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Hindu Rituals - Facts

SOME HINDU RITUALS

Being a science graduate and a regular reader of scientific researches, it
was hard for me to initially grasp certain concepts. But as I went more
into my religion, the so called Hinduism, I realized that science has a very
long way to go towards realizing life and death, before they outreach a
Hindu ideology. I have tried to reason out some of Hindu rituals and
these reasons are purely Vedic, put in my own words. I have honestly
accepted the wrong that is practiced and more honestly elaborated the
right that is there actually in the scriptures of Hindus.

OFFERINGS AND SACRIFICES

One year after my marriage, I along with my wife, went to a holy place of
Lord Shiva, ‘Baski Nath' in Bihar. We worshipped together, and when we
came out of temple, to my surprise and dismay, what I saw was
something I had heard from the critics. I saw, priests performing sacrifice
of a goat. It was shocking for me as I saw them chopping off the creature
and I saw such barbarism first time in around a temple. Hence, I was
impacted deeply and my ideologies got challenged. I could not accept
this as a part of my religion. I was never taught, at least, by my known
ones about this. I always learnt that this religion suggested vegetarianism
on top of everything. But this killing was done by the very priest, whom
we believe. I told my wife, ‘I don't feel like coming to this place again,
unless I know the truth – the truth of the religion I believe.' And I opened
the books of highest regards again for answers – ‘Bhagwad Geeta' and
‘Vedas'. I had been reading them earlier, but had never come across any
text that said of killing in the name of God. I intensified my research on
this – How did this happen then, if it is not in the religion? I went to
various temples in various towns and met many priests. I interacted
deeply with them and tried to understand their background as well in
addition to their knowledge about the holy books. And soon, I
understood where the mistake was.

First thing that I found was that not all priests were Brahmins by birth.
They had acquired the profession as they found it easy to support the
livelihood without any illegal means. This was religiously not challenged,
as the religion described Brahminism (knower of Brahma or creator) only
by deeds and knowledge and never by birth. This was confirmed by
following scripture of Bhagwad Geeta, Chapter IV, Verse 13.

‘The fourfold caste was created by the differentiation of Guna

(knowledge and behavior) and Karma (actions and deeds).'

Second, I found that not all priests, Brahmin or non-Brahmin, had

profound and exact knowledge as in Hindu texts. They learned some of
the verses and some of the commonly known philosophies, some rituals
and some behaviors following which they became unquestionable
priests.

Third and most astonishing of all was intrusion of political activists and
external religions to defame the whole religion in a planned manner.
There were few instances of Political relations with the priests and
criminal incidences attached in some manner at those places. Anyway,
my purpose was not to investigate and help law, my intention was to
derive information regarding causes of such inhuman acts that went
against my understanding of Hindu religion.

Anyway, I would depict the texts of Bhagwad Geeta to show what the
religion actually says about sacrifices and offerings; following are the
quotes from Chapter IV.

‘The process of Brahman, the clarified butter is Brahman, offered by

Brahman in the fire of Brahman; by seeing Brahman in action, he reaches
Brahman alone.' – Verse 24.

The book first establishes a reason behind those sacrifices and beliefs. It
says – first important thing is to understand that we act as per our
perception and attitude. The ultimate goal achieved is totally based on
our own configuration of understanding, nature and actions. Brahman is
a stage of ultimate knowledge about Life, God and Creation. And even
the stage of Brahman is achieved by rendering ourselves, dedicating our
desire (that burns as fire within us), our vision and actions towards the
process of Brahman. Here, starts the concept of offering, offering the
very self to a Brahman, if Brahman is the fire (desire) within to be
achieved.

‘Some Yogis perform sacrifices to Devas alone, while others offer the self
as sacrifice by the self in the fire of Brahman alone'. Verse 25.

First part of the sentence starts talking about sacrifice to Deities, but do
not clarify what is sacrificed. The second part reflect similar offering as in
previous verse –the self sacrifice in the fire of knowledge (Complete
dedication towards learning of truth).

