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Thread: Pancha Ganapati-Our way to Celebrate 25th December :)

  1. #11
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    Re: Pancha Ganapati-Our way to Celebrate 25th December :)

    Namaste Nayasurya ji



    The pressure here is very tremendous. I can see throngs of my friends from our temple, all native Hindu...with trees on their face book profiles.
    I understood the problem faced by Native Hindus in the foreign land and the necessity to come up with this sort of things.

    For the people who are forced to go out their homeland (due to security problems faced by Sri Lankan Hindus or Kashmir Hindus or other security problems faced by Hindus ) this could be the way to deal.

    But I don't understand the need for other Hindus to migrate to US / other countries ALONG with their KIDS. I wont dictate anyone but men born in some unknown poor hamlet of BIHAR, ASSAM or other similar places working for Indian Army or construction industry or sanitation Industry etc etc in Middle East don't migrate to Siachen or Saudi Arabia along with their KIDS. They stay away from their families for years together. The entire family sacrifices. You should observe the bonding and mutual respect. That's fading off today due to migration.

    I raised my objection in the following ways.

    #1.
    Is there a need to emulate west?

    I understood that Non Resident Indians/Hindus are facing pressure due to culture prevailing in US. Thats fine. I empathize with the genuine cases. On others I dont have the RIGHT to criticize or the need to empathize. I think they are responsible for their plight. Read the previous para.

    #2. Was Shree Pancha Ganapathi invented?

    I didn't get answer from OP yet. If SPG is an invented deity, that invention is not necessary for Indians. It is my view. I will give enough points to justify my view.

    #3. Today 14th Feb, 25th Dec and 1st Jan has become an integral part of Hindus living Indian metros and small cities. In the coming days we will not mind slaughtering cows and sheeps in front our own houses. We are VERY GOOD in identifying reasons to justify. :-(

    #4. There is a systematic plan to replace our culture with western culture during festive season (and mix into our lifestyle) due to unnecessary patronizing or mad following. It is affecting poor and small Indian businesses in India. If you don't believe ask any of your friends living India to compare their spending on laddu or jalebi vis-a-vis on chocolate or coke or pepsi or other alcoholic beverages.



    But, we have come up with a perfect way to work our holly days out. We celebrated the return of our Beloved Sun...and his Son.

    Starting with Saturnalia going to Mithras. We celebrate Beloved Lord Shani Deva and Beloved Lord Surya.

    Our children get their gifts over a week earlier than their xtian friends...and because our government shuts down always the week prior to xmas...we always have our days off too.

    and...instead of being home a week then getting some gifts and having one week to play with them...our children have the entire two weeks of vacation to play.

    Also, we don't have to worry about the xtians shutting down stores on us for our meal or if we run out of milk. Our meal happens when they are still scrambling to purchase gifts.

    Now, instead of my children coming home saying..."why don't we get gifts?" I have my children come home and say..."Mom! my friends want to know how come they don't get gifts early!"

    Being here means we must bend to what the cultural majority wishes...and so we have these two weeks off. So we just have to find ways to own them as much as they do.

    Once we do this...it loses its power over us...and the pressure disappears.

    I sincerely suggest this to anyone having difficulties with the pressures of this time of year.
    +1. This is an assertive and proactive approach without compromising or giving into pressure.
    Anirudh...

  2. #12
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    Re: Pancha Ganapati-Our way to Celebrate 25th December :)

    Namaste EM ji

    Can you give links or explain me on the origin of Shree Pancha Ganapathi ?
    Anirudh...

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    Re: Pancha Ganapati-Our way to Celebrate 25th December :)



    Vannakkam Anirudh: I'm not sure what you mean. Five headed Ganesha murthis have been around for a very long time I suspect. But I'm not sure if you mean the deity, or the festival. The festival was created, yes, as a response to a need. But really don't know about Ganesha's form with 5 faces, or heads. I do know there are some famous ones, like in Alaveddy, Sri Lanka , where one of the murthies is five faced. If you search on five faced Ganeshas you'll get a lot of images.

