Last Thursday, we went to visit a Kalachandji temple, which is located in Dallas. I was excited because it is my first time to step into an Indian temple.
As we entered the front gate of the temple, we met our guide, a nice and fun guy. He led us to take our shoes off, and then we were heading to a large room. The big room is full of incense, and the warm temperature makes people calm and peaceful. The interesting thing is that this big room was a basketball court. There are several paintings about Krishna on each side of the wall. At the front of the room, there is a Kalachandji statue. The statue is colorful and decorated with flowers. During our tour, people kept coming in this place and prayed, what impressed me was that not all of them are Indians, some of them have different races.
Our guide told us about the founder, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada, and how he introduced an ancient religion to America. Prabhupada started his mission at New York in 1965. According to Tomas J. Hopkins, the headquarters of ISKCON was “a former storefront curiosities shop with the wonderfully apt words ‘Matchless Gifts’ painted above the large plate-glass window that faced the street.” (ISKCON’s Search For Self-Identity: Reflections by a Historian of Religions) For over decade years, there are over 100 temples, ashrams and central centers all over the world. People who worked in this temple are all volunteers. They came from different regions such as Huston, San Francisco, and they kept running this place by selling books and cooking in the restaurant. Also, our guide talked about what is the true religion. He said there are three levels of religion. The bottom level is that a person would like to get something from the religion, such as wealth and power; the second level is about spirit, a person would like to gain something of spirit from his or her believes; and the top level is that, a person would not want to get anything from religion but truly love the god he believes. I could not agree more because I think the deepest belief should be from the heart, just like a mother loves her child selflessly.
The paintings on the wall are all about Krishna, and all of them sent us a message that Krishna, as a supreme God, is not out of reach; in fact, he is more like a friend to people. It surprised me that in my point of view, God is a figure that needs to be respected, or, people could only see God but not get interact with God. These paintings showed us that Krishna would care about all the people, interacting with them and making them happy.
At the end of our tour, our guide taught us a Hare Krishan song, which is made of only three words. The drum he played sounds wonderful and very inspiring, and the rhythm of the song is easy and catchy.
It was an educational experience to visit a temple. It was a little pity that I did not eat in the restaurant there, and I believe it would be worth to give it a try.