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Spiritual Practices
Temple (Mandir)
The place where we live is called ‘home,' and the place where God and His sants reside is called a 'Temple .'(mandir)
The end of the world is 'Home.' Similarly, wherever we may go – be it office, job, business, or visit our relatives, we feel at peace when we get home. This is because we have our family members, parents, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives at home, and thus we feel at peace when they surround us.
We recite everyday:
Twamev Mata cha pita Twamev
Twamev Bandhu cha sakha Twamev
Twamev Vidhya Dravinam Twamev
Twamev sarvam mama dev dev
In this prayer, we say to Maharaj, ‘O Maharaj, you are my mother, father, brother, and a friend. You are the one who is my knowledge and my one true treasure. Not only this, but you are my everything.
Just like we are eager to meet our family members, we should be equally anxious to meet our true relatives – Maharaj and His holy sants. We should always be eager for their darshan.
For this purpose, we should go to the temple daily – morning and evening to do darshan of Maharaj. Can we stay a day without meeting those that are closest to us? We feel restless if multiple days pass by without the chance to meet those, we consider our loved ones. Similarly, we should experience a kind of restlessness if we cannot go for Maharaj’s and His holy sant’s darshan.
The Murti in the temple is Maharaj himself. It is not a photograph or a statue. The darshan of Maharaj’s Murti should be performed with utter concentration and knowing that it is Maharaj himself and thus trying to imbibe the Murti within us. We should perform darshan with complete attention as it upsets Maharaj if we look around in all directions.
Being a Maharaj’s servant, men and boys should perform a minimum of 5 dandvats, whereas women and girls should perform five panchang pranams.
Singing kirtans while remembering Maharaj’s Murti is a way of making Maharaj happy and enhances our affection towards Murti.
In temples, the broad space surrounding Maharaj’s throne or sanctum is called a place for circumambulation 'pradakshina.' Pradakshina denotes that we are tied to Maharaj, and Maharaj is our centre point. Thus, we should do at least five pradakshinas each time we go for darshan.
Temple is the best place to get away from the worries of the world and attain peace. It is the place where we can connect with Maharaj’s Murti. Performing mala while chanting the Swaminarayan Mahamantra is a quick and easy way of connecting to Maharaj’s divine Murti.
One should do darshan of sants (if present in the mandir premise) by doing dandvat pranam and touching the feet of sants with Divinity. Therefore, the temple is a place to detach from worldly desires and difficulties and connect with Maharaj.
In our community, temples are of two kinds – S hikharbadhha and Hari temples. For better understanding, the murti in shikharbadhha Mandir is viewed as either marble, wood, or panchdhatu (Mixture of five elements.) and where arti is performed five times a day. In comparison, a Hari mandir is one where Maharaj is viewed in the form of a photographic Murti. For example, our temples at Vasna and Mehsana are considered shikharbadhha temples, whereas Ghanshyamnagar Temple is Shikhar Hari mandir and Isanpur is Harimandir. However, this all differences are an illusion of eyes. Maharaj is. always divine and omnipresent. through these forms.
