10 Sep 2024
The Shodasha Upachara means the various modes of the practical service you can do to the alive contemporary human incarnation. But, majority of the humanity is not applicable to this concept since it cannot conquer the ego and jealousy towards a co-human form. In such preliminary stage applicable to the majority of devotees, these modes of worship are done to the inert statue carved in the human form. There also, before these modes of worship, the process of initiation of life into the statue is done, which means that these modes of worship are to be done only to the alive human body that is represented by this concept (statue + life = live human body). Hence, these modes of worship done in the case of statues are only a training to increase the theoretical devotion at least because theory is the source of practice. One important point is that you need not do all these modes in sequence everytime. If the contemporary human incarnation comes to your house and is very hungry, you can do the latter mode of worship straight avoiding preceding modes, which is Nivedanam (offering the food). Any mode of worship can be done directly without following the sequential order as per the context.