Say Anything Blog

Top insurer forces employees to study Buddhist teachings
Managers’ retreat requires chanting ‘om’ in dark room

A former Prudential Insurance manager is preparing legal action against the company, claiming she was fired after blowing the whistle on mandatory Eastern religious exercises that included chanting the Hindu mantra “om” in darkened rooms.

Prudential Insurance Co.’s southern California real estate division also required managers to read a Buddhist book, charges the Christian ex-employee, whose name has been withheld pending formal action.

The former manager’s lawyer, Richard Ackerman of Ackerman Cowles & Associates, has written a letter to Prudential demanding the company stop requiring participation in the religous practices and warning he has been retained to pursue claims of religious discrimination, “hostile environment” and harassment against his client that led to her termination.

Ackerman told Prudential California Realty, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate, it must stop the “discriminatory practice of segregating Christians from other employees and forcing employees to adopt and practice Buddhist theology as an implied or express condition of their ... employment.”

Ackerman told WND his client was instructed to go to a managers’ seminar and was given a book, “Buddha: 9 to 5,” to study beforehand.

The book, boasting it was “based on the Buddhist practice of the Eightfold Path,” provides “a hands-on set of tools to reawaken yourself, your employees, and your organization.”

Ackerman told WND his client was in the management ranks for the organization and was required to attend a management conference that focused on the Buddhist book. He said managers also were required to be in 13-minute sessions in darkened rooms where everyone was instructed to sit in the lotus position with hands held overhead while the “om” chant was performed.

The “om” chant actually is more often associated with Hinduism, and an online information resource for the religion states, “The goal which all the Vedas declare, which all austerities aim at, and which men desire when they lead the life of continence ... is om. ... Whosoever knows this syllable obtains all that he desires. ... Whosoever knows this support is adored in the world of Brahma.”

At the seminar, after the lights were turned back on, those who “felt uncomfortable” with the stunt were required to stand and explain. The participation in the mysticism conflicted with the religous and moral principles of the law firm’s client, the wife of a local evangelical Christian pastor, Ackerman said.

“Basically what they did was made her life miserable [following her objections],” Ackerman said.

Ackerman’s letter to the real estate company cited its “2007 Fall Leadership Conference - ‘Rise Above’ Lake Arrowhead” event.

If these employees were required to pray to Jesus, study the Bible and engage in Christian worship it would be headline news. But, since Christianity is no longer acceptable in the public square in the country, no one will raise and eyebrow or any real objections to forced indoctrination into Hinduism or Buddhism by private companies.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=76923