242. diaspora
mestic, community, and temple rituals in Hinduism as practiced in the United
States. Domestic rituals, such as the prenatal rites, are conducted in the temple; fam-
ily festivals like Deepavali are conducted by the whole community, which gathers
in a school gym, a church auditorium, or, if there is one nearby, a temple. The cel-
ebration of rituals and festivals in suburban America seems to be similar in many
ways to their celebration in village India, where both domestic and temple rituals be-
come community-based celebrations. There are very few really private domestic
functions in villages. Such functions are invariably community-based celebrations,
where one or two families are responsible for food and hospitality. Similarly, even
temple rituals in small Indian villages, especially where the temples have no fixed en-
dowment, become the responsibility of a few “sponsoring” families and again are
community-based.
The Penn Hills temple, unlike other Venkateswara temples in this country, but
more like other Srivaisnava temples, does not have other non-Vaisnava deities (ex-
cept for Ganesha). The Penn Hills temple obviously is syncretic to a limited extent;
it strikes a balance between the needs of its devotees and what is permissible by the
written and practiced codes adopted by the Tiru Venkatam temple. Thus while syn-
cretism extends as far as some Telugu and Kannada practices, the temple has not ac-
tively sought to fulfill the needs of Hindus from many other regions. It appears from
the cultural programs sponsored by the Penn Hills temple (Bharata natyam,
Kuchipudi dances, and Carnatic music, with lavish celebration of the Thyagaraja ut-
savam) and the language classes it offers (Tamil, Teluga, and Kannada) that many
of its devotees—like those of the Tiru Venkatam temple in India—are from the
states of Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Kamataka. Just a few miles from Sri
Venkateswara temple is another beautiful place of worship, known simply as the
Hindu-Jain temple. The architecture, deities, and rituals here are principally “north-
Indian,” and the two temples serve the Pan-Indian Hindu community in tandem.^21
self-inquiry and self-perception
The Penn Hills temple sponsors several workshops and lectures based on connec-
tions between psychology and the Hindu tradition. The “Living In Freedom—an
Enquiry,” or LIFE, workshop lasted four days and was conducted by Swami
Sukhadodhananda from Bangalore. According to the temple bulletin, “the work-
shop demonstrated how the Vedantic principles of self-enquiry can be used to re-
solve the day-to-day problems faced by individuals.” Material for the workshop
“was drawn from the Bhagavath Geetha, the Upanishads, the Bible, the Koran, Ti-
betan Buddhism and Zen.” Participants in the workshop examined “inhibitions that