Ritual

Usually this word tends to be associated with the aspect of ‘worship’ and something confined to the idea of ‘sacredness’. Loosely speaking, the idea of ritual indicates a sequence of actions one has to repeatedly undertake, strictly in a prescribed order (crystallized over the generations and codified/ sanctified through collective memory) to achieve a result – either of appeasing the Gods or fulfilling a duty or wishing for benevolent events to happen in one’s life. There are several ‘intentions’ behind the idea of ritual, one of them being of achieving a state of mind that may closely resemble Godliness. Other intentions include the idea of purity v/s non-purity, holy v/s secular, hierarchical systems to maintain ideas of privileged class and untouchables, financial support to the institutional structure of worship and many other political motives.

I would like to highlight important observations from above statements – A) Any concept, no matter how noble its intention maybe, isn’t uniformly perceived when it comes to applying the same in practice – modifications (and adulterations) are inevitable. B) Any concept or an idea undergoes changes and transformations over a period of time. C) It is upto the individual to ‘discover’ and realize the potential of the ‘idea’ and even surpass the idea itself. 

In other words, according to point ( C ), performance of a prescribed set of actions does not necessarily guarantee the intended noble intention that may have been dictated by somebody else in some different place and in some different time period. Or, a crystallized ‘method’ and the sequence of actions does not necessarily guarantee a historic output. And if one is doing actions for a substantial amount of time, without really questioning what that action is meant for and what it will let you achieve, then the action is nothing but a ‘ritual’ that is being performed. If we change, our intentions will change and so will our aspirations. If aspirations change, so should the method of achieving our priorities in life.

My question to the students therefore is: Is your way of thinking being - ritualistic? Are you performing actions without thinking, without analyzing, without any concern for yourself? Are you doing something just for the sake of doing? Are you doing something because it seems to have been dictated by the society and has a huge cultural/ historical/ social baggage? Have you evaluated that a given set of framework prescribed by your colleagues, family, college, relate to your individual aspirations? Are the prescribed demands entrusted by the society able to make you discover the meaning of your life? Have you thought about such questions deeply enough and boldly enough? 

My experience tells me that the biggest obstacle to our development is our nature of thought and the biggest asset is also the nature of our thoughts. Our thoughts are everything in life and therefore, I would sincerely urge the students to think deeply for themselves – since that will eventually make your life purposeful, meaningful and liberating. 

How does one achieve this? One can start by observing things that one is interested to learn something from – music, stories, reading, drawing, playing. One needs to experiment with things one has not done before. One has to start looking ‘inwards’ and ask oneself – what is one trying to discover here and how can one achieve this sense of discovery and learning? How is one thinking and how are those thoughts, in turn, shaping oneself and one’s life? 

The advantage of contemporary times is that everything is open for questioning – old orders are dismantled, hierarchical relationships need not be present always and ideas can be forthcoming from any dimension, from any place and from any slice of time. This is the time of volatility and a destabilized environment. The onus of finding one’s way is upto ‘you’ – the Reader!

Best wishes for a bright future!