It was during that trip, arranged by Ms. Hsia and Mr. Huang, that Mr. Gore first met the temple's leader, Venerable Master Hsing Yun.
On Sunday mornings, congregants meet at the temple for Sunday School, which begins with prayers and hymns.
The temple was renovated to meet the needs of the god that was especially venerated during a particular year (the annual god changed from year to year).
In the Athens of Demosthenes, there was a comedians' club called the Group of Sixty, which met in the temple of Heracles to trade wisecracks, and it is said that Philip of Macedon paid handsomely to have their jokes written down; but the volume, if it ever existed, has been lost.
For making Mahaprasad and to meet the activities of Anand Bazar and temple rituals, water from two open wells called Ganga and Jamuna are utilized actively.
And businesses are transforming into mind, body and soul temples of wellness to meet the demands of people increasingly eschewing traditional houses of worship and pursuing alternative paths to spiritual connection.
A short-lived effort to give a similar course of lectures at the Inner Temple met the same result.
They meet yards from the temple complex in Vrindavan built where Krishna, one of the most popular gods in the Hindu pantheon, supposedly spent his childhood.
I meet Balhair Dulai, the temple's vice president, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a more grail and peaceful human being.
