Diwali significance – how to understand & explain the various celebrations Part 1 of 2
Progression so the celebration of two festivals signifying health and wealth the dhanvantri puja and then lakshmi puja we discussed both of them yesterday so let us continue the discussion today now the basic idea behind the celebration of Diwali is that one incident is not what happens it is generally speaking whenever there is a major festival it is not I’m talking a little bit from the perspective of religious psychology and sociology before we go into the specific scriptural and traditional understandings see anything that is significant if there is one thing that is of significance then other things they become attached to that say for example if somebody is drowning and a boat is passing by then people try to hold on to that boat people try to get into that boat if a boat is passing boat is there in a stormy water and a ship is passing by and the boat tries to reach the ship so like that what applies in that domain also applies what applies in the domain of say in ocean it also applies to human psychology see when we talk about significance so there are different things of different degrees of significance so for example this could be great significance something could be small significance something could be medium significance and now when you talk about the significance of something what determines the significance we could say the significance is determined by many factors the significance is determined by the past and is determined by the present the past means how important what is the history behind it what is the associated with it but an incident may be very very important but if in the present nobody is celebrating it it doesn’t have much significance I gave yesterday example of Bhadra Purnima you know that was not celebrated so long for quite some time since the start of his call but recently it started is quite a lot of significance so the significance comes from both the past history now as well as the present practise so now the in Diwali it’s at one level in any festival when there is celebration there is the cultural side and there is the philosophical side this is generally there in any anything spiritual anything traditional so Rajavidya and Pratyaksha Vagama as Krishna says 9.2 so now for most people the cultural is what is most important the philosophy is something which is in the background so in some ways you could say that the cultural interview content is like the technological and the philosophy is like science not many people know the science of how the internet actually works but millions and billions of people use the internet so like that the cultural is what reaches the people the philosophical is not something which most people are aware of just as most people don’t know the science behind how something works so basically now if you consider from the Diwali perspective from the cultural perspective there is basically four things fun food firecrackers so and of course there is family people come together various reasons but at one level this is what the festival almost everybody wants to have some fun now fun I’m not using this in a cheap sense you can have fun in a sattvic way rajasic way tamasic way whatever it is but the idea is in most occasions if we are if we look at ourselves if we celebrate Diwali in our childhood what is our childhood memory you know it might be associated with some firecrackers that were blown or some food that was eaten or something which was done culturally together even if we consider the puja and the worship okay I woke up early in the morning and I took a bath and then we cleaned our house so generally speaking please take out the other ones also so generally speaking it’s the cultural that is remembered and the cultural to some extent while it is associated with the tradition the cultural to some extent keeps changing why because culture itself keeps changing so as the culture keeps changing the cultural aspects will also change doesn’t mean everything has to change but some things do change so I’ll come back to the cultural a little bit later I’ll say now the philosophical it is associated with the history now often in the secular world the word secular world the word that is used as mythology now many of us are uncomfortable with the word mythology because it conveys the idea of something being non-historical something being imaginary so while there is definitely that concern but if we consider a spectrum say history and myth so or let’s put history and fantasy so history is generally about what actually happened then in between there are two words the legend and myth so mythology does not necessarily mean that it is non-historic the idea is that it is historical plus something more so generally even in the word legend also we have heard the word legendary so legend also is history plus some ornamentation some poetic ornamentation say generally speaking that tendency of most people or most cultures is to anoint to decorate to talk about their past in ways that are far greater than what actually it is so just in Australia sometime ago there is this whole legend in Australia about how Australia and New Zealand their warrior the soldiers fought in the second world war they are very heroic and they played a decisive role but actually speaking if you look at the history what the Australian and the New Zealand soldiers did was very very little the war practically