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Festival Of Lights Of Good Fortunes - In Praise Of Goddess Lakshmi
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Light up all your lights, dear friends, and
Keep the backdoors of your houses well-shut this day,
For it is Diwali - the Indian festival of lights.
Yet recalling old strains of bad luck,
Lady Good Luck's elder sister, Alakshmi of Indian imagery,
Seen roaming our spheres often in a
Twin face of Lakshmi of good fate,
Shall not be given any chances of sneaking
Into our houses through the backdoor,
At a time when Goddess Lakshmi and her
Higher envoys to attend on
Our blazing ambitions and high-lighted resolves,
With all Her good fortunes in trail,
Is being invited to share with us for a day in a year
The full shine of Her good times.
This is why we have set our
Lights flaring throughout this day and night, hoping to
Inveigle the Fortunate Goddess to enter and abide in our home, too.
But, mind you, dear friends!
Lady Good Luck might come and take just
A fast look around in our house,
Just to see for Herself what really there is behind
That outward display of glory of ours in Her name,
And vanish as swiftly as she came, through the backdoor,
When unheeded and left open.
On the turn of heels in flight,
Of which we may perceive but the fading tinkling of anklets
She might just come and go, so as not to be forsaking us
Once that we raised a big show of Her worship,
With the divinely lit house's backdoor not properly locked up.
Unless, indeed, we took good care of
Our house of life kept tidy,
Without all its side-way entries and its outlets,
Including the ones in the house we made of our mind,
Neatly shut up on this special divine occasion,
Neither our human Lakshmi-like invited neighbour will find time
To come and sit down and stay for longer in our house
For sharing a cup of tea and one's sweeties
Nor will the great Goddess, called on in all her Fullness
From all sides.
Lakshmi is a bit of a choosy Goddesss, as
All of us easily are to understand, her good lucks not
Befalling each and everyone regardless of
Any distinctions, and after Her great pattern
Also the ladies of lucky matches in our visible worlds are of
The rarest in our neighbourhood to be met with.
- Realizing the whole of life itself as
One grand system of symbolism of a kind -
Closed backdoors symbolically stand for: forgiving! ,
Disallowing wonted cumbersome inroads from past sorrows & frustrations.
When we want this good luck of divine Lakshmi's,
If perchance we were to befriend her on a Festival Day of Lights,
To stay with us for longer or for good, with
Her ever lush graces showering onto us this time of the season, and
Not only to pose as a mere facade on our life's house
Fading fast away in bland eyes,
Verily shouldn't we want Lakshmi to come and enjoy our gift of lights
As a guest who, pleased overly and royal only,
Will lovingly stay with us a regular in our house and
Make friendship with us a long-standing affair of steady nature?
... Once that, in the very first place, we've already
That much of good luck that
On our chosen celebrated Day of Lights
We've come to be dealing with a Great Goddess
One who can go all places and be with all sorts of people
All at the same time...
We are calling up, not the country's president,
Who most probably wouldn't either - just couldn't - come to our house,
Lest you're that big fish that I am not,
Or befriended since childhood,
A free, omnipresent and all-knowing Goddess it is, and
One with a mind of bountiful, generous Lakshmi it is that
We are calling up on this Day of Lights, one
Who never has ever forsaken anyone
With a sincere heartful of golden ambitions,
That had invited the Goddess of Good Fortune's inspiring Self
Over to take a seat in one's own house.
Never anyone's given by Her unfair treats,
Once She has come to be one's guest in the house,
Unlike as among us strictly humans,
As long as only people never trumpeted out
Divine plans of the Fortunes offered in Her hands
Before the sketches are written,
- With the house's backdoors always well shut on Her arrival.
Unexpectedly favourable circumstances,
Eventually evolving stately events to be handed out by
A fate turning its benevolent face toward us,
Will be seen naturally, in the wake of
Another Festival of Lights remembered
Happily for one long year ahead,
With good turns to come to pass in our lives,
That in due time will be sharing their lights of glory
With all these bright fest lights of
Oil-lamps and scented candles
We kindle in our wishful praise of Goddess Lakshmi.
