Religious Experience Paper
The religious experience I went to was the Manav Mandir Temple where they study Hinduism. I found this community of faith while looking up temples of hinduism. There were so many choices and they all looked marvelous but the Manav Mandir temple looked astonishing. I choice this temple because not only was it beautiful but I wanted to learn more about hinduism and the night I wanted to go they were worshiping Shiva. Shiva is known as one of the primary gods and a popular hindu deity. He was very amusing and I felt the need to learn more about him. On the way to the temple I couldn't help but think about what it was going to be like. I expected to see a big room surrounded by many statues and people speaking different languages. I pictured people singing, dancing, incense, and color. My expectations were to have fun, really get the meaning of hinduism and feel what it would be like to worship something completely different. My only fear was the feeling to not fit in. I thought people were going to stare if I didn't know what was going on. I wanted to be able to understand the feeling of worshiping hinduism but I was too afraid to actually interact because I didn't know what they were doing. My question when we got to the temple was “who exactly is shiva, and how do we worship him?”
As I arrived with two of my classmates, I saw this white tall building with Ganesh on a podium outside. He is the first thing you see as you walk towards the entrance. As we walked up we had to make a quick stop on the side of the building to take our shoes off in the shoe room. There was not many people there but we all walked in barefoot. When we walked in I was hit with the scent of incense just as I expected. I saw shiny marble floors, bright lights and colors, tall white polls, and many different statues on little stages around the room. It almost looked like a palace, something like in a dream. It was beautiful, and that is a understatement. It was spacious like I expected and kind of cold. When we made it all the way in we walked toward the people that were standing (which was only one family), and they had started. I heard a different kind of language and they were singing. It sounded pretty like they were having fun. The people looked at as and they knew we did not have a clue so they proceeded. They were dressed normally just like us and they seemed nice. The objects they were singing too were in very much detail. We were standing in front of Shiva, Ganesh, and Parvati. They objects were big, colorful, and very shiny. Shiva was in the middle and in front of him was a table with some type of water and nuts. Something the worshiper gave us during the ceremony. Around the room we saw many other statues like Lakshmi, Rama, Sita, and Hanuman. So much in detail and so pretty. My question then was “how do they believe in so many lords?”
Being there the first couple of minutes I didn't feel welcomed. I could not call that place somewhere I felt safe and welcome even though it was beautiful. While they were singing, walking around the room and ringing the bell I didn't know what to do, it was awkward. I did not feel like I belonged but after the first couple of songs we got to interact with the crowd and stand in a line to receive the holy water and nuts. We were last in line so we watched what we had to do. He poured water in my hand so I drank it, then I received different kinds of nuts and then I ate it. Then he put a red dot on my forehead called a bindi which he explained. We then walked towards the other end of the room to another statue of shiva and we sat crisscross on a colorful rug and he gave us a paper to sing along. We sang about five or six songs then they rang this big bell and we had to stand in a line again where he gave us more nuts and another dot on our head. Our worshiper asked us to repeat after him and he made us say words in a different language. It was amazing, it was a blast I just didn't understand what I was saying. After that he waved to us goodbye. My question after the ceremony was “how does someone convert over to hinduism?”