    So which is it you're asking? The festival has a ton of stuff on-line. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancha_Ganapati

    Editted ... I did find this:
    "But the most relevant meaning of the five-headed Ganesh is certainly that these heads symbolize the five kosha in the subtile anatomy experienced by the yogi :
    annamaya kosha : the flesh body made of matter
    pranamaya kosha : the breath body, or energy body
    manomayakosha : the mental body
    vighn�namayakosha : the body of the Upper Consciousness
    anandamayakosha : the body of Cosmic Bless."
    Aum Namasivaya

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    Re: Pancha Ganapati-Our way to Celebrate 25th December :)

    Quote Originally Posted by Anirudh View Post
    Namaste EM ji

    Can you give links or explain me on the origin of Shree Pancha Ganapathi ?

    Namaste Ji,

    No body invented Sri Pancha Ganapati i.e. Ganapati with Panchamukhas(five faced).The worship of this deity is mentioned in Ganesha Purana,Mudgala Purana,Skanda Maha Purana,Padma Purana,Brahma Vaivarta Purana,Shaiva Agama Shastras and in tantric manuals.There is archeological evidence to show that worship of five headed Ganesha has been in existence for nearly 1000 years.


    SOME PROOFS:
    1.
    Los Angeles Country Museum ,Indian Embassy Washington Exhibit circa 9th-10th century

    http://photodivision.gov.in/waterMar...p?id=16011.jpg

    2.From Cornell Museum:
    Five Headed Ganapati
    from early 18th century(i.e. at least 300 years old)

    http://museum.cornell.edu/collection...-ganapati.html



    Last edited by Ram11; 29 December 2014 at 07:52 PM. Reason: Added Proofs.

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    Re: Pancha Ganapati-Our way to Celebrate 25th December :)

    Thank you EM ji and Ram ji.
    Anirudh...

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    Re: Pancha Ganapati-Our way to Celebrate 25th December :)

    Namaste Ram ji

    Thanks for those links. I have seen Shree Pancha Mukhi Ganapathi temple in the area I live. Never had any doubts about the deity or temple.

    While reading the links you provided earlier, got a doubt whether it was invented to fix a specific problem. Kindly read my reply to Nayasurya ji.
    Anirudh...

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    Re: Pancha Ganapati-Our way to Celebrate 25th December :)

    Quote Originally Posted by Sudas Paijavana View Post
    How the celebration of a deity, in this case Lord Shri Ganesha, a mere act that is completely against the foundational and theological cores of Abrahamic ideologies wherein it just happens to fall in line with the dates of Christmas-related festivities, the latter whose very origin is polytheistic and non-Christian, mind you, wherein murti-s of Lord Shri Ganesha are offered laudations and comfort, during which the propagation of a Bharatiya deity is enamored and embellished with Dharmic forms of bhakti; can be seen as anti-Hindu, escapes my noggin entirely.
    Namaste Sudas,

    I agree, and I will even go further. Hinduism has lots of festivities of which many are local. So I do not understand why Ganesha can not sit with the fir tree. This is part of the great Germanic tradition of tree worship. Northern Europe was covered with dense forest and people would worship old trees, and gather around them. They were considered sacred. Winter solstice was a celebration of light, that was only renamed by Christianity. In the same way many local Pagan Gods were re-branded as Christian Saints.

    The most beautiful part of Christianity lies in her Pagan heritage, not in the sado-masochistic suffering worship or the Judaic slave-master worship of a choleric God. As a child sitting around the Fir tree with all its lights and glitter, while outside the snow was falling, was a magical moment, much like Divali.

    Songs like O tannenbaum (O Fir Tree), have nothing Christian

    O Fir Tree, O fir tree,
    How lovely are your branches!
    O Fir Tree, O fir tree,
    How lovely are your branches!
    They are green when summer days are bright,
    They are green when winter snow is white.
    O Fir Tree, O Fir tree,
    How lovely are your branches!

    Celebrating the Fir Tree is as natural to North-Europeans as worshiping the Cow and the Ganges is to Indians.

