Cultural Minority Activity

Dean Paulk
SPED 620-70
Dr. Buskey

I attended the Sri Somesvara Temple, which is a Vedic Temple in Clyde, NC for this
activity. I went with a friend who was my ride. Neither one of us had been to a Vedic or
Hindu Temple before, so it was a new experience for both of us.

We visited for the Daily Rudrabhishekam, which is a daily cleansing ritual of the Shiva
statue in the center of the Temple. This starts at 11:00 am every day, and ends at around
1:00 pm. We happened to show up on the same day that a Christian church group was
coming in to hear a talk by Dr. Mamas, the founder of the Temple, and then get a brief
overview of Vedic philosophy. We were invited to attend, and we decided to do so.

Dr. Mamas was an amazing speaker and was very down-to-earth and well-spoken. He
spoke extensively of the ways in which science and spirituality are intertwined and how
meditation can help with realizing these connections. One of my favorite things that he
said is that the Master’s words essentially lose their power after they leave the Master’s
lips. Translations, interpretations, and retellings dull and dilute the original message.
After that, the church members asked a few questions, and then we went to the Temple.

At this point, Pandit Prasad was about halfway through the Rudrabhisekam. As we
walked in, there were four rugs, one along each wall. There were maybe 30-40 people,
most of them of Indian or Middle Eastern descent. Almost all of the women were
dressed in saris. Everyone was seated on a rug (they had chairs for those who couldn’t
sit on the floor) or standing. Pandit Prasad was chanting the entire time, with the
exception of a few minutes, when one of the women sang while he was dressing the
altar. When we came in, he was pouring various liquids over the bare stone altar which
drained into a bucket through a hole in the side. It was obvious that he was cleansing
and consecrating the altar.

His chants were not in English, and they repeated a bit. There was one thing he said
multiple times that everyone else joined in with. He also sprinkled the altar with what
looked like spices or powders. Once he was done with the liquid, he carefully wiped
down the altar, then spread oil over the marble. Then, he started dressing it by laying
cloths over it, decorating it with statuary and trinkets, fresh flowers, and what I’m
assuming were offerings of food and money to Shiva.

After this, they brought around a flame and incense for everyone to bless themselves
with, then allowed everyone to collect some coconut that was donated by the members
and had been sitting by the altar while the Rudrabhisekam as performed.

We left right around 1:00 pm, so we spent about 30 minutes listening to Dr. Mamas,
and an hour and a half in the Temple. There was no interaction with the other
participants, outside of sharing in the experience. There was a part where we all stood
and repeated after Pandit Prasad in a different language. Everyone was mostly quiet
during the Rudrabhisekam. Some people did come and go a bit, and children were kept
still, but not as quiet and still as they would at a Christian church. They were allowed to
fidget and play a bit.

After about 30 minutes in the Temple, the Christian group left, which left me and my
ride as the only white participants for the remainder of the Rudrabhisekam.

This event was very fascinating to me, as Hinduism is a path that I looked into a bit
during my own spiritual journey. I never attended an event or did much research on the
Hindu or Vedic rituals, so this was completely new to me. I found myself alternating
between just being in the moment and kind of zoning out while listening to Pandit
Prasad’s chanting, and thinking of all of the parallels between this ritual and the Pagan
rituals that our Pagan Temple leads. It made it easy for me to recognize the annointing
and consecration of the altar, along with the offerings.

It was a very powerful experience, and one that I would recommend more people
experience. I think that if more people experienced the religious and spiritual rituals of
other spiritual traditions, that they would recognize the similarities and be able to focus
on mutual respect instead of the “us vs. them” mentality that we tend to have, especially
around spiritual groups.

This event was the first one in which I saw someone who is typically thought of in the
Western world as a monk, aside from the Buddhist monks who have come to campus to
make the sand mandalas. Seeing that Pandit Prasad does this every single day for 2
hours made me realize just how strongly some people feel and express their religion and
spiritual beliefs, and how very ingrained they can be in their lives. As someone who
feels their spirituality very strongly and incorporates it into everything in a not-so-
visible way to others, it was very nice to see someone who was feeling and incorporating
their own spirituality in a very visible way.

This may not affect my work in a significant or visible way, but it at least gives me a base
of understanding and knowledge about Vedic spiritual practice, and the seriousness and
length of their practices. This doesn’t include meditation practice, or other rituals, so I
can only imagine how much time a strict devotee would spend a week on spiritual
practice.

Increasing my basic understanding of the various spiritual and religious practices is a

goal of mine in order to understand how spirituality and religion can affect one’s lived
experiences and life goals. One’s understanding of this world and how and why it
functions the way it does can heavily influence every aspect of their life, so as
professionals, if we have knowledge of these differences and what they mean, it can help
us to relate to and remain understanding of our differences, and by extension, our
similarities. Focusing on the similarities, especially related to religion and spirituality,
can really help us to coexist and have mutual respect for each other and our beliefs.