Smells and Bells

Darśan To See & Be Seen By Ava Barry Darśan, a term that is seemingly unknown for may Americans who don't practice Hinduism. This term means to see or view a deity, sacred place, or sacred person and be seen back. Darśan is at the center-view of Hindu worship, for in Hinduism one believes that that the eyes are the windows to the divine. Images in Hinduism hold great meaning because the deities reside in the images of themselves. Moreover, images of deity's in your home must be taken care of by performing pūjā. The deities entrust themselves to the human to take care of them, and by doing this the people are given blessings.  Image of the deity Shiva- creative commons license Shivacropped.jpg " God is present in image, whether for a moment, for a week, or forever. It is this fact which is at the basis of darśan. People come to see because there is something powerful there to see. " - Diana L. Eck While I do not practice Hinduism, I can say that this act of seeing...

Religion and Vision: Seeing the Divine in Hinduism By Genesis Lantigua Diaz Introduction Diana L. Eck’s Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India introduces Western readers to Hinduism and helps the reader appreciate and value Hindu approaches to worship. Eck, professor of religion and Indian studies at Harvard University, composes a text filled with definitions of Hindu worship terms. One of these terms is Darsan . Darsan is the Indian word for seeing, more specifically spiritual seeing. Eck argues that in contrast to Christianity and Islam which emphasize hearing the divine (listening to the word of God or Allah), Hinduism emphasizes seeing the divine. In Hinduism, the “central act of worship” is to see and to be seen by the divine.  “The central act of Hindu worship, from the point of view of the lay person, is to stand in the presence of the deity and to behold the image with one’s own eyes, to see and be seen by the deity” Eck, 3. Idols or Icons in Hinduism In Hinduism the de...

       Do we have to see something to believe it? Well, that depends on what it is you are trying to believe. Simply viewing something may just serve to confirm your previous notions of what you had already imagined. We can't really see wind, and we don't have a lot of wind-deniers. Of course, that's an obvious example, because we can feel it. If another sense can confirm the existence of something, do we really need to have the others involved? Diana L Eck argues that "Seeing is not a passive awareness of visual data, but an active focusing upon it, "touching" it" (Eck 15). The way she describes it as "touching" this data is fascinating to me. Going back to that phrase, "I have to see it to believe it," it holds true sometimes! Vision as touch can be really affirming! Touch is one of the strongest senses because when something is tangible there's not a lot of room for debate as to whether it exists or not, or what it looks like. ...

  Reading about Darsán and its critical role in Hindu worship, made me think: what if you’re blind? There are other aspects to the rituals, yes, but if physically seeing the deity is such a central point, what replaces that aspect of worship when sight isn’t possible? Part of me hopes that there is something else that the visually impaired can do that fills the time during rituals that would be for Darsán, something that allows them to feel like they’re seeing the image of the deity, but that can be perceived with the other senses. I think that there probably isn’t any other specific activity that fills in for Darsán. In a lot of cases, rituals and types of worship are as much about the things you physically perceive as they are about the way those things make you feel. I would assume that if you’re blind, being in the presence of the image of the deity is enough and you focus more on the emotional aspect of the experience. Rather than physically seeing the image of the deity and p...

  I read Yann Martel’s novel, Life of Pi, almost a year before its film adaptation was released — and I remember really liking it, despite only understanding some of its key themes. At 11, any notion of spirituality or metaphysics flew over my head, but I recognized the weight of these discussions when they appeared within the book. It meant something when Pi converted to Christianity and Islam while still practicing as a Hindu. It meant something when Richard Parker, Pi’s Bengal tiger companion, did not say goodbye after they survived 227 days at sea together. And it meant something when Pi told two (very different) versions of his story to the Japanese transport officials and allowed them to choose which one they wrote in their report. But I couldn’t understand what.  The story compelled me in a way few books previously had. It itched in the back of my mind and made me feel like I had stones in my heart. My hands shook with nervous energy every time I turned a page. For a ye...

       Dasan and Puja are important parts of Hinduism as discussed in Diana Eck's writings in  Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. During these rituals the image of god is deeply connected to spirituality as you envision the god in which you are praying to. Not only do you envision the god you are worshipping in that moment, you also have physical idols or some sort of physical imagery to guide you to do that. There are shrines and statues used to help us visualize the deities we worship. Even during religious festivals, hindu religions are very sight oriented in how they must be decorated and celebrated. Diwali must have bright colors and lights and is often associated with gold, the biggest factor of a Holi celebration is throwing the dye on each other, filling the area with color. Specific colors represent specific things and must be used to celebrate particular festivals. Sight is a sense heavily leaned on for the Hindu religion      Int...