    By the way the Catholics never had a Christmas tree at Christmas but a crib. It was protestants that restored worship around the Christmas tree, because protestantism came up in the Germanic Northern countries. A hundred years ago Catholics did not have a Christmas tree, now it has become a symbol of Christianity around the world (a revival of paganism!).

    In the same way Eastern is essentially a Pagan tradition and the Easter bunny and the tradition of seeking eggs has nothing to do with later Christianity. Christianity only used these existing traditions. I think Pagans should restore these traditions to their original meaning. They are incredibly powerful as they are deeply ingrained in the psyche of North Europeans. In the Northern hemisphere life very much revolves around the seasons, and seasons are connected to the Sun, which is much weaker in Northern Hemisphere.

    Christmas is basically Winter solstice, and the story of rising from death after three days is Sun worship. When the Sun drops to it lowest point in December and stays there for three days, (s)he would be declared dead. Or rather (s)he would be considered to have descended into the underworld. After three days (s)he would victoriously reappear (rebirth), and that was celebrated. By the way Celts and Germans did not see darkness as evil. They understood that in Winter life went on underground to gloriously reappear in Spring. The time of darkness was the beginning of recreation. That is why the Celts had the year begin in autumn and the new day started at Sunset.

    Santa Claus goes back to the worship of the God Wodan (aka Weda , Odin), who is similar to Indra and Zeus. The Germanics had houses with a hole in the middle of the roof as a chimney. It was believed that the God Wodan riding through the sky on his eight-legged horse Sleipnir would throw gifts through the chimney. In later times when the Italian city of Bari wanted to profit from religious business by having their own patron saint. They stole the corps of a Greek saint from what is now Turkey called Saint Nicolaus. Dutch seafarers visiting the Port of Bari combined stories of this wonder man with the old Germanic tradition to create the Sint Nicolaas fest, and brought it to America (New Amsterdam, later New York) where it became Santa Claus, also known as father Christmas. But in the core it is a nice Pagan fest.

    In fact Christmas is a truly Pagan fest, you only have to leave out the idea of Jesus birth that was planted on it. By the way in my country hardly anyone is even thinking about that. It is the magical celebration of light, family reunion, helping people in need, and peace that is on the mind of most people. If you have a dislike for the word Christmas and Christ, it may help to know that the name Chrestos or Christos is of Pagan origin and existed centuries before Jesus was ever supposed to be born.

    It was mostly Jewish priests who started this conversion business and converted Pagan (Indo-Aryan) tribe (Galileans or Nazarene) in the Norh of Israel to become Israelites (not Jews, you can not be a Jew unless your female lineage is throughout Jewish). These newly converted Galileans were the fierce defenders of Israel wanting to make war on the Roman occupiers (called Zealots for this reason). When the Jews betrayed their leader to the Romans, who executed him, this led to a fierce hatred against Jews and Romans and then those Zealots started to convert Pagans to their Israelite faith. Judaism is the birth ground of this religious fanaticism that threatened the stability of the Roman empire (Jewish sects were constantly fighting with Greeks within the Roman empire even creating massacres).

    The Romans being practical above all created a new syncretic state religion in which they combined the various cults (Greek, Persian, Egyptian, Jewish, Christian etc.) in the empire . By allowing the Christians to become the priesthood they used their zealous fanaticism to expand their empire and as a shield against Jewish religious fanaticism (They were suppressed, no longer allowed to convert).

    Islam is an offshoot of the same Zealots, three of their tribes fled to the Arabian desert after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and started to convert Arabs to monotheism. Those Zealots did not see Jesus as a God, but simply a messiah, a king coming to free them from oppression (The idea of the trinity was created by the Romans). Mohamed is maybe a later invention of the Arabs, a fictional founder, because the Koran is only put in writing decades after the death of Mohamed, different Arab tribes adding their own stories. Even half a century after Mohamed's death they still had Jesus on their coins, which is odd as all Kings put their own face on their coins. We are living in world of lies spun by temple priests over many centuries.

