CENTENNIAL, Colorado: Centennial CO Hindu Temple and Cultural Center of the Rockies opened in Centennial (Colorado) on June 7 after an elaborate three-days of ancient Hindu rituals conducted by nine priests gathered from all over the country.
The “Grand Opening Celebrations” included havans, artis, pujas, murti sthapana, cultural program, Veda pranayam, aradhana, archana, Maha Kumbhabhishekam, etc.
The new temple, whose construction began in March 2014, besides being a place of worship, will also undertake various religious, cultural and spiritual activities/celebrations. Its architecture is based on ancient Vastu and Aagam Shastra principles and it includes murtis of Aayapaa Swami, Durga Maa, Ganesh Ji, Gaurishankar, Laxmi Narayan, Radha-Krishna, Ramdarbar, Saraswati Mata, Shiva Lingam and Nandi, Shiva Parivar and Tirupati Bala Ji, reports suggest.
Reva Nayar, C.P. Mishra, Modhumita Mukherjee and Satish Kumar are President, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer respectively of the Temple while Kailash Chandra Upadhyay and Raghavendra Iyer are the priests.
The Hindu community in Colorado set up the Hindu Society of Colorado in mid eighties in the wake of a sizeable increase in the Hindu population. This group would meet at different members’ homes for spiritual discussions and deity worship. A need for a true temple was pressing, so another group, Hindu Temple and Cultural Center of the Rockies (HTCC), was formed and it merged with the Hindu Society of Colorado in 1995.
By 1996, the group successfully raised $100,000 to purchase an old church building in Littleton for the much needed temple in Colorado. This temple started successfully and in the same year, the neighboring lot was purchased. With this growth, temple activities for both children and adults expanded in 2001 with Bal Mandir and Yoga classes.
In 2002, the third lot was purchased, and talk regarding a bigger temple began. In 2004-2005 the parking was paved and a New Temple Committee was formed. The third lot was sold and the land in Centennial measuring 4.25 acres was bought at $500,000 in January 2007. The Bhoomi Pooja Samaroha was celebrated in June the same year. The design of the new temple was completed in 2008 and the site plan for construction was approved in 2009.
Commending the opening of the temple, Rajan Zed, president of Universal Society of Hinduism, said that the efforts of temple leaders and area community for realizing this Hindu temple complex need to be welcomed by the community at large across the country.
Rajan said that it was important to pass on Hindu spirituality, concepts and traditions to coming generations amidst so many distractions in the consumerist society and hoped that this new temple would help in this direction. Zed stressed that instead of running after materialism; we should focus on inner search and realization of Self and work towards achieving moksh (liberation), which was the goal of Hinduism.
India Post News Service
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