      It has always bugged me how churches and synagogues and other religious places say to donate to .charities and give to those who are less fortunate, yet all I see when I walk into those spaces is gold. Gold wall ornaments, gold candle holders. It's all just gold. I try to understand that gold is a sign of divinity and godliness, but in my not-so-humble opinion, I think that more money should go to different charities. All sorts of places donate to churches, such as Chick-Fil-A or Amazon, donate to churches to promote their services, but the churches should in turn donate to other local nonprofits that benefit the community they're in. If God is represented in gold, and everything in a church has to be gold, that feels like an unfair monetary balance. If God is supposed to treat all his children equally and love all equally, why would he allow churches to  spend so much on furnishings yet so little on helping combat homelessness. I've been in many churches,...

This will be the first in a series of me loosely tying the various senses to various spheres of religion I want to explore. First up, sight. Vision. The sense that many claim to be the most important. And perhaps the sense that poses the largest challenge to spiritual belief. If you can’t see it, then it stands to reason that it doesn’t exist, right? Well, theologians have come up with many theories that claim to prove the exact opposite. Let’s explore one of the most prevalent ones. The teleological argument originated as part of Plato’s philosophy ( Laws) and was expanded upon by Aristotle ( Physics and Metaphysics ). It represents one of the foundational arguments that make up natural theology, the argument for the existence of God without divine revelation. There are many visual representations of the teleological argument, but here is one that is frequently used. You are walking along a beach that is littered with pebbles. After walking for a while, you look down at your feet an...

     Hinduism has always been of interest to me, for a lot of reasons. Now, granted, I don’t know a lot about it, but it’s always been visually interesting to me. I find the idea of the integration it has into the overall life, surroundings, and culture to be interesting and while I don’t necessarily wish that for a society I live in (or, rather, the society I do live in, since I very much wish religion would kindly remove itself from many places in which it has engrained itself), it’s beautiful and fascinating and interesting all the same. I feel like Eck’s book, and the added lecture from Dr. Tuggy, have not only filled in important context to me, but also made me realize a lot of things about my own faith and experience with faith.        I was drawn to paganism for many reasons, one of which is that I don’t like or have a lot of emotional investment in many Christian doctrine. I don’t like the idea of an all-seeing, all-knowing deity that punishe...

       Don't you wish you could see your favorite celebrity, just once? Even if just for a second, look at their house, maybe even just stand in the spot where they stood, see something they looked at with their own eyes? Although it is intended to be used in a religious context there is a word in Indian Hindusim,  " Darśan" that refers to this kind of seeing. In  Darśan: seeing the divine image in India , Diana Eck explains that religious seeing or  Darśan is a sort of worship that happens by looking upon holy items, places and people. For example Eck states that Hindus often go on pilgrimages to different sacred locations as "sacred sightseers" just to look upon the home of a god or goddess, a statue, a blessed city, and so on. Eck's description of the way people used to flock to Mahatma Gandhi just to "take his d arśan" (Eck 5) is what reminded me of modern day celebrities. Society has deemed celebrities important and even getting the chan...

 

Diana Eck's description of the richness associated with Hinduism was one of the most interesting reads for me. Reading the manner in which she described the opulence and relevance that goes into the preparation and viewing of holy sites and statues in India made me view my own origin in a new light.  I feel like sometimes when you're reply engulfed in a particular surrounding it somehow takes you father from appreciating its nuances, however looking at it from someone else perspective allowed me to see the beauty in practices that to me have to an extent lost their luster as I have been accustomed to them for so long. I found the way she spoke about there being an air of divinity not just in the idol but also in the location that holds it, when she talks about the process of "taking darshan" very interesting. This is something I have experienced countless times my life, as the belief is that the location that houses a specific idol has meaning to itself which in some ...