    For people in India Christmas has no use, but for North Europeans it is a one of those precious Pagan traditions they should cherish. If being a Hindu means slavishly adopting foreign culture then it is the same cultural colonialism as Judaism, Christianity and Islam are promoting. It think that is what turns religion in senseless ritualism and a tool for cultural, economical domination.

    That is not what Krishna sees as True Religion, that is not what the Mahabharata war is fought over. The heart of Religion as Krishna sees it is not scripture, not his worship as only God, not a strive for moksha, not ritualism, not temple visits, not tradition, it is Dharma and upholding the Virtues of Dharma alone. If we can not see that, we already mummified Religion like Abramic religions have done.

    Hinduism is characterized as a truly diverse religion, not a monolithic central theology like Abramic religions. Every state in India has its local customs, traditions, and festivities, and worships local Gods. I think it is only natural that people in other countries combine Dharma with their own cultural traditions.

    The idea of Dharma is opposed to the idea of orthodoxy as developed in Abramic traditions. In Dharma Man is defined by his action. His Dharm is to respect and serve all other beings in existence. In Abramism Dharm is often made insignificant to belief. Being subservient to the right God is the only thing that counts. You can do any crime, he will forgive you. That is adharm. Especially orthodox Jews and orthodox Protestants live by scripture alone (sola scriptura). They want to destroy everything Pagan. But Christmas is a light they have never been able to extinguish.

    I think, more dangerous to Hinduism in India are converts that want to live as pure cultural Hindus and are creating a new orthodoxy along Abramic lines. Ideas like, there is only one God, and all Gods are either the same or subservient to this God. That duty is to seek salvation (moksha) in this God, etc. Those are the ideas that destroyed Paganism and religious freedom in the Roman empire. Let us beware not to create the next movement of religious fanatics based on scripture. It may come to haunt us. Is it not strange that these people accept Jesus as Son of God, and the Bible as equal to the Gita, but reject the Christmas tree? Better make up our mind, is Hinduism a diverse Pagan Religion around Dharm, or a monotheistic salvation seeking religion with the Gita as Bible? I am not interested in the latter.
    Last edited by Avyaydya; 01 January 2015 at 06:18 PM.

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    Re: Pancha Ganapati-Our way to Celebrate 25th December :)

    Namaste Avyaydya,


    > I think, more dangerous to Hinduism in India are converts that want to live as
    > pure cultural Hindus and are creating a new orthodoxy along Abramic lines.
    > Ideas like, there is only one God, and all Gods are either the same or subservient
    > to this God. That duty is to seek salvation (moksha) in this God, etc.
    > Those are the ideas that destroyed Paganism and religious freedom in the Roman
    > empire. Let us beware not to create the next movement of religious fanatics based
    > on scripture. It may come to haunt us. Is it not strange that these people accept Jesus
    > as Son of God, and the Bible as equal to the Gita, but reject the Christmas tree? Better make
    > up our mind, is Hinduism a diverse Pagan Religion around Dharm, or a monotheistic
    > salvation seeking religion with the Gita as Bible? I am not interested in the latter.


    I'm sorry to go off topic, but I must respectfully disagree here and do so in the name of affirming true Hindu diversity. The idea that there is one Supreme Being and that other deities are either the same being or subservient and/or parts of the Supreme is not the invention of converts, nor is the idea that the goal is liberation (mokṣa). These doctrines are among the basic teachings of all twelve traditional branches* of vedānta (as well as the forms of tantra I've come across) and have been part of some traditons of sanātana dharma for millennia. (Well, a few branches of vedānta are not enthusiatic about mokṣa.) They were taught by śrī ādi śaṅkarācārya, who, in his 8th century commentary on the bhagavad gītā, wrote, "There can only be one īśvara [Lord or Supreme Being]." They were taught by the twelve āļvārs (or āzhvārs) in the 6th to 8th centuries C.E. and they were taught in the brahma sūtras long before the āļvārs.They are not derived from Christianity. They are found in several Hindu texts. Nor do they resemble Christianity. They do not look to one God out of fanaticism. They do so because every branch of vedānta but one points to the underlying unity of reality, the Whole. seeing God (the Ultimate Reality), the world, and beings as in some sense not separate and in some sense non-different.

