Earlier this week, the first practicing Hindu to serve in the U.S. Congress, Rep.Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, took her oath with the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred text of Hinduism that is turning up in more and more Oregon motels.

Manu Patel, who has lived in Salem (Oregon) since 2006 and owns the Days Inn there, has placed more than 100 copies in his motel rooms and helped other motel owners throughout the state to add about 800 copies to drawers that have traditionally held the Christian Bible.

Patel is part of the Motel Bhagavad Gita project, sponsored by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON. Last month, the group distributed about 16,000 copies of "The Bhagavad Gita as It Is," a translation prepared by one of its founders.

Patel and representatives from a nearby ISKCON temple will present copies of the Gita to representatives of the Howard Johnson Portland Airport Hotel at 4 p.m. Sunday, he said.

The Gita is 700 verses of a longer work, the Mahabharata. The Gita is a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and Krishna, an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu, about the soul, duty and honor.

-- By Nancy Haught, The Oregonian 

on January 04, 2013 at 10:27 AM

Please see my link on the sidebar if you would like to help place Bhagavad Gita in more hotels.