Happy Diwali! Deepavali SubhatiyaH! http://photos-a.ak.************/photos-ak-sctm/v157/113/105/919838/n919838_36849584_4362.jpg May the light of love and devotion shine brightly in your hearts. May the light of understanding shine in your minds. May the light of harmony glow in your home. May the light of service shine forth ceaselessly from your hands. May the light of peace emanate from your being. May your presence light the lamps of love and peace wherever you go. May your smile, your words and your actions be as sweet as the sweets of this festive season. May Maha Laxmi bring you the true wealth of health, happiness, peace and spiritual upliftment. -Swami Chidanand Saraswati (Muniji) Dearest friends, I wanted to take this time to firstly wish you a very happy Diwali! Also the other thing is I wanted to take this note to reflect (and feel free to comment and reflect too!). So many holidays come and go and the reasons we love them so is because they give us time to put our lives into perspective. When we ask ourselves what does Diwali mean to us, most of us would say family, friends, food, pujas, lights, music, ect. But from a very base level isn't that pretty much every holiday means to people? So, I was thinking about what does Diwali really mean. I could go on about all the legends: Rama returning to Ayodhya, Kali Puja, Lakshmi Puja, Goverdhan puja, the enlightment of Mahavira, the release of one of the Sikh gurus from prison, Krishna killing the snake, Vamana tricking Bali, and the list goes one. Of course, as we talked about in discussion the other day...the number one word that comes up is LIGHT. Diwali is the festival of lights. But what does that mean. Whenever I think of light holidays, this one particular quote from a Unitarian Universalist meditation by Victoria Safford comes to mind. I first heard this last year at the Harvard Divinity School Seasons of Lights festival: Now is the moment of magic, when the whole, round earth turns again toward the sun, and here's a blessing: the days will be longer and brighter now, even before the winter settles in to chill us. Now is the moment of magic, when people beaten down and broken, with nothing left but misery and candles and their own clear voices, kindle tiny lights and whisper secret music, and here's a blessing: the dark universe is suddenly illuminated by the lights of the [diyas] suddenly ablaze...and the whole world is glad and loud with winter singing. Now is the moment of magic, and here's a blessing: we already possess all the gifts we need; we've already received our presents: ears to hear music, eyes to behold lights, hands to build true peace on earth and to hold each other tight in love. Keeping this in mind, I was thinking about what light really really means. A lot of people would say that this light is the light of knowledge. I would agree with that. I would even go further to say that this light is the light of Love. Each year we are given this opportunity, on a dark night of a new moon, to ignite fires. We are given the chance to remove the darkness that has covered the fires we have within us and we have always had, and that have never been extinguished. Diwali comes each year to give us a wake up call. It is said this is the start of the new year--yes, this is the start of a new year...a new time for us to re-evaluate and make ourselves better people. My sincerest wish for us all on this Diwali, is to refind those flames that we have within us. Each time we light a diya, that we may think of it as a physical manifestation of the love we are igniting within and that we may take that love and give it to everyone, not just during the holidays, but the whole year long. We have been blessed with this opportunity to stand in the midst of the cold darkness and be lights unto the world. Then Diwali becomes everyday--each day we add fuel of smiles, small kindnesses, an devotions and that flame becomes brighter and stronger. Each Diwali we have a chance to remember that flame we have that we may have forgotten and make it real again. And that is my wish. That each one us may take these flames and becomes beacons of light, love, and peace and to pass these inextinguishable flames to all. In which...that was a round about way of saying: May you be blessed with a Deepavali full of Light and Love. May you light the diyas within to welcome Sri Rama back to the Ayodhya of your hearts. I love you all. Thank you for everything. <3 The light of all lights, He is said to beyond darkness. He is the knowledge, the object of knowledge, and seated in the hearts of all beings, He is to be realized by the knowledge."- Bhagavad Gita 13:24 Peace<3 Nicole http://photos-b.ak.************/photos-ak-sf2p/v149/113/105/919838/n919838_36849585_4802.jpg
sal mubarak! deepavali ki jai. happy goverdhan puja as well. thats today when krsna lifted goverdhan mountain on his little finger and held it there for 7 days to protect the residents of vraja from indra's wrath.
