{"id":48,"date":"2010-02-17T12:27:33","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T12:27:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omsweetom\/2010\/02\/question-hinduism-and-religious-sightings.html"},"modified":"2010-02-17T12:27:33","modified_gmt":"2010-02-17T12:27:33","slug":"question-hinduism-and-religious-sightings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2010\/02\/question-hinduism-and-religious-sightings.html","title":{"rendered":"QUESTION: Hinduism and Religious Sightings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beliefnet’s latest gallery <\/span>— Seeing Jesus (and Mary) in Food and Other Objects<\/a> — features photos from religious sightings in nature or non-religious objects<\/a>. The gallery, crafted by pop-culture experts Harry and Sandra Choron<\/b> (who also wrote a book, Look! It’s Jesus!<\/i><\/a>, on the subject), includes images that range from the humorous (Jesus as a Cheeto, named “Cheesus”) to the downright mysterious (Ashtray Jesus). <\/p>\n

Whether you think its a sign from above, or a whole lot of hot air, its worth taking a look. Check the gallery out here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite the markedly Christian title, the gallery does include one non-Christian example (a Buddha image in a beehive). But the gallery got me thinking about such religious sightings and Hinduism. <\/p>\n

What does Hinduism have to say about this phenomenon?<\/p>\n

There a few examples of Hindu religious sightings that I’ve seen, like this flower resembling Sri Ganesh<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\"ganeshflowers_sidebyside.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>
Still, for a faith that is very comfortable with the idea that the Divine can (and does) appear in a variety of forms and manifestations, I could find few cases of religious sightings (in food or other common non-religious objects). What gives?<\/p>\n

Do you think Hinduism supports the idea of religious sightings? Do you know of any religious sightings involving Hindu deities or imagery? Or do you think the whole thing is just a case of the fertile and faithful imagination running wild?<\/b><\/p>\n

Share your answers below…<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beliefnet’s latest gallery — Seeing Jesus (and Mary) in Food and Other Objects — features photos from religious sightings in nature or non-religious objects. The gallery, crafted by pop-culture experts Harry and Sandra Choron (who also wrote a book, Look! 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He is a Hindu Chaplain and the Coordinator for Hindu Life at Princeton University, and serves as the North American Director of Communications for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), a worldwide organization representing the Vaishnava Hindu tradition. In previous incarnations, Vineet has been a New York City prosecutor, a cable TV show host, and a hospital chaplain. In his free time, he enjoys relaxing with his wife and his new baby, attending classes at The Bhakti Center, and teaching himself photography. As a second-generation, Indian-American, Vaishnava-Hindu, Vineet ponders new ways of further hyphenating his identity.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/author\/vchander"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}