BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Essay

These structures are meant to summon spirits, serve as a place to pray, sing, dance, and much more. Another reason cultures build religious structures, is so

Angkor Wat - The temple is admired for the grandeur and harmony of the architecture, its extensive bas-reliefs and for the numerous devatas.

One of the most striking was my grandfather’s temple in the small town of Mahoba where my father grew up. I spent a great deal of my childhood here, thus the pastel pink walls, intricate flower designs, and open layout immediately sparked flashbacks. I remembered the lenghas, traditional dresses, I would pick out to wear even though they were much more formal than the usual attire. I remembered waiting until no one was looking to sneak over to where everyone removed their shoes to try on my mom’s high heeled sandals. I remembered seeing my Dada, grandfather, leading the poojas, religious services, and feeling proud seeing how respected and genuine he was.

Identify one Christian community living or serving in a Hindu context. Analyze the principles and practices of the group in light of key Hindu beliefs and practices.

Woodstock originally started as a festival in 1969 for young American youth escaping the confines of the world they were living in. The town became instantly famous, with kids searching for the utopia lifestyle. The town became famous to young youth everywhere. The town that was once quiet was now overgrown with young youth sleeping on benches, people now hitchhiking in and out of the town, and also seeking food and clothing. One woman realized all there was a problem and opened her home and phone line to them. The Family of Woodstock still has the same telephone number

Ann Landers once said, “Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.” We tend to assume that the things we do in life aren’t worth it but really at the end it opens up a whole lot of opportunities for us to show how hard we actually work in order to achieve our goals. As I got older I ran across many things in life such as, picking social science as my major, my grandmother being the one person who influence me the most, and loyal, considerate, optimistic being the types of characteristic traits that go along with my major.

The architecture in itself was rather simple, with little sense of greatness. It included an arch at the entrance and a large dome.

In fact, like many Hindu families, we have a small shrine in our house to perform important ceremonies. Also, I have been going to the temple every Sunday for as long as I can remember, and I have been attending the BalaVihar program, which teaches young Hindus all about our beloved culture.

In our study of the Hinduism, the class visited The Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago (HTGC). This active temple is a house of worship that serves thousands of devotees as they pay hamage to a diverse variuety of Idol and spiritual gods. Taughted as one of the oldest religions in the world, it accepts all religious belief systems and God. In fact, the Temple is designed to accommodate any and many gods to include the practices and rites of the devotees. Our volunteer tour guide explained the Hindu theology in lthis way.

: The structures that make up the Temple of Heaven are meant to signify the relationship between heaven and earth, more importantly the connection between the emperors and God. The through in It was believed that offerings made by the emperor to the Gods, would bring a flourishing harvests, as he was believed to be the closest being to god. The structure itself was built so majestically to represent it descending into heaven. The main ceremonies that were held within the hall were all on the basis of worshipping heaven and so it was believed by doing so, it would be seen as favorable to the gods, enough to be blessed with an abundance supply of harvests such as grain. The ceremonial interior of the hall was built in such a way as to emphasize

Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever

On Sunday, September 8, 2013, I visited the Wat Buddharangsi Buddhist temple of Miami in Homestead. Every Sunday, they present a meditation service in English for two hours from three to five in the afternoon. Once I parked, the place of ritual was conveniently located across the parking lot. There was a shoe rack outside of the temple. Before I came to this temple, I read the guidelines from their website. The requirements for new guests are to remove your shoes before entering inside. Therefore, when I saw the shoe rack, I was not in shock. I was relieved to see that the temple provided a neat spot to place shoes rather than having them scattered on the floor.

For example, Christians retreat to Churches, Muslims worship in mosques, Jews pray in temples, etc. But the significance of Hindu temples is the fact that there are only four “holy places”: “…[they] correspond to the four points of the compass and near which…Shankara established his four main centers” (Holy Places).

Around the inside of the building were candles, incense, and different statues of what I'm sure were a multitude of separate Hindu deities. Of course, being relatively new to the Hindu gods and goddesses, I wasn't able to identify too many, but I did recognize the remover of obstacles, Ganesh—for what I figure is one rather obvious reason. I could only assume other popular divine figures including lord Vishnu and the mother goddess Devi resided with these other statues.

Behind the main temple was another small courtyard was two smaller buildings for worship to the left and the right of the courtyard. Another large building was to the back which looked fairly newly built. It seemed to be a place of serving food that contained no meat but some sort of meat substitute that was not artificially made from what the servers were telling me. Then to the right of that building was a small warehouse that looked to house desks and whiteboards for the weekly Vietnamese classes that are being held there. Outside of the warehouse was a basketball goal for the students that would come for Sunday school, and a small parking lot for more visitors.