hardly reached Australia it didn’t reach New Zealand second world war but there is a legend that comes history plus something so for example India there is a story of Prithviraj Chauhan who fought 14 times and 14 times or 18 times or 16 times whatever he defeated Ibrahim Lodhi and finally he was defeated and now if you look at the history there are only two wars that we have objective historical evidence for and is it possible there could be more wars the two main wars that are recorded is between just one year difference first war he defeated and second war he was defeated but the legend is where something is told but that image becomes bigger and bigger and bigger so in our tradition also when devotees write books about Prabhupada no it is it is important that we don’t mythologise Prabhupada Prabhupada’s actual life history is still glorious but many times something is attributed to Prabhupada that is much more than what it is so once one devotee told Prabhupada Prabhupada there is some devotee saying he came to meet you and you were in closed eyes you were in some absorption and you started becoming bigger and the devotee saw you standing up and came out of the room and Prabhupada just laughed and just see and Prabhupada basically mocked it so the idea is that legends are what they may not be out of say fantasy they are not imaginary but it’s more like imagined respect out of wanting to respect something we add imagination to what is told so that’s where it’s legend now in myth also there is ornamentation but there is one more thing is supernatural elements are added to it so supernatural elements could be there is idea of heavens of earth like if you see in the history of India every temple deities mediaeval deities you have stories of those deities being protected from say Islamic invaders every practically every temple has some story associated with it now if all those stories were true what it would mean was practically no temple was ever desecrated all Muslim invaders would be filled with memories of how powerful and extraordinary these deities are and they would be living in fear of the deities but that is not the history so that is a mythology where some supernatural elements are added to it now can the supernatural intervene of course it can intervene we have the understanding that the avatars are there and there are various miraculous there are various siddhis are there a lot can do extraordinary things so when somebody uses the word mythology we don’t have to react to it this is not mythology because that is the word that is used where people are ok there is history but there is some supernatural element in it is it supernatural actual not actual well scientifically we can’t really verify it like one of the events here is Govardhan puja we will come to that quickly but just a quick point see what can history tell us there is only a certain amount of thing that history can tell us see history can tell us about things that happened but history cannot tell us about the identity of who what happened so by history we can prove more or less now that a person named Krishna existed but that Krishna was God that cannot be proved by historical research in the western tradition also Jesus identity is considered semi-human semi-divine that Jesus existed can be proven but that he was semi-human semi-divine that cannot be proved so anyway the point is I don’t want to go to the philosophical side the mythology is something which is the word we don’t have to recoil against that that word is used in a particular sense it is not to say that it is not history but it is history plus something more and legend is history plus a little something more which is possible but improbable but something which is involving supernatural elements is where mythology comes in so let’s look at it from this perspective now now if we move forward yesterday I was talking about Lakshmi Puja so I just talk a couple of things about that see one of the distinctive aspects of the Vedic tradition is that there is the divinity is seen as a divine couple that is not just a one person God is not just male God is both male and female the two aspects and different aspects of divinity or different manifestations of deities are associated with different particular devatas or different particular aspects of the universe so Lakshmi is of course associated with wealth now what was the Prabhupada’s main concern when he talked about Lakshmi Puja Lakshmi is worshipped without Narayan now in general in the tradition of the worship of the goddess there is the goddess is sometimes generally worshipped together with her husband and sometimes she is worshipped single so this is more in the Shaivite tradition in the Shaivite tradition there is Durga who is or you could call more specifically Parvati she is almost always with lord Shiva and Kali is almost always worshipped alone now both of them may be generically used by the name Durga but generally Parvati so when the goddess is alone she is said to be Saumya that she is supposed to be in a gentle mood when she is alone she becomes in a Ugra mood so Kali is generally she can also give blessings but the Kali is generally depicted as a fierce goddess so the idea is that when the goddess is alone then she takes on the role of the protector because the lord who is the protector is not there so this is more in the Shaivite tradition now from the Shaivite tradition that particular idea had gradually came in the Vaishnavite