‘Some again offer hearing and other sense as sacrifice in the fire of
control, while others offer sound and other sense-object as sacrifice in
the fire of the senses.' – Verse 26.
It requires deeper knowledge to understand ‘sacrifice of sense-object in
the fire of senses'. Vedas describes five basic work-sense organs and
another five knowledge-sense organs. It describes the objectives of these
sense organs and also binds them to the mind and ego of a person.
Above sentence, by using ‘fire' as a metaphor, indicates that it requires
huge effort and continuous practice to control our mind's motivation
driven by the senses. In order to attain this control, a person has to
sacrifice many desires and concentrate on the self, which is what the true
meaning of Yoga is – as we will see ahead.

‘Some again offer all the actions of senses and the functions of the vital
energy, as sacrifice in the fire of control in Self, kindled by knowledge'. –
Verse 27.

Again it requires understanding what the actions of senses are and how
are they different from the senses itself. What is meant above by vital
energy? I have already mentioned above about ‘fire' being correlated to
the power of control in self.

‘Others again offer wealth, austerity, and Yoga, as sacrifice, while still
others, of self-restraint and rigid vows, offer study of the scriptures and
knowledge, as sacrifice' – Verse 28.

And last of all, it has mentioned few of the practices performed in those
days, when Bhagwad Geeta was written, some 5000 years ago. People at
most offered wealth, austerity and rigid vows as sacrifice. Probably, this
was the limit as further in the whole book; I never found anything about
killing of animals as sacrifice. I have, thus every reason to believe that the
practices has come into practice only after invasions.

It is also noticeable from the above texts, that no where does the texts
tries to create boundaries. Unlike all other religions of the world, we
never find Hinduism talking that you cannot do this or you are bound to
do that. This is the first step towards creating a tolerant society. The
detailed description of life, living styles, human, God and creations opens
the mind of followers, leaving them in a positive mode of ever-growing
knowledge and ever-improving attitude and life-style. This is the second
important aspect of the religion that confirms peace in the society.

Anyway, what I found in the books was exactly what I had known about
the religion. There was nothing about killing of animals and the
knowledge was astoundingly of highest level, as I had always known.

Moreover, offerings and sacrifices as a culture inculcates a very positive

attitude in individual and binds the society on ground of human values. I
wonder how pure would be those days when people respected Brahmins
and Brahmins would live upon the ‘Dan-Dakshina' of people. The
corrupted English version of ‘Dan-Dakshina', is ‘Donation-Commission'.
Actually, now we find people criticizing Brahmins for asking ‘Dakshina'
and they immediately categorize them as greedy. Unfortunately, they
have forgotten that it is our culture to look beyond the greed of holding
more and more property and help growth of healthy society. The first
attitude that builds with the practice of ‘Dan' is that we get freed from
the feeling of Greed and attitude of holding things. The west practices
the pride to take and hold, while we practice the pride to give and get
satisfied. The power to give (‘Dan') immediately takes our attitude to
build satisfaction with whatever we hold – this is the hardest thing we
find in the world to be gained – and it was so easily achievable in the
ancient Hindu culture. There are numerous examples of such powers,
Raja Daksh, Raja Harishchandra are very well known names, for example.
The power to give also confirms with one's ability to hold the power to
build. Every individual, irrespective of their Varna, had the power to give
‘Dan'. This practice had many indirect attitude build effect in disguise.
Respect towards Brahmins and poor immediately killed individual
arrogance and helped him to learn and earn more and live a satisfied life.
Fortunately, it still exists in some shape – what is needed is to regain it
with respect and in pure forms. This might look absurd to people
brought up under western education style, but let them then come up
with a suggestion of how would they evolve a culture of highly satisfied
society, a society that knew to respect Worshippers of Lord, a society that
knew to regard Guru and elders, a society that had every children free
from diseases and mental illness.

