Hindu leader Rajan Zed will recite these prayers before city councils of Bakersfield, Fresno, Modesto, Lincoln and Yuba City in California and Henderson in Nevada.
Zed, who is president of Universal Society of Hinduism, is delivering these prayers from ancient Hindu scriptures at Lincoln (April 27), Yuba City (May 4), Bakersfield (May 5), Modesto (May 11), Fresno (May 13) and Henderson (May 18). After first reciting in Sanskrit, he will read the English translation of the prayer. Sanskrit is considered a sacred language in Hinduism and root language of Indo-European languages.Zed plans to recite from the Rig-Veda, the oldest scripture of the world still in common use, dated from around 1,500 BCE, besides lines from Upanishads and Bhagavad-Gita, both ancient Hindu scriptures.
He will start and end the prayer with "Om", the mystical syllable containing the universe, which in Hinduism is used to introduce and conclude religious work.
This includes the famous verse from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, "Asato ma sad gamaya, Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya, Mrtyor mamrtam gamaya", which roughly translates as "Lead us from the unreal to the Real, Lead us from darkness to Light, and Lead us from death to Immortality."
Reciting from Chapter III of Bhagavad-Gita, he will urge the councilors to act selflessly.
Rajan Zed, a recipient of the "World Interfaith Leader Award" by the National Association of Interchurch and Interfaith Families, is one of the panelists for "On Faith", an interactive conversation on religion produced jointly by Newsweek and the Washington Post.