tradition also so normally Lakshmi Narayan are always worshipped together but and in the iconography also Lakshmi and Narayan are always together but over a period of time what started happening was that in some ways in our tradition also the Shakti Tatva all the goddesses are considered to be expansions of one particular Tatva so just like Kali is worshipped separately so Lakshmi also started getting worshipped separately now Lakshmi is indeed the goddess of wealth at the same time she is with her lord Narayan so there is when the Lakshmi Pooja is done there is basically when somebody does Lakshmi Pooja what is their conception in doing it the conception that people have that is generally speaking when we talk about the wealth is what people are seeking so wealth is the only or the supreme goal like in our tradition there is Artha and then there is Paramartha Paramartha is the ultimate wealth the ultimate meaning the ultimate value so within the universal structure wealth is one aspect like lord Ganesh is in charge of removing obstacles so we worship that Ganesh was worshipped traditionally so that when we are starting something new that could be done but that is not the only thing there are many other things after we remove obstacles and there are many other things which are needed to continue things so what happens is sometimes one deity can be worshipped fragmented from the entire framework so what happens is if we see wealth as one among many blessings then it is Narayana Mukti Pradata Vishnu Sarvesha as the Upanishads say that as the Puranas say basically so what happens is the Paramartha and here this Narayana is the person who can actually give Paramartha and then when Artha and Paramartha are integrated together then there is all Rahu well being otherwise so Lakshmi is said to be Chanchala so we may worship her and we may appease her but Lakshmi does not stay forever so the idea is why does Lakshmi not stay here forever sometimes we may say that is it Lakshmi sometimes what happens is certain things are attributed to certain deities Lakshmi is the goddess of fortune to call her Chanchala it can almost seem like an insult to the goddess she is fickle so where does the word Chanchala use in the Bhagavad Gita Chanchala and Manakrishna that the mind is fickle so to say that Lakshmi is fickle in many ways the word fickle could be associated with somebody who is not committed somebody who is not steady and it could also be associated with unchaste somebody is fickle in a particular relationship then they will leave that relationship to go somewhere else so when the word Chanchala is used it is not used although it has become attributed to Lakshmi what it is meant actually is that the blessings of Lakshmi are Chanchala and why Chanchala can mean restless at one level restless means as you say fickle but Chanchala also when it is applied for the mind it means fickle but Chanchala also means unpredictable so that we cannot it almost is unpredictable or arbitrary arbitrary in the sense that now two people invest money in some stocks one person gets a lot of money thousand people buy a lottery one person wins the lottery from this perspective it does seem arbitrable so in that sense there is when it is applied to Lakshmi specifically to Lakshmi’s blessings it refers to the arbitrary or the unpredictable aspect not the restless or the fickle aspect so now from the symbolic significance perspective now from our experience it is true that Lakshmi doesn’t last for very long so the wealthiest dynasties may end up becoming very poor according to if you study history Rajasthan which is like a desert now that is the place from which Saraswati river was supposed to be flowing and just a few thousand years ago so things keep changing with time and even it could be countries it could be families it could be individuals their fortunes keep changing so it is only beyond this world that there is everlasting fortune that’s why Lakshmi and Narayan are generally to be worshipped together now of course within the tradition there is Lakshmi and Narayan together also because there are festivals associated with Narayan also so that is with respect to Ram and with respect to Krishna now with respect to Ram which is the festival associated over here yeah but which is the incident sorry yes the return to Ayodhya now generally the lambs that are there they are associated with this particular idea so when Lord Ram came back now if we look at the original Valmiki Ramayan what is described is that there was a great celebration when Lord Ram came back that the celebration was such that Lord Ram first came to Nandigram he did not come to Ayodhya specifically Nandigram is on the outskirts of Ayodhya where Bharat was residing and there Bharat had got practically all the leading citizens of Ayodhya to welcome Lord Ram and there the celebration the joy went on so much after the reunion after a long separation a long and a painful separation that by the time from Nandigram they came to Ayodhya it became twilight it became night and that’s how this lamps became associated so at one level the lamps I talked about there is a specific and a symbolic idea about it so specific was more to welcome welcome the Lord and now at a symbolic level it has become a sign of celebration generally darkness is not very pleasant unless somebody wants to do something unpleasant is it if somebody wants to rob somebody wants to attack then darkness is a pleasant surprise for