Why do we do it?
In Hinduism we do so many things as a way to please god without knowing the meaning of things behind it. Let me quote a few examples
1. Most of the prayers are in a language we do not now. Yet most of us pray without knowing the meaning of it.
2. There are lots of activities we perform in front of a deity. All have them have symbolic meaning and most of us do not know what it is. We just do it the same way like we have seen others do it
3. Most of us do not know why god is in different shapes and forms like we have. We just accept as is and pray in front of it
These are just a list of few things. I understand it is mostly because of our own ignorance. We learn things from our parents and they learnt it from their parents and certain formalities and beliefs get passed through generations. I know for sure that there are good reasons behind every thing we do. But very few people know about it.
In fact as an NRI when people here ask us questions like why we pray cow/elephants etc it is really embarrassing because most of us really do not know why we do (I know that even if we explain they might still make fun of us. But at least we can be happy that we tried to explain it to them). The situation is even more embarrassing when our own kids start asking questions.
When I was young, I remember asking the meaning of a few things we do and I remember one of the Hindu scholar (Shastri / Pandit) just telling me that I am asking questions way beyond my age. That pretty much killed my enthusiasm.
But with the advent of internet, inquisitive minds can get most of the answers they want.
4 comments:
My intention here is not to give you the precise, logical answer you are looking for here. I just want to write whats in my mind on this subject.
One reason why we pray cow is because we consider them as our "surrogate mother". Right from a few months when a child is born till he grows old and passes away, an important source of his food is "Cow Milk". We use many forms of it like butter, curd, ghee and one can almost be hale and healthy by just consuming milk in his entire life time. This is what I found from another website regarding the many forms of God IN Hinduism:-
"Just as a man is called "father" by this son, "husband" by his wife, "son" by this father, and so on, God is called by various names and worshipped in various forms depending on the mood and approach of the devotee. When God is worshipped to remove hurdles, He is worshipped as "Ganesha". When God is worshipped to bless with good understanding of art and science, He is worshipped as "Saraswathi", and so on. Similarly, when a devotee wants to worship God as mother, he may worship as "Kali". When a devotee wants to worship God as a child, he may worship as "Krishna". "
I have been able to tell my son that since we have many forms of God, we can choose our favourite one and genuinely love ( NOT JUST FEAR) the God.
My son likes "Hanuman" and "Ganesha" ( Probably because he likes animals). He has immense faith in Hanuman that he sleeps with a small Hanuman doll and when he is scarred and wants to go in darkness he chants a Hanuman sloga. Not only that, even he is playing cricket with me, he takes Hanuman's name to get me out or hit a boundary. As long as he knows that "to be good" and to "do good", God has to be with him, we are happy.
This website answers some of your questions:-
http://www.himalayanacademy.com/basics/tenq/hindu10questions.pdf
I was recently talking a small child in India and was taken aback by the reply that I got from him. He goes to a christian school and so, I asked him if "Jesus" was the God or "Krishna" was the God. His succinct reply was "Both". On another occasion, I told him if he studies well, he will get a surprise gift from the God. His reply was "God himself is a gift".
If only, the so called mature adults in our country understand that God is the pathway to peace and not the driveway to become pieces.
I am agnostic and against all the cultural beliefs that does not fit todays lifestyle.
1. I'm not against Hindu rituals. I learnt Sanskrit for 7 years and I still do not understand most of the Hindu prayers.
2. I think anything offered to God with love, anything recited with His thought on the mind, any words spoken that heals someone's heart instead of hurting it, any service to the needy, are all forms of worship. I see God as a complete form of love and I don't think 'it is wrong if we do it in a different way'. I don't believe you have fulfilled the needs of your worship if you do everything in the 'correct way' and come outside the temple and be rude, hurt people, etc. I believe worship is the complete surrender of ego. 3. I think any living form needs to be respected. From what I know about Hinduism there are a lot of Symbols. Everything is a representation of something. I think to understand the details one must dive into it. For now, we can just explain to the kids saying that the Gods are in different shapes and forms to fight some kind of evil.
I don't even want to tell children that God took forms to 'kill' someone. I think 'someone' in Hinduism represented some evil qualities. For example, 'Rakshas' represented massive ego, arrogance, disrespect, etc...
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