COW WORSHIP
Hindus do not only worship Cows. They worship countless creatures and
things around. Before commenting on this as an insane activity or
meaningless act, one must first define what they exactly mean by
worship. Having done that, they would end up in discovering a big gap
between the meaning of worship in Hinduism and in other religions. For
Hindus, worship is a shape of highest regard, love and faith. These three
things are required by every individual irrespective of religion, region,
beliefs, color or creed to exist. Thus, a Hindu would worship his parents,
teachers, natural powers, and overall God with true understanding. The
question remains – why cow?

According to Hindu philosophy, there are at least six kinds of mother:

1. Mother who gave birth
2. Mother who brought us up: Often mother who gave birth also brings
us up, but is not necessary case and hence who brings us up is a
mother.
3. Mother who is source of our life: Those natural powers which are
feminine in nature, like power of a woman, love of a mother, etc., often
worshipped as Deities.
4. Mother who holds us as we are: Our motherland, which has fed us
without any condition
5. Mother who feeds us: The Cow who feeds us throughout our life
6. Mother who is seen as a mother by others: Our ‘Guru' mother, our
friend's mother, any woman who is a mother, any elderly lady, etc.

Thus, Hindus consider Cow as mother. Motherhood according to

Hindus is the greatest relation and of highest regard – higher than the
understanding of God. In fact, Hindu philosophy has proven that God
cannot be realized without the love for mother. The very basis of our
existence is our mother. Hindus respects and worships not only this
relation, but also the responsibilities and feelings that this relation
holds. A mother gives birth to a child, brings him up, feeds him,
enlightens him, and supports him in all circumstances (good or bad).
Cow is one among all animals who feeds us throughout her life. There
are huge numbers of milk products that we consume throughout our
lives. Children, who do not get their mother's feed, often are supported
by cow milk. Hence, cow milk is one primary food that supports our life
system.

And it is not just for the reason of feeding, Hindus worship cow. Cow is
a natural power as well. Hindus used to wash their house with Cow
Dung, a very healthy methodology to keep diseases away. Urine of Cow
is used in curing many deadly diseases including cancer.

It is just not the usage for which Hindus worship cow. Cow is one of the
most humble and harmless animal. Hindus are not brutal who would
just overlook the suffering of these humble creatures for the sake of
their dirty taste of tongue of which there is no end. Hindus realize that
these creatures are as live as us, and they suffer as deep as us. Thus, if
they are responsible in holding our life, they are worth worshipping as
our own mother. This is a value for a Hindu, a value that helps a Hindu
to deliver high contribution towards human society also. Such morality
of social betterment starts developing from awareness of these things.

Unlike the west, where every human pet dogs and cats, Hindus used to
pet cows. It is up to the thinkers to decide which is better – living with
cats and dogs or living with cows. We very evidently find the result of
reducing cows in the country in terms of consumption of contaminated
milk and milk products. On 11th July 2007, India TV had released news
related to Animal Fats being used in production of ‘Ghee' in huge
quantity all over the nation, and largely at ‘Aligarh – Uttar Pradesh'. It is
but obvious that demand of ‘Ghee' and milk products ever remains as
they are life supporting food in India. But to meet the demand, there
are not enough cows left to provide sufficient milk – the alternative is
ready – take out fats from killed cows and other animals, process it and
present it to the nation as a Milk Product. It is up to the people of this
nation to decide – they want to have pure Milk from Mother Cow, or
they want to feast on Fat Milk from Dead Animal.

