Last Thursday, we visited a temple in East Dallas to learn about Hare Krishna followers. It was a very enriching experience. I learned a lot from the priest who gave us our tour. For the first hour or so we learned about the beliefs of his religion. After the official tour, some of us stayed to eat at the temple restaurant. The food was amazing. During and after eating I spoke a lot with the priest, Shundra, about Vedic astrology, body types, food types, and rankings and suggestions on these topics.

 

During the official tour, Shundra showed us the inside of the temple and spoke to us about his religion. He explained a lot about his view of the relationship between a person’s body and their soul. To sum up what he said, you are a soul and have a body. This is different from most western religions where the soul is discussed as something you have. Shundra went on to describe how to feed one’s soul rather than their body. Bhakti, love and devotion, is what provides this food for the soul. Yanakanda is food for the flesh. Shundra also specified that love and devotion also include sacrifice and service because these are the result of true love and devotion. He referred to these acts of service as dharma, or duties. He also mentioned that a person can change their soul but cannot change their darma. The highest expression of this darma is through service to god. At this point I wanted to ask if a person can still achieve spiritual transcendence without organized religion, but I did not feel it was an appropriate question to ask. The four pillars of darma, as Shundra described, are honesty, self-control, compassion, and cleanliness, which includes the body and the mind. Then Shundra began to discuss faith. To do so, he used science as an example. I found this very interesting because scientists are often described as faithless. Shundra used the sun for his example, asking us if the sun is hot or cold. Of course, we all said the sun is hot, but we have never actually touched the sun to prove it. Shundra describes this as faith in science. I found it very intriguing to hear someone describe science as faith based. While there are some holes in this example, it really got me thinking on the topic. I believe Shundra made an amazing point. We believe in the numbers we calculate, but how do we know there is not a better or different number system that would prove our idea of mathematics to be wrong.

 

While I would love to dive into what I discussed with Shundra during and after dinner, that will have to wait for another possible blog post since I am limited in the length of this post. For now I will say that Shundra is truly a bright individual with an intriguing outlook on life.