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Diwali, the Hindu festival, is nowadays simplified as “the festival of lights.” Unfortunately, it is reduced to the display of electric string lights, shopping at ‘Diwali sales,’ and indulging in sweets. However, Diwali is actually a multifaceted celebration to teach and remind us of important principles of being a noble human.

Hindus are ancient people, who are distributed over a large geographical area and have a long history, in addition to varied local resources. Hence, there is extensive diversity in the way Diwali is celebrated. Diwali is celebrated in October/November on the dark fortnight of this period. It is celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains in India and around the globe. There are approximately 1.3 billion self-identified Hindus in the world. There are 3.3 million Hindus in the USA, according to the 2016 census, which is 1% of the American population. The reason I say self-identified is that there are many people who follow Hindu principles but do not actually identify themselves as Hindus.

Diwali is derived from the Sanskrit word “Deepavali,” which means “row of lights.” Many historical events have occurred during Diwali, and these events are celebrated and remembered regionally or globally with varied stories and traditions. For example, Lord Ram, the 7th avatar (human manifestation of the divine), defeated the evil king Ravana who had abducted Ram’s wife Sita and was committing atrocities on people. Furthermore, the sixth Sikh Guru Hargobind, who was imprisoned by the mogul emperor Jehangir, was released on this day, along with 52 other kings. Mahavir, the last Jain Tirthankar, also attained Nirvana during Diwali.

So, how do we celebrate Diwali? Hindus clean and decorate their houses, draw Rangolis (floral designs on the ground made by colored powder or flowers), indulge in sweet and savory snacks, shop, exchange gifts and food with friends and neighbors, and light fireworks. We also visit the temple, make offerings to the deities of spiritual and material prosperity, donate to the needy, and light earthen oil lamps and other types of lights around the house. In fact, the lighting of the earthen lamp has great significance for Hindus. The earthen lamp represents the recyclable mortal body (dust to dust). The light symbolizes knowledge. The oil or ghee (clarified butter) in the lamp represents our negative tendencies, and the wick is our ego. When we light the lamp (body) with the flame (knowledge from our teacher), it slowly exhausts the oil (negative tendencies), and the wick (ego) perishes. The knowledge takes us to higher ideals, similar to how the flame burns upwards. One single person of knowledge can share knowledge with others without diminishing his own knowledge, just as a single lamp can light hundreds of lamps.

Six days of Diwali

Day 1: Vasu Baarus — 12th Day of Lunar Calendar

Vasu means brilliance or wealth. Baarus means the 12th day. This day pays homage to the cow and calf, representing wealth, motherhood, fertility, and sustenance.

Why is the cow considered sacred? Hindus see cows as particularly generous creatures. A cow gives lots to the human being but takes almost nothing from us, just like our biological mother and mother of all, the earth. Cow worship is acknowledgment and appreciation of these holy qualities. In every agrarian house, there is a cow whose milk is drunk from childhood and throughout life. The male cow plows the field and is a mode of transportation — the bullock cart. Thus, the cow is considered part of the human household family. Cows not only give milk and innumerable milk derivatives, which are used as food, but they also give cow urine with medicinal properties, and cow dung, which is used for its antimicrobial properties, as a fuel, and for bioremediation of environmental pollutants. Cows not only take care of us during their entire life but also after their death, through leather and making fertilizers from their bones. In addition, Hindus associate various animals with different gods and consider these animals sacred. These include monkeys-Lord Hanuman, elephants and mice-Lord Ganesha, and tigers-Goddess Durga, among others, but none is revered as much as the cow, who is associated with Lord Krishna.

Day 2: Dhanteras — 13th Day of Lunar Calendar

Dhan is the abbreviation for Lord Dhanvantari. the deity of health and medicine. Teras means the 13th day. This day is celebrated in India and around the world as National Ayurveda Day. Ayurveda is the world’s oldest holistic healing system developed in India and is now getting popular in America and around the world. Dhan also means wealth, representing both material and spiritual wealth, as well as health (health = wealth). Consequently, Dhanteras is a massive shopping day in India, in addition to other forms of celebrations.

Day 3: Narak Chaturdashi — 14th Day of Lunar Calendar

Narakasur was a tyrannical demon king who had a boon that he could not be killed by a man. Satyabhama, the wife of Lord Krishna — the 9th avatar, thus killed the demon and released the 16,000 women whom Narakasur had kidnapped. The lesson from this story is that women should not wait for a knight in shining armor. Women should don the armor themselves, pick up a weapon, and vanquish the offenders themselves, or use other legal ways as in modern society. The demon may be a politician, powerful celebrity, workplace colleague, a roadside ruffian, or even negative characteristics of oneself. For Hindus, the women are not damsels in distress or delicate flowers but goddesses of power and strength. The traditions of this day include special ritualistic baths and worship and lighting of lamps to eradicate the negative energies.

