Ganeshotsav – 3

On this 10th day of the festival, the thought and feeling of seeing off a near and dear one very painful. It is always difficult to see off a dear one, and remember this is God. He is just not only our family member, but our Guide, who guides through various difficulties. The stay of the God at our place has broken many a shackles in our personal lives, family lives and social lives. It uplifts our feelings towards our nation too. But anything that comes has to go, is the basic education from Visarjan.

It is a teaching to us, that every Srijan ( creation) has to move towards Visarjan (destruction). It’s a part and process of the cycle of evolution of the Universe. If we think, we will know that it is because of Visarjan that we are able to enjoy life. Can we imagine an infinite life? (the scientists have been trying to find the elixir of life, but it has evaded us till now.) If we knew that we are going to have an infinite life, will we be able to enjoy life? So, the seers, wanted us to understand the finiteness of life and so they introduced us to this process of Srijan – Visarjan through celebration of Ganeshotsav.

Also let us look at it in our everyday life. Visarjan is a part of our daily life. We have to immerse many of our thoughts, beliefs and emotions, otherwise our very existence will become very difficult, living with them. Let’s understand it with an example. Say we had a fight and now we hold a grudge for the person with whom we fought. Now if we keep living with this grudge, we cannot move ahead in life. So as soon as that person goes away, we have to forget it and move on. Yes we might remember it again when we see or meet that person. But it does not or cannot stay with us for every moment of our life. Otherwise our lives will become miserable. So better immerse the feeling.

Visarjan also signifies to develop an outlook from “looking outside” to “looking inside”. Everything is destructible, but not the Love of God, the Soul. We need to understand that the flow of the river of love is within out body and keeps us going. We need to immerse the Ganesh into it. Leave our bodily desires and immerse ourselves into our souls.

Yet another way to look at it can be that death (visarjan) is going back to where we came from. Going back to our mother. Our mother will remould the Soul, and we will get a new life. We can also understand the importance and necessity and conviction about Life after Death. Why fear Death?, when we are going to come back again and again, till our Karma makes us do this. Death is only a changing of bodies, as we change our clothes, is what Shreemad Bhagwad Geeta describes. As I mentioned in my last blog, it is the Parthiv Ganesh which we bring home. Parthiv means made from earth. “From dust thou art, to dust thou shalt be, was said of the body” it comes from earth and returns back to earth.

I would request my readers to sit back and think over what we are doing. Are we doing it the way our Rishis have told us too? Is the social responsibility that Lokmanya Tilak envisaged being fulfilled? If not, then we need to ho backto our roots and correct our course as well.

May Ganesh give us all the necessary understanding and intellect to do it.

Ganpati Bappa Morya!

Mangalmurti Morya!

Pudhchya Varshi Lavkar ya!