looking specifically at a community in the area of Sonqo.
The article written by Alexis Celeste Bunten called “Sharing culture or selling out?” talks about the theory of “commodified persona” or the “self commodification” of a tourism worker in Sitka and how capitalism has influenced the way a tour guide is presented. Chapter eleven in Charles C. Mann’s book called “1491, New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus” is a slight summary of the second half of the book which talks about how similar Indians were more advanced than the colonists and that we should accept the fact that indigenous people and their societies have influenced American culture.
The presence and function of pilgrimage in both the worlds New Age and Judeo-Christian religious landscape is incredibly important as it often provides individuals with an opportunity to exemplify and extended their spiritual beliefs and understandings and gives them a chance to create a meaningful, life changing and life affirming spiritual experience. New Age Pilgrimage in particular creates a chance for New Age adherents to explore the choices they made through encountering deep spiritual journeys and experiencing sacred energies through a range of different experiences. We will discuss the appeal of New Age pilgrimage with reference to two sites in particular, the vortex experience in Sedona, Arizona in the United States and the Ayahuasca rituals and journeys that occur all over the Amazon Rainforest in South America. These sites are worthy of looking at because they market two completely different spiritual experiences, but upon closer inspection seem to be important and appealing to the New Age community for similar reasons. The sites are similar because pilgrimages to these areas do not pertain to one strict site or one dogma of spiritual understanding; in fact they do the opposite by providing a large landscape in which individuals can create their own pilgrimage experience. Indeed it seems that the two most enticing factors about both these sites is the fact that they both feed and satisfy every individual’s desires and provide individuals with a chance to make sense of and answer the larger questions about life and the world that people struggle to answer. However both these sites also offer something that is unique to their pilgrimage alone, in Sedona that being the accessibility and ease of choice pertaining to practis...
Further, the attributes of pilgrimage proposed by Ian Reader (1993, 7-8) provide an account of the varying motives of participants who attend the Lennon memorial: “the idea of a journey out of the normal parameters of life, the entry into a different, other, world, the search for something new, the multiple motives of participants, ranging from homage to veneration to the simple impulses of curiosity.”
Trix, F. 2006. Blessing cars: a Classical Sufi Play on Ritual in Immigrant America. Journal Of Ritual Studies 10(2) 109-129.
Suter, Keith. “Roadside Memorials: Sacred Places in a Secular Era.” Contemporary Review 292.1692 (Spring 2010): 51+. Psychology Collection. EBSCO: Academic Onefile. Web. 24 Mar. 2011.
may not always be seen to be a good thing as pilgrims spend much of
Hinduism is a complex religion that has a variety of beliefs and traditions. In the nineteenth century, the British had to categorize the people living in the region of the Indus River for census purposes thus getting the name Hindus by foreigners. Today they have a preference of being labeled as "Sanatana Dharma (eternal religion)" (Pg 79)
This is a comparison paper on modern day sacred secular places versus mythological secular places in history. This report will summarize what elements mythical secular sites have in common. The report will explain how Ground Zero qualifies as a modern day secular site. The significance and functions of the twin towers before the attack will be addressed. Ground zero will be compared with the Areca Tree, noting differences in meaning, function, and common elements. Our modern day secular site is Ground Zero. On September 11, 2001; 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four jet airliners. At 8:45am. American Airlines flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) and exploded. At 9:03am, United Airlines flight 175 crashed into the south tower of the world trade center and exploded. At 9:17am the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) shut down all New York City airports. 9:21am the port authority of New York and New Jersey order that all bridges and tunnels in the New York area are closed. 9:30 am. President Bush announced the country has suffered an "apparent terrorist attack." 9:40am, for the first time in history Federal Aviation Administration halted all air traffic nationwide. 10:05am, the south tower of the World Trade Center collapses and a massive cloud of debris and dust expands from crash site. 10:28am The World Trade Center north tower collapses from the top down. 11:18am American Airlines reports it has lost two aircraft. Flight 11, a Boeing 767 had 81 passengers and 11 crew members. Flight 77, a Boeing 757, had 58 passengers and six crew members. 2995 people died that morning including the 19 hijackers. 156 innocent civilian passengers, 2605 civilians died on the ground. ...
Kochler, S. & Levi, D. (2012) Perception of Sacredness at Heritage Religious Sites Environment and Behavior October 2013 45:912-930, Retrieved November 8, 2013
Ludwig, Theodore M. The Sacred Paths: Understanding the Religions of the World (4th Edition). 4 ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2005.
As I have mentioned in the above paragraph that I always had a dream to go visit the Hindu temple, so I decided to visit Hindu temple for my experience project. It is way that is giving me an opportunity to learn and find out interesting things about the Hindu practices. By just visiting to this temple I can find out many differences in between mine and Hindu culture. I have watc...
Most people in the world derive their religious beliefs and traditions from their parents and peer influences. From a religious point of view, “There are many definitions for the term ‘religion’ in common usage. [Broadly defined], in order to include the greatest number of belief systems: ‘Religion is any specific system of belief about deity, often involving rituals, a code of ethics, and a philosophy of life’” (Robinson, 1996). However, in examining Hinduism, it is difficult to label the practices as a religion. This paper will expound upon the Hindu traditions, taking into account the characteristics of sacred elements, their meaning, and significance.
"…brings into contact people from different nations, socioeconomic classes, and ethnicities." (p. 2) As such, the authors argue that historical studies of tourism reveal human interaction that is "both pleasurable and profitable as well as exploitative and depleting."