MARRIAGES, SEX AND DOWRY

The world knows that Hindu families are the strongest families, in the
sense nearly all cases they do not break apart. What is the secret behind
this? Is it because this is a mail dominated society? I do not think so –
there is no society as much dominated by mails as Muslim society, but
they are not stable in nature. Then is it because women are bound to
worship and obey men? I do not think so, because women worshipping
men is just one part of the coin, the other part containing men
worshipping women. As I said earlier, worship in Hinduism is not
bowing before an image, idol or human. Worship means realizing
respect, love and faith all together. And it is this form of worship that
existed in every Hindu family. Surely, this is one of the important fact
that held Hindu families intact.
The natural reasons start from the way the partners start their relations.
The two genders are created by nature to realize an important aspect of
the same nature – Sex. Every creature had this capacity, but all other
creatures than human practiced it only under natural influence and for
the pure purpose of reproduction. And obviously, the act is momentary
in nature. Thus, Hindus seriously believe that Sex as considered as
physical enjoyment is temporary in nature and if practiced in an
uncontrolled and unnatural manner takes away mental peace and
strength required to hold family intact. Thus, premarital sex and
extramarital affairs was not allowed and is looked at with disregard
even today. Among the marriage partners too, sex was not a very
important aspect and depended upon the moods of partners. For a
Hindu woman what is more important is holding on the value of
virginity (Virginity in natural terms means biological virgin, but in
philosophical terms it meant holding the values of the family she
belonged to, maintaining the reputation that she held a strong concern
about her life and prestige of her family) and delivering all to one and
only one man, a man who is a partner of life-time and not one time sex
partner. Sex is the last thing to be given to the partner, as it is a power
of a creature that can produce life. This power was not taken granted by
Hindus, and they always were of the opinion that no scientific power
can also achieve the greatness of producing life. And hence, proper
utilization of this power was a necessary condition. And to make this act
a respectable realization, the power was even attached to one of the
deities. And this respect created an atmosphere where it was possible
only after marriage and with husband alone. The relationship was
further strengthened by the meaning of God attached to each of the
partners, thereby making sure that no other individual proved to be
superior to a woman than her husband and she ever remained
committed to her husband. A similar meaning of Goddess was attached
to the woman keeping the man in boundary of belongingness.
Moreover, this had a very positive impact on the society in terms of
health and morale of child produced. There used to be nearly no health
hazards due to sex, forget about AIDS and other western world gift of
sexual diseases. Children produced used to be of pure nature and were
not impacted by the temptations of sex and other harmful manners.
The way Hindu marriage takes place play a very important role in
keeping the family intact. Love marriage was there but not too common
in practice and most of the times, it used to be arranged marriage.
There exists a difference between the two types of marriages. While
love marriage takes place because partners know each other, as it
seems to them for few years, and decides to get into the boundaries of
marriage. And here lies the weakness of love marriage; the couple
thinks that they should get bound by marriage, when actually they are
already bound. Thus, they fail to understand the boundaries and its
meanings as they have unknowingly already gone through it. Another
drawback of love marriage is that in most of the cases love is not
formed out of understanding; it is formed out of attraction. It is the
attraction that binds two individual for some moment, at least till before
marriage. After marriage the illusion breaks the two persons come to
their reality. If they both are of same nature or either of them is
adjusting, the relation persists, else they part. Thus, having an adjusting
nature as one's own character is a necessary condition for the stability
of love marriage, which is not realized during the illusion of attraction
which always sees compromise to meet adjustment.
Unlike love marriage, arrange marriage starts with an understanding
and adjustments preset in mind. Though it appears that this adjustment
is done mostly by the girl, in reality both partners make this adjustment.
The girl has to go and fit in the space of husband and his family, while
the husband and his family have to create space for the girl to fit in.
Love follows through the committed nature of the wife and this love is
not an attraction, it is a responsibility and overall it is a relation that has
