The Lotus Temple

    If we had to pick a star for each blog post we wrote, the star of this blog post would be my lovely sister, Sarah, who drove with me today to the Krishna Lotus Temple in Spanish Fork for a tour and general adventuring.  After getting our very authentically Indian Sonic breakfast burritos, we headed over to the beautiful white temple on a hill.  This is my sister, Sarah.  

It was her birthday, when this picture was taken. 

    This is the website for the Spanish Fork Temple, which sits on a hill in the little town, right next to a farm.  The website quotes from a blog by a man who stayed in the temple over the summer: "Long story short, there’s this beautiful Krishna temple smack dab in the epicenter of LDS Utah. There’s llamas and peacocks and parrots and chanting devotees in robes and statues of Hindu deities and huge gardens full of tasty organic vegetables. To say the place sticks out like a sore thumb is a bit of an understatement." And that is pretty accurate. 


   Vai, the woman who took us on a tour, says that the Temple grows its own food, and though they have animals, they are vegetarians.  The building is white and ornate, and with all the windows, has a lot of light.  It is also where the Festival of Colors is held every year, and this year 50,000 people attended.

The Lotus Temple

  Vai has short, white hair and wore a light green sari.  She showed us upstairs, where there is an altar and a statue of Krishna.  Vai explained that Hinduism is not a polytheistic religion because the many gods, Krisha, Vishnu, are actually all Krisha in his different forms.  This website lists the many names of god and the role he is playing at the time.  Krishna is "All Attractive, All Wealthy, All Wise, All Knowing, etc."  Click here for a description of the temple's opening and dedicatory services.   

The statue of Krishna on the altar

   Vai also mentioned what Brother Gill brought up in our interview, which you can read in the last part of my blog post. It is what Brother Gill termed in "Aryan Problem" in the article he wrote.  Vai said that the Aryans were the beginning of civilization, so when scientists say that they immigrated into India, they were actually returning.  It was interesting to hear Vai, whose name is part of a phrase meaning "ecstatic lover of God," who has the opposite viewpoint of the "Aryan Problem."  

    In many ways, I was reminded of what we as Mormons believe when Vai talked, about how we believe god has a physical body, about the importance of progressing in thought, and the importance of the soul.  There is a large picture in the upper-room of the temple which shows the stages of life a man passes through, beginning from a baby right down to a skeleton.  Krishna generally appears in the form of a young man with a peacock feather in his hair, which is why the temple keeps peacocks.

The picture looked a little like this, the stages of Transmigration

     The Spanish Fork Temple website also mentions the importance of gathering together for study and prayer: "In the Vedic culture, a community of worship is called a sangham.  In it we share uplifting association with fellow seekers and devotees.  A person can always chant mantras or study scriptures on their own, but the same scriptures advise joining a sangham in order to advance quickly and enter the spiritual realms, which we call Krishna Consciousness."  The following is a short video about Krishna Consciousness.  

     The problems faced by Krishna Consciousness sound a little familiar.  Up on the second floor of the temple is also a statue of Vai and her husband's own guru, a monk who came to the United States on a steamship when he was seventy, wrote books, and had many students.  Vai's husband is a guru as well with a few students, but she says that it is a stressful job for him.  

     On the wall beside the statue is a poster of many different pictures of men, stretching back to Krishna, showing the line of authority of Vai's guru.  Vai says that Krishna Consciousness is not a religion, but a way of progressing.  If we use the time we have in this life in this body well, then in our next life we will be less likely to come back as a cat or a dog, but if we spend this life on pleasures and only survival, like a cat or dog, what's the point of being human in the next?

     You can visit during Sunday services, which include chanting the maha mantra, 

    Hare Krishna Hare Krishna

Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama, Hare Hare

    The temple also offers classes on the Bhagavad Gita, as well as the Vedic texts.  The Bhagavad Gita is the Song of God, when Krishna came down on the eve of battle, and his conversation with Arjuna, a warrior-king, who was not sure if he wanted to fight his friends and family.

  

   I especially enjoyed being able to talk to my sister about what she thought about the tour and what Vai had said, on the way back in the car.  We wondered if it is more effective in talking about Mormonism to point out the things we have in common with another religion, or to point out differences.  There was a point at which I think our tour guide could tell we were pretty committed to our own religion, something she has seen pretty often with all the BYU students who take tours and volunteer their time at the temple.  Sarah asked the question of how you would want someone to respond to you when you have the feeling they are not considering living your lifestyle in a serious way.  She came up with the idea that the best option is to just show that you are really listening.