Hindus pray to many deities but see each deity as a manifestation of the same supreme self. Also, the essential difference between Semitic religions and Hinduism is that in Semitic religions, God is an “external” being while for Hindus, God is within oneself and can be “realized” within oneself. So a prayer is like being in connection with the god-self. All the different deities represent goodness and values that one ascribes to God. Each Deity has associated myths, beliefs and traditions. Though there are temples with just one “God” or “Goddess” normally, Hindu temples have many deities. When a Hindu prays to a deity (God / Goddess), he see in truth praying to the Supreme God and so on with the next deity. It is like seeing God in various lights, aspects – but at the same time – God remains same. Have I confused you enough? For a Hindu, a temple is not a place where he is sermonized or taught religion. The canting that is done before the deity is a ‘mantra’ by a priest. A mantra is a prayer but being in Sanskrit (an ancient language, not much in common use today) it is chanted by the priest along with associated rituals. An essential element of prayer for a Hindu is “Bhakthi” which expresses his love and devotion to God. This love and devotion is expressed through ritualistic ‘feeding’ – means, giving food to God. And this food which is first given to God and thus consecrated (made holy) is distributed among the worshipers as “prasad”, which is eaten. So, an expression of devotion is having food with God. Though this may seem silly to a Christian, religious rituals of one religion does seem silly, foolish and funny to believers of other religion, but makes perfect sense to the believer of that religion. For example, I may find Christians praying to a grotesque image of a dead man on two pieces of wood revolting (I said this to just clarify my point). This one-ness of God for Hindus is the reason why there is no contradiction or conflict among Hindus as regards theology (the basic percepts remain same) or worship of God/Goddesses as can be seen between various sects of Christians like Roman Catholics and Syrian Catholics or in Islam between Sunnis and Shias.