The Festival of Lights
Let us illuminate our Inner Self
The festival of lights or the Hindu festival of Diwali every year gives all human beings an opportunity to reflect on their own ways of lives and clarify, correct, consolidate and control various aspects that do not conform to the norm. However, before this vital task of self-purification takes place one should be fully determined and be ready to concentrate to do the right things for the right purposes.
Prayers are our most important tools to move in this direction. So let us pray and pray with sincerity and calmness to get the best results always. In fact everyday should be our festival of lights rather than on any particular days or periods of time. The festival of lights is of special significance for all human beings because our world is not doing everything in the right way for the peaceful co-existence of people.
God Almighty has put the self-luminous inner light of the Self Realization in every being and this light has the potentiality of ever shining steadily in the chamber of our heart. So let us sit quietly. Close our eyes. Withdraw the senses. Fix the mind on this supreme light and enjoy the real Festival of Lights everyday of our lives. This divine human action will definitely help us attain illumination of our mind, body, soul and environment. We will then need no more bliss and blessing in life.
In my seventy five years of existence in this world I have seen and experienced that all the lights of the world cannot be compared even to a ray of the inner light of the self. This is my reason to say that we should try to merge ourselves in this light of lights and enjoy the supreme festival of lights everyday. This duty of human beings is possible and should be performed for our greater wellbeing.
Many festivals of lights have come and gone. Yet the hearts of the vast majority are as dark as the night of the new moon. The house is lit with lamps, but the heart is full of the darkness of ignorance.
Let us now wake up from all our slumber of ignorance. Let us all realise the constant and eternal light within ourselves, which neither rises nor sets. We can do this through our meditation and deep spiritual enquiry.
We can all attain full inner illumination if only we tried hard enough. Let the supreme light of lights enlighten our understanding! Let us all attain the inexhaustible spiritual wealth of the Self! May we all prosper gloriously on the material as well as spiritual domains of this universe!
There is no one way to enjoy the festival of lights within us, or with our family and friends or within our environment. We can celebrate this awakening of self in multiple ways and the way we like the most. But the most important aspect of it is to celebrate it with pleasure, peace and purpose with your loved ones.
The festival of lights is no doubt the best way to forget all your troubles and problems for the time being. It helps in refreshing relations and giving everybody another chance. Overall, the whole month of this festival is a source of enjoyment for everyone. It is for this very reason that people try to express their love and feelings for each other by sending messages of good wishes and greeting cards to their loved ones as a continuity of that vital human feeling and emotion of love and compassion.
So, the question when looking for reasons to celebrate the festival of lights is not only when, how, why, where and with whom but many more and much deeper. No one can deny the importance of the festival of lights because it is unique from other festivals in the sense that it helps us illuminate our inner self and make us live a full life with all the human dignity.
The message of this festival of lights is so simple that everyone is able to fully comprehend the essence of it because everybody knows the festival of lights. Lights diminish darkness and darkness is the worst enemy of humanity because it depicts ignorance and sin.
So our messages must be according to the various themes of the festival such as peace, prosperity, progress and greater human dignity where truth, beauty and goodness prevail always. One thing is important and that is that the message of lights we spread in our messages to the community should be able to spread out the brightest lights in the darkness to overcome the evils, ills and illness of the people.
Also, remember that the festival of lights is to illuminate your appetite and stomach so sharing your sweets and food with our family and friends can provide greater self-satisfaction to everyone.
The ideas of giving and forgiving are the greatest assets of all good people. I remember my beloved wife harping on this aspect of human conduct during our loving family life of over fifty years. She is no more today but her thoughts are translated here. She said that the more everyone forgets and forgives the wrongs that are done to others the better it is for good human interaction.
I personally feel that there is an air of freedom, festivity and friendliness in this aspect of human existence. The festival of lights brings about an extremely energetic experience to go out and put this conduct into practice for the unity of everyone. This personal behaviour instils a special charity in the hearts and minds of people for social unity when family members, friends and generous employers exchange gifts for their loved ones.
Thus in this festival of lights giving and forgiving become the greatest human interactions of our modern age and should always provide us with an opportunity to rise and shine above everybody. All the people who rise early truly shine the whole day in their duties and responsibilities.
This aspect of daily living is good for health; it provides ethical discipline to us, makes us efficient and effective at work and above all enhances our spiritual advancement. So why only wake up early on this particular day but make it a regular habit of our life and reap the benefits of healthy, wealthy and wise.
Thus, we would be able to promote all forms of unity and unify our friends, family and faith, mixing with one another freely without any reservation, rancour and real reason to forget all enmity that may exist between and among us. We would be able to openly and freely embrace one another with love, passion and compassion for the advancement of healthy human living and natural nation building.
Those of us who always wear a happy and favourable mood would easily be able to rejoice ourselves more and create greater joy for our people thus creating a life conducive to harmonious human existence for better and stronger cultural, economic and spiritual advancement.
What more light and enlightenment are needed during the festival of lights after we have achieved all the above credentials? We would easily make the festival of lights one of the greatest unifying forces for people. Some of us would be able to hear the voices of the sages, who recite their prayers to warn the children of God to rise, shine, unite, give and forgive to love everyone around us.
