Hinduism For Beginners
Here is a series of articles that I once wrote for children in the age group 5 - 10 years.
(B) Why does Hinduism promote the worship of images?
Why do you think people around you --- your parents, your brothers and sisters, and of course your friends --- have names? Let’s say you have a friend who is called ‘John’. You have spent an evening playing video-games with him, but when you wake up the next morning you realize that you have forgotten his name. Now if your mother asks you, ‘Where were you yesterday evening?’ it would be pretty tough for you to answer her question. You might say, ‘Well, I was with that boy with black curly hair who wears spectacles’ but since there are so many boys who fit that description, you should not be surprised if your mother still wants to know, ‘But which boy?’ But if you reply, ‘I was with John’, you have hit the bull’s-eye, and your mother knows exactly where you were.
In today’s lesson, we shall learn a bit about what Hindu thinkers have said about naming God. We shall see that they teach that although God is everywhere, we can use some specific names (like ‘John’ in our example) when we wish to speak about God. Everything is full of God but because we cannot think of everything at one time, we think of specific objects when we think of God. These specific objects are called images of God, and they remind us that God is present everywhere.
To understand better what images are, let us go back to the name ‘John’. I hope you will agree with me that there is quite a big difference between the name ‘John’ and your friend John. The first is just a non-living collection of letters ‘-j-o-h-n-’ that you write on a piece of paper or that you speak out when you call him. The second, in contrast, is a living being with whom you can talk and play, and who in turn responds to your questions. In spite of this crucial difference (the name ‘John’ is non-living, your friend John is a living being), there is, however, an intimate connection between the two --- the moment you see or hear the name ‘John’ you think of your friend John. We therefore say that the name ‘John’ is an image of your friend John.
If you find this somewhat difficult to understand, let’s consider a slightly different example. Suppose you went to Mount Rushmore last summer, and you drew a painting of the four great Presidents staring at you. You show this painting to your friend back at home, who exclaims, ‘This painting is so clear that I feel that I am actually in front of Mount Rushmore’. Now surely, your friend is not being serious, is she? For no matter how accurate your painting is, it is obvious that your painting is one thing and Mount Rushmore is another thing, right? And yet, they are not two totally disconnected things either --- whoever looks at the painting will get to know something (but not everything!) of what Mount Rushmore is like. So once again, we say that your painting is an image of Mount Rushmore. It is like a mirror that reflects the real Mount Rushmore, just as your friend’s name ‘J-o-h-n’ is like another mirror that reflects the real human being in flesh-and-blood with whom you play video-games.
But you might want to ask, ‘How is all this connected with why Hinduism encourages the worship of images?’ And the answer is two-fold.
Firstly, God is omni-present, there is no place where you can go to where God is not present. God surrounds the whole universe in just the way a garment envelopes a human body, and also God is also present inside everything. What does that imply? It implies that anything that you can see you around you is full of God. God has, so to speak, left His footprints on everything in this world that He has created. The sky, the oceans, the trees, the prairies, the wild animals, the rivers, the lakes, the food you eat, your parents, your friends, our planet Earth itself --- you name it! --- everything reflects the glory of God. Therefore, all these things --- which reflect God, their creator --- can be images of God. If someday you travel to rural India, you might come across a small shrine, with a few lamps burning brightly, underneath a big banyan tree. The Hindus who gather around that tree believe that it is also one of the many images of God.
Secondly, you cannot see God in the most direct way that you can see an object in front of you. However, the different images of God tell you something about what God is really like. If you have never been to Mount Rushmore, you will find out something about it by looking at a photograph (or what we have called an image) of that place. But here is an important warning that Hindu thinkers have repeatedly issued. Just as you must not confuse this photograph for the ‘real thing’, or the name ‘J-o-h-n’ with your friend John, you must also be careful not to confuse the images of God with what God really is like. No human being can truly and perfectly describe God, only God Himself can do this! So the Hindus who gather around the banyan tree do not actually think that the tree is God. Certainly the all-present and all-powerful God cannot be squeezed into a small tree, right? But they believe that the tree is one of the many, many different images that reflect something of the infinite glory of God.
Let us summarize our discussion so far. We have seen today what images are and why Hinduism believes that we can approach God through image. An image, to repeat, is a name, a picture, a painting or an object which points the way towards something which is more valuable than itself. The name ‘J-o-h-n’ reminds you of your friend, and he is more valuable to you than the four letters ‘j’, ‘o’, ‘h’ and ‘n’. The painting takes you back to the true grandeur of Mount Rushmore which it cannot fully capture. Finally, the banyan tree reflects God, who is infinitely superior to it as its creator. The images that Hindus worship are therefore like mirrors in which they can see the partial reflections of the supreme light of the unseen God.
So the next time you step into the road on a bright spring morning, look at the things around you that remind you of God! You might like to stare for a while at the huge sky spread out over you, and its hugeness might tell you something about how God is truly infinite. Or the birds chirping around you, are not these beautiful small creatures full of life, the life that comes from our common creator? What about the wind that gently blows through the trees, their leaves and branches, does it not tell you something about how an invisible thing can be present everywhere? And if you hear some children playing in the backyard, do their merry cries not remind you of the God who is supreme joy and who is the source of all earthly joys?
