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ARTICLE : The rituals called yajna
Dear Friends:
What is the importance of rituals to a sAdhaka? Why would one even
bother? Sages tell us that rituals are important. The Srimad Bhagavad
Gita tells us why so.
Verses 4.28-34 tell us that each act we could concievably do can be done
as a sacrifice, a yajna, that is, as individual acts of surrender. That's
basically what the yajnas are; they are individual acts in the whole
scheme of total surrender. That means, a person who is totally surrendered
to God, is performing all the possible types of yajnas at the same time, all
the time. God referred to these sacrifices as karmasannyAsa in verses SBG
18.2-3. God says that all these yajna-karmas end in GYAna (SBG 4.34), and
part of that GYAna must be the realization and recognition of the meaning
of the verse SBG 4.24, in which it is said that God Himself is the worshipper
and the worshipped, and the basis of the rituals of yajna is the understanding
that all of these are brahmakarma and have brahma-mukhi gantavya.
Thus, yajnas if done as karmayoga (that is, a karma done with the idea
but not necesarily the recognition that all karma is done by prakR^iti,
and the senses merely take part in the physical acts), are well-formulated
ways that repetitively remind us of brahma-GYAna, and these rituals serve
their purose when that GYAna is established (SBG 4.34).
May we have such karmayoga.
With best regards,
Dhruba.
