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Thread: What to do...

  1. #1

    What to do...

    Namaste to all,

    Currently, I'm working at Scarborough Festival in Texas, where I am working in a kitchen as a dishwasher. I'm depressed about this because it was the only job I could find for this year. It is strictly a meat kitchen, where we have to scrap up remains of cooked dead bodies from the cookware and clean them off. Today, being the first day, was rough. I'm not used to the smells, the grease, and clogged sinks, not to mention looking at parts of dead bodies and feeling utterly helpless at ending this nightmare of millions of animals.

    I guess what I'm asking is, is it possible in America to find Hindus with businesses whom I could go work for? I am SO TIRED of working with western/Christian people. I feel exhausted, and I feel invalidated, like no one has to respect animals, especially livestock. Treating animals with respect is really an option, not a requirement in western civilization.

    Dhanyavād

  2. #2
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    Re: What to do...

    Namaskar deafAncient,

    Having worked in restaurants for many years when I was younger, I understand. It's trying, particularly in a Medieval Faire where pretty much everything is spit-cooked meat. I sympathize and do not blame you for wanting to find something else. However, I don't understand why it has to be an Indian owned and run business? You do realize that there are plenty of Indians who eat meat? Plenty of Indian Dhabas and restaurants here in the US that serve meat - not simply for westerners but because they also eat it?

    If you wish to do something that might help the plight of animals in this country - an admirable thing to wish - it might be best to look up and seek to work with aid and rights groups already established in this country, which means that they are most likely to be largely American grown and run. There are plenty to choose from. if what you wish is to do good, and help to teach others to do better then why limit yourself?

    Your choice of words is striking to me. Which are you tired of, Christians or Westerners? Because there are plenty of intelligent, open-hearted, understanding, animal rights loving (and vegetarian) people out there who are Christians. There are plenty of Westerners who are not Christian, some of whom are also all of the above and some of whom are also fairly ignorant. In this birth you yourself, like it or not, are a Westerner too, partly by some heritage and partly by upbringing. Drop all these useless, divisive labels. Stop looking at skin and hair colors and look at the People underneath, this is where you will see their hearts, nowhere else.

    Let's talk about animal rights for a moment. This may be a fairly unpopular thing to say, and I sincerely hope I do not offend anyone with this, but I'm pretty sure I will offend some. Please understand this is only my personal view from what I have seen, which is fairly limited and may admittedly be biased. If you think you might be offended, please do not read the rest of this paragraph. I have been to many places in India and while the love for Mother Cow is a great thing, and there are many who try and care for the cows properly, and there are indeed lovely temples devoted to animals who are associated with the Devas and God, (if one ignores the abomination that is the Meat Lobby in the US), most animals here get far more over-arching and consistent rights, medical care and respect than animals do there in my experience. When was the last time you saw a pack of semi-feral, mange and flea ridden dogs in the street? Or a dead cow with a stomach bloated from eating plastic and garbage - possibly partially picked clean by various scavengers? Or a person carting a freshly slaughtered goat, still bleeding, home down the highway on his motorcycle? Kids throwing stones and chasing animals as a game? Here we are required to give our animals some amount of medical care and comfort and guarantee them good food, or they are taken from us and we are sued. Most pets must get licensed, which requires keeping up certain vaccinations, just like children. Most pets get regular dental checkups - which is more than we can say for many Humans in this country, case in point Deamonte Driver. Some animals get cancer treatments when not even all Humans in this country can afford to, and advances in medicals treatments and understanding in Humans are often applies to animals - my own workplace deals with some cardiology and we get calls from Veterinarians regarding new research fairly regularly.

    My point is that there is no ideal society on this planet. Every single one has it's warts and scars and wounds. Every single one has it's wonderful and beautiful things. We cannot only look at one and not look at the other, however weary we get. We must see both, or we don't really see the truth - instead we lie to ourselves. Stop looking at the bad only, look at the good too. There's plenty of it. It's nice to idealize other cultures when you're sick of your own, but that's also a lie, albeit a pretty one.

    If you are insistent on working for an Indian business - nothing wrong with that - then my suggestion would be the same as for anyone looking for any job: Google Is Your Friend. Look up Indian Groceries, Clothing stores and similar businesses near where you are, then go visit them. Ask if they know of more places, or know of anyone looking to hire. A suggestion if you have any technical skills and are willing to learn, many of the equipment calibration companies in New England and the northern east coast are Indian owned and run, perhaps look up some in your area of Texas. And then there's going to Temples to find the communities there. Go, make some friends and acquaintances, ask around. If you can find a Satsang center, go and see if they have a community bulletin board that may have jobs posted. There may even possibly be community email lists and/or online boards linked to some of the sites. You are most likely going to have to network in person.

