This question arises, as we dig temples for historic facts. Why Hindu temples are popular, spread across the nation and survived inspire of so many onslaughts? Is it because of hope? Why people built so many temples, although their prayers did not materialise and their life did not change due to temple?
Hindu concepts are, Sarve Jana sukhina Bhavantu", "Karma dictates your current life". " Human life comes after many rebirths, be thankful", "Do good things for future life, so that human life form can be used to get out of rebirth cycle". So, temple is not a place to demand material benefits or to pray ( Praying can be done at your home also. There should be bigger meaning than praying).
Temple is a place to say " gratitude" and a means to donate to social causes to gain browney points for future life. Even if one prays, nothing is going to happen, as things are dictated by karma. So, people were clear that temples were not praying centers.
Infact temples served 2 main objectives. 1) Centers to concentrate celestial power in the idol (some scientific basis exists for this) 2) To distribute donations for social causes (not jus humans, it includes environment, animals etc). Donation at temple was supposed to be used for welfare. Anybody pocketing donated money was cursed to accumulate the bad karma of donation giver. The benefits are assured of accumulating to doner, as "intention" is epitomised at the deity using "sankalpa". So, brahmins at temple never attempted in diverting funds for self gain (as they were pious and were working to gain "punya" for liberation than doing theft and accumulating "papa" for next birth). So system was working with highest efficiency.
Muslim invaders did not believe in this prophecy. They were natural thieves and were hard pressed to "live" due to droughts in Afghanistan, Arabia etc. They were not civilised to understand "rebirth cycle". So they attacked temple and looted.
To mask the original concept, They started something called " prayer place". They brought the concept of demanding or praying. They used to begin the day by praying for a kill (as they were hunters by practice). Indians evolved from hunting and were in to agriculture and were with abundant supply of food. They were looking for enhancing happiness (next higher plane), while west was still struggling for daily food. This difference dictated lot of things in religious practices.
So calling Indian temples as prayer hall (like a Budhist monastry or Durga or a church), or as peace place (place where you get peace of mind) or confession center (like in a church, where you can confess and get peace of mind in return) are not correct and were not the purpose for building Indian temples.
Hindu temples were not even placesof worshjip. In Kaashi, the idol is so small. Compare this to Huge statues of Bamiyan Budha or Gommateshwara of jaininsm. If worship was the idea, India and had built Huge statues off Shiva than building a "Brihadeeshwara" temple or Ankor wat temples. It was much easier and economical to build a big statue carved out of a rock than carving a kailasa temple. So many things were carved, because they wanted to reinforce concepts of Hinduism and wanted to educate people. The exterior carvings were purely for educating masses (not just to display art).
If you want to pray or worship, you can do it at your home. You have to visit a Hindu temple, if you want to say "Thank you" to god for giving a human life form and you want to do a social good. As Indian Govt is diverting donations, it is stealing money and any politician thriving on this money is actually accumulating your karma. As doing social good is not guaranteed any more through temple, you have to do it yourself by donating to people directly. Feed people who are in hunger, adopt a zoo animal, help a homeless child, educate a child, feed animal in distress, save animals, Do service/seva to keep rivers and environment clean you achieve the goal of accumulating punya. As education is moved from temple, help schools or build vocational institutes that can impart skills to enable people earn a living. This is new vidya dana that was happening in temples earlier. This is the brief story of Indian temples.
No comments:
Post a Comment