Editorial
the shraddha ceremony of his father. He was assisted by his two young sons. When they sat for worship with eyes closed, their pet cat ate the naivedya before it could be offered. The man arranged for new naivedya and also put the cat in a corner and covered it with a wicker basket. The cat was let out after the worship. The next year, before the worship began, the cat was confined to the same corner with the basket over it. This practice continued for many years. One day the man himself passed away. Now his two grown-up sons got ready to perform his shraddha ceremony. Just when the worship was about to begin, the elder brother exclaimed, ‘My God! We have forgotten an important ritual of our sacred tradition!’ ‘What is it?’ asked the younger brother anxiously. ‘Don’t you remember, how at every shraddha ceremony our father would keep a cat in that corner covered with a wicker basket?’ replied the elder brother. As the pet cat too had died by then, the younger brother rushed to the market and purchased a new wicker basket and a new cat in the name of the dear departed father. The worship began with a cat once again kept in the same corner covered in a basket! A ‘sacred’ tradition had been safeguarded!! The sooner such cat-basket customs are weeded out from our faith, the better for us. But what if we in ignorance discard the very fundamentals of our religion, like throwing the baby out with the bathwater? To avoid this danger, the first thing we have to do is to learn to distinguish between the essentials and the nonessentials of Sanata Dharma. The essentials are eternal and based upon the immortal nature of man, and are
February 2019
Today, there is a growing fear that Sanatana Dharma is under threat; that it is being defamed, distorted, and weakened. Some of our ancient customs and beliefs are being swept away under the hammer blows of different forces — forces of social justice, of malice, and of ignorance. There are people clamouring to change ancient temple customs; some are out to discover the caste of Hindu gods; some are crying hoarse that Hinduism has become intolerant of other faiths; some indulge in all kinds of deceptions to wean Hindus away from their faith; and some regard animals as more sacred than fellow human beings! In short, the religion that enshrines eternal, universal truths seems to be losing its fire. In his first write-up for Udbodhana, the Bengali monthly of the Ramakrishna Order, Swami Vivekananda makes an interesting observation. Pointing out to the fast paced changes in sentiments, manners, customs and morals that the British Raj enforced upon the Hindu society, Swamiji writes: ‘Slowly and slowly, by the strong dint of law, many of our most cherished customs are falling off day by day — we have no power to withstand that. And why is there no power? Is truth really powerless? “Truth alone conquers and not falsehood.” — Is this Divine Vedic saying false? Or who knows but that, those very customs which are being swept away by the deluge of the power of Western sovereignty or of Western education were not real acharas, but were anacharas after all.’ How are acharas corrupted? A parable explains this. Once a man was performing
9 The Vedanta Kesari
PA G E S P O N S O R : S WA M I B A N E S H A N A N D A , V E D A N TA S O C I E T Y, G E R M A N Y
The Task Before Us