    But really, I'm not the first to tell you this and it bears repeating: Your happiness and God and India and respect and validation... everything you're looking for is not any further than yourself. Drop the labels and the skin sacs our consciousnesses inhabit, look through them and look inwards. You won't find any of those things anywhere else.

    ~Pranam
    ~~~~~
    What has Learning profited a man, if it has not led him to worship the good feet of Him who is pure knowledge itself?
    They alone dispel the mind's distress, who take refuge at the feet of the incomparable one.
    ~~Tirukural 2, 7

    Anbe Sivamayam, Satyame Parasivam

  3. #3

    Re: What to do...

    Namaskāra Aanandinii,

    You caught me on the nationality fallacy. I ought to have mentioned Sanātani instead of Indian.

    I am still in search of what to do in the remaining time of Grihasthashrama that I have left.

    I am tired of both westerners and Christians, the former because of how they look at drugs, alcohol, finding all kinds of sensational pleasures to keep themselves occupied, their place in nature (dominion over animals and nature whether they are atheist or not), and the latter because they keep trying to do what they do, especially in the Deep South of the US. The kind of westerner you speak of is rarely found where I live, and most of them are in the rennie world where I work. I would count maybe two in the rennie world alone, and one of them, a person with "buddhist leanings," is struggling with alcohol and tobacco amidst a difficult, if not failing marriage. The other one, I hardly ever get to see him because we are on separate roads in life (I work right now the Texas faires, while he goes out of Texas most of the time, and he lives onsite at the faire, while I tend to live in RV parks 15-20 miles away from site).

    Thanks for the other information you provided. I seek these things because I... Don't have others to talk to in person. I'm having to hide myself most of the time. There's one of the men who works for the RV park that I'm staying in. He has worn a "Duck Dynasty" camo t-shirt, speaks with a real thick Texas accent, and made the brazen assumption that I had a boyfriend. He would probably skin me alive if he found that I read the kind of books I read. Seriously. That's the kind of people I'm surrounded by quite often. There are very few vegetarians I know of, never mind vegan. I get to the point, I don't want to live like this, being the only one who gets it. I want to talk to people like yourselves, IN PERSON. To be able to say namaste or namaskār and be understood why I say that. Don't forget that we not only have devaruna of some form and pitruruna, but also must have rishiruna and manavaruna. How can we have the latter two when we realize in the last third of our lives that what we were taught wasn't so, that we were taught to be obedient office and retail workers with no real contribution to civilization insofar as dharmic living and real works goes, and when the sevas really benefit the powers that be and helps to keep them in their place of power?

    I'm in a existential AND civilizational crisis. I live in a society that is just wrong. We lose trees every year to more range land bought for cattle grazing and hay growing. More earth is leveled for more buildings for businesses we don't need more of. Inner Mongolia is being poisoned in the name of all kinds of gadgets for consumption. Consumerism is rampant. People talk about these sunglasses or these shoes, or this football team or that baseball team. When I talk about the basics of things important to me, instead of them conveying themselves as understanding what life is about, I'm being told that "I'm deep, really deep." As if they weren't capable of understanding what I understand, which disappointments me because I know that they could see what I see if they were given a better or different chance at accessing that place in the heart. It's almost as if I want to decide to skip Grihasthashrama AND Vanaprasthashrama and go straight to Sanyasashrama to prepare for moksha, because I do not want to come back to this world. However, I still have to make a living because I am not secure in my living situation, and probably never will progress to Vanaprasthashrama fully. I guess mentally, I'm in between Grihasthashrama and Vanaprasthashrama because while I do see the need to make a living, I also do feel a need to find something that I can do seva in. I don't know what that is in Texas, though, given my proximity to small towns (under 15-20,000 people) as opposed to major cities. Currently, I work on the weekends, while I spend most of my time during the weeks reading up on east-west or western dominance history (at this time, as I have several books I want to get through), SD, and Saṃskṛtam. A major part of my devotional time is spent working on solving online jigsaw puzzles of SD things, like images of Mandirs, Murtis, street holidays, especially Holi and Gaṇeśa, Nature, etc.

    Dhanyavād for reaching out to me.

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