A soft warm light infused the room, flowing from the flames of the deepas I’d just lit. A variety of idols lined the walls, their faces cast in an orange glow. My mother, sister, and I all watched with hands folded in prayer as my father carefully lit an incense stick. Tendrils of scented smoke curled around us and the divine statues, wrapping the room in a hazy blanket of calm. My family and I stood together, the atmosphere we’d carved for ourselves within the room a world away from the community we resided in – a small, Christian town in southern Virginia. 

However, since I didn’t have a local community to practice my religion, my home—instead of a temple—became my religious hub, and within it, my connection to my faith and culture existed almost exclusively between its walls. So despite never having lived within a cultural or religious Hindu community, my family’s religious traditions became the predominant influential force on the development of my worldview and core values. My parents were my religious teachers, and through them and the dozens of texts we had in our home, I learned about my faith. During the day, I attended the local public school (consisting of a fairly homogenous religious community), and in the evenings, I sat with my father and read about the fantastical mythology and deep philosophy that seemingly occupy two sides of the same coin in Hinduism. I learned mantras and the dozens of rituals sacred to our faith. Once I reached high school, I became further immersed within my practice and would dedicate a few hours each day to meditation and prayer. However, it was at this age that I recognized that while my family taught me how to practice, it was still up to me to understand why I should choose to practice. 

I couldn’t turn to a broader religious community or Hindu friends for help with this question. The nearest temple was hours from us, so I didn’t have a priest to act as a guiding presence on my religious journey. Ironically, since I could not rely on my own religious community for guidance, I realized that the best way to understand why I should choose to practice my faith was to test it—and there was no better place to do so than in the community I lived. So I shed the natural vulnerability blanketing my beliefs and turned to those around me and sought to learn what continues to drive their Christian practice as they mature past their childhood and the influence of their parents. 

One’s worldview impacts everything from a person’s moral compass to their political views, and by understanding how that worldview was formed, I felt like I understood and empathized with my friends and colleagues on a much deeper level.

In retrospect, this was probably the best choice I could’ve made to enhance my understanding of myself, and why I choose to believe in what I do. Once initiated, interfaith conversations were more natural than I expected. Although the topic of discussion was heavy, our tones were always light and the questions we asked of each other stemmed from a well-intentioned curiosity. I found I always came away from these conversations not only better knowing the other person and how their current worldview was formed—but also reaffirming the nuances of my own worldview. For example, learning about eternal judgement and heaven and hell led me to truly grasp the fluidity of how I view divine judgement and how it relates to karma and reincarnation. 

Throughout my high school years, almost every close relationship I maintained became an interfaith one. Not simply because we were of different faith backgrounds—but because we both chose and enjoyed discussing our practices, beliefs, and core values. One’s worldview impacts everything from a person’s moral compass to their political views, and by understanding how that worldview was formed, I felt like I understood and empathized with my friends and colleagues on a much deeper level. 

Once I arrived at college—a community infinitely more diverse than my home town—the skills I learned from my interfaith relationships in high school helped me to better understand and get to know my new colleagues. Although I was still not defining such dialogue as “interfaith”—more along the lines of people willing to probe deeper topics while getting to know one another—I became exposed to the term when one of my friends told me there’s in fact a structured community along this sort of dialogue. This was when I learned about both my school’s interfaith group as well as the larger Boston Interfaith Leadership Initiative (BILI). After having the privilege of joining BILI this past year, I have not only been able to define interfaith dialogue, but also better understand how one can be an interfaith leader—a person that facilitates conversation, acceptance, and inclusivity within a wider community comprising of any worldview—whether that be religious or nonreligious.

While I wasn’t sure what the term meant before I entered college, I can now confidently say that I define “interfaith” as a process of learning. Not only about others—but about yourself and your own beliefs. 

Photo by petr sidorov on Unsplash.