I wrote this back during my Freshman year of college in 2002. I felt this writing piece was suitable for sharing, since it’s the middle of Paryushan (religious period of time where Jains fast).
“Beep, beep, beep, beep….!” I slightly opened my eyes, to the blurriness of several lines connecting to form numbers on the clock. It was 6:30 am. I let my alarm clock ring for several more minutes until everyone was awake and yelling at me for not shutting it off sooner. Another Sunday at the temple, I thought.
“Mom, do I really have to come to the temple today? I’m very tired and I also have a lot of homework to catch up on.”
“You have to come today since our community has invited a very wise priest from India to give us more insight on our religion.”
“The priest is just going to repeat everything I already know about our religion. Besides, it’s going to be boring since none of my friends are going to be there.”
“Don’t give me any excuses! Instead of worrying about socializing and being bored, you need to come to the temple to understand religion not only through your head, but also through your heart. True happiness and knowledge lies within that temple, but it’s in your hands to search for it, understand it, and feel it.”
What did my mother intend to tell me through these abstract words? Could she have meant to say that I was still far behind in learning even the slightest bit about my temple and religion? For 15 years I’ve be a Jain, a pure vegetarian, I’ve been taught to believe in ‘ahimsa’ (non-violence), I’ve followed my culture and traditions, I’ve attended every program held at the temple, but she still told me that I hadn’t discovered the hidden treasures within our temple.
After intensely thinking over my situation, I realized how secluded I kept myself from my religion and culture. I’ve always had the utmost respect toward God, my religion, and temple, but I never really tried to perceive them. I never thought of how God, my religion, and temple played a significant role in my life. This absence of knowledge urged me to attend the temple…not to socialize, but to sense the pleasure in learning more about my temple and religion.
As we turned onto Cincinnati-Dayton road, I carefully observed the temple’s surroundings. The temple was newly built, about a year old. It was set off to the right side of the road, across from a street filled with rows of almost newly built houses. As I stepped out onto the black cement ground, facing the temple, I noticed the huge field of greenish-yellow weeds on my left. Rows of neatly placed trees were growing in a way that they sort of made a fence around the weeds. On my right there stood an ancient house that seemed to be built in the early 1900’s. It was the only other object that accompanied our temple on that side of the road.
The temple streched out sideways, like a ranch house, with two entrances on the far right and left ends of the light brown and white brick building. Supported by white tree-like logs, two triangle shaped sections of the roof hung out over the entrances giving our temple a warm and welcoming look. As I walked in through the right entrance door, I hung my jacket on a long, steel bar, placed along the left side of the wall. I put my shoes on one of the shelves of a large wooden cabinet on the right side of the wall.
A small, upside down L-shaped hallway led me to the middle-sized meditation room, a little kitchen, restrooms, and a large lecture hall, which our community sometimes use as a dinner hall. At the far end of this L-shaped hallway, a small table stood, holding a few religious books, titled “Life as a Vegetarian”, “Ahimsa”, and “The Seven Stages of Life”. The final room in our temple is the extremely large prayer room, which is seperated from the rest of the temple by a simple wooden door, with a shiny brass knob.
That day I didn’t want to waste a lot of time in any other room besides the prayer room. As I walked into the prayer room, the essence of sweet smelling candles tickled my nostrils. A look of simplicity was given to the room by the several rectangular windows embedded into the walls of the square-shaped room. The checker designed marble floor, liberated from any burden of carpets or rugs, sent cold electric currents through my bare feet. The milky white ceiling made an upside down V-shape, holding two cherry brown fans and a diamond shaped crystal chandelier. I finally arrived to look at the main attraction of the prayer room, the special stage where God was placed. On each side of the stage there were three hollow spaces built into the wall for pictures of God and other deities.
The first time I observed God closely, he was sitting in a position similar to the way Native Americans sit with one palm placed over the other, the inside of it facing upward. A diamond-shaped gold metal, embedded into the upper center of his milky white chest, symbolized his heart. His ear lobe barely touched the top of his white marble shoulder symbolizing his eternal life. His dark black eyes pierced across the room as if they were observing the good and bad deeds of every soul alive. God was great I thought…he had every right to be God.
I slowly sat down on top of the cold floor. Gently shutting my eyes, I imagined how God would look in reality. At first, my mind took me through a tunnel of unwanted thoughts of friends, parties, and school, but gradually I started concentrating on putting together a picture of how God would really look. The only difference between the statue and my picture was that God could speak to me. I felt as though I had flown thousands of miles away from this world and into a new dimension. A dimension that didn’t understand the meaning of sorrow, hate, jealousy, fear, anger, selfishness, death, or any evil deed our world is full of. As I felt myself slip into a mode of deep meditation, I could only sense love surround me. I had so many questions to ask and God was there to answer them with honesty.
Why are we on this planet? What mission are we here to accomplish? If you loved everyone and wanted everyone to be equal, why did you install hate, anger, jealousy, and greed in every living being? Did you really create this universe, and if so, where did you originally come from? Did you have parents? Is there a planet outside of ours that contains the same material things? Is there such a thing as reincarnation?
So many questions boggled my mind and nothing made sense to me. Somehow, when I looked into God’s eyes I thought maybe these questions didn’t matter…or maybe he was the only one who had the right to know these answers. I asked God a lot of general questions about my life and I realized how many right decisions I had made with the lessons I learned from my religion and culture. It seemed as though I was answering my own questions, but those answers were coming from his mouth. He was like a parent to me, maybe even closer, he made my life’s complications seem like a spec of dust, lying on top of a crystal table. I had never felt this wholesome before, I was sure that in life I will always have someone watching over me, to take care of me, to encourage me, to bless me with life’s happiness and to lead my path in the right direction.
My train of thoughts were interrupted when my mother called out for me to listen to the lecture on our religion. I wiped away my tears and put on a smile. I was going to come to the temple every Sunday because I had found the treasure so soon and so precious.
This sudden interest in knowing more about my religion has changed my life. I see my religion as a way of trying to figure out who I am deep inside. Now after 18 years, I believe myself to be very well prepared to answer how God, my religion, and my culture has influenced my life. Deep down inside my heart, I feel as though there is a God lying within me. God has installed hate, anger, jealousy, greed, selfishness, fear and evil around my heart, but within my heart he has installed love, compassion, and care. This is the place where God lives, and I must break the evil barriers to reach my true inner soul, and that is where God lives.