This day that once again a summons has gone out from
Ancient India's greatest visionaries of truth, from her
Star readers of the divine tablets of laws
Inside of God's cosmic enfoldings,
Who had read the heavenly
ornamental hieroglyphs of enkindled beauty on fire
Written on our black sky boards - eternity's backdropp -
This day a summons has gone out for us
To be enhancing God's endless
Divine Light yet in finite rows & lines of human-made shines
Down here on our top grounds of
Cosmic life on earth - now and here in gay array,
Lakshmi's Light to be held aloof,
Befitting to Her status as the
Secret Queen of all the riches existing for real or dreamed about
By very precious sets of ornamental lamps,
As all Hindustan does on Her day of days,
Having them illuminated without break for one day & one night
In a symbolic/mental/cosmic inner & outer balance of harmony,
Whose aggrandized face of lights will be reflected
In all peaceful faces of spirited holiday revellers,
As it will be felt in the sweet inner delight
Within the latters' shining homes.
And if I but were allowed one personal comment on
What in the end I feel will warrantee
True success & good luck with
Lakshmi arriving at the doorstep of one's house,
It is that it will have to come hand-in-hand
with our very own positive personal socializer attitudes
Put to tests all the while in our
Daily dealings with one another,
The selfsame attitudes that make us, knowingly or unknowingly,
Look either proudly and overruling, or egoistic and anti-social,
Or friendly and practical and endearing
In the eyes not only of Lakshmi, but also in
Those of all our other contemporaries.
If anything good were to be harvested
In festivities based on celestial myths of fine heavenly rites,
Be they lavishly designed or just simply lit
Suprahuman events performed on men's treaded grounds,
We ourselves also, with our minds, will have to
Catch from the fire of our votive lamps
Sparkles of the divinely lighted motifs
And, gleaming from within with the fires of heaven's messengers,
Announcing, to alert us, the arrival of the Goddess' party
We'll finally hear Lakshmi's knock on our own main door.
After all, dear friend, isn't everything in matters human
One big issue of attitude in how we fare in life?
And isn't all well-faring even on the lower and also
On the higher stages of life poised on
Something like sound, wholesome attitudes,
Below the human level a balanced control of powers,
Above the common human reaches an endless
Flurry of soaring divine intuition?
These are the things I've always tried to keep in mind,
Along all other lines that go with a divine cause.
Naturally all this of what I'm saying here only applies
If someone really desires by one's self, and
Be it just for a day's occasion, to
Take a divine stroll
In a royal park of heavenly imagery, as of
Gay India's enlightened soulscapes, and to
Follow suit on a wonderful, grand belief
On a day of glory,
Kept vibrant in its mother country
From times immemorial right up to this day.
We all want good fortunes to prevail throughout
And for real in our lives, and
Not just for a moment or two, and
Neither for flashy effects only during
Pseudo shows that entertain the lesser fortuned! -
Aside from mustering up our faith in
'Spirit over Mind, and Mind over Matter',
We ought to have verily our lights burning physically!
- While God does see all of our unacted intentions,
It is only proper to prove that we mean
What we express by symbols
By virtually performing the rituals in universe time, just as
Children intuitively get themselves
Absorbed into simple games about life.
For bringing in the sacred momentum versus our own selves
In what we're doing to call up a great Goddess it is
That we keep on this day of Diwali, the Festival of Lights,
Great lamps glaring in our homes,
Remindful of the high essentials of the ancient myths, and of
Our benignly secretive mother Lakshmi, Lady of good lucks!
Celebrating Lakshmi's Day Of Lights makes for good entertainment,
'Tis a choice fun of street happenings,
If done so from house to house - and,
On top of all, 'tis
A wonderful life enhancer in general,
Attractively smiling lights of grace
Seen as one most wonderously lit face of happiness,
On a divine face with human features,
The face of Goddess.
HAPPY DIWALI
(written on Diwali 2006, October 22)
Erhard Hans Josef Lang
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