HINDUISM AND SANATANA DHARMA

Why Are There So Many Hindu Rituals?

Hindus worship everything, Gods and Goddesses, people, plants, animals, and different places in Nature. They may even perform ritual worship to inanimate objects like books, automobiles or computers. While this may appear as a superstition to those of us who are enlightened materialists, there is an important and universal meaning behind it.

To worship something in the Hindu sense is to recognize the Divine presence within it and to seek its grace. We need the grace, favor, communication and understanding of all that we are connected with in life, and nothing is really without consciousness or apart from the Divine. Hindu ritual-worship (puja) is both an art and science for accomplishing this. We need to honor the Divine in everything, particularly in the most simple and intimate things of our lives.

If we only honor God in the distance, we are ignorant of his all-pervasive being, and our own ordinary actions will be ungodly. To have a strong and yet diverse culture of ritual aids to both the development of the human spirit and its proper interaction with the universe. While it may be difficult to understand for us today, it should not be devalued.

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