Day 4 Laxmi Pujan — No Moon Day

The worship of Laxmi, the deity of prosperity, is important because we should respect wealth and not misuse it for inappropriate and immoral purposes. During the dark winter months, you need material wealth to survive. Only the ‘haves’ can feed the ‘have nots.’ Wealth provides security for you and everyone else because Hindus believe that the entire creation is a family. The business community starts new account books on this day. In villages during olden times, grains were shared with the 12 guilds (balutedars) who served the village throughout the year as a part of a complex barter system. In the USA, Sewa Diwali (www.sewadiwali.org) is conducted, a collective initiative by a large number of Dharma-based organizations around the country, who hold food drives and other necessary drives to benefit underserved communities. Last year, more than 300,000 pounds of food were collected from 400 centers and distributed to 200 facilities.

Day 5: Bali Pratipada/Padwa — 1st Day of Lunar Month

This day commemorates the defeat of king Bali. He was originally a virtuous person who got corrupted by power and became too arrogant. The Supreme Being thus manifested as Vaman, a dwarf and the 5th Avatar of the divine, to carry out the task. This is a lesson for powerful people to behave righteously, since even an apparent weak person may cause their end. This day is also celebrated as a husband-wife festival in which the wife gives a ritualist bath to the husband with scented oils and perfumes stressing the romantic nature of the relationship, while the husband gives jewelry and gifts to the wife. These gifts belong only to the wife and are not family property.

Day 6: Bhai Dooj — 2nd Day of Lunar Month

This is the brother-sister festival. In ancient days and even now, many sisters are far away from brothers’ homes, and brothers do not get a chance to meet them throughout the year. However, on this day, it is the duty of the brother to visit the sister, regardless of how far she is located, or if impossible do so, at least make a virtual video call with her. The brother gives gifts to the sister, and the sister performs ceremonial rituals for the brother and feeds him. In my hometown of Peoria, IL, we conduct a food drive for The Center for Prevention of Abuse (https://www.centerforpreventionofabuse.org/), using the principle of brothers helping the local sisters in distress.

To review in short:

Day one — Animal protection and appreciation.

Day two — Health awareness.

Day three — Women empowerment.

Day four — Well-being for all.

Day five — Removal of arrogance and greed, and homage to the husband-wife relationship.

Day six — Homage to the brother-sister relationship.

Thus, Diwali is not just a festival for Hindus, but its principles are applicable to the entire humanity regardless of your mode of worship.

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti. Om Peace Peace Peace.

During adversity, a person’s true nature (Swa- self, bhaava- essence) gets exposed. In normalcy, many of us take on covering to fool others and sometimes ourselves. We take on roles to fit into what we believe is expected from us to be accepted as a member of the society around us. The current pandemic is acting as a cleaver, slicing the outer false shell and exposing the inner true nature.

Some of us are hoarding food and other essentials in quantities far beyond our wildest imagined needs. From toilet paper and canned meat to protective masks, vast quantities of materials have disappeared from stores as well as online retailers. Some people have hoarded medicines like hydroxychloroquine due to unsubstantiated statements of its ability to cure Covid-19 infections, at the cost of causing shortage to people who really need it for their immunological disorders. Some of these hoarders have become black marketeers. There are others who have built a virtual moat and stockage system around them, with stockpiles of essentials hoping to survive the pandemic by complete isolation, binging on streaming online entertainment, oblivious to the suffering around them.

At the same time, there are others who have seen the distress around them, and their true divinity gets manifest. These are the so called ‘ordinary’ people who become extraordinary. When disaster strikes, they blossom into true heroes. A few weeks ago, my youngest daughter and I had gone to Neighborhood House, a local charity in Peoria (nhpeoria.org), a life-line to many of Peoria’s most vulnerable population, to volunteer for making long shelf life food packages and delivering food to the elderly. On the delivery day, we arrived 5 minutes before the scheduled time. To our surprise, the whole parking lot was filled with volunteers, and in a few minutes all the deliveries were assigned. I was truly humbled by the spirit of service in Peoria.

