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Tantra is usually associated with sex or transgressive practices. These images, the Sri Chakra, mark the temple as a center for Srividya, a tantra practice from South India.
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Incense and ghee lamps are burning, and the walls are decorated with a kind of mandala made up of rings of triangles. Inside, though, it’s filled with flower-garlanded figures of the goddess and other deities. Image by Sri Rajarajeshwari Peetham.įrom the outside, my temple, the Sri Rajarajeshwari Peetham, is a nondescript ranch house and a clutch of prefabricated outbuildings. The exterior of the Sri Rajarajeshwari Peetham temple. This is something both incalculably ancient and radically new. They’re men and women, both Indian and non-Indian, and only a few wear the sacred thread of the Brahmin caste. The officiants at the fire pits aren’t priests. But this is not a glimpse into a timeless, unchanging world. Drums beat, conchs blare, and hundreds of voices chant in Sanskrit as tens of thousands of offerings are made into sacred fires. The scene is like something out of an ancient Indian epic. The morning sun brightens over the western New York countryside, its rolling fields especially beautiful in the raking light, and soon we’re turning into the temple driveway. I just have time to straighten my dhoti before a Toyota minivan with a sign reading “SVTS Shuttle Service” picks me up. Half an hour later I’m in my car, and 15 minutes later I’m pulling into a middle-school parking lot. I fumble an approximation of the correct mudra and whisper “Hamsa Shiva Soham” once before my feet touch the floor, kiss my wife, and pad to the bathroom. I don’t even wait for the alarm to go off. I usually stay in bed much later, but right now sleep seems much less important than being at the temple.