For our mid-semester retreat, our whole group, plus a couple extra American friends traveled to Amritsar, Punjab, to see the Golden Temple.
This temple belongs to the Sikh religion and is considered their holiest place on Earth. Many Sikhs make pilgrimages there to visit the temple and bath in its water.
Before we even went to Amritsar I was lucky enough to get to talk to a Punjabi Sikh man who was visiting McLeod Ganj for a weekend. He told in general about the religion and about the Golden Temple.
It is easy to spot a Sikh man in India because they wear turbans or cloth coverings on their heads. Sikh women are a little harder to spot, but I learned from this man, that they also usually wear special bracelets on each wrist.
I asked the man a little about the religion and was very interested to hear his explanation. From what he told me Sikhism seemed to fall somewhere in between Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. He said that they believe in one God who is the creator of all things, and concerning the afterlife, that if you were good and did the right things you would go to heaven, but if you were not good or did not do the right things, then you would go to hell for a certain period of time, and then eventually be reborn on Earth and given another chance.
The first teacher of Sikhism was Guru Nanak Dev Ji. From there there were nine more gurus for a total of ten (this man wrote all of their names in my notebook for me). Now the current guru is the scriptures that these past gurus left behind.
The Golden Temple was founded the 4th Guru, and has therefore been around for a very long time; around 400 years.
As we stepped into the temple grounds, our feet bare and our heads covered with cloth, we were just awestruck by our surroundings. The outside walls of the complex stretched far out on all sides. The majority of the interior was filled by water. And then out in the middle of the water sat the golden temple, which itself seems rather small in comparison with everything around it. Some soft, soothing Indian music was playing, and Sikh scriptures were being sung. We made our way around the perimeter of the water, just taking it all in, including the vast amount of people who were there visiting; some locals making their regular visit and some having just arrived from very distant places, just to see the Golden Temple.
We didn’t actually go into the temple until that night. It was a whole new breathtaking experience to go back at night. The temple was all lit up and looked beautiful out on the water. It was also much cooler by night and so we were lot more comfortable.
We had to wait in a long line of people to get into the temple, but it moved fairly quickly and standing out over the water was a beautiful-enough sight that it really didn’t matter if the line was moving quickly or slowly.
When we got inside we discovered that the music that was being played and the scriptures that were being sung through the speakers outside was coming live from inside the temple. We had supposed it was a recording that played throughout the day, but no; they have musicians that trade off throughout the day, who sit in the temple and play the songs. It was real beautiful music and I wish I would have recorded it.
The temple was beautiful but crowded. We walked all around it, including its three or four different levels. There was a lot to see inside, but we felt a little rushed to get through and make room for all the people still waiting in line outside.
I could say a lot more about the golden temple, but words never really do the experience justice. I would highly recommend it as a place to see if you visit India, but then again, I would recommend almost everything I saw to anyone else who was going.
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