India Day 2- My Sweet Lord!

I enjoyed the quiet of the morning by having
breakfast and a cup of coffee in the lobby. Sue,
Wanetta, and Elisa arrived very late the night before,
and the other three ladies are due in today. I mapped
 out a game plan if the ladies were interested in a little
Delhi exploring. I am always up for an adventure!

With some help from our most gracious hotel
manager, he hired tuk-tuks for us- away we go!

Elisa, Sue, Wanetta and myself made our way
through the crazy Delhi traffic to the ISKCON Temple,
home of the Hare Krishna. I could not help but sing
"My Sweet Lord" all through the place, lol.

Construction of the temple was just completed in 1998,
following the popularity of the Hare Krishna movement.
It has three ninety foot tall 'shikharas'.

This is one of the largest temple complexes in
India, and it seemed like a good place to learn
more about Hinduism, the third largest religion
in the world, behind Christianity and Islam.

Ninety-five percent of the world's Hindu followers are in India.

Hinduism is believed to be the oldest world
religion, dating back more than 4000 years.
I was eager to learn more, and was wishing I had
paid better attention in my "Religions of the
World" class I took as an eighteen year old
freshman in college. Youth is wasted on the young!

The door leading to the temple. Though it is
not thousands of years old, thousands of
visitors pass through here daily. 

You know me...I always pause to think, "Who
has passed through these doors?" I feel a deep
connection in passing through the doors of
temples, cathedrals, and historical sites worldwide.

What an interesting, golden alter, the Guara Nitai shrine.

No selfies in front of the deities! I was not tempted, lol.

A priest came out, and many gathered around
to listen to him offer up the Maha Mantra:
Hare Ram Hare Ram
Ram Ram Hare Hare
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krisha Hare Hare(now I'll bet you're singing My Sweet Lord, too!)

The Cultural Centre holds the 'Astounding Bhagavad
Gita' the world's largest printed major text of any world
religion. It was just dedicated to the Temple on 2/26/19.

After a walk through the Cultural Centre, we were escorted to the front of the line to visit the Bhagavad Gita Experience. (I felt very conspicuous walking in front of the fifty or so Indians waiting to enter.  My guess is because the 'experience' was already cued up in English, rather than Hindi.) It was a walk-through museum of sorts, that presented the teachings of Bhagavad Gita using robots, animations, music and a laser light show. While I found much of the narration fascinating, the further we got in to the belly of this 'fun house', I couldn't help but giggle. It was part fun house, part haunted house, part cosmic bowling, with some really bad Disney thrown in for good measure, all to explain the teachings and verbiage of Krishna. 

Fundamentally, my understanding is they believe in karma, action and reaction, and reincarnation, without beginning, middle or end.  My Momma would have loved listening to the narration, as she was a believer of reincarnation and wrote a book called "The Tomorrows."  I smiled and thought of her many times as I meandered through the crazy light show. At one point we entered a room with some silly fun house mirrors, like you'd see at the Lion's Club Middletown Fair back home. While I couldn't help but smile at our goofy reflections, the narration quickly sobered me... "Your body is NOT your Self. What you see when you look in the mirror is NOT you. (How often do we get caught up in gazing at our reflection- and imperfections- in the mirror?) The essence of You is your Soul, and your Soul is Eternal. Do not be influenced by passion, gratification, greed, ignorance, or materialism."

Hmmmm....wise words. 

What would my Momma think of this place?

Another 'room' which had a profound impact on me began with the narration of the "eyes are the windows to the soul."  It then proceeded to show, in rapid fire succession, at least a hundred images of the morphing of eyes of an infant child to a lion, to a seal, to a cow, to a bird, to an elderly man, to a kitten, to a dolphin, to a teenage boy, to a horse, to a camel, to a dog, to a lamb, to a deer, to a mother, to a fish, to a giraffe, and on and on it went. It was both bizarre, yet captivating.

As we exited into the sweltering heat and sunlight, we 

walked around the complex and gardens for about as long as

we could tolerate the heat...115 degrees that day. We had

to walk barefooted, but even the rubber mats were scorching!

With a last look at the beautiful architecture,
we wandered back to our shoes, and the tuk-tuk
driver who was resting in the shade.  I had him
take us to the market and restaurant that I had
visited yesterday, as I knew the ladies would
like to do a little shopping. We were all more
than ready for some food and a cold drink!

We made a significant dent in our souvenir shopping,
and purchased tunics, housewares, some prints, and teas.
An ice cold Coca Cola never tasted so good, and
Sue was loving her strawberry milkshake!

I am not exactly sure what we ate, other than it was some
sort of spicy tofu! Wanetta had to get some french fries;
the girl can't handle spicy. I said to her that she may have
some trouble on this trip, as India is primarily vegetarian.
She laughed and said that Greg always tells her,
"Oh, you can do change, just not very well!"

We returned to our motel mid-afternoon for a rest in the air conditioning.  It is so blazing hot here, and we are all fatigued by the heat and some serious jet lag.  We had an informal dinner that evening to meet the rest of our group members.  Following breakfast the next morning, we had an orientation meeting about the country of India, it's people, their culture, and what to expect on our tour.  Since we knew that touring officially was beginning tomorrow, we decided to call it an early night.

G'nite, y'all!