Obviously the celebration of Holi was less colourful for us in 2002, as we were remembering the times that we celebrated the colour festival together with my grandfather. It went by without a very big celebration for us and was rather quiet instead of the usual madness of joy.
Again I thought of the rituals and their meaning. I was sure there were many people who could enjoy the happiness of Holi even closely after the death of a relative. We were however still really sad and so I wondered whether it had been the aim of the rituals to reduce our pain. For what are there so many rituals, who created them and for what?
Hinduism is very ritualistic. There are rituals in Christianity and Islam, too, but I have experienced that especially Hindus emphasize the meaning of rituals in everything they do and especially after someone died. I believe it might have something to do with the philosophy of reincarnation. According to Hindu belief, your soul does not die and does not remain in heaven or hell. Depending on their Karma they have to serve some time in a place either like heaven or like hell. When they have ‘paid off’ their time there, they get reincarnated and enter another life, maybe in another form of living or in another person. If you have done good Karma, you can get a better life, maybe in a rich family whereas a person with bad Karma would be reincarnated in a worse situation, poor or struck with illness and bad fate. Of course, when a loved one died, you pray for him to go to heaven and then have another reincarnation in a prosper and loving family.
In Egypt people buried their dead as mummies with as much gold and wealth as they could give them because they might use this all in the world after death. I read they even killed the servants or slaves of their pharaohs so that they would have someone to serve them in their life after death. Hindu priests were a bit cleverer than them. They created rituals and told the families of the dead that it would be good for the soul if they gave as much as they could to the priests. The more you give to the priests, the more comfort the soul of your loved one will have in the time of transition as well as in his or her next life.
I got more and more convinced that these rituals did not really bring much to me or my family. I realized that I was able to think in this way only after my time in the cave. Before that, I would not have been able to question any of these points. If I had not had my retreat, I would have simply accepted whatever was written in the scriptures. My inner mindset had shifted and I could have another view on these rituals, a bit more realistic maybe.
Even while this all was going on, I was already preparing for going abroad again. The family who had been waiting for their offspring when I was in London in 2001 had invited me to come and celebrate the birth of their first son. They had sent me a message in November, overjoyed and happy. They wanted to organize a program of nine days, as traditional.
I told you before that whenever I did this kind of program in India, I had a complete music group with me who accompanied my lectures, preaching and recitation of Mantras with their instruments and singing. As I could hardly take 15 people with me to the UK, I only chose one, arranged everything for his and my journey and so I left India in spring 2002.
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Accepting Challenges of an overwhelming Response at Ammaji’s – 1 May 16
My Day as a Waiter – 24 Apr 16
Ramona’s first Birthday as a Restaurant Owner – 20 Mar 16
A week at the Hospital – 13 Mar 16
Just a month ago was published a book called by Nagappa Gowda – another intelligent attempt to question your culture roots.
I’ve noticed over the years that many people seem to enjoy rituals and apparently see them as useful and inspiring ways to structure various aspects of their sadhana. I on the other hand always found them to feel pretty meaningless. I realized a long time ago that if I was to practice sadhana with any consistency, I would have to eliminate all the rituals or keep them to the barest minumum, because rituals take all the joy out of sadhana for me. If I knew I’d have to practice the rituals, I would be more likely to give up on sadhana, just out of avoiding all the rituals that feel so meaningless and boring to me. I see that the rituals seem to help some people, but to tailor my practice to the needs and dispositions of my particular personality, I had to eliminate them.
Wouldn’t that condemn the family to remain in the same level of poverty going forward? Sad to hear.