Hindus and their deities move to new temple
FORT WORTH — For five days and nights they have prayed, burned wood and incense, and offered fruits and melons, part of the Maha Kumbhabhishekam rituals in which several granite statues are prepared to be consecrated as living vessels.
The ceremonies will culminate Saturday with the opening of the newHindu Temple of Greater Fort Worth.
“This is a consecration ceremony to start the new temple,” said Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami, who came from the Kauai Hindu Monastery in Hawaii to help with the temple’s opening.
The temple’s priest, Sri Murali Krishna, and visiting holy men have presided over the ceremonies, which are leading up to the installation of the statues in the almost $3 million temple’s 5,000-square-foot sanctum sanctorum.
“On Saturday, they’ll pour the [holy water] on the statues to bring them to life, infusing them with life,” Veylanswami said.
Swami Chidananda, who came from Mumbai, India, to be part of the ceremony, said the statues will be treated like people.
“We look at the statues thereafter as being alive and vibrant,” Chidananda said. “We give them food, bathe them and dress them.”
The granite statues were made in India and shipped to Fort Worth to become the temple’s idols — including Lord Ganesha, Lord Shiva and Lord Venkateswara.
But Veylanswami’s associate from the Kauai monastery, Sannyasin Senthilnathaswami,
explained that the idols are not the focus of worship, merely the focal points through which worship is channeled. “You don’t worship an idol. You worship God through an idol,”
Senthilnathaswami said.
"Turn ye not unto idols, nor make to yourselves molten gods: I am the LORD your God." Lev.19:4.
1 comment:
Hmmmmm..
I can only summize that if you believe you can worship God through an idol, then most certainly God speaks back to you through the same idol.
Isaiah 44:9-20 makes it perfectly clear just what foolishness this is.
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