At the Crossroads between Ashram and Church: Living Christianity in India. Article Swipe
Every now and then, especially when I sit in silence after prayer, I find myself asking the same question:How do I live as a Christian in India while honouring the deep spiritual currents of Hinduism that have shaped my inner life? The question is more of my cultural identity, and how can I balance my religious identity with this. At the crossroad of this churning of cultural-religious identities, I reflect on how I can respond to this in a positive manner. India has never allowed me to live a compartmentalised faith. Growing up surrounded by sādhanā (training the mind to focus on God through devotion and meditation), meditation, mantras, temple bells, and a felt sense of the sacred in nature, I realised early on that the Indian experience of God is not an abstract system—it is an encounter. And strangely, or perhaps beautifully, this helped me understand Christianity more deeply than many Catechism classes ever did. The following is my personal reflection on the spiritual journey and how I learnt to synthesize the two traditions while remaining true to the Universal, Apostolic Church.
Related Topics
Concepts
Christianity
Religious studies
Silence
Hinduism
Identity (music)
Philosophy
Catechism
Sociology
Theology
Renunciation
Heaven
Gospel
Perfection
Christian Identity
History
Religious identity
Faith
Spirituality
Identity formation
Cultural identity
Pilgrimage
Religious life
Focus (optics)
Natural (archaeology)
Personal identity
Buddhism
Love of God
Interpretation (philosophy)
Metadata
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- https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17762764
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At the Crossroads between Ashram and Church: Living Christianity in India.Work title
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otherOpenAlex work type
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2025Year of publication
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2025-11-29Full publication date if available
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SALDANHA, SavioList of authors in order
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https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17762764Publisher landing page
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YesWhether a free full text is available
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greenOpen access status per OpenAlex
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Christianity, Religious studies, Silence, Hinduism, Identity (music), Philosophy, Catechism, Sociology, Theology, Renunciation, Heaven, Gospel, Perfection, Christian Identity, History, Religious identity, Faith, Spirituality, Identity formation, Cultural identity, Pilgrimage, Religious life, Focus (optics), Natural (archaeology), Personal identity, Buddhism, Love of God, Interpretation (philosophy)Top concepts (fields/topics) attached by OpenAlex
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