Date: June 1, 2025
Part 5: Understanding Hindu Rituals
Continued from Part 4
Rituals are physical acts that establish our relationship with the Divine. The act of a ritual establishes rules and patterns of behaviour that we adopt towards the Divine. There is a philosophy, meaning and significance behind every ritual. Rituals become beautiful and meaningful when one is aware of these things. Without that knowledge rituals are empty shells devoid of content. Only the physical act remains which we perform mechanically without knowing why it is being performed – as a matter of habit, tradition or imitation.
For instance, Hindus apply various kinds of tilaks on their foreheads. This small, innocent looking ritual is packed with significance. Usually, we are supposed to apply tilak on our foreheads after our bath when we perform our puja in the morning. Every Hindu house, no matter how small, has a shrine where some vigrahas are kept based on the inclination and temperament of the devotee. After morning bath, the devotee spends a few minutes in front of his deities, says his prayers and before leaving for his work, applies the tilak on his forehead. Millions of Hindus may be following this ritual without knowing its meaning and what it signifies.
Let us explore the meaning behind this ritual. For the Hindus, everything in life is an expression of the Divine. He believes in the presence of the Divine in every aspect of life. Even the physical world is infused with Divinity. That is why the sun, the fire, the sea, the earth – all are considered to be deities – Suryadev, Agnidev, Varundev, Dharitri mata etc. We worship everything. We divinise everything. Hinduism does not believe that God is sitting somewhere in the clouds; he is present in his creation itself. Hence, our lives should be a constant remembrance of the Divine. But while working in the world, this smarana, remembrance is not always possible. The tilak on the forehead is applied with the prayer that “may I remember the Lord in all my activities.”
Scientifically, the upper part of the brain is the neo-cortex which developed in human beings at the later stages of physical evolution. The human brain is unique compared to all the other creatures of this planet because of the neo-cortex. All our science, mathematics, arts, philosophy and religion have their source in the neo-cortex. And the forehead specifically, is the seat of memory in human beings. You would find in our behavioural pattern that every time we are struggling to remember to something, we tap our foreheads. It is almost an instinctual behaviour pattern. We tap our forehead because it is the seat of memory. So, applying the tilak on the forehead is a sign that says that we are keeping the Lord in our memory. It is an aid to memory.
But how can we remember our tilak and our Lord when we are unable to see it? We are reminded of it when we see the tilak on another person’s forehead. His tilak reminds us of our own and that is how the memory of the Lord is evoked in the midst of all activities and life becomes a constant remembrance of the Divine. Yes, we continue to do all our activities but the Lord always remains in our memory. It is a beautiful ritual and a wonderful concept.
The rituals thus serve the purpose of bringing down the concept into the physical realm. Rituals act out the philosophy. That is why they are important. Without action on the physical level, spiritual knowledge and philosophy merely remain as abstract ideas in our brains. Without rituals, philosophy is reduced to intellectual gymnastics, flights into abstractions. Rituals are a constant reminder, through physical acts, of the lofty vision. But without knowledge of that vision, it is merely a blind belief, a mindless repetition, a superstition.
In today’s world it is precisely this situation which has come to pass – where we are holding on to the rituals with a fanatic zeal without knowing what they mean. Simply because they have been handed down to us by our ancestors, by our culture or tradition. Mechanical observance of rituals is not religion; it is dead habit. But sadly today empty rituals are all that is left with us and the philosophy behind such rituals is lost.
Even the majority of the priests who perform them do not have the faintest idea of what they are doing. But since they have made a lucrative profession out of it, they convince us that the rituals are absolutely necessary. This mechanical performance of rituals without knowing their meaning has been expressed by the wise Sufi Masters through their immortal creation – the enigmatic clown who goes by the name of Mulla Nasrudin, in the story titled I Did Not Start It:
Nasrudin went to a mosque and sat down. His shirt was rather short and the man behind him pulled it lower, thinking it looked unseemly. Nasrudin immediately pull on the shirt of the man in front of him. “What are you doing?” asked the man in front. “Don’t ask me. Ask the man behind me – he started it.”
Yes, we are performing the rituals because someone behind us (someone in the past) had started it. We are simply repeating and imitating what has been done for centuries without knowing the meaning of what we are doing.
A balanced religious life needs both philosophy and the rituals because philosophy minus rituals tends to become intellectual gymnastics and rituals minus philosophy is nothing but mindless repetition, imitation and a breeding ground of fanaticism.
A question may be raised that none of our saints and sages have been found to have performed rituals to a noticeable extent. We have to understand that rituals are an enactment on the physical level, of some deeper philosophical idea. Rituals are a reminder of some spiritual truth. But for an advanced spiritual being, a ritual is not necessary at all. A Jesus doesn’t need a ritual but he may perform it for the benefit of his disciples, like the sacrament of the Last Supper. A Buddha or a Jesus or a Kabir do not need rituals; they do not need any reminders of what they are. They are already established in the Divine consciousness; they live in divinity all the time.
Rituals are meant for people like us who need constant reminders of the spiritual wisdom that lies behind the ritual. A ritual is an adoration and worship of the Divine through the medium of our physical body and mind.
In our subsequent blogs, we shall explore in detail the rituals of Pradakshina and Aarti.