Here is a series of articles that I once wrote for children in the age group 5 - 10 years.
(B) Why does Hinduism promote the worship of images?
Why do you think people around you --- your parents, your brothers and sisters, and of course your friends --- have names? Let’s say you have a friend who is called ‘John’. You have spent an evening playing video-games with him, but when you wake up the next morning you realize that you have forgotten his name. Now if your mother asks you, ‘Where were you yesterday evening?’ it would be pretty tough for you to answer her question. You might say, ‘Well, I was with that boy with black curly hair who wears spectacles’ but since there are so many boys who fit that description, you should not be surprised if your mother still wants to know, ‘But which boy?’ But if you reply, ‘I was with John’, you have hit the bull’s-eye, and your mother knows exactly where you were.
In today’s lesson, we shall learn a bit about what Hindu thinkers have said about naming God. We shall see that they teach that although God is everywhere, we can use some specific names (like ‘John’ in our example) when we wish to speak about God. Everything is full of God but because we cannot think of everything at one time, we think of specific objects when we think of God. These specific objects are called images of God, and they remind us that God is present everywhere.
To understand better what images are, let us go back to the name ‘John’. I hope you will agree with me that there is quite a big difference between the name ‘John’ and your friend John. The first is just a non-living collection of letters ‘-j-o-h-n-’ that you write on a piece of paper or that you speak out when you call him. The second, in contrast, is a living being with whom you can talk and play, and who in turn responds to your questions. In spite of this crucial difference (the name ‘John’ is non-living, your friend John is a living being), there is, however, an intimate connection between the two --- the moment you see or hear the name ‘John’ you think of your friend John. We therefore say that the name ‘John’ is an image of your friend John.
If you find this somewhat difficult to understand, let’s consider a slightly different example. Suppose you went to Mount Rushmore last summer, and you drew a painting of the four great Presidents staring at you. You show this painting to your friend back at home, who exclaims, ‘This painting is so clear that I feel that I am actually in front of Mount Rushmore’. Now surely, your friend is not being serious, is she? For no matter how accurate your painting is, it is obvious that your painting is one thing and Mount Rushmore is another thing, right? And yet, they are not two totally disconnected things either --- whoever looks at the painting will get to know something (but not everything!) of what Mount Rushmore is like. So once again, we say that your painting is an image of Mount Rushmore. It is like a mirror that reflects the real Mount Rushmore, just as your friend’s name ‘J-o-h-n’ is like another mirror that reflects the real human being in flesh-and-blood with whom you play video-games.
But you might want to ask, ‘How is all this connected with why Hinduism encourages the worship of images?’ And the answer is two-fold.
Firstly, God is omni-present, there is no place where you can go to where God is not present. God surrounds the whole universe in just the way a garment envelopes a human body, and also God is also present inside everything. What does that imply? It implies that anything that you can see you around you is full of God. God has, so to speak, left His footprints on everything in this world that He has created. The sky, the oceans, the trees, the prairies, the wild animals, the rivers, the lakes, the food you eat, your parents, your friends, our planet Earth itself --- you name it! --- everything reflects the glory of God. Therefore, all these things --- which reflect God, their creator --- can be images of God. If someday you travel to rural India, you might come across a small shrine, with a few lamps burning brightly, underneath a big banyan tree. The Hindus who gather around that tree believe that it is also one of the many images of God.
Secondly, you cannot see God in the most direct way that you can see an object in front of you. However, the different images of God tell you something about what God is really like. If you have never been to Mount Rushmore, you will find out something about it by looking at a photograph (or what we have called an image) of that place. But here is an important warning that Hindu thinkers have repeatedly issued. Just as you must not confuse this photograph for the ‘real thing’, or the name ‘J-o-h-n’ with your friend John, you must also be careful not to confuse the images of God with what God really is like. No human being can truly and perfectly describe God, only God Himself can do this! So the Hindus who gather around the banyan tree do not actually think that the tree is God. Certainly the all-present and all-powerful God cannot be squeezed into a small tree, right? But they believe that the tree is one of the many, many different images that reflect something of the infinite glory of God.
Let us summarize our discussion so far. We have seen today what images are and why Hinduism believes that we can approach God through image. An image, to repeat, is a name, a picture, a painting or an object which points the way towards something which is more valuable than itself. The name ‘J-o-h-n’ reminds you of your friend, and he is more valuable to you than the four letters ‘j’, ‘o’, ‘h’ and ‘n’. The painting takes you back to the true grandeur of Mount Rushmore which it cannot fully capture. Finally, the banyan tree reflects God, who is infinitely superior to it as its creator. The images that Hindus worship are therefore like mirrors in which they can see the partial reflections of the supreme light of the unseen God.
So the next time you step into the road on a bright spring morning, look at the things around you that remind you of God! You might like to stare for a while at the huge sky spread out over you, and its hugeness might tell you something about how God is truly infinite. Or the birds chirping around you, are not these beautiful small creatures full of life, the life that comes from our common creator? What about the wind that gently blows through the trees, their leaves and branches, does it not tell you something about how an invisible thing can be present everywhere? And if you hear some children playing in the backyard, do their merry cries not remind you of the God who is supreme joy and who is the source of all earthly joys?
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