    Look at the teachings of śrī rāmakṛṣṇa in The Gospel of Ramakrishna (rāmakṛṣṇa kathāmṛta). This guru was the antithesis of a fanatic, because he saw truth in all traditions of sanātana dharma and even in all authentic religious traditions of the world, teaching that Truth appears differently when viewed from different sides, yet he was devoted to one supreme God, who was to him kālī mātā (Mother Kali). He had no problem with acknowledging that religious traditions tend to incorporate errors over time, but he had no interest in correcting the errors of other religions and even said as much. Seeking One Reality behind the many need not make one a fanatic.

    Surely, truly embracing diversity in sanātana dharma means accepting monotheistic, monistic or nondualist, polytheistic, and atheistic Hindus instead of urging everyone to become a polytheist. In truth, all four interpretations of sanātana dharma seem to be quite ancient. Personally, I'm drawn to several different forms of vedānta, but I respect polytheists and atheists. I agree with śrī rāmakṛṣṇa that there are many valid paths and that we need teachings that speak to us at the stage where we are now. I think that when we truly understand the teachings of the great Hindu philosophers, there is no room for fanaticism.

    What do you think?

    praṇām



    * Svāmī bhaskarānanda identified 12 traditional subschools or "branches" of vedānta in the book Journey from Many to One. I've changed the order of his list to a chronological one and added some synonyms of a number of branches: advaita (Nondualism), bhedābheda (Difference in Non-difference) or aupādhika bhedābheda (Difference in Non-difference related to Limiting Conditions), viśiṣṭādvaita (Nondualism of the Qualified Whole), dvaitādvaita (Duality in Non-duality) or svābhāvika bhedābhada (Natural or Essential Difference in Non-difference), dvaita (Dualism), śuddhādvaita (Pure Nondualism), śivādvaita or śaiva-viśiṣṭādvaita, viśeṣādvaita (Nondualism Qualified [by śākti]), acintya-bhedābheda (Inconceivable Difference in Non-difference), avibhāgādvaita (Indistinguishable Nondualism), śākta-viśiṣṭādvaita, and śāktādvaita.

    The twelve branches of vedānta are sometimes confused with the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy (āstika darśana): nyāya, vaiśeṣika, sāṃkhya, yoga, mimāṃsā, and vedānta.
    Last edited by anucarh; 01 January 2015 at 07:41 PM. Reason: added a parenthetic note on exceptions to a generalization
    śrīmate nārāyaṇāya namaḥ

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    Re: Pancha Ganapati-Our way to Celebrate 25th December :)

    Quote Originally Posted by Anirudh View Post
    Namaste Ram ji
    Namaste Anirudh Ji,

    I understand.

    Namaste Avyaydya Ji,

    Thanks a lot Ji for sharing your knowledge with us.We learned many things from your post.
    In Dharma Man is defined by his action.
    Truth!

    Namaste Anucarh Ji,

    I read that there are many schools of Vedanta but never knew there are 12.Thanks for sharing this important information.

  10. #20
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    Re: Pancha Ganapati-Our way to Celebrate 25th December :)

    Namaste,

    I am one of those "wrong Hindus" who celebrates the Xitian festival! This is because me and my hubby are in love with the concept - of giving, sharing, rejoicing (mainly giving). Also we like the concept of appreciating other religions too, even if other religions won't do it to Hinduism. We think that just because someone is mean, we don't have to act the same way. We think that Pancha Ganapathi is a great alternative. Ofcourse, young children talk to their friends at school and think that the Xitian festival is like our diwali and why not everyone is celebrating it. It becomes quite complicated to explain them and so an alternative as 'Pancha Ganapathi' is a welcome addition!

    Thanks,

    Viraja
    jai hanuman gyan gun sagar jai kapis tihu lok ujagar

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