     One thing I found interesting in Diana Eck’s reading was the differences between Western monotheistic religions and Hinduism, specifically in their views of images in worship. In the West, the use of images is often seen as idolatry, that is, the worship of an object or something other than God as if it were God. As Dr. Dale Tuggy points out in his video lecture on Eck’s book, Western ideas and beliefs are often applied to Hindu devotion, claiming that the use of images, or idols, is wrong or bad. As mentioned in the video, the term idolatry is actually an outsider term, meaning that it has been used to describe Hindu practices from a Western viewpoint. I would argue that this goes against the concept of cultural relativism, the idea that a person's beliefs and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture, norms, and values From a comparative religious perspective, I think it’s important to keep cultural relativism in mind and try not to compare ...

Picture owned by Pravin475     https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Goddess_Durga_statue_of_2018_Durga_Puja_festival_06.jpg  To start things off, I want to make it clear that I wasn’t able to read “ Seeing the Divine Image in India '' so I had to watch the three videos on Oncourse instead. In regards to those videos, I have to say I was quite impressed by what they had to offer in terms of both the sensory and idolatry interpretations aspects of it. First and foremost, Hindu practice not seeing idols as a bad thing didn’t really surprise me since I was already pretty aware of how casual they were about it. I was also fairly well aware of how NOT casual christianity, Judaism, and Islam were about the idea of putting Idols everywhere. Honestly I never understood the whole mentality of seeing idolatry as sin in the first place. I mean yeah, today you can’t really put up a bunch of depictions of Jesus or whoever for the sake of public tolerance but back then, it just didn’...

Image from Dreamstime.com Reading about darsan reminded me a lot of my experience with Adoration. According to Christian tradition, Adoration is defined as "a​​ sign of devotion to and worship of Jesus Christ who is believed to be present in body, blood, soul, and divinity, under the appearance of the consecrated host, that is, sacramental bread" (wikipedia.org). It was and is difficult for me to understand how a piece of bread (a wafer, really) is supposed to encompass all of this. Additionally, adoration didn’t make me feel great because it is actually pretty awkward. Typically, people sit or pray in silence which can make it hard to think. I still have trouble looking at Jesus on the Cross in church even though I was an altar server because, in my upbringing, this statue was neither defined as a visual tool nor as an embodiment of the divine, so it really never “did” anything for me during mass, and I just looked at the priest.  The current and common view/thought/reactio...

So, anyone who knows me even a little bit probably knows that I like to go birdwatching, or "birding", in my free time. I get that this is a hobby that is probably kind of confusing or strange for a lot of people and that it makes me a total dweeb, but I do genuinely enjoy it. I love all wildlife, it just so happens that birds are incredibly abundant, vibrantly colored, and have a support network for people that like to watch them. To say that that the fulfillment I get from birdwatching is spiritual would be one hell of an overstatement, but it does let me connect with nature in a more active and in depth way. The moment of recognition, where you can look at a bird and be absolutely sure that you know what it is, is incredibly validating. Birding lets me attune myself to my senses and attempt to experience more deeply. A White-Winged Crossbill, one of the rarer birds I've seen this year The notion that idolatry is in some way a lesser form of religious practice has ...

Rama & Sita India is a destination that I would love to travel to. Its rich culture and religious diversity shape much of the country’s ideals, customs, architecture, music, art, etc. Diana Eck, author of “Darsan: Seeing the Divine Images in India” describes India best when she says, “India presents to the visitor an overwhelmingly visual impression. It is beautiful, colorful, sensuous. It is captivating and intriguing, repugnant, and puzzling. It combines the intimacy and familiarity of English four o’clock tea with the dazzling foreignness of caparisoned elephants or vast crowds bathing in the Ganga during an eclipse. India’s display of multi-armed images, its processions and pilgrimages, its beggars and kings, its street life and markets, its diversity of peoples- all appear to the eye in a kaleidoscope of images” (10).  One of Frida Kahlo's Self Portraits I remember being mind blown about our vision when a challenge having to do with the color of a dress was goin...

When we're in preschool or kindergarten we all learn what colors are and what their names are. We might have been shown flashcards with the colors on them or learned to associate colors with specific objects like how an apple is red and how grass is green. Growing up we are meant to assume that the color we see is the color that everyone sees, but how can we know? How can we know that my green isn't your blue and someone else's red? We agree on what colors are based on what we're taught not knowing if this is anything close to what others are seeing. Supposedly we don't all see colors exactly the same (Ackerman, 252), but it's not as if what we see is wildly different from what others see. We see colors in different shades and at different levels of vibrancy. What I found really interesting from what Ackerman said about color is that "emotions and memories we associate with certain colors also stain the world we see" (253). After she makes this s...