An anthropologist-turned-believer, Stephen Huyler has dared to cross the line of objectivity and produce an introduction to Hindu religion that combines first-person detail with reverential admiration. Ten years in the making, Meeting God is the culmination of Huyler's travels throughout the Indian subcontinent, documenting in vivid photographs the panoply of Hindu devotional practices. What distinguishes Meeting God is its intimacy--through his glossy color photos and vignettes of individual Hindus practicing their rituals, he takes the reader into a world that pulses with the power of faith. The crux of the book is puja, daily devotional practices that anchor Hindus in the divinity of the universe, whether that person is a farmer, carpenter, engineer, or housewife. The remarkable array of different puja don't seem to interfere with modern life in India, and, as Huyler insists, actually enhance it. Given the vacuity of meaning in our own modern world, each page of Meeting God is an inspiration to deepen life. --Brian Bruya


From Publishers Weekly
For centuries, India's strict caste system prohibited many Hindus from worshipping their gods in a public way simply because lower caste Hindus could not afford the services of a brahmin (a priest). Yet Huyler, co-curator of the Puja: Expressions of Hindu Devotion exhibition at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, notes that these lower caste families and individuals found many ways to worship and to keep alive devotion to their own religion. In what is sure to become an enduring work, the author provides descriptions of the many devotional rituals that occupy Hindus as they seek darshan, seeing and being seen by God. In an opening chapter, Huyler explains the major concepts of Hindu devotions: puja, "a ceremonial act of showing reverence to a God or Goddess through invocation, prayer, song, and ritual"; dharma, "the supreme law of righteousness"; karma, "the doctrine of absolute responsibility"; varna, the caste system; Brahmanas, priests and their families. Using stories and photographs, Huyler describes the elements of public worship in a Hindu temple, the rituals accompanying worship in the home, the practices surrounding community festivals, processions that honor specific deities and the coming-of-age ceremonies that mark adolescence and old age. Photos grace every page: 200 in all, gorgeous full-color depictions of temples, household shrines, statuary of deities, sacred sites such as the Ganges River and people engaged in particular ritual activities and processions. Huyler's riveting prose and lavish photos bring Hinduism and its practices to life in all their richness and diversity. (Sept.) FYI: The book will accompany an exhibition that opens at the Houston Museum of Natural Science in fall 1999. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
This book was written to accompany an exhibition titled "Puja: Expressions of Hindu Devotion," which the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery has put on tour. More a work of devotion than a didactic text, it displays the author's delight in his subject. Huyler, a photographer, art historian, and cocurator of the exhibition, spent many years working and traveling in India. In this book, he focuses sympathetically on individual Hindus, detailing their daily practice and worship and avoiding erudite matters of doctrine and cosmology. Each chapter begins with the narrative of some devotional observanceAworship at the family shrine, for instance, or participation in a public festivalAuntil, by the end, readers feel that they have grasped a little about how Hindus respond emotionally to God. The best basic introduction to contemporary Hinduism to appear in many years; recommended for both public and academic libraries.AJames F. DeRoche, Alexandria, VA Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Religious Imagination

Stephen P. Huyler, author of Painted Prayers: Women's Art in Village India and Gifts of Earth: Terracottas and Clay Sculptures of India, is no stranger to Hindu art and life. He has worked with internationally renowned museums curating exhibits of Hindu art, and has spent most of the past 28 years traveling in India and studying its rituals. Meeting God is the first book of photographs to bring to Western eyes the many colorful varieties of Hindu daily devotional ritual.

In hundreds of vivid images, we are introduced to the practices that make of everyday life an omnipresent opportunity to both worship and acknowledge the divine ground of all existence and to engage in darshan, or "seeing and being seen by God." The book spans sunrise bathing rituals in the Ganges River to the sunset of life, during which the elderly are revered as repositories of spiritual and practical knowledge. Along the way, Huyler's text explains the rich diversity of Hindu devotional life and faith in prose that is as vivid and illuminating as the photographs themselves.

One of the most startling series of photographs is of a ritual performed by ummarried women seeking divine aid in finding a good husband. On the floor of a temple to the Goddess Mariamman, three women join together to meticulously create a lotus flower with 1,008 symmetrical petals, which are connected by trickling rice flower through the fingers. This process takes approximately six hours, and, once completed, small terracotta lamps are placed in each petal, and then burn for one hour. The haunting image of the darkened temple floor pierced by a thousand-plus small lamps burning in the shape of an extraordinary lotus blossom that will be dismantled as soon as the flames die out is a powerful visual metaphor for the Hindu belief in the impermanence of all material existence.

As Thomas Moore writes in the introduction, "The magical world of India that Stephen Huyler evokes with his wondrous photography and devotee's manner of observation shows that it is still possible to live in the world religiously.... We need nothing less than a renewal of religious imagination, and to that end there is much to be learned from the concrete, touching, simple Hinduism filtered through the brilliant lens of Stephen Huyler."

—Sara Laurent

FROM THE PUBLISHER

For the hundreds of millions of Hindu people in India, devotional practices offer meaning and balance to daily existence. Household rituals and community festivals frame Hindu life, and prayers enfold the hours--acknowledging the sacred dawn, honoring the spirits within the tools of one's work, seeking the protection of deities in the night. This beautiful book is the first to enable readers in the West to witness the breadth and vitality of the reverential Hindu experience in India. With hundreds of pictures to fire the imagination and eloquent descriptions of the wide scope of Hindu beliefs and practices, the book is a deeply satisfying introduction to the religion embraced by one-sixth of the world's people, including more than one million adherents in the United States.

Stephen Huyler's arresting photographs document the spirituality of common men and women in India. His evocative pictures, set in houses, at roadsides, and in temples, enable us to see directly into the heart of Hindu belief: the essential moment of worship known as darshan, or "seeing and being seen by God." With definitions, descriptions, and captivating stories of Hindu individuals at worship, Huyler offers us a deep understanding of the Hindu people, their belief in the spiritual component of all human activity, their awareness of the sacred, their daily worship experiences, and their ways of meeting God.

FROM THE CRITICS

Dallas Morning News

Pictures with amazing color and beauty line nearly every page, and the author's written portrayal of Hinduism is just as enticing. Focusing on the various ways of Hindu worship, or puja, Mr. Huyler explains how Hindu practices fit into everyday life in India. . . . Huyler put [Meeting God] together so that outsiders to the Hindu tradition might appreciate what often seems strange and even threatening.

Bill Broadway - Washington Post

A full color tour of India through the eyes and lens of a noted historian-photographer.

Hinduism Today

An engaging story book, an exquisite photo journey into the heart of India and especially, a superb overview of the ways and whys of Hindu worship.
(— Hinduism Today

Sandra Marshall - Napra Review

Anyone with an interest in religion and specifically in the traditions of India will be invigorated by this splendid treasure! Truly in a class by itself.

Hinduism Today

An engaging story book,an exquisite photo journey into the heart of India and especially,a superb overview of the ways and whys of Hindu worship. Read all 7 "From The Critics" >

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