Is This How You Treat Your Gods?

I have forgotten how many times I got this e-mail with the pictures of the aftermath of Ganesh Chaturthi. So having got tired of explaining this, let me deal with this once and for all. Understand the essence of Hinduism, do not get hung up on the idol worship thing (more on that below).

First see the accompanying text in the email:

IDOL worship ? or IDLE worship ? or IDEAL worship ? After immersion .. ? The Day after .. Would you like your Gods bulldozed like garbage ? and treated like this ... ? or dumped like this ? left to rot for scavengers to feast ... ? Lying at your feet ...Helpless .. Abandoned by worshippers ! Maimed ? Desecrated ? And you create a hue and cry when some statue in your city gets 'desecrated' ? You burn down buses and call for bandhs ? Was that statue a GOD, OR Is this GOD only a Statue ? You decide. — Wake Up! ~ Friends, Nothing will happen to you if you don't forward this mail. But it would be great if you can do it to avoid real desecration !

Now the shocking photo's

Shocking, no? you can never imagine a statue of Christ or the Buddha or a torah or a tabiz/black stone treated in this manner, can you? No, you cannot because what you see as statues is mere earth, water, fire and air. This is where you go wrong, thinking that these idols are the Gods. No, as the Maitreya Upanishad says, if you want to keep on having rebirth, then you worship idols, if you want liberation, what you should worship is the inner heart, the Brahman.

Idols are merely a way to concentrate minds, the visarjan (the immersion of the idols in the sacred waters) is merely a ritual where you simply exchange one form of earth, water, air, fire into another, you are exchanging states. What you see left behind is the same thing.

If you want to be scientific about it, this is the first law of Godhead, the total Godhead of the universe remains constant. This is simply changing shape, my friends, this does not mean that Brahman has been abandoned. How can Brahman be abandoned? He is present in water, air, earth and fire, we are mere humans, we worship him.

When we die, we are burnt on the funeral pyre and then submerged into the holy Ganges or some other sacred water. Does that mean that we no longer are part of Brahman? no, we have simply changed our state. So to repeat

1. This is not idol worship, this is worshiping your inner heart through a focus of a temporary structure of earth.

2. In due course, these discarded statues will return to their original state and again will become another statue, another brick, another human being, another animal.

3. Do not shed tears when a human being dies or when visarjan happens as that is but a small step in the cycle of rebirth, a good step on the path to liberation and being one with Brahman.

4. And finally, do not get distracted by worldly images, this is but Maya, remember to fix your eyes on your inner Brahman.

(as for getting upset about a statue getting defiled, well, what can I say? these rage boys are condemned to be caught up in a world of Maya)