Narayan Narayan

Happened to visit a tibetan gomba (monastry) last weekend with my family.
Even as I waited for our turn to meet HH the Ningma Lama, a large number of thoughts poured into my mind and I started thinking about all the holy shrines I visited in the country during various stints at different locations.
I have visited Tirupati Balaji, Gangotri, Yamnotri, Jagannath Puri, Badri Nath, Meenakshi temple, sun temple, Sai temple Shirdi, mahabalipuram and a lot of those religious places.

Somehow the real feel of devotedness to the lord is missing in almost every place that I went. Even the priests look for "MOTA MURGA" as they stand at the gate and look at the devotees walking into the temple.

I would narrate a similar incident during my visit to Puri.
I entered the gate and a bald priest welcomed me and directed me to bow at a few statues here and there. Then he escorted me to one small room where a man sat on a desk with a receipt book. The fellow told me to pay for temple fund. I said I would rather go to the main shrine. He insisted and it was really bad I must say. Finally when I did not give anything he said OK lets go to the temple, there again he took me to a window where again one guy with a receipt book was collecting money ( there was no one else except me). He said if I wanted special parsad then I must pay there and get the prasad on producing this receipt at the prasad window. I again said a big NO.
It was really horrible with the way he was irritating me. I got rid of him, bought some prasad and batti and entered the main shrine. Huge rush, half of them bald pandits looking for devotees to get some daan dakshina. One such pandit hit me on my head with a bamboo stick as a gesture of blessing and put forward his left palm for daan dakshina to my amazement. I had five bucks ka coin and i gave it to him. He went furious and put that coin right back into my palm and raised his fist in anger and said a few things which I could either not hear or not understand cos of language. But it was clear that he was angry that I gave him five bucks only which was way below his standard.
What to say.
Narayan Narayan