you you can get away with it but generally darkness is not favourable for doing things so light symbolises celebration now the Diya as a tradition in the Vaishnava tradition what has happened is specifically in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition the Damodar Leela is what is emphasised in Krishna Leela where there are two main events that happen actually three which are associated with Diwali which are the three yes Govardhan Puja Annapur festival then sorry Damodar Leela then well terrace is mainly associated with Dhanvantri ok this is actually yeah you could put it this is Narasitodashi this we don’t celebrate so much this is more associated with the killing of Narakasura by Krishna so now beyond that there is one more avatar Vamana what is associated with him there is the Bali Pratipada Bali is who is Bali Bali Maharaj so Bali Pratipada is Bali surrendering to Vamande so that is also associated with this particular festival so there is a lot of associations with Vishnu Narayan so the worship of Lakshmi in that sense is not divorced in the tradition itself so in the conception of people they might just worship Lakshmi alone but actually within the tradition Lakshmi and Narayan they are both there through different festivals but ideally in the same celebration Lakshmi and Narayan both being together is good so now if we look at Govardhan Pooja we will be talking about that more so I won’t go into too much about that right now but the idea is that when we talk about generally when people talk about Diwali they have association of food with it prepare a lot of items feast and then eat it share it distribute it give it to so the idea is that it is associated in general with the festivities in Govardhan Pooja it is associated specifically with Krishna doing the Pooja so in many ways in the if you see these different festivities in Ramlila like the battle or the confrontation happens before the festival so the welcoming of the lord means Ravan has already been killed but in Govardhan Pooja the confrontation will come afterwards so what is happening is the when the Govardhan Pooja happens at that time they worship Govardhan and then the food is distributed so now when we do Govardhan Pooja which is the day this is not the day that after this Indra will do his rains for seven days so the rains were also completely unseasonal if you consider the Indian context this time there are not many rains not much rains so what we celebrate in one sense sometimes the celebration comes after the lord has done something marvellous sometimes the celebration comes and after that the lord does something marvellous but before the lord does something marvellous something not so marvellous also happens like the Brajivasis they are terrified what has happened over here and now they don’t know specifically how the lord is going to protect so in one sense the celebration of the return of return to Ayodhya is like the triumph of faith triumph of faith means that lord Ram is the supreme lord lord will win over demons and so the lord has in fact won over demons whereas Govardhan Puja it’s more like a show or a text of faith that the lord says no need to worship Govardhan so no need to worship Indra you can worship Govardhan and sit and when the Brajivasis do that it’s like they know that this is going to create some trouble but they are ready to do that so in some ways Krishna provokes people and what happens is like a doctor suppose a patient is sick and the patient is in denial that I am sick then the doctor may give some medicine which initially aggravates the sickness and then hey what is happening my cough is increasing the swelling is increasing this discomfort is increasing doctor please help me so what happens is sometimes the symptoms need to be aggravated so that the person confronts reality so Indra had pride arrogance entitlement within him and Krishna detected that but then Krishna deliberately promoted and the way he provoked also was there’s a whole different past time but the Brajivasis faith is what we’re talking about the celebration is what happens Krishna says there is no need to worship Indra say imagine some big person say some political chief minister of a state or a mayor or a prime minister they’re supposed to be invited as a chief guest for some big occasion and suddenly their invitation is cancelled now generally speaking the chief guest will cancel I am coming those who are festival organisers will cancel the chief guest and they cancel the chief guest and replace that with some unknown local person like Indra puja was given up and after that who’s puja one kills puja that I am replaceable for somebody who’s proud that I am replaceable that itself is infuriating but I am replaced by this that becomes unbearable to the ego and then just so he tries to destroy the Rajivasi and Krishna will expertly use the very thing that replaced Indra to defy Indra Krishna could have stopped Indra in many ways but Krishna uses Govardhan so point is that here that’s the whole story the future but here Krishna is provoking and the Rajivasi are going along and being a part of that so it’s like we are celebrating because something some very difficult test is over difficult phase is over and there is success but here Govardhan puja is actually we are celebrating knowing that some difficult test is coming now so it’s a different kind of celebration it’s like a celebration after the war is won and a celebration before the