Building temples is especially important for first-generation Hindu immigrants in the United States who want their children and grandchildren to know Hindu teachings and values. Although choosing sites is a challenge, Hindu communities tend to emphasize transportation accessibility (nearby highways) and the natural beauty of the locations (hillsides and hilltops).... Read more about Building a Temple

There are many variations of Hindu rituals at home, but the home altar remains an important part of American Hindu households. The home altar can be a place for studying scripture, performing puja, gathering a small Hindu community, and celebrating holidays or special events, such as marriages.... Read more about Home Altar

The number of Hindu temples in the United States has grown rapidly in the last decades, creating a landscape of varied expressions and structures within American Hinduism that parallels both the sites and histories of India and the value of pluralism in the United States.... Read more about American Hinduism

Hindu “temple societies” were non-profit associations dedicated to building the first generation of temples in the United States. The first Hindu temples were built in the 1970s. The organizations behind the temples blended Hindu traditions with American values like volunteerism.... Read more about The Temple Builders

Increasing numbers of students and professionals immigrated from diverse regions in India during the 1960s and 70s. Once in the United States, they often formed associations based on their regional origins—associations that later became the basis for collaborations between different immigrant groups.... Read more about The New Hindu Immigrants

The 1960s and 1970s mark the popularity of the guru or swami movement in the United States. In the late 1960s and 1970s, new streams of Hindu religious life came to the United States with the arrival of new gurus or spiritual teachers. ... Read more about The Rush of Gurus

Paramahansa Yogananda was a Hindu teacher who came to America to attend the International Congress of Religious Liberals in Boston in 1920, and stayed to found a religious movement. Yogananda promoted yoga as an intersection of science and religion that emphasized the mind-body relationship. Yogananda wrote The Autobiography of a Yogi, which was published in 1946; at the time of his passing in 1952, his organization the Self-Realizaiton Fellowship was the most prominent Hindu organization in the United States.... Read more about Yogananda and American Yoga

Swami Vivekananda opened the first American Vedanta Society in New York in 1894, and the second Vedanta Society in San Francisco in 1899. Vivekananda’s teachings through these societies focused on Vedanta and on yoga practice. The Vedanta society contributed to yoga’s later rise in popularity.... Read more about The Vedanta Society

Swami Vivekananda, a Hindu religious reformer who spoke in Chicago at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions, made an impression in America as one of the first Hindus to speak for his own religious tradition before a large audience. Vivekananda traveled across the country and spoke in various public and religious contexts, including two speaking engagements at Harvard.... Read more about Vivekananda at the Parliament

Hindu influence in the United States likely started with trading ships that traveled between ports in India and New England in the early 19th century. Prominent transcendentalist writers and thinkers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, were also influenced by Hindu teachings and sacred texts.... Read more about Trade and Transcendentalism

Today Hinduism is practiced and reinterpreted all over the world. There are Hindus in South Africa and East Africa, in Trinidad and Mauritius, in Australia and Austria, in the United Kingdom and in the United States.... Read more about The Hindu Diaspora

Hindu temples house the images (murti) of the gods. Temples are used for daily worship, festivals, pilgrimages, and for seeing the gods’ images (darshan). Sacred locations like hilltops or rivers, called tirthas (“crossings” or “fords”), are sites of pilgrimage.... Read more about Abodes of God: Temple and Image

Dharma is a concept of social order and duty that sustains the whole universe. A person’s placement in a caste (varna) and birth group (jati) is one element of dharma. Jati is historically also used to determine social interactions and marriages, as dharma guides every aspect of daily life. ... Read more about Dharma: The Social Order

Karma (literally “action”) is a teaching on the consequences of actions: every action that a human being performs will leave an “imprint” or have its consequences. Teachings on the path of karma from the Bhagavad Gita and Mahatma Gandhi encourage Hindus to live a life of renunciation while engaging actively in the world.... Read more about Karma: The Way of Action

Bhakti – devotion to the divine – is based on another interpretation of Vedanta: that the soul and the Divine are not One, but inexpressibly, mysteriously, both One and distinct, allowing for a relationship of love. This loving devotion, bhakti, is expressed through songs, hymns, offerings, dances, and plays. ... Read more about Bhakti: The Way of Devotion