In this violent world we need the vibrations of these types that are produced by and with the greetings of love and lustre to fill the atmosphere that would be more potent and powerful to promote and bring about a needed change of human heart.
The current hearts of many people around the world have considerably hardened and only a continuous celebrations of the festivals of lights can rekindle in all of us that urgent need of turning away from various ruinous and evil paths of hate and war and move towards love and peace.
Prosper and Progress
Many people have expressed their own opinion on the significance of the festival of lights but I think if there are more then it would be a lot merrier and helpful for people to better understand the deeper meaning and significance of the occasion. I am able to think of some reasons for the celebration but the readers would also have many more ways of their own.
On this day, the people clean their homes and environment, decorate the surrounding by day, and illuminate everything by night. The best and finest illuminations would be the internal enlightenment.
Why do we celebrate the festival of light? It is not just the festive mood in the air that makes you happy, or just that it is a good time to enjoy but there are so many mythical and historical rational for the celebration.
From various Hindu scriptures, I can gather at least ten of those. It can be seen from these historical myths and legends that these are good reasons not just for Hindus but also for all people to celebrate this great Festival of Lights.
1. Birthday of the Goddess of Wealth:
The Goddess of wealth, Lakshmi was incarnated on the new moon day of this month during the churning of the ocean, hence the association of Diwali with Lakshmi.
We all have our rightful wish to be rich and affluent and live with adequate material things around us to lead a successful family life.
This then becomes our responsibility to begin performing some appropriate economic activities to achieve our objective of acquiring wealth on this day. By praying to the Goddess of Wealth we tend to develop that needed stamina to persevere and work even harder with diligence and sustained effort. All successful people have shown us that this is plausible for everyone.
2. Vishnu Rescued Lakshmi:
On this very day, Lord Vishnu in his fifth incarnation rescued the goddess of wealth from the prison of King Bali and this is another reason for us to worship the goddess of wealth to ask her blessing to grant us our needs and wants.
Of course, we can rescue someone from hardship and difficulty and create some illumination in their life or help some of the poor and desolate people of this world to lead a better life.
During this festival of lights if we can make sincere resolution to brighten the homes of some of the adversely affected people then our festival would become a lot more meaningful and valuable.
3. Lord Krishna Killed Narakaasur:
On the day preceding Diwali, Lord Krishna killed the demon king Narakaasur and rescued 16,000 women from his captivity. The celebration of this freedom went on for two days including the Diwali day as a victory festival.
This then is an appropriate time for every right thinking human being to celebrate and promote the libration of so many suffering women all over the world by putting some light and shine in their respective lives.
4. The Return of the Pandavas:
According to the great epic Mahabharata, it was at this time when the Pandavas appeared from their 12 years of banishment because of their defeat in the hands of the Kauravas at the game of dice while they were gambling. The subjects who loved the Pandavas celebrated the day by lighting their homes and environment as well as showing the gamblers that the consequence of gambling was always distasteful and harmful.
Thus, it becomes imperative that everyone lights that lamp during this festival of lights that would lead them away from gambling and such harmful pleasures.
5. The Victory of Lord Rama:
According to the epic Ramayana, it was the new moon day of this month when Lord Ram returned to Ayodhya after vanquishing cruel and evil king of Lanka Ravana. The citizens of Ayodhya cleaned and decorated the entire city with lights to illuminate it like never before.
This festival of lights is then our chance to do the same to make some effort to vanquish all of the cruel and evil people who live around us and harm us. We can light some aspect of wisdom in their evil thinking to make them respect the values of human dignity to promote the needed love in the community. Let us advise and help our leaders to increase their effort to get rid of the terrorists and evil human beings.
6. Coronation of Vikramaditya:
It is believed that King Vikramaditya was crowned on this day, hence the festival of lights became a historical event as well for the people in his kingdom. Therefore, there are many such events in our own lives when respected members of our family and community are crowned with success and elevated to more respectable and senior positions. The event then becomes a moment of celebration and we tend to light some lamps of joy in their lives.
So the festival of lights is also here to rejoice the success of our loved ones who have been serving us sincerely with dignity and dedication. Let us light some specific lights in their life and keep supporting them to serve us even better and with greater understanding.
7. Special Day for the Arya Samaj:
It was the new moon day of this month so many years ago when Maharshi Dayananda, one of the greatest reformers of Hinduism and the founder of Arya Samaj attained his nirvana or salvation.
It is time for us to celebrate the contribution of all our spiritual leaders who have shown us the path to nirvana and enlightened us to do better in our own life by reforming our way of living and getting rid of all the obsolete and unnecessary ceremonies that waste our time, money and effort.
Therefore, it would be appropriate and symbolic to generate specific lights during this festival to illuminate ourselves in order to assist us reach some form of nirvana within our lifetime.
8. Special Day for the Jains:
Mahavir Tirthankar who was considered the founder of modern Jainism also attained his nirvana on this particular day. Therefore, this day can become a special day for any one of us who is ready and willing to take that vital journey of salvation towards the attainment of truth, beauty and goodness. To light a few lamps to enlighten our internal self and external environment would enable us to complete the destination and make our world a better as well as more peaceful place to interact and coexist.