war is going to happen it’s like the last meal that warriors take before they go for a fight you know you don’t know what is going to happen so eat as much enjoy the food now you don’t know what you will get to eat so there are so the idea is that faith can be expressed in different ways so Govardhan puja is more like a celebration and act of faith over there is faith in the face of danger that is coming not danger that has gone now of course if you consider Damodar Leela the same dynamic is there with Damodar Leela that it’s a beautiful festival where mother Ishwara ties Krishna in fact the entire Damodar Leela happens in one day itself most of it but the idea is that Krishna gets tied over here the lord is conquered so this is more about the devotee being greater than the lord other festivals are mostly about the devotee being protected by the lord so in that sense if you see among all these festivals now if you see Govardhan puja also the idea that devotee is greater than the lord is that it is Krishna also worships Govardhan Krishna also doesn’t directly protect Krishna says Govardhan has protected you Krishna away lifting Govardhan no actually Govardhan is ecstatic he is himself floating up and I am just using my finger for this show remove the finger no don’t remove the finger but the idea is that in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition generally the mood is not so much of the lord protecting the devotee as the lord being conquered by the devotee that Aishwarya Shithila Prem na Aishwarya Bhujai so among the various festivities in our particular tradition you see the festivals that are emphasised are what are more in alignment with the specific mood of the Gaudiya tradition the mood is not just that the lord is up there the lord is supreme the lord will protect us but that actually the devotion of the devotee conquers the heart of the lord so both these past times Govardhan Leela especially in Vrindavan many of the past times are very sweet and endearing they are more in the Madhurya Bhav when we use the word Madhurya there are two aspects to it Madhurya there is a Bhav and there is a Rasa so Madhurya Rasa is specifically say what the Gopis and Radharani have but the Madhurya Bhav is in all of Raja but that Madhurya Bhav is contrasted with the Aishwarya Bhav whereas the Madhurya Rasa is contrasted with the other Rasa so this is example of that Madhurya Bhav more than Madhurya Rasa now beyond that so these are what is emphasised in the Gaudiya tradition and we will come to we will be celebrating these separately and we will be talking about it also on those particular occasions because we celebrate every day where Krishna delivers the world from the demon Narak now Narakasura is the name of that person now that literally means that there is a demon name Narakasura but also means that this was a person who was capable of creating Naraka on the earth see from the demon’s perspective they don’t consider hell to be a bad thing because hell is the place where they rule and for them he has created hell on earth that is a glorification because hell is where they rule so so the idea is that Narakasura he is a terrible demon and he has abducted many many princesses and his plan was that he wanted to perform a yajna at a particular and after the yajna for that he wanted these princesses to be virgin and then after that he was going to enjoy them for himself so then the lord comes and the lord protects all of them delivers the world from Narakasura and then he protects them he delivers them so that they all become his queens that’s how Krishna has 16,108 queens the first 8 queens and then 16,000 queens now here Krishna is actually demonstrating again is more the Aishwarya Bhava his role as a protector so the actual day on which Krishna killed this demon Narakasura is what is Narasithu dasha now if you consider the Bali Pratipada that is there this is a again a very interesting pastime where the lord does not come in the mode of a warrior it’s event is of a war but the lord comes more in the mode of a Bala Brahmachari Brahmachari is more a Brahminical mode and what he does is he asks for charity so Bali Pratipada is the time when Bali surrenders to the lord so if you see in one sense the mood of Lakshmi Pooja and Bali Pratipada is actually the opposite Lakshmi Pooja is we are asking things from the deity where Bali Pratipada is in one sense the one is he surrenders and how does he surrender by giving everything now apparently here the lord is unfair lord says I just want three steps and it’s like you know the way the lord it was a cheats you know we say we are in a car signal and somebody beggar knocks and this knock so we open the door we want to give one rupee how dare you ask something like that but the lord asks for three steps and three steps he expands himself what the word three means is he takes everything so now it’s not just a surrender the Bhagavatam as it moves forward it’s like his surrender it is all the more glorious because the lord is seemingly unfair so generally speaking when we worship God the normal way of transaction is people think that you give some donation to God God will give that hundred times or thousand times more to you so you will basically be the benefiter in that but here the lord asks for something small and takes everything from him and not only does Bali not resent it when his assistants they become angry and they say it’s unfair and they want to attack now he stops