The festival of lights; kindness; lemon water benefits

The Adiveda Weekly #22

Oct 16, 2022

Hari Aum Sadhakas!

Wishing you a very happy Diwali (in advance)! As our grandmothers have been telling us since we were little, it is the festival of lights – the day Sri Rama returned to Ayodhya and the day Sri Krishna rescued the 16,000 princesses who had been incarcerated by the demon Naraka. The esoteric meaning for sadhakas is that it is an opportunity to remove this ignorance by lighting the lamp of wisdom within us. Diwali is the victory of our noble emotions over our negative tendencies.

The Hindu way of life

Diwali is one of the festivals of Bharat that is celebrated all over the sub-continent by all the states. The word itself is a condensed form of the word Deepavali which means a row of lights. This festival is very old and has even been mentioned in the Padma Purana which is a very ancient scripture.

All Hindu festivals have only one theme and that is to lift the human being from his present state of ignorance into the state of enlightenment which is his birth right. Most people including Hindus don’t realise this truth because very often this truth is buried under a heap of rituals and superstitions and just fun things that have been collected through time which have smothered the central idea over a period of thousands of years. Diwali is one of those festivals which openly blares out this truth since light is always a synonym for enlightenment.

Reflection of the week

“The sun does not shine there, nor the moon, nor stars or fire.”

What does this mean? Just as the light of a small candle pales into insignificance before the light of the sun, so also all the lights of this universe cannot be compared to even a spark of the effulgence of the Brahman. That effulgence is ever burning within us and all around us. All we have to do is to remove the darkness of many births and allow that light to burst out in all its glory. IT is ever enshrined in our hearts but the brambles and bushes of our abysmal ignorance cover IT. If that light was not within us, no amount of external lights would allow us to see this world of multiple phenomena which is actually a shroud which covers the face of the creator.

For your everyday practice

Be kind to every kind.

One small lamp dispels the darkness of a big room. So also one small act of kindness can bring light into the darkness of a heavy heart.

For your health and well-being

Start your day with lemon water.

An idea for a morning drink, to be had on an empty stomach before you consume anything else, is a cup of warm water with the juice of one-half lemon, to be sipped each morning. (Use a metal/wooden straw if you are worried about the acid from the lemon harming your teeth.) This drink will engage the liver, enhance bile flow, increase metabolic rate, and help maintain a balanced pH. The increased bile flow, amongst other things, helps in the prevention of gallbladder stones. This drink is a good idea for many people though, not just those with gallbladder disease.

Please note this is not medical advice – please follow the advice of your practitioner before you make any changes that could impact your health.

By Dr. Poorna Menon, Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine

From Vanamali Mataji’s desk

Since Diwali is such an important festival for the whole of Bharat, all the religions in this country, except the Abrahamic religions have woven some story about it into their own scriptures. It is celebrated by several other religions including Jainism, Sikhism and numerous folk religions. They have different mythological versions of the same tales.

Jainism, Bharat’s sixth largest religion, hails this as the day on which Lord Mahavira, the last of the twenty-four Tirthankaras (Great Teachers) attained “Nirvana” (enlightenment). Most traditions surrounding Diwali go back thousands of years, but the most recent tradition associated with it is the one in Sikkhism. Sikhs celebrate Diwali as the occasion on which their great teacher Guru Hargobindji was released from the captivity of the Mughal ruler Jehangir from the fortress of Gwalior along with several Hindu kings. The Hindus of course have incorporated the story into the lives of both their great avataras – Rama and Krishna.