9. Special Day for the Sikhs:
I have read that the third Sikh Guru Amar Das institutionalized this day as a Red-Letter Day when all Sikhs would gather to receive the rich blessings of the Guru.
I found out that in 1577, the foundation stone of the Golden Temple at Amritsar was laid on this particular day and people have been lighting the temple and their homes and suburbs with bright lamps to illuminate the environment and rejoice for the establishment of that magnificent religious structure.
I am told that in 1619, the sixth Sikh Guru Hargobind, who was held by the Mughal Emperor Jahengir, was released from the Gwalior fort along with 52 kings. That was the time for the people to rejoice and they did it by lighting lamps in the homes and streets.
Therefore during this festival of lights it can give us a lot of peace in our own minds when we visit a temple to light a few lamps to remember all religious and spiritual leaders who have shown us the path of righteousness.
10. The Pope’s Diwali Speech:
It was reported that in 1999, Pope John Paul II performed a special Eucharist in an Indian church where the altar was decorated with Diwali lamps, the Pope had a tilak a religious symbol marked on his forehead and his speech was bristled with references to the festival of light.
I firmly believe that since this world has shrunk to a mini melting pot of multi religious and racial harmony we all can emulate the liberal sentiments of Pope John Paul II to respect and honour the various religious and different faiths that exist in our environment by lighting a few lights to generate greater knowledge, understanding and love.
Therefore, the readers can clearly see my point of view that there is no one way or one particular community or one kind of belief to celebrate this great festival of lights but we all can celebrate it in our own way and within our own means. The main objective should be to cleanse ourselves internally and externally and make our environment a healthy place to co-exist in peace and with unconditional love and instinctual joy to save the human race from deteriorating any further.
Lessons that can be learnt from the Festival of Lights
During any enlightenment, an awakened human being should be able to differentiate the beautiful and the ugly things in life and the community but the important thing is that the enlightened person should have the courage of his or her conviction to do something to eradicate the ugliness and further improve the beauty of the words, thoughts and actions. Since this festival of lights is the period of enlightenment, all sentient beings are definitely capable of that kind of consciousness, which can reveal truth, beauty and goodness in their lives. Therefore, we all have the duty and responsibility to brighten and enlighten our internal and external positions. This is the greatest essence of humanity.
Any form of darkness is synonymous with ignorance, guilt and hardship and as enlightened people we human beings have the capability to brighten ourselves, our environment and our community with knowledge, freedom and understanding through our words, actions, thoughts, conduct and help.
During this festival of lights, all our words need to be well selected for every occasion where love, peace and total understanding become our main focus of communication. One of the best ways to refine our words would be to distance ourselves from hatred, anger and stress.
This can easily be achieved through meditation and prayers in a quiet corner of our home sweet home with our friends and family members. We can learn a lot from the angry conducts and actions of such sages as Durvasa, Parasram, Bhrigu, Brihaspati and Kashyap by keeping our temper under control and seeing the essence of divine being in every person we interact with in our life.
During this festival of lights, let us illuminate ourselves and dedicate all our actions toward the welfare of every being we are related to culturally, economically and socially. Let our individual way of life dictate our intellect to do the right things at the right time. The way we are moving backwards in this world we would soon find that we have helped to destroy the idea of humanism and there would be nothing left to celebrate.
All our religious, racial, communal and national indifferences are growing so fast that we have begun to see war, hatred and animosity as the only solution to all our problems. During such festivals, our actions should be escalated to promoting greater peace, joy and love.
We should plan all our actions and then act all our plans for the benefit of humankind. Then and then only the objectives and the true meaning of the festival of lights could be achieved in the best way by all of us and everyday of our lives.
When it comes to refining our thoughts, we should be able to do this simply by increasing our knowledge about service to the community and keeping our families within the bounds of humanity rather than letting our children, relatives, friends and colleagues think and act adversely.
Since all evil, all wars and all sins generate in our thoughts we should light as many lights as possible to see that all such odd, obsolete and sinful thoughts are cleared from our hearts and minds for our own benefits forever. Once our thoughts become refined and conducive to our needs and wants we would be able to conduct all our human, social, economic and cultural activities with dignity and pleasure.
In order to conduct our acceptable and normal behaviour we cannot always walk where our legs lead us but use our wisdom and intellect to construct our future with ease and understanding. One of the ways this can easily be done is for us to love God and His creations and enlighten ourselves enough to maintain and manage our living and provide help where it is most needed.
Finally, in this episode let us examine the way we can help the people in the community to develop the positive power of enlightenment. Firstly, we must decide what are we passionate about as far as assisting the people is concerned.
All this depends on our special interest but one of the important things to remember is that it is not practical to want to help everyone. Choose one or two areas and focus on them with all your good efforts.
Time and money are important so the idea of volunteering is the best form of assistance. Many times, we have a lot of things in the house that we do not really need so these can be donated to various charitable organisations or poor needy people. The idea of giving some of your income to the needy is a possibility.
Thus, our festival of lights would provide us with a rewarding experience if we made a small start at all the above aspects.
