Spiritual Architecture and Siddhanta

[Gauracandra 1]

I wanted to get any of your thoughts on this subject. Certainly the architecture of churches, mosques, temples and synagogues have a lot to do with cultural ideas of aesthetics. But very often, on a subtle level they reveal the philosophical conclusions of that particular religion. Here are a few thoughts on this:

 

Catholic Churches – The Catholic faith is one steeped in tradition. In medieval times, they built grand cathedrals as a way of attracting the poor peasant. If you were poor, but heard about the kingdom of God, when you stepped into a Catholic church you would feel that power. Grand arches and columns. Beautiful stained glass windows. They approach God in a mood of awe and reverence, hence the rooms tended to be very subdued, and respectful. Their philosophy is based on the blood and suffering of the crucifixion and so their crosses show the image of Christ nailed on the cross, with stab wound, a crown of thorns, and blood trickling down his face.

 

Protestant Churches – The Protestant faith came about as a revolt against the Catholic church. They didn’t want all these layers of spiritualists (Bishops, Archbishops, Deacons etc…). Their churches tended to be fairly simple and “down with the people”. A Baptist church is more or less a very nice building. The simplicity speaks to their desire for a religion of the people, rather than of spiritual bureaucracy. They also use symbols of the cross but without a physical image of Christ because they feel that the image of Christ was a deviation by the Catholic church in that it was violating the commandment against creating images.

 

Mormon Church – Mormons have no crosses either on the inside or outside as part of the Church design. To them the most important part of the story of Christ was not the crucifixion but rather when Christ prayed to God in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was at this point that Christ began to sweat blood as he took on the sins of others. They also believe that man can evolve spiritually to become a God in his own right. Thus in their temple designs, you will find that there is a spiral path in every temple going from the lower level to the upper temple room level. This represents man’s evolution to different levels of Godhood and exhaltation. They also have sharp needle like points that pierce the sky outside as part of their architectural design, perhaps symbolically representing this drive to Godhood. Mormons are thus henotheistic, believing in a plurality of gods.

 

South Indian Sri Vaisnava – As temples to Visnu, these tend to be very grand and the mood is one of awe and reverence. The Gopuram represents the gate into heaven, guarded on both sides by the deities of Jaya and Vijaya. I have been told that the temple design is actually one representing the body of God. Thus the Gopuram gate represents the feet of God. The stambha represents the genitals of God. The length of the temple, with its room represents the body of God. The deities in the small compartment of the temple, represents the heart of God where the deities reside (or perhaps the head of God I don’t remember exactly). And the top of the temple, above the deity, is often made of gold, and represents the crown of God. Thus symbolically the temple takes on a certain architecture.

 

Gaudiya Math – This style is very colorful and playful and thus represents certain philosophical conclusions about how to approach God. Rather than a mood of awe and reverence, the Gaudiya philosophy stresses other aspects of God’s personhood. The Gaudiya Math style has blues, greens, yellows, reds, with carvings of peacocks, elephants, lions. Dioramas of Krsna and Caitanya. They tend to have a simple entrance gate and then a simple, but beautiful temple. Again, the look and style represents the philosophy.

 

Buddhist – I don’t have a whole lot of experience with Buddhist architecture so perhaps someone could fill me in on this. I do remember that at the temple I went to a few weeks back, the main temple was filled with 10,000 little statues of the Buddha (hat’s the number they gave). Each little Buddha was like 4-5 inches tall, and covered every inch of the interior of the temple room. Perhaps this represents the infinity of time and that there is a Buddha in every corner of the world. This is just my guess. I’d be curious about any ideas on Buddhist architecture.

 

I also don’t know much about Islamic and Judaic architecture or how their philosophy would tie into them. Please share your thoughts on any of these or other religious systems and how we can see that philosophy in their temple designs.

 

Gauracandra

 

 

[Gauracandra 1]

Just wanted to quickly revisit this topic and talk about the deity altar for a moment. One of the things I like about my local Sri Vaisnava temple is that they have a small enclosure that you can walk into to have darshan of the deity. Its a small little room separated from the greater room. This creates a sense of sacred space and intimacy between the devotee and the Lord. The only problem I see with this is that it is not very conducive to holding kirtan as most people won't be able to see the Lord. Another point in a similar vein, is that I tend to like altars that are open from end to end. At some temples they have pillars that break up the space between each deity. What this generally does is make it impossible to see all of the deities at once. If it was just a rectangle across it would allow anyone, at any part of the room to view all of the deities.

 

I'd be interested in anyone's opinion on the optimal way to construct a temple room.

 

Gauracandra