#Disclaimer: If you can't handle difference of opinion or are sensitive to religious debate, please DO NOT READ this. God and epics are beyond the judgment of a mere mortal like me. This useless musing is one such rational thought to justify faith and surrender.
It is said that caste is often defined by your deeds than your birth. I am born a Brahmin - or rather into a Brahmin family.
One of the natural gifts kids, in Brahmin families, have is the ability to think. And so I thought and thought about rituals, traditions and norms we abide by.
One ritual that would bother me a lot is when they would "throw" sarees and cloth into the homam, during the Navaratri pujas.I would feel (maybe I still do) it's better to give it to an underprivileged person. In fact, there are quite a few rituals like these.
Thanks to the lockdown and daily Vishnu Sahasranamam sessions with family, I started thinking about some verses from the famous dialogue.
At the end of the Vishnu Sahasranamam, a verse says I surrender everything that is "mine" - thoughts, speech, actions, pleasures (anything perceived by the 5 senses) to Narayana!
How many of us are able to let go of material things we have? Maybe when it's old and not used, it's easier to give away. But what about things that are dear to us? We can't even give up our thoughts and emotions (although many spiritual schools teach that) - let alone our souls.
So the ritual began - of creating detachment, of giving away to Agni (through yagna) what we consider as "ours". Since Agni was believed to take the offerings directly to Narayana, humans started offering things to please Gods (perverted version of detachment)
And the ritual continued...and so did the mutation of the term "detachment".
So I ask myself today:
1. What is really "mine"?
2. Does hoarding anything really matter?
3. Am I able to have faith in God to be able to surrender to him? (especially in these difficult times)
So the next time I see materials being put in a yagna, I will remind myself to surrender, to let go, to have faith, Without this, the yagna is actually incomplete.
