CULTURAL NEWS, Diwali

Do you know why Diwali is celebrated on the darkest night of the year?

Let’s know the story behind The Festival of Lights.

It all starts with Ramayan – one of the greatest spiritual epics of all time.  While the story has many layers of meaning, at its core, it represents every person’s struggle to know themselves.

To put it simply, the message of Ramayan will help you understand how to live a better life.  So how does it do that?  Diwali is a story of battle between Lord Ram and Raavan.  This isn’t just a battle that happened thousands of years ago. This battle is happening right now inside each and every one of us.  It starts with Lord Ram who represents our higher self, our divine soul.  The infinite life force that lives inside everyone and in all places.

Our soul, Ram lives in Ayodhaya – the place of no conflict.  It means our soul lives in peace.  It isn’t concerned with trivial things like ‘how do I look today?’  ‘What do others think of me?’  ‘How much money do I have?’

In the story, everything changes with Ram’s marriage to Sita which represents the union between our soul and human body. As soon as that happened, they are banished from Ayodhaya. In our own lives whenever we focus our thoughts on the body, rather than the soul, then we too loose our peace and we are banished into the jungle of the world.  Even in the jungle, Sita continues to meditate on Ram.

One day Sita sees a golden deer and gets totally enamoured by it, just like our eyes and senses are always distracted by worldly things.  When she stops meditating on Ram and goes after the deer, then she is trapped by a demon called Raavan, who represents our ego.  He is depicted as having ten faces and twenty arms, which means that our ego is not as easy to identify – it often comes disguised in many different forms. 

So, the battle begins between Ram and Raavan and eventually Ram is victorious.  He manages to defeat Raavan and bring his soul mate Sita back home.

The spiritual master Guru Nanak summarises this real human struggle between our ego and our divine light.  He says in each and every heart is the unseen and infinite Ram.  When we kill our egos, only then will we unite with this invisible and infinite truth. 

So, why do we really celebrate Diwali on the darkest night of the year.  It is so that we can remind ourselves to break free from our own dark habits, our worldly obsessions – ego, self-importance, insecurities, and inner demons.

This year, instead of just lighting candles and fireworks, lets learn and share the deeper meaning of the celebration.  Make this Diwali a challenge for us all to let our own divine nature shine as bright as possible so that we too can become a beacon of light and help who are still in darkness.

Happy Diwali!