Paras Ra­moutar

In­di­an-born seer Jy­oti Shacharya Sri Sri Gajen­dra Ku­mar has an­nounced that�con­struc­tion work on the $14 mil­lion Lak­sh­mi Narayan Mandir at Sei­w­dass Road, Freeport will com­mence in ob­ser­vance of Di­vali, which will be cel­e­brat­ed on No­vem­ber 5. "The Laks­mi Narayan Mandir will re­flect the an­cient Vedic tra­di­tion dat­ing back to be­tween 5,000 and 10,000 years. "It will be pat­terned along the Vashti Shas­tri tra­di­tion rem­i­ni­scient of the spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, moral and eth­i­cal val­ues of that pe­ri­od," he said."When com­plet­ed, the Mandir would be­come a place of peace, so­lace, tran­quil­i­ty, and deep spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, where de­vot­ess from all re­li­gious and so­cial tra­di­tions, be­liefs and eth­nic com­po­si­tions could come and med­i­tate, pray, of­fer obei­sance to the re­spec­tive Hin­du pan­theon of gods and godess­es. Hin­duism, In­di­an thought and In­di­an civil­i­sa­tion would be our deep fo­cus here," Jy­oti Sri Sri Ku­mar point­ed out.

Jy­oti Sri Sri Ku­mar has come from a lin­eage of Hin­du re­li­gious lead­ers span­ning sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions over 200 years in In­dia. His fa­ther, Jy­oti Shacharya Sri Sri Chan­drashekar Harayan Ku­mar was a not­ed Hin­du thinker in the state Mad­haya Pradesh in the City of Vidisha, In­dia, and he has adopt­ed part of his fa­ther's name. He was born in the State of Ut­tar Pradesh which ad­joins his fam­i­ly's state. Ut­tar Pradesh and Bi­har are the main source of the East In­di­an stock which was brought here from In­dia be­tween 1845 and 1917 to work on the sug­ar plan­ta­tions. Some 145,000 East In­di­ans came here. Jy­oti Sri Sri Ku­mar said that the Mandir will serve as a link be­tween In­dia and Trinidad and To­ba­go as,"In­dia in all of us re­gard­less of time and�space. And to rep­re­sent this Force, there will be two spe­cial­ly-carved domes, tes­ti­mo­ni­als of the rich and cul­tur­al and re­li­gious part­ner­hips and link­ages be­tween our two coun­tries," he said.

"While the Mandir will be named the Lak­sh­mi Narayan( Moth­er Laskh­mi-God­dess of Wealth and Lord Narayan(Lord Vish­nu) Sus­tain­er of the Uni­verse), there will be mur­tis or im­ages of Lord Hanu­man, Lord Ra­ma, Lord Kr­ish­na, Lord Ganesh, and God­dess­es Saraswati, Par­vati, Rad­ha, Dur­ga, among sev­er­al oth­ers," he said. "Our fo­cus will be to cel­e­brate the ma­jor Hin­du fes­ti­vals such as Di­vali, Nau Raa­tri, Ram Nownee, Kr­ish­na Jana­mashti, Pitri Paksh, Lord Ganesh Chautri, Kr­ish­na Leela among oth­ers." Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the es­tab­lish­ment of a school to train young and po­ten­tial pun­dits with deep re­li­gious and philo­soph­i­cal con­tents along Hin­duism and Dhar­ma, Jy­oti Sri Sri Ku­mar said. The old­est form of Hin­du scrip­tures, Vedas, means knowl­edge and wis­dom, and con­tains hymns, prayers and rit­u­al texts, while the Up­an­ishads are a col­lec­tion of se­cret teach­ings in­clud­ing mys­ti­cal ideas about man and the uni­verse. The Ra­mayana con­sists of 24,000 cou­plets based on the life of Lord Ra­ma, a right­eous king who is an in­car­na­tion of Lord Vish­nu, he said.