Usage of sight across faiths

By Anonymous -
Diana Eck’s book Darśan Seeing The Divine Image In India brings up many points about religion that I’ve thought about for many years but didn’t know how to put into words. Growing up in an Abrahamic faith in a western culture I found it hard to understand some parts of this book but there were also some key points that resonated with me. On page 45 Eck quotes a religious text stating how in order to believe in a god or deity you have to be able to see it and feel it. This idea of needed a physical form of the god or deity makes so much sense in my mind because it would provide a form of tangible proof of existence in some form or another. In many Indian homes there are shrines to their gods and deities that they often emotionally and physically interact with daily. 






In Abrahamic faiths (which ae often found in more western cultures) there isn’t a need or emphasis for a physical form of god that people can see or feel but rather an emphasis on the word of god, not the looks of god. I find it so interesting how different faiths incorporate the senses in different ways and find some senses to be more important than others. 

Comments

  1. Jonathan Brumberg-KrausApril 2, 2020 at 12:30 PM

    I think it's the tendency of the "Abrahamic faiths" (c'mon, I know you mean Judaism ;-)) to play down or even condemn the physical elements of interacting with the "Something More" of reality (i.e., what many religions call "gods" or "God") that has made them so irrelevant to many modern people. Disembodied relationships don't feel like anything, but we register and remember experiences we see with our eyes, touch with our hands, taste, smell, hear - and really feel connected. So we turn away from our own institutionalized religions that don't offer much of this. Sometimes it feels like other religions do it better than the "Abrahamic faiths" we've grown up with (and out of).You see this here in Hindu worship.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Amidst the Pandemic

By -
Image
I think having the opportunity to take Smells and Bells and then experiencing a worldwide pandemic came with good timing. Oftentimes, we’re so rushed to get from one one place to another that we miss out on what happens around us. We’re so accustomed to the lifestyle of being busy that it has become the norm for many of us. However, the pandemic has forced us to slow down. We’re now appreciating everything that we had previously taken for granted and noticing things in our surroundings that we have never noticed before.  Take this quarantining/social distancing as an opportunity to be more aware of what you experience through the senses. I don’t think my senses have necessarily heightened over the past 5 weeks, but I am actively making the choice to pay more attention to what I see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. I like going on nature/mindfulness walks and basking in the sunshine out in my backyard. This morning, I could hear a faint noise from the wind, hear the birds chirping, f
Read more

Food in the Afterlife

By -
Image
In Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions , Perez talks of Ashabi and her grandchildren providing food offerings to their ancestors. This immediately reminded me of the practice of food sacrifice in early China. I've taken Chinese language classes for about 7 years now and in one of the lessons, we learned about food as well as the history of food in Chinese culture. Ashabi and her grandchildren would give food offerings to their ancestors every day. This included nine beverages (coffee, liquor, and water mixed with sugar and molasses) and nine square pieces of coconut topped with red palm oil and guinea pepper. The offerings would also include whatever food was dropped on the ground. In their house, food dropping on the floor signified more than it would in common American households. It signified that the ancestors wanted that food and had willingly made it fall to the floor. They also used dishware that had been chipped which was
Read more