My first-hand knowledge is somewhat limited to my organization Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, USA and its sister organization Sewa International (sewausa.org) who have established help lines covering all the time zones of the country. Requests ranging from home bound elders for grocery delivery, hospitals requesting cloth masks, stranded travelers, immigration help to spousal abuse and emotional/mental support are being handled by the help lines. Feeding the homeless and supporting food banks by conducting food drives are being done. At some places fundraising is being done to order food from local restaurants for the charity free food organizations, so that the local restaurant owners will earn money since their restaurants are closed to public, and the hungry will get food, thereby achieving two good activities in one stroke.

The medical community starting from the front door greeters/security personnel to the EMT to the doctors and nurses are the brave hearts, holding back the Tsunami of the pandemic, and hopefully soon overturning it. Fortunately, for us in central Illinois, the rampage of the virus is limited compared to New York and Louisiana. Some local children are sending thank you posters to the hospitals. Drawing these pictures of gratitude will encourage our heroes and also ingrain into the children the examples of service before self.

In Hindu Dharma, God manifests on earth (Avatar) when the balance of good and evil tilts too much in the favor of evil, and God rectifies the situation by annihilating the evil. One particular form of Avatar is called ‘Aveshavatar,’ where for a brief time God manifests special powers through an individual soul and acts through that person. I sincerely believe that each of the people who are helping others whether for an instant or by giving up their life while fighting for humanity are manifesting Aveshavatars channeling the divine force through their thoughts and acts. Lets all close our eyes for a few minutes and listen to our individual divine, manifesting through ourselves or through a prophet/philosopher, and do more than we are already doing.

There is a story of a famous poet Māgha in the 6th century, who was carefree with his wealth and lived in poverty towards the end of his life. One day, a poor man came to his door asking for some money so that he could get his daughter married. Māgha saw that his sleeping wife was wearing two gold bangles. He quietly slipped off one of them from her wrist and donated it to the visitor. When his wife woke up, he hesitatingly told her why he had taken her bangle. His wife admonished him, “How can a father get his daughter married with just one gold bangle. Please take off my other gold bangle and give it to him!”

Hindu literature is filled with anecdotes of ordinary people performing extraordinary charitable acts without giving it much thought. This originates from the understanding of shared Divinity among all life forms resulting in a feeling of oneness, so that helping someone is like a person’s hand feeding his own mouth. For simple understanding of the process of charity, the Hindu scripture, Bhagawad Gita (17.20-22), states three categories of giving.

1)A gift that is given without any expectation of benefit or reward is greatly beneficial to both the giver and recipient.

(2) A gift that is given with the expectation of some advantage is of lower value.

(3) A gift that is given at the wrong place and at the wrong time, causing embarrassment to the recipient, is harmful to both the giver and recipient.

Charity essentially is a gift of useful time and resources. Nowadays, it is easier for many people to give under category 2, with the most common expectation being name recognition and advertisement of their economic success. Although we should all strive for the category 1, my personal opinion is that display of wealth is not always bad depending on how you do it. I have been a beneficiary of ‘display of wealth.’ I have received treatment at a hospital which carried the name of the famous Tata family in Mumbai. I used a library which was named after a benefactor who bestowed a large sum on the charitable trust. I have played in a park constructed on a piece of land donated and named after an industrialist. Having donated a large sum of money to a charitable cause indicates that you are wealthy. Of course, I do understand that the above gifts to the public by the generous benefactors were for the betterment of the masses, not just display of wealth. But is it not a great way to let everybody know that you have made it by donating to worthy causes? My suggestion to people who want to display their wealth is to donate more. A name on a plaque on a wall of charitable organization or emblazoned on a hospital or school lasts longer than a latest model expensive car. Further, more people can see it. This display is more glaring than a rare timepiece or jewelry. A hot meal consumed by a hungry person is nutritious regardless of the intention of the donor. Educational material donated to an underserved area organization gives the same quality of knowledge and career boost to children regardless of the selfish reasons of the donor.

Sense of charity is like a skill. For some it comes naturally. For others, there is a steep learning curve. Small steps till we are comfortable, then one fine day we soar. Initially, perform charitable acts for prestige, self-aggrandization, or display of wealth. When you experience the joy of alleviating the misery of a fellow life form, slowly it transforms you. The hubris of self-importance starts getting washed away by the realization of oneness of giver and receiver, and ultimately oneness of the creation.

‘Giving without expectation’ is an epitome of perfection which we should all try to achieve. But just because a rooster cannot fly as majestically like an eagle, it does not stop trying. Some fortunate beings are born eagles, but for many of us, doing small acts of charity will be the building blocks which one day will result into our metamorphosis into a truly selfless charitable being.

Featured image credit: Lalesh Aldarwish