Hindu Lite

With Britney going to a Hindu temple, karma on NBC, and yoga everywhere, Hinduism--or something like it--is hot in pop-culture.

BY: Cathy Lynn Grossman
USA TODAY

Throw another ingredient in the American spirituality blender.

Pop culture is veering into Hinduism--sort of. Call it a Hindu-esque sampling of the flavor, images and style of a 6,000-year-old faith but with no actual theology involved.

"This is how the culture manages everything," says Luis Gonzalez-Reimann, who teaches Southeast Asian studies and religious studies at the University of California-Berkeley. "Remember Dharma & Greg?"

That 1997 sitcom featured a free-spirited gal, named Dharma by her hippie parents. Forget the Hindu idea of dharma as a way of living that leads to spiritual advancement. It just sounded flip.

The latest sign of infatuation with the Hindu-esque is NBC's new Thursday night hit "My Name Is Earl."

It starts with a mangled take on the concept of karma as the low-life main character tries to reverse a lifetime of scamming and stealing by undoing a life list of misdeeds.

That's a slick, quick notion of karma, rather than a true reflection of the Hindu idea of action and reaction as the "neutral, self-perpetuating law of the inner cosmos," says

Hindu monk Sannyasin Arumugaswami, editor of Hinduism Today magazine.

Then there's Alicia Keys warbling in her song "Karma," "It's called karma, baby. And it goes around. What goes around comes around. What goes up must come down."

But "that isn't karma," gripes Shoba Narayan, Hindu columnist for the spirituality website Beliefnet.com. "That is Newton's Law of Physics."

Watch for reincarnation Hindu-esque style if an Ashton Kutcher-produced sitcom lands on TV in the fall. For Pete's Sake is actually an interfaith goof: St. Peter plays bouncer at the Pearly Gates, sending five main characters off to rebirth instead of hell, garbling both Christian and Hindu theology.

After all, there's no law that TV or movies must teach correct doctrine, says Dick Staub, a writer on faith and culture for Christianity Today online.

Yoga, the 5,000-year-old Hindu physical and meditative discipline, is everywhere now. Yoga Journal says 31% of Americans who have tried it say they're seeking "spiritual development."

But authentic Hindu yoga schooling is outnumbered by variations more focused on six-pack abs or non-denominational inner serenity. One entrepreneur hits every trend button with DVDs teaching Kabbalah Yoga, borrowing very loosely from Jewish mysticism.

Celebrities long have had an affinity for mystical mishmash. Shirley MacLaine, joking about her many lives, is no longer news.

Kutcher, who once sported a "Jesus Is My Homeboy" T-shirt, wed Demi Moore in a Kabbalah-esque ceremony before veering toward the Hindu-esque. And Britney Spears brought her 4-month-old son to be blessed at a Hindu temple in Malibu, Calif., last month.

No one begrudges a blessing.

"Hinduism is a complicated and beautiful religion but much more complicated to adopt as a lifestyle, particularly in our short-cut culture," says California author Mark Hawthorne, who writes about hidden Hindu elements in popular culture for Hinduism Today magazine.

Continued on page 2: Apu from 'The Simpsons,' India travelogues, and Hindu goddess underwear »