Lord Krishna deity in ISKCON temple
Clearly observe deities during our Temple Darshan.. Whenever we visit the temples, let’s clearly and closely observe the deities, since the very purpose of our visit itself depends only on our darshan of the deities, and that too, in case of TirumalaSri Venkateswara Temple, we must have to carefully observe our beloved Lord Venkateswara deity within a few seconds time, or otherwise, the temple staffs and the crowd would push, and they would automatically make us to move from that place. Even during the turn of my Darshan, I used to hurriedly check for some paper for the purpose of folding the Prasad items, and during that time my mother used to tell, “Forget about the paper, first let you have the proper darshan of the deity”, like that.
In my young age, I used to think, why these devotees are madly waiting in the queue just to have the darshan of the deities only for a few seconds time. But after the passage of time, I have fully realized about the significance of the deities, and thereafter, I used to think, in order to get the wonderful darshan of the deities, even we may wait for life long!
All of the deities present in the temples contain lot of divine powers, since the temple priest would invoke lot of divinity on to that, by chanting various Vedic Mantras, and it would be done immediately after the construction and also during the time of consecration ceremony of the temples. From our ancient texts, it was known that the great Brihadeeswara Temple at Thanjavur, which was constructed under the direct supervision of the great king “Sri Raja RajaChola’, had ordered the temple priests to utter thousands and thousands of Vedic hymns before the main deity, in order to add more powers to the holy Shiva Lingam present at the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Big Temple.
When our great Prahalada had built the famous Narasimha Temple, at Multan, Pakistan, he himself has chanted the Sahasranamavali (1008 names) of Lord Vishnu, and had also performed the opening ceremony of the temple under his own hands. But that wonderful temple was demolished by some miscreants before several years ago.
Hence, whenever during the time of our temple visit, let us get the divine vision of the deities properly, by observing full of bhakti, sincerity, patience and faith.
“OM NAMO NARAYANA”
WRITTEN BY
R.HARISHANKAR