and gracefully accepts so it’s like when the faith when the lord does something good to us that faith is very easy to have but when something bad happens at that time faith is very difficult but it’s not just something bad when something unfairly bad happens now that is very difficult to bear it’s like if there is a covid and everybody is sick ok misery loves company so we are all sick but it’s like everybody is healthy and I only get fever why is this happening so actually that time the faith is tested the most when we seem to be singled out for suffering by the lord in spite of what we are not in spite of what we have done or not done for the lord so surrender at that time is very difficult and it is that surrender that is commemorated now there are few other stories also that is this Hanuman puja that is there the legend that when lord Ram came back to Ayodhya at that time he remembering and appreciating the service that lord Ram did to him that Hanuman did to him he said Hanuman should be worshipped Hanuman should be welcomed so then there is also the Vishwakarma puja then there is where art is like I said there is something of big significance and other things get attached to it so there are artisans who worship their tools there is a gift of Vishwakarma the god of everything artistic then there is some Yama puja that is there it is so out of death then a major festival is Bhai Doj it’s not so much of like religious significance as more of historical significance so I said festival is celebrated how much they are in the past and how much they are in the present so in the past in terms of history in terms of religious history or what the modern world mythology Babaji doesn’t have that much of significance the significance story that is associated is that Yama comes to meet his sister Yamuna and she welcomes him she greets him and so similarly it is said that the Yama and Yama Raj and Yamuna they are brothers and sisters like that there is a festival where brothers and sisters this is almost the counterpart of Rakshabandhan so there are many festivals associated with this these are all supplementary festivals I just make one last point about the culture and then we will conclude this I mentioned that in the culture what happens there are different things which become associated with particular forms of worship so now in today’s Diwali culture firecrackers have become like the major part of the celebration now historically speaking among these festivals among each of these occasions if you look at whatever description is available traditionally firecrackers have never been prominent when Lord Ram comes yes there is a description of festival and might someone have celebrated with firecrackers they may have but it is not something very prominent so now of course food is generally there is there may be fasting and there may be feasting sometimes both happen one after another some occasions more of feasting so many people like Diwali because there is practically no fasting is only feasting over here so other festivals they have to fast before we get to the feast but here it’s now I just talk a couple of things about the firecrackers so certain things may become very prominent now when they become prominent at particular times now if you see one of the question that Krishna asked the Brajwasis he says when the Indra puja is going on he says is this scriptural or is it traditional it’s a very interesting question scriptural means is this based on Shastra traditional means is this something which is coming down from the past so everything that comes down from the past is not necessarily traditional that true no everything from the past is traditional but everything traditional may not be scriptural so if traditional is one circle scriptural is another circle so that there may be many things given in scripture that are not being practised now and there are many things which are in the tradition that are being practised now which are not traditional so it’s a deviation can come from the tradition also it’s not the deviation comes from the contemporary world alone like the caste system or the caste by birth idea that is a deviation that has come from the tradition so it is not by that we can say just by doing what has done in the past we’ll be faithful we might be faithful to a deviation that has come from the past instead of being faithful to what actually was the essence of the tradition I’m not making this as a judgement about whether five factors are positive or negative that are their deviation just because something is not explicitly mentioned in the scripture does not necessarily make it a deviation because things can be added so for example in the Raksha Bandhan generally we think it’s more of a conventional festival rather than a scriptural festival there is some association of Draupadi and Krishna with it but the mood of Draupadi and Krishna is not of a brother and sister it’s not exactly Madhuriya but it’s not exactly brother and sister also it’s quite a unique rasa but it is described in the Goswami literature there are some passages where it is said that the Gopis and Krishna that basically in Vrindavan among the various festivals that would happen Raksha Bandhan is also one of them like tying of strings was there does that refer to Raksha Bandhan not necessarily some people say that is the justification if someone wants to celebrate Raksha Bandhan there is nothing wrong with that so when something is coming in