Great Divine Words from Deivathin Kural-Bhakthi-Temple Worship
To express gratitude for a help rendered is our ordained duty. It is our duty to show our gratitude to God who has chosen to give food, clothing and so many other needed things to Man, who is incapable of creating himself, even a blade of grass.
To express our gratitude, symbolically, we should offer Him the food we eat, as Nivedhanam.
Anyway, we only are going to eat the food after it is offered to Him. Similarly, as he is blessing us with dresses and jewellery to wear, we should also offer Him suitable vestments and adornments. It may not be possible for all to do such Pooja in their homes and offer Him all these items.
That is why, the concept of temples has come into being, to support community worship. In the beginning, Great sages have enabled idols to acquire divine powers by the power of their mantras. Temples have come to be built around such idols.
Pujas in temples can happen without any shortcomings only if all the people including those who do puja at home, make it a regular habit to visit temples. Since I go to temples, at least for my sake, temples are kept clean, lamps are lit, food is offered to the deity, clean dresses are used.
We have forgotten many small but crucial righteous things. We fail to ensure that the deity who gives us food and clothing, is also properly offered food, is draped with clean clothing. If you look for the person who is wearing the dirtiest clothes in our locality, it would be the deity in our temples. If only we care to ensure that the deity in our local temple is wearing clean clothes, our hearts will become dirt-free.
"Aranai Maravel" (Eswara be not forgotten), "Thirumalukku Adimai Sei" (Be subservient to Bhagawan), etc., it is our "Primary duty" to keep the temples of Shiva and Vishnu in our localities, in good conditions.
Nowadays, there is a thinking that we can meddle with the procedures and prescriptions in temple worship in any manner we deem fit. Temples have been built to exhibit the omnipresent divine power just as power houses are erected to bring out electricity which is available everywhere. If we meddle with the electric machinery haphazardly, we may lose our lives. Similarly if we meddle with the divine power meant for the good of our souls, we will lose our souls.
Some people question why we should not do certain things when sanctity is not getting affected even if priests are not disciplined. Their suggestion amounts to driving away whatever little sanctity is remaining. Temples have an inherent capacity to bear with some amount of indiscipline.
If we extend that indiscipline beyond reasonable levels, we will only be the losers. God is not affected by such things. We should only be taking efforts to cleanse or rectify the existing shortcomings and not bring in new things which are not prescribed in Aagamas (Sastras relating to temples). If all of us are disciplined and follow the existing prescriptions and regularly visit temples, even those priests will reform themselves.
The new aggression will automatically dissipate. The so called reformists have not studied our Sastras. That is why they are showing their annoyance. We should also not react with anger. We should show compassion to even those who oppose us. We have to explain to them, the prescriptions in agamas, with compassion.
Compiled by : N Jambunathan Iyer Chennai India
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