started with the name of God and develops so deep that even if the
partners are to extreme opposite natures, they do not depart and learn
to live together in support of each other. Thus, there is no illusion, no
preset conditions that is required for the stability of the family formed
out of arranged marriage, it is simply out of high value process, and
they live together life long.
The only concept wrongly introduced into arranged marriage is dowry.
In fact, dowry was never a drawback in ancient Hindu society. To my
knowledge, there was no concept as dowry at all or else I would have
found the word ‘Dahej' (the Hindi word for Dowry) many times in myths
– I did not find it even for a single instance. Dowry is the name given by
English historians and Long Leaders of this country to ensure that
Hindus have one more criminalized practice in their religion. Hindus
never knew Dowry. The practice of Hindus was based on ‘Kanya Dan'
meaning donating the daughter. This again looks bad – but it simply
means the ‘Daughter have to start a new life hereafter, her husband
being her primary responsibility'. ‘Kanya Dan' is a phase of change of
life from being under parenthood to being a parent. Thus, this was an
important stage of life, which if it was not deep routed; families in
Hindus would have also seen the fate of Muslims and Christians. And
hence there were ceremonies and rituals attached to this, ceremonies to
cherish the start of a new life and rituals to start it with purity and
firmness and under the support of God. It is important to understand
that woman after marriage goes to the husband's house and husband's
house is her own house thereafter. She dedicates the rest of her life
towards the benefits of her husband and does all that is within her
capacity to see that it flourishes to the maximum. And hence, woman is
called as ‘Goddess Laxmi' of every house.
Indian societies, as per law, had the practice of dividing parental
properties only among the sons and not daughters. And thus,
daughters enjoyed property of her husband and no of her brother,
keeping in view that a balance was required as her brother would also
have a family to hold and her share in it would reduce his strength.
Even today, this is a general culture and not a necessary religious law.
And hence, as a parenthood out of love for the daughter, parents used
to furnish their daughter with as much richness as possible so as to
make sure it did not effect son's share, though in Indian families of high
values brothers were ever ready to sacrifice everything for their sisters.
And the offerings were taken as gift of love by the parents of husband
side. Nothing seems to be wrong by now, as all is happening by mere
feeling of love and sacrifice.
Slowly in modern India, this offering took shape of demand from the
husband side. How, when and where it started – no one knows. But it
started only in recent centuries during late British invasion. Probably,
seeing this high culture of love and sacrifice, English Historians through
their devastating imagination, first gave it a shape of dowry on papers,
which passed on as information down to the societies rich and poor
who were fighting for their own existence and had little to ponder on
their original values. Anyway, what is given a name of dowry was simply
an instance of love within a family.
No doubt, this has taken to somewhat a bad shape now days in some
of the families. But even now, dowry is not a hard and fast rule followed
during marriage by all families – it is still a gift without demand.
Government and law, if finds it wrong, they are themselves incomplete
to implement the equality practice of parental property being
distributed to the girls as well. And many times, the media makes a
hype of events that are occasional and impose it to the whole
community practicing it.
DEATH RITUALS
Hindu science has realized that every creature is composed of five basic
elements (Panch Mahabhuta): Sky, Fire, Air, Water and Earth (Described
in detail in Chapter ‘A Hindu God'). The science says that death is a
phase of transformation, which cannot take place effectively unless the
composing elements are disintegrated back to its originality. If the body
is cremated, it would be a process of submission of body only to the
earth. And hence, the process of burning was accepted which allows the
Sky, Air and Fire part of the body to disintegrate to their respective
elements immediately during burning. The remnant thereafter is earth,
which is then allowed to be submerged in River, disintegration to get
further back into Water and Earth elements.
Moreover, the long process of Ritual brings in the families together,
helping the effected family to complete the process, which goes on for
at least 10 days. One of the major reasons of having a long phase ritual
was to allow the family under the coverage of other relatives, settle
against the setback. Though the pain remains, but the family learns to
live further and live without any negative attitude developed due to the
incidence.