the tradition now I am not talking about the Gaudiya Vishnu tradition as we are practising here but something is coming in the tradition now how much do we emphasise it so that will based on ultimately we have to consider in Bhakti what is Anukul and what is Pratikul so what is Anukulyasya Sankalpa Pratikulyasya Varjanam what is favourable what is unfavourable so are fire crackers favourable for Bhakti or the unfavourable for Bhakti now how do we decide what is Anukul Pratikul at one level we can look at Shastra at what it says but another level is we can look at what is the effect is it Sattva Rajas or Tamas so in some cases the fire crackers may contribute to the mood of the festival and celebration of the festival and if that is happening then that is fine if somebody wants to celebrate it and it enhances the mood that is okay but the important thing is sometimes certain things become become they are a part of a tradition but they also become instruments of a political war so there are some attempts to say that oh this fire crackers cause so much pollution and therefore we should not have this fire crackers some states are trying to ban the fire crackers some see this is infringement on Hindu rights to celebrate their festivals so at such times when we make a statement we may be making a statement from the spiritual perspective but we are entering the political mind field so if we consider other places like that is in our tradition there is only the nitya worship that is there but naimittika worship is also described like Ganesh puja where they have Ganesha visarjan so now they do the visarjan in our tradition is arohan and tiro bhavis so that naimittika puja nitya puja that is very much a part of the broad idea of worship of deities but there they have adopted as possible Ganesh deities they are made more eco friendly and then when they go into the water also it doesn’t destroy the water it doesn’t harm the water so sometimes some people do it some people don’t do it the idea is that when certain things are going on rather than stepping into what has become political battlefield with particular positions the important thing is firecrackers it is something which is a part of the tradition but quite often it the effect for most people will be more rajasic and tamasic than sattvic now it depends on what someone is remembering so there is a principle I will conclude with ultimately it is a matter of the remembrance of the law if we consider music now there is something called mantra rock like people have the Hare Krishna mantra sung with rock music and there are devotees who will do that and lot of people who come for that now is that good is that bad yesterday we talked about intent content and consequence so if we consider here it is content it is the Krishna mantra is there and there is also something which is not normally there from the tradition so then here we have to look at what Prabhupada says phala phalena parichayati so for somebody who is familiar with mantras what happens with them for them what they remember what is new is the rock so at the end of the event what they will remember is the rock and that will not make their devotion rock it will only create new impressions on the other hand if somebody is familiar with rock and for them the mantra is the new thing then they may remember the mantra so for them the same thing might be anukun because ok there is some familiar genre of music in which something new is being done so the new is what is remembered so it’s not black and white that for some people it might be favourable for some people it might be unfavourable now of course we are not going to have mantra rock in our temples certainly not in Mangalarthi you know if somebody does that that will be amangal it won’t be mangal at all so there are certain boundaries definitely in black and white there is now there are shades of grey so for a particular purpose certain things are required so now for some people firecrackers may be mentally very strongly associated with Diwali and they say oh stop firecrackers you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are you are That is the most difficult form of surrender. But how will he gracefully accepts that.
So in one sense, this mood is almost the opposite of the Lakshmi Puja. And there are some other aspects, some other festivals associated with the Amma and others also that are there. And then with respect to the culture, I talked about a principle that when there are firecrackers, they have become a central part.
So they are, they are traditional, but they are not necessarily scriptural. So now somebody can find some obscure reference from somewhere. But as far as the main literature is considered, there is no description and certainly the centrality is not there.
So then how do we decide? We decide based on what is favourable and what is uncool, what is prathikool. And how do we decide what is uncool and prathikool? Two criteria for that. We look at sattva rajas tamas in terms of what is being done.
And how do we know what is sattva rajas tamas? We look at the phala. So phala is in terms of remembrance. So for those whom the particular observance reminds them of the Lord very strongly, then that observance can be insisted on.
But for those who are not so emotionally invested in that particular observance, then rather than fighting unnecessary battles, we focus on the remembrance of the Lord and how that can be best fostered. Thank you very much.