Date: June 22, 2025
Part 6: Understanding Hindu Rituals
Continued from Part 5
Pradakshina is a term used for the ritual of walking clockwise around a shrine, an image or a sacred object. This circumambulation ritual is widely practiced in in Hinduism and Buddhism. The essential idea is the communion with the divine principle. Why do we do this?
In our ordinary, ego-centered lives we happen to be the centre of everything that is happening in our lives. Events, circumstances, our careers, family and relationships, our plans and ambitions, passions and hobbies – all these things are happening around us. Throughout our lives we keep our ‘ego-selves’ at the centre of everything; things are in the periphery.
But when we go to a temple to offer our worship to our chosen deity, we temporarily set aside our self-obsession, take away the focus from our little selves and shift it to the deity. At least ideally, that is what we should be doing. Thus the pradakshina is meant to remind us – ‘I am no longer the centre of my life, my Lord, but YOU are the centre of my life’. That is why keeping the deity in the centre, we go around in circles.
Speaking about this change in the central emphasis of our life Sri Aurobindo writes in The Life Divine:
For the senses the sun goes round the earth… The truth is the very opposite… So also for the mental consciousness God moves round the personal ego and all His works and ways are brought to the judgment of our egoistic sensations, emotions and conceptions and are there given values and interpretations which, though a perversion and inversion of the truth of things, are yet useful and practically sufficient in a certain development of human life and progress… But they do not represent the last and highest state of human life and knowledge.
“Truth is the path and not the falsehood.” The truth is not that God moves round the ego as the centre of existence and can be judged by the ego and its view of the dualities, but that the Divine is itself the centre and that the experience of the individual only finds its own true truth when it is known in the terms of the universal and the transcendent.
While performing pradakshina, we always keep the object of our reverence on the right side and move in a clockwise direction. That is because the right side is considered to be auspicious.
The circumambulations are performed on three levels, i.e., around the outer walls of the temple, in the inner corridor of the temple surrounding the sanctum sanctorum (garbhagriha, the seat of the deity) and inside the garbhagriha itself. In fact, the human body itself is a template for the structure of a Hindu temple. The outer walls and structure of the temple symbolises the human body; the inner corridor called prakaram represents the human vital/mind and the garbhagriha represents the soul. The human soul is the seat of the divine, and accordingly the deity is placed in the garbhagriha, the soul of the temple.
As per custom, we are required to perform circumambulations on each level, though the circumambulations inside the garbhagriha may not always be feasible due to paucity of space or the presence of crowds. Also, in present times, generally only the archakas are allowed in the garbhagriha.
Each pradakshina is supposed to be an act of shedding of bonds and purification. For instance, since the outer structure of the temple represents the human physical body, it is an act of shedding all physical bonds and attachments and purification of the body. During pradakshina along the outer walls, we detach ourselves from our physical life by praying to the Divine.
A quick mention may be made of the nature of sculptures carved on the outer walls of the temple. For example, in several Khajuraho temples (also Konark) we see explicit depictions of the sexual act. The fact that such depictions are found only on the outer walls, not anywhere inside the temples, is itself revealing. The outer walls represent the human body and thus all physical acts are depicted there. We also see carvings representing warfare, dances, beautification and adoration of the body, hunting and various other daily activities.
Such representation also shows that our ancestors were not squeamish about the realities of life. While performing the pradakshina around the outer structure of the temple, we must concentrate on shedding our attachments to all physical acts and arouse in our hearts the feeling of devotion for the deity.
Pradakshina around the inner corridor, the prakaram reminds us that we must let go of our mental attachments and mental impurities. During the outer Pradakshina we had shed our outer bondages pertaining to our body. But here in the Prakaram, we shed our inner bondages and attachment and begin to approach the deity with utmost devotion in our minds.
And finally, we enter the garbhagriha and have the darshan of the Deity, and there we are supposed to shed our ego – the last vestige of our identity. We go to the Divine with the idea that “You are everything; I am nothing. Please accept my devotion and surrender. Let your Grace and blessings shower on me.”
Surrendering of the ego is represented by the act of offering a coconut to the deity. The coconut symbolically represents our head – the seat of the ego because that is the central part of our identity. A headless torso has no identity. The broken coconut in effect means, “I have offered my head, my ego.”
One more act that is enjoined is the constant chanting of the name or the mantra of the deity. Usually, this chanting is carried out with lot of energy and enthusiasm by the devotees which creates a wonderful positive field of energy in the entire atmosphere. Thus the entire exercise is meant to align our body, speech, mind and soul in an act or devotion towards the deity.
In Buddhism, pradakshina represents as an act of surrender to the Three Jewels of Buddhism: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.
To summarise, the ritual of pradakshina is an act of devotion, purification and surrender to the Divine. What is offered to the divine is our surrendered body, mind and ego after they have been duly purified with our devotion and faith. I am not the centre of life my Lord, but YOU are the centre of my life – that is the central idea of the ritual of pradakshina.
