What is the significance of touching ones feet?

From: Puri Ashishkumar

Also in Iskcon we have seen a practice of touching others feet even if we push them unknowingly. Why is that?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you very much Hare Krishna question from Puri Ashish Kumar Purno what is the significance of touching one’s feet also in ISKCON we have seen a practice of touching other’s feet even if you push them unknowingly answer touching a respectable person’s feet is a way of offering respects and to that person expressing humility from our side this expression of respect can vary in different cultures some culture that is bowing down some cultures it is said taking off the hats is a means of offering respect but in the Vedic culture the physical expression of respect is associated with the understanding of how our physical actions shape our psychological emotions so actually speaking when we bow down the physical positioning of ourselves in a lower position forces us to rethink from our normal egoistic self-serving centered little bit arrogant perspectives and actually become humble just as if we lean back on a cross on a easy chair and cross our legs and say i feel humble we can’t feel humble that way it’s very difficult so actually physically going down is an expression of humility which if we have humility we express it if we don’t have it by doing it gradually we develop humility so rituals like this serve two purposes they are expressions of the essence and they are ways to reach the essence they are expressions of the essence and their pathways to the essence both now there is a deeper significance also within the tradition of touching the feet from the point of view of karma it is said that if we touch the feet of a saintly person then the fact that saintly person is accepting obeisances from us indicates that we in some remote sense it is like he is accepting us as his disciple and now just as we know that the spiritual master gets the karmic reactions of the disciple so in a remote sense not in the same direct or intense degree as when there is a proper initiation which forms a formal relationship of guru and disciple but in a generic or a broad remote sense some similar relationship is established and that’s why it is said that if a saintly person’s feet are touched then the saintly person takes one’s karma or rather one gives one’s karma to the saintly person so that’s why because people have this attitude that by touching the feet of a saintly person we can sort of pass off our karma to that person and we can become free from the karmic burden of course the karmic burden will become free form when we actually reform our consciousness and these sort of rituals are ways in which we can reform our consciousness so just touching the feet doesn’t actually lead to purification if there is no desire to lead a purified life after becoming purified we can’t cheat krishna by by just utilizing the rituals for our own purposes by neglecting the original purpose for which the rituals are made but nonetheless because people have this tendency to sort of dump their karma on saintly people krishna prabhupada in general did not allow or recommend that his feet be touched no except in special cases when he was very pleased with some disciples and in general the ISKCON standard is also that we offer obeisances from a distance so when we see the spiritual master or we see senior Vaishnavas we offer obeisances by bowing down from a distance and normally we don’t touch the feet of senior Vaishnavas or for that matter of anyone now some devotees may do it playfully and that sometimes reduces to an exercise of frivolity where what is a very sacred and deep ritual becomes just a playful thing where one devotee tries to touch the feet of another another tries to touch the feet of the first and in general this is quite likely to degenerate the Vaishnava relationships down to a level of excessive frivolity and that is best avoided as far as if we say if we accidentally touch another person with our feet or we brush against or push another person actually we don’t touch the feet of that person but we touch a part of the body of that person and we touch that part of the body maybe the shoulder or the arm and then we touch that to our head so that is a way of expressing respect and okay actually when if i touch my feet to somebody even if it’s accidentally then it’s an expression of disrespect so because i don’t want to offer i didn’t intend to disrespect anyone so i make amends for that by actually touching my hand to that person so when we touch our hand to that person and then touch that hand to our head the indication is that we are taking we are putting our head on that person or rather we are taking that person on our head we are offering our respect to that person so it is a way of making amends for having unintentionally and disrespected a person we should not in such situations if we accidentally touch another devotees another devotee by our feet we should not touch the feet of that person because that may embarrass the devotee and that may as i said earlier lead to a lot of unnecessary and undesirable frivolity in interactions among devotees thank you