by Manjit Handa & Parmjit Singh
Being an Indian festival, Diwali holds a religious significance for Hindus, Sikhs and Jains. Though they celebrate it for different reasons, yet the fervor and gusto is the same. They eat sweets, fire crackers, attend religious ceremonies and pray to the Mammon. It is called the Festival of lights, or directly transliterated ‘a row of lamps’. Falling on the dark moonless night, Diwali actually means lighting up, but it may also be much more than simply lighting up homes and terraces.
Mythological history offers various accounts about the significance of this festival. It is celebrated differently in North than South across India: Punjabis celebrate it for different reasons than Gujaratis; Hindus enact it differently than Sikhs. But, somehow, the running theme behind these celebrations is the same: festive enjoyment coupled with various rituals.
Rama’s exile can be taken as a willful departure from the worldliness into the jungles of his own soul where after meditating for 14 years, Rama was able to kill the Ravana of his own self.
Myths have it that Hindus lighted the whole city of Ayodhya in order to welcome back Lord Rama after his 14 years of exile. Sikhs celebrate this occasion to mark the release of their sixth Guru from the imprisonment of the Muslim ruler Jahengir. Though the reasons for all these communal celebrations seems variant from one another, yet one thing is common; it is a festive declaration of freedom to mark a disassociation from the unwelcome past be it Lord Rama returning from exile or the sixth Sikh Guru being released from prison.
But is that all to Diwali? May be not. It may also be symbolic of something very deep.
Most of the time, religious ceremonies are a symbol of something very deep where the ceremony is a simple narration of a profound act. However, we humans, always make religion out of simple practices of the past. We forget the reason behind the existence of such ceremony and become content with its mechanics. Lord Rama returning home after 14 years of exile can also be indicative of relinquishing worldliness and going on a willful recluse into your heart to know your inner self. Killing of eternal evil-incarnate, the Ravana, may also be a symbolism for killing our inner demons of greed, violence and all other states that benight our being.
Rama’s exile can be taken as a willful departure from the worldliness into the jungles of his own soul where after meditating for 14 years, Rama was able to kill the Ravana of his own self. It is not the Ravana that exists outside that threaten our existence today, it is the monster within us—the darkness of our inner soul in the form of a perpetual violence spanning our hearts and minds or greed or even our tendency to invent noble ideology to mask our ulterior motives.
The originators of Diwali may have held it as an annual wake-up call for all the celebrants. But it remains only a wake-up call—we never wake up. We never take the courage to delve deep into our heart and understand the darkness within our self in the form of greed, loathing, violence that lies beyond the sophistry and deception of our grand posturing and celebrations. As we light the row of lamps on our homes and terraces, there is also a need to illuminate the flame of our inner self so that our spiritual darkness can be dispelled. As human beings, we have not become better even after the celebration of countless Diwalis. The ‘row of lamps’ have not touched our inner dark; they have lighted only the periphery of our existence.
The real import of Diwali may not lie in lighting rows of lamps only; it may be an occasion for deep introspection. Lamp should act a reminder that nothing lasts for ever. Dogen, the legendry Zen Master, understood the meaning of life and became enlightened just looking at the wisps of smoke rising from an extinguished candle. Suddenly, he understood that life is like that—like a candle or lamp, it disappears into the wisp of smoke cloud. That, everything is impermanent.
Like a lamp which fails to light its own base, we also usually do not devote much time looking into our own darkness. Perhaps that is the chilling metaphor reminding us of the need to turn inward than being obsessed with outside. Ordinarily, we are more interested in reaching out to external objects like power, money and prayers to the Gods and Goddesses. Diwali may be reminder to the contrary. It is not about exploding crackers, but about exploding our ignorance. It is not about only lighting our homes and terraces, but about lighting our inner self with self-knowledge and understanding.
Each year we light lamps to enshrine our home, when would we light the ultimate lamp—our inner core?
The day we do that, that would be the real Diwali—the first one!
