trapped

Technorati Tags: statue, sculpture, narasimha, temple, kanchi, kanchipuram, kanjivaram,

Believers and ‘one day vegetarians’

In India believers have some undefined dislike towards animal products into places of worship. They are not allowed into temples and places of worships. I really don’t buy the idea of we all started as vegetarians and animal lovers, but I feel they are introduced into the religion to convince the followers to show god loves animals too.

Major three or four religions in India want its followers to be vegetarians. Most of the followers successfully convince their gods, that they will be vegetarians on specific days of the week (Fridays Lakshmi, Saturdays Vishnu etc).I saw so many of them while ordering in a hotel “two Rotis … and then …hmm… today what ..??Tuesday… alright … Butter chicken!”.

People don’t enter temples if they had taken any non-veg that day, and most of them can’t explain why?

These all confusing rules, people made them and the same people find loopholes not to follow them, Then why to have them at all. Why restrict only to temples.

There are some more of them

• Kerosene are not supposed be used in any of places of worships. They are considered to be animal product, came into form by tones of animals and plants died billions of years ago.
• Sugar is not used in any of the Hindu religious ceremonies. The reason is sugar is prepared from Jaggery, and while doing it they polish jaggery with some animal product (I guess it is leather). So any sweet is cooked is using Jaggery directly.

I have listed certain things which are missing in those rules.

• All gods and goddesses wear silk. All Shwethambaras and Peethambaras presented to gods are silk, which are results of boiling thousands of silkworms. Similarly honey, which is obtained killing or burning thousands of honeybees.

Behind the bars

Patterns II

 

India’s oldest light house

I started loving history and geography only after I stopped studying them. Text books say Buddhism was propagated by ashoka’s sons to Srilanka, south-east Asian islands trade path. I could not see Lakshadweep Islands till 2007, how could they do with 100 BC technologies. Some of the other examples are: Big chunk of population in all those countries are of Tamilians. how ? Precedents (only those names I get to here) names are Suhardo, Sukarno, Meghavathi Sukarno-Putri etc which are almost Sanskrit. why ? One of biggest Indian temple is there in Cambodia. how ?

Some of the proofs that actually saw were in mahabalipuram. There were remains of a port, through which south Indians supposedly did trading and also exchanged culture and language. The other thing I am showing you was a light house.

Light house, of course is carved beautifully as any of other structures. It has a store room (which is not locked for avoiding illegal activities) for keeping wood dry. Burning woods (or may be coal) used to show direction for traders. It is located in such a place that entire city also can utilize light.

Gods, demons, dancers, soldiers etc.

These are rest of the photos of Halebidu. Reference to my previous post Halebidu an architectural beauty

Halebidu – An Architectural beauty.

This is the most favorite place on the face of the earth for me. I love sitting there for a long time and daydreaming. I do not have the count how many times I been there. Halebeedu (search in net for: halebeedu, halebeed, halebid or dwarasamudra) is one of the very skilled works I have seen.

There are many reasons why I go there. One is its uniqueness; it is built in Hoysala style – very different from any other south Indian temples (tamilnadu is kingdom of temples; most of all other state temples are built in the same of architectural style, except few historical ones). Second is it is very calm – only Pease lovers come here, god lovers go to the other similar temple nearby belur. And third reason is the surrounding, it’s green.

Mahabalipuram – ‘Pallava’ remains.

About: One of the oldest structure standing in maha- balipuram (now Mamallapuram, I still like the old name). There are supposed to be seven temples and all of them submerged. The rest six are still under water. During Indira Gandhi’s visit, she promised to offer national monument status, she did. Now this is the only temple standing on the beach. All the precautions are taken, that the ocean king does not invade this. Still the salty sea doing its work, its ruining the beauty of the wall without even touching it. Once in year chemical treatment is done to remove all the salt from the walls.

The temple was badly hit by Tsunami, and also by British Queen (locals tell she has taken the golden ‘Shiva Linga’ hundred years back ). you can also see remaining of a port 1300 year old. These kinds of docks south east coast only used to make trade with Srilanka and south East Asian countries.

ISKCON and I

I heard about ISKCON during my school days, and I was told it’s a different version of looking at Hinduism. Built to make the concepts reach everywhere, especially to the west. I also learned about the things they do, and their culture. I never happened to attend the courses they offer. In my high school, I was inspired by on my teacher and also my brother, to look at these things. They asked me to be skeptic, I became atheist!. I lost my interest visiting any of the religious place unless either historic or aesthetically different, I was told it is different. I did not get chance anyway. In my college also weekly seminars were happening, I did not attend.

They came to the town once, the lecture was held at the costliest auditorium in the town (heard the rent is 1 lack Rs. Per day, just heard not sure). And the ticket was of 500 Rs. And for students 250 Rs. (again I am not sure). One of my friends argued, costly because they want quality crowd to understand what they say. I did not know it comes from rich. If I haven’t had the entry pass I wouldn’t have gone at all. But they did not make anything less than a royal treatment. The food, settings, decoration and all the things, it was really pleasant. I had myself entered a different world, everyone wishing “hare rama, hare Krishna“, all the small games we played was based of based on these games. People were so polite.

The problem started with the 108 times chant and meditate. I really did get this concept. Meditation as I know, is to calm your mind, and concentrate. why do you have to chant only the mantra they tell? why not anything else ? Why is it on that particular number? why do we need to count simultaneously ? Why do you need “god” to meditate? I tried but I could not hold it for a long.