Report on a visit to a hindu temple/relgious place or worhship - Essay Example

Being new to a Hindu temple, there were heaps of surprises awaiting me in the temple. To my fortune, I could find Shivkumar, one of the governing board members of the temple to guide me through the nooks and corners of it. He was a real master in effectively extending the ideologies, myths, rituals and the ethics associated with the temple and its beliefs. We had an extensive dialogue on the details of each of the minute processes that happens in the temple and he helped me find moral and scientific justifications to them.

This inter-religious discussion could help me to explore a lot on the diversity of the Hindu culture and moreover helped to change my misconceptions on Hindu culture and rituals. The myth behind the origin of the temple was narrated as a beautiful story by Shivkumar. It was then I understood that behind the existence and origin of many of the Hindu temples, similar myths existed and it is those myths which form the basis of the rituals and other festivals associated with the temple. Though the story in relation with that specific temple was unrealistic, the discussion could help me to have the insight that it is those myths meant a lot to the believers.

The epics of 'Mahabharata and 'Ramayana' along with the sacred texts of the four Vedas including, 'Rig Veda', 'Yajur Veda' , 'Somaveda' and 'Adarva Veda' forms the basic rules of Hinduism. The Vedas contain hymns, incantations, and rituals from ancient India where as the epics are the ancient literatures called "Purana" which forms the background of the culture of the religion. (Michell, George. 1988).Shivkumar explained that the main deity of the temple was 'Lord Shiva'. However the temple also had the idols of 'Lord Vishnu'.

I had already read in literatures that these two Gods and "The Lord Brahma" forms the trinity of Hindu beliefs and they represent the three states of life. The "Lord Brahma" is the creator,"Vishnu", the preserver and "Shiva", the destroyer (Eck, Diana L ,1998). I realized this representation very much relates to the integral realities of humanity which includes birth, life and death. Despite the methodology, what every religion and culture in the world imparts to humanity are the routes to improvise these basic realities.

However there are numerous incarnations of these Gods and the total of them counts to thirty three 'crores'. In our discussion I made the query why was not 'Brahma' worshiped in the temple. It was quite interesting to understand the myth behind Brahma loosing the worshipping status. This myth includes the world's goodness and badness and the final victory of the morality.( Jayakumar C,2005) It was just six in the morning, but I could see huge number of people moving in and out of the temple.

I was really surprised that why do they prefer to come so early to worship. Shivkumar clarified that there are specific reasons relating to the time of worship as well. A temple visit in the morning would facilitate curing, where as visiting the temple in the noon would be of the intention to pray for the humanity and the world. Believers make their way to temples in the evening so as to pray in confession and get cleansed of the sins. Though not much common, resurrection is intended if prayed in a temple in the midnight.

He added that the vividness and diversity of the Hindu religion makes this generalization difficult as the time specific worships would differ from village to village and temple to temple. (Jayakumar C,2005)