As part of Heritage Open Days, we went to a Mandir, Hindu Temple. This was my first guided tour to a Hindu Temple. I went to one in Singapore unguided.
The guide started explaining, there is one truth and righteous path, and the different gods are just different manifestations of the way. I suspect, he didn't know how many Hindu gods altogether either. And Hindu believes in the concept of eternality, with no beginning and no end.
Then he was explaining how lotus was a symbol in Hinduism, how it rises above the mud into the beautiful blossom, I though it was suspiciously Chinese!
We looked around the temple, and he sat us down to have a little religious discussion. He repeated a few religious stories, including the blind men and the elephant, again, it was suspiciously Chinese.
I let the two other visitors ask their questions, and I bit my tongue the whole time. I really wanted to know if their temple practice the caste system! I only opened my mouth to correct his comment relating Taoism with Hinduism.
When we saw the images of the different gods and sacred images were all blessed. This is also a standard practice in Buddhism. One of the sacred images was Hanuman, representing bravery and loyalty, which was probably the blue print for the Monkey King in Journey to the West!
We asked about their religious texts, but he was bluffing regarding the age of the artefacts.
By the end of the tour, I thought just how much Chinese teachings and cultural practices were from the Hindu teachings in Buddhism!
When we got home, we found our answers regarding the Sanskrit. Then when I searched about Taoist Pangu, only to find out the Chinese world creation story was only written after the initial introduction of Buddhism into China, and story of Pangu resembles a traditional world creation story from Hinduism!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.