With the advent of Social media the worse has happened. I am bombarded with images of Gods, Deities, Saints, Sadhu’s and few of the Modern Guru’s everyday in the morning as well as throughout the day with huge lists of “Jai Shri Krishna”, or “JSK” for short, “Jai Sai baba”, “Jai Gurudev”, “🙏 “etc that follows the images. With the coming of the Religious Festivals more of such data keeps flowing. I really cannot understand the fervour for doing such acts.
Ganesha Passport
We have this issue more with Hindu’s who themselves are mocking there own Gods during the festivities without even realising the depth of irreverence one is having towards the one’s they believe in. We have huge number of festivities where Massive Idols are made to be sold to the devotees on massive levels of propaganda, the demands and needs or superfluous believes of masses create demand for making such idols who are imitating the trend, fashion or craze.
If people assume that by doing such acts they are going to be religious, I feel it is just a way of mocking the Gods one believes in and worships in the most venerable manner. When festivals come people love to buy idols to satisfy both ego and conditional rituals started either few hundreds of years ago or as recent as few decades back. They adorn the idols with all decorations and have huge rituals, chants, bhajans and everything during the days when the idols are there as per the knowledge they either receive as forwards from other social media sites, or some personality being invited on a television channel talking about it. As the time for the festival gets over they just immerse the idols at river, pond or sea in huge numbers, since most of the modern idols are made from cement, terracotta, POP that are supported by iron rods/ bars, painted with metallic paints and using waterproof materials. Now since the immersion happens on a particular day the crowd is high in number and the idols are also huge in numbers, since they are immersed nearer to the beach or banks. Modern way is utilising JCB’s, Stone Crushers, Hammers to destroy the idols piece by piece. I am saying Idols for they cannot represent the Gods one’s worshipped and have loved it like that.
Imagine we love members of the family and as soon as a new member joins our family, we love them,care for them and also look after them it can be humans or animals, but when one of our loved one’s be it human or a pet do we just throw them away to be crushed and destroyed by others in the most inhuman manner. Can we see that or tolerate that, we may have sleepless nights thinking about the horrible act. So in social conditions when even dead bodies, images of deceased ancestors and ancient King are respected but the deities one has worshipped, loved, prayed fall for ghastly end knowingly or unknowingly.
The beginning of this happens when one makes plans or launch everything into a concept of a enterprise, the purity of Divine love is lost to the conditional Enterprise-Love. If it wasn’t for Enterprise-Love one would never even think of bringing the deity one worships to make mockery of it as well as do the blasphemous act of the representative visible idol of venerable deity to be destroyed in such a horrible manner. Some of thee religious festivals have become big for it was started with a religious and political agenda beginning from medieval period to 19th century to even 20th century.
The recent trend of denigrating the deities has crossed all limitations wherein the images of Gods, Deities are being photoshopped and editing to be added up in a manner that belittles the sanctity, reverence and venerable of the deity. It in no manner enhances the beauty of the scriptures through which one is connected to the deity rather it creates a perverse, superfluous image of the deity, that has no more relevance than the RSS(Rich Site Summary) Feeds or timeline relevance that keeps changing faster than that of a blinking eye. Facebook, /whatsapp/ Telegram or any site you look for, you will find people sharing images randomly on one basis or another without giving a thought to the reverence and sanctity of thee Godly beings they are conditioned to worship.
Robot Ganesha Blessing
Lord-Hanuman-breaks-coconuts-himself
Even recently I saw some Robotic idols of Ganesha that used to stand up to bless people and people were thronging to get the blessing, another robotic idol of Hanuman was there where people were feeding coconut into the mouth of the idol and the idol used to close the mouth and a broken half coconut used to come as prasad from the arm in the vessel. Or another idol of Krishna where in the people used to put there offering into the bowl of Krishna and Krishna runs to push open a gate and emerges from other side with the offered thali/plate in hands. I could not understand are people bowing to the idols or enjoying the moments of seeing the robotic idols blessing them. After the function is over the robotic God will be dismantled, a new form of God that is ready to be dismantled.
Earlier people used to immerse torn/ distorted images or broken idols or bury them under the earth, it was natural for the material were bio-degradable so what came from nature merged back into nature. But this is not same now, for most of the printing inks, sculptures are non-biodegradable so can cause more nature pollution.
Most of these social forwards and idols are denigrated for they are bound to be made fun of by those who cannot comprehend what you might be sharing for you in You never realised what an act of blasphemy you have done for yourself. In the age of Electronic gadgets people mostly save the images on the Hard Disks and easily share them with friends on android or social media with no knowledge or little knowledge
Most of the Religions work on the concept of Karma (action, work or deed. It is a working spiritual principle of cause and effect where intent and actions of an individual influence the future of that individual). Like the concept of Religious Karma, most of the religions have deep rooted foundation in Gods/ Goddesses/ Guru. Supremacy of Gods/Goddesses/Guru is accepted root and all the noble work is done with a noble intent for liberation, so the depth of reverence, acceptance and belief has to be proper and in that order. Gods/Goddesses/Guru have a relevance beyond the personal choices and those following the path of religion cannot even think of removing, deleting or disrespecting them. Then how come people who store images of those very Gods/Goddesses/Guru in their mobiles, desktops, laptops delete them for saving space. Will they think of deleting images of their loved one’s, parents, children, if not then a condition to delete images of Gods/Goddesses/ Guru’s creates bad/negative Karma. Similarly, when one does not like to share lot of images of ancestors,parents,family, friends or loved ones to public who may criticize them, accuse or abuse then why do such a thing with your Gods/Goddesses/ Guru where we are actually disrespecting them for these very Gods/Goddesses/ Guru’s were worshipped, prayed and loved by those very parents and deceased ones who loved you.
One has to understand like Ancestors/Parents/Siblings; God/goddesses/guru are also personal to one. So respect that, love it and evolve for when there is love, affection, caring too happens naturally for it is beyond any organisation weakness and needs. It is related to one’s own depth and expanse.
Now we know certain things which can and should be avoided but then how to follow the religious way without any irreverence, disrespect.
For Idols natural ingredients like Sesame seeds, sand, turmeric, ash, wood are excellent where the binding compounds can be honey, water, milk, rice for gaining the shape and size. Such idols can be made everyday and the same can be immersed in water and the water can be poured into the flower pots, ponds or lakes. If making idols is not possible then wood/brass/silver or Gold idols are preferred, they can be with you for a long period of time.
Regarding paper images, they can be immersed in water and allow the paper to be absorbed in water. Completely avoid 3D/ Vinyl papers/ Plastic sheets.
For digital images, have a external Pen-drive/ Hard-disk, move all of the images into them from all the electronic gadgets and keep it safe.
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