On this day nine years ago. . .

. . . the World Trade Center collapsed.

I'm home for the weekend to take care of a few appointments. I thought about today and searched for 9/11 videos. I came upon the apparently infamous "Falling Man," which depicts a man falling head-first in a rather relaxed pose. However later they discovered it was one of a dozen clips.

It got me thinking about life and death, and what comes after (if anything). These are topics that would normally make someone panic, cringe, or uneasy - but I think about it everyday. I really do. I dread the shower because the shower is the one place my mind wanders so deeply, and I think scary thoughts.

The "Falling Man" got me thinking about death, which got me thinking about my Religions in India class that I'm taking this semester. I never really knew much about Hinduism, or any other -isms in India. I took it to fill course requirements and out of interest.

The very first reading assignment I had enthralled me. First of all, Hindus never called themselves Hindus. They never called themselves anything. It's the oldest continuing religion, with the Vedas dating back to 1200 BCE or so. The term Hindu and Hinduism came when the British occupied the country and saw that they lived in the Indus valley. I think it was the British, or at least the names STUCK when the British came.

Anyway.

What struck me were the Vedic hymns. Unlike other religions in the world, Hinduism never had a clear answer on the beginning of the world. It was what it was, and we will never know. So who do we worship? There is no linear creation story where a "being" appears and builds the universe. The universe was already there. What also struck me was a hymn about heat, and worshiping heat (not as a god though) and its properties.

I personally think they were ahead of their times. Sans the whole endless list of gods and goddesses. But other than that, their thinking was really different from the rest of the world. I dare say maybe even bordering scientific. The fact that there's a hymn praising heat says something, since heat is a fundamental exchange of energy that rules the universe.

Thus it got me thinking about aliens, naturally.