Lake Forest Acadamy students at Grayslake Temple

BY A STAFF WRITER

GRAYSLAKE (IL) – A large group of 125 students from the Lake Forest Academy as well as five of their teachers on October 15 visited the Hindu Temple of Lake County in Grayslake to see Hindu deities, observe Hindu rituals, and get their doubts and questions answered by knowledgeable people.

Anand Upadhyaya and Prabhakar Joshi usually give the tour of the temple to students and answer their questions. Upadhyaya gave them an elaborative tour and answered all their questions accurately and methodically with lots of day-to-day examples.

Temple priest Pandit Anil Joshi Ji welcomed all the students warmly and requested them to participate in the Archana and Maha Mangalarati and blessed all the students for their academic success, bright future and prosperity, become good citizens, and maintain peace, harmony, and love to humanity with prasadam.

Dr. Harsh Kumar, president, appreciated and expressed his gratitude to all teachers for bringing their students to the temple and getting the first hand information.

He also said that a visit to a Hindu temple could be helpful in illuminating the way Hindus worshipped their beautifully decorated deities.

Dr Harsh Kumar said that many textbooks continued to depict Hinduism as a religion confined strictly to the Indian subcontinent but in reality it had become a world religion with its universal preachings.

In the United States, he said, the diversity of Hinduism was reflected in the plethora of temples representing numerous worship traditions as well as cultural beliefs.

He also assured teachers that he and his team would be available to answer their questions regarding Hindu religion.

The Hindu Temple of Lake County in Grayslake, indeed, is not just a center of rituals and congregation but a lighthouse of philosophy and knowledge that are the basis of Sanatana Dharma.

In this temple, the imparting of Hindu religious knowledge on rational basis, observing devotion and offering services to community and academic institutions are blended into a harmonious whole.

This is creating an environment where the youth understand, appreciate and love the Hindu culture. The temple is visited not only by the Hindus but also those who wish to explore religious diversity and initiate inter-faith dialogues.

Grayslake temple therefore makes all the effort so that modern man develops a rational and scientific understanding of the use of Hindu temples in the world.

Several schools and colleges of the Lake County continuously visit the temple as teachers of world religions class say that their students get a real sense of Hinduism when they take them to local temples, Sikh Gurdwaras and Jain temples.