My wife and I want to get our own place to live (we're living with her parents at the moment). Today I went to look at an apartment not far from where I work, but it was only a one bedroom apartment. The price was quite reasonable, however.
The main window faces east, and there is a space in the left-hand corner of the room for an altar to be set up. I'm wondering, how do you deal with having an altar in a one-room apartment? To enter a puja room or approach an altar, you must be clean. When you get out of bed in the morning, you are unclean. From what I know, a puja room receives a different blessing than the rest of the house.
So what do you do about this? Do you draw a line around the altar and the surrounding area, designating this area as sacred space, and the rest of the room as mundane space for living in? Do you curtain this space off? Do you just curtain the altar off when you're not using it? (I know an altar is supposed to have doors or curtains to close it off)
And when they say that an altar should face east, do they mean that when you're standing in front of the altar, praying, that you are facing east, or do they mean that the pictures should face east (i.e. when you face the altar, you're facing west)?
Thanks for any help on this.
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