21 Jun 2013
Essence of Ritual is Universal: The entire essence of all the rituals is missing today and as a result every ritual is a simple wastage. When the essence is lost, the ritual is like the body after losing the life. You must know that the essence of all the rituals is only acquiring the spiritual knowledge, developing the devotion to God and finally serving the deserving devotees. The ritual is both theoretical and practical. Knowing the right direction through right interpretation of the Divine Scripture is the spiritual knowledge (Jnana Yoga). Praying God with sincere dedication and emotion is devotion (Bhakthi Yoga). All the names like Agni, Varuna, Indra, etc., are the different names of the same God indicating different powers of God. Therefore, there is none other than God prayed in the rituals through the various hymns. Both knowledge and devotion constitute the theoretical activity. The practical activity (Karma Yoga) constitutes the materialistic sacrifice like giving food, clothes, money, etc., to the deserving devotees. Thus, a ritual is a pious mixture of knowledge, devotion and practical sacrifice uplifting the doer from lower ignorant level to the upper spiritual level. Today, if you sincerely examine any ritual, do you really find any of these three? People attending the ritual including the doer and priest do not understand a single word of the prayers recited in Sanskrit. People attend the ritual and start all sorts of gossip while the ritual proceeds. The doer acts sincere concentration due to not understanding anything there. The enacted sincere concentration of the doer is only due to the ambition of getting some fruit on performing the ritual.
Similarly, the sincere concentration of the priest is also to receive the demanded money and get good impression for the next invitation based on the developed goodwill. Thus, it can be very clearly seen that both Jnana Yoga and Bhakthi Yoga are totally cremated in any ritual due to lack of knowledge of Sanskrit language. This is the greatest misfortune of Hinduism since other religions have their scriptures in their corresponding mother tongues. Due to this, the basic purpose is not understood and the right direction is totally missing. You may say that the practical sacrifice (Karma Yoga) exists due to materialistic sacrifice. But, even this Karma Yoga is totally lost because it is spoiled on both sides. On one side, the charity is done with impure aim for the selfish welfare and on the other side, the receivers are perfectly undeserving. The receivers are mostly relatives, friends etc. The ritual is totally converted into a function of exchange of gifts. In fact, every ritual like the ceremonies done at the birth and childhood, the ceremony of marriage, the ceremony of construction of a new house, the ceremonies after death etc., have become foolish formalities of business. No trace of spiritual knowledge, devotion and spiritual elevation through practical service to devotees exists in any ritual. Most of the receivers are totally undeserving and due to this, all the rituals are ending in negative results.
If you understand the essence of the ritual as the development of spiritual knowledge, devotion and practical service to devotees, the universality of all these rituals in the world is maintained. Let it be any religion dealing with the scripture in any language in any part of the world, the essence of the ritual i.e., divine knowledge, devotion and divine service, is one and the same. Since the universality of the ritual is maintained, God becomes impartial to the religion of any region. If you give importance to the external cover of the ritual like language, specific mode of the procedure etc., neglecting the inner universal essence, God becomes partial by allotting such a specific ritual to a specific region only. The ignorant priest gives lot of importance to the external cover only since he does not understand anything from the hymns recited. When the fate of the priest is this, what to speak of the doer and the other spectators! Therefore, you should perform the ritual giving importance to the essence and by that only, you can receive good fruits.
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