TEMPLES – IS IT JUST FOR WORSHIP

It first appears to people that Hindus go to temple just for worship, and
worship idols. The perception is one of the many threads that bind a
Hindu to the temple.

If one sees the shape of the temple and the way it is build nearly always
with stone, one would surely develop some meaning out of this. The
shape and the use of stone together keep the temple cool at all
temperatures. Moreover, use of water inside it by the worshippers
further cools it. Thus, Hindus also go to temples during day hours,
particularly in summer to find naturally cool and peaceful place.
Temple in India has always proven to be the best Stress reliever. People
undergoing to whatever level of stress, simply visit the Temple, render
some prayers with their heart and faith and find peace by staying there
for some hours. Thus, we have seldom found people in India
committing suicide, barring for those who have adapted to western
philosophies. As the stress gets controlled, many more unsolved health
problems, emerging in modern world are yet absent among Hindus.
HINDUISM – THE TRUE WAY OF LIFE
Truth is simple and eternal. Truth does not require any cosmetic to
show off itself. Truth is what is holding the world. But, when truth
requires another truth to prove itself, when truth is not accepted as
simple as it is, we find people adding the word ‘True' before the fact
truth. Thus, when western people didn't know that Earth was spherical
and some notion of it being spherical developed – people were found
to be saying ‘The earth is truly spherical'. Thus, to falsify a false belief
that was truth in the mind of people, we use the related words of truth
in order to emphasize upon the reality. The earth is spherical is enough
to say that it is simply spherical. But the usage of word ‘truly' enforces
knowledge upon ignorance. Many times the emphasized usage of such
words becomes a habit and this is well understood by people then.
Thus, Hinduism is a way of life – was simple enough to speak about its
truth. But, when other religions repeat this for their religion also, it
seems like the say ‘way of life' is stolen or made common. And hence, it
now requires differentiating Hinduism again on the same ground. Thus,
the topic here has to be now ‘The True Way of Life'.
The life-style of Hindus is configured more as per the rules of Vedas, as
propagated to them through saints. As the world of chemistry and
biology are secrets of nature unfolded in the world of materialism, so
are the Vedas facts of nature unfolded in the world of both material and
non-material. While it becomes meaningless now to remember who
found which Chemical element and compound, and the whole focus
remains on understanding the Chemistry world, so do the Vedas overall
focus is to develop humans to the heights of God. The saints in India
undergo years of studies and Yoga practices in places like Himalayas,
before attaining to saint hood. They then come back to the normal life
stream, with the single idea of making people healthier in
understanding and leading their life. Thus, unlike all other religions and
societies of world, Hindu saints run trusts purely for the purpose of
promoting a healthier life-style, among the Hindus particularly. Unlike
all the trust of Muslims and Christians, who use their fund for
conversion, these trusts of saints help poor and ill section of the society
to come up to normal life-stream. They do not teach anything that goes
against Islam or Christianity or against any other religion of the world.
They even do not talk anything about Hinduism. They are the greatest
philosophers of the world and they teach only life-styles.
Thus, the societies of Hindus are formed by these saints and the saints
 in turns are formed by Vedas. The society practices Vegetarianism, at
least by the knower of Vedas or true followers of these saints, they
believe in God, they believe in peace, they believe in humanity, they
have pity for animals and other creatures of earth, they understand the
importance of life of all existence on earth. Hence, they prove to be the
most peaceful and tolerant society on earth.
No other religion on earth has such unbiased existence, and this makes
Hinduism as a way of life. It is not a statement, just for say. The
statement has its presence in every house of a Hindu.
And this is the reason, highest personalities like Sri Aurobindo and
Swami Vivekanand, had to say that if India has to rise again, it has only
option to take shelter of Vedas. Because, Vedas are books of highest
values, and greatest natural science and no other religion or book in the
world can bring in identity or leadership to Hindus than Vedas. Vedas
are our originality and we can lead the world only in our original
foundations. In all other methodologies, we would simply be the
followers. Our identity remains in retaining and promoting what we
have. We lose ourselves in order to follow the faiths and practices of
other countries, which actually stands far immature in contrast to Vedic
formulations.
I do not say that a Hindu should stop learning of western cultures. I
simply say that Hindu should not let western culture indulge in their
culture. Under the modern education system, as already in practice a
Hindu should additionally go ahead to learn Vedic science so as to
realize the better part of modern education. For Hinduism is all about
eliminating ignorance with the light of knowledge and the highest
knowledge of all sciences, the deepest and the purest is the knowledge
of Supreme for a Hindu, that can be realized by direct perception,
endowed with immense merit and of imperishable nature.

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