Prakash Per­sad

Every year, dur­ing the Sep­tem­ber/Oc­to­ber pe­ri­od for ap­prox­i­mate­ly fif­teen days, Hin­dus ob­serve the Pitri Paksh (loose­ly trans­lat­ed as an­ces­tors' time), by en­gag­ing in re­flec­tion, prayer and re­mem­brance; a man­i­fes­ta­tion of grat­i­tude to those who have paved the way and who con­tin­ue to live through us. As is the case with many an­cient cer­e­monies, mis­con­cep­tions are com­mon for the pur­pose and the­o­log­i­cal prin­ci­ples un­der­pin­ning the rit­u­als are not gen­er­al­ly un­der­stood. All Hin­du rit­u­als are ground­ed in the so­cial, psy­cho­log­i­cal and meta-phys­i­cal do­mains with a core goal of main­tain­ing or­der in the fam­i­ly, so­ci­ety and coun­try. The rit­u­al is not the end it­self but rather a means or process to­wards a more no­ble and lofty cause of re­mem­ber­ing and ac­knowl­edg­ing the sac­ri­fice and con­tri­bu­tion of those who have died.

In this re­gard, the rit­u­als per­formed in this pe­ri­od are sim­i­lar to re­mem­brance cer­e­monies in both the sec­u­lar and re­li­gious worlds. Ex­am­ples of the for­mer are Memo­r­i­al Day and Re­mem­brance Day. Grat­i­tude is one of the stronger threads of the so­cial weave and hence a pri­ma­ry aim of the pe­ri­od is to en­gen­der and fos­ter this es­sen­tial and crit­i­cal hu­man char­ac­ter­is­tic. It is thus for the liv­ing who per­form it. The con­ti­nu­ity of life (spir­it, en­er­gy and mat­ter) is ex­pressed in the tenet of rein­car­na­tion and thus the prayers that are prof­fered are meant for the ben­e­fit of the rein­car­nat­ed an­ces­tor in his/her present life. To many, this is a dif­fi­cult con­cept to ac­knowl­edge or grasp, par­tic­u­lar­ly those whose con­struct of the world is as­sem­bled from in­flex­i­ble dog­ma.

Such in­di­vid­u­als can be found in both the sec­u­lar and the re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ties who share a com­mon­al­i­ty; a one-di­men­sion­al bi­na­ry world view, one that is in­con­sis­tent with the in­ter-re­lat­ed mul­ti-di­men­sion­al com­plex­i­ties of the uni­verse. Re­li­gion, like oth­er en­deav­ours of man, seeks to pro­vide an un­der­stand­ing of the world.

The prob­lem with dog­ma based be­lief sys­tems is that the evolv­ing world is con­strained to con­form to a mod­el that might not rep­re­sent re­al­i­ty. On the oth­er hand, process based be­lief sys­tems are able to ac­com­mo­date chang­ing sit­u­a­tions and thus are more rel­e­vant as they pro­vide a mod­el that is aligned with ex­ist­ing sit­u­a­tion. Hin­duism and Bud­dhism are process based re­li­gions which pro­vide the in­di­vid­ual with the al­go­rithms for ef­fec­tive de­ci­sion mak­ing.

Au­thor­i­ty, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty lie ful­ly in the do­main of the in­di­vid­ual up­on which the con­cept of kar­ma and its corol­lary, rein­car­na­tion, are based. The the­o­ry of kar­ma in­di­cates that our present life tra­jec­to­ry at any point in time is the dy­nam­ic con­joint of past and present ac­tions. Since we are ac­cus­tomed to think­ing that the out­puts of ac­tions are lim­it­ed to a fi­nite time scale, con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion of the con­ti­nu­ity of the ef­fects over large dis­tances and time pe­ri­ods re­quires ef­fort. To give a sim­ple ex­am­ple, an earth­quake oc­cur­ring for a few sec­onds near the east­ern shores Pa­cif­ic ocean take a few hours to be felt on the west­ern shores; as it takes time for the waves to prop­a­gate. Now imag­ine, a few min­utes lat­er, a sec­ond earth­quake oc­curs a bit west of the site of the orig­i­nal quake.

Waves near the west­ern shore would be the con­joint of both waves; that is, its present char­ac­ter­is­tics is a prod­uct of both ac­tions (quakes). Put an­oth­er way the ef­fects of the past and present are co­ex­ist­ing and by ex­ten­sion, the fu­ture is a prod­uct of the present and past; the idea be­hind kar­ma. At the phys­i­cal plane lev­el, the per­for­mance of the rit­u­als for one's an­ces­tors is a prod­uct of a past ac­tion or con­sis­tent set of ac­tions. By per­form­ing these rit­u­als, the fu­ture ac­tions of one's off­spring are in­flu­enced. In oth­er words, an ac­tion by an an­ces­tor one gen­er­a­tion re­moved will af­fect the ac­tions of a suc­ces­sor one gen­er­a­tion for­ward. Put an­oth­er way; ac­tions from the dis­tant past im­pact on the present and fu­ture.

The clear con­clu­sion, even if one did not sub­scribe to the rein­car­na­tion and kar­ma, is that the wor­ship of the an­ces­tors im­pact pos­i­tive­ly on the liv­ing, over many gen­er­a­tions. To say oth­er­wise is to de­ny the fun­da­men­tal char­ac­ter­is­tic of what makes us hu­man. To crit­i­cise the cer­e­mo­ny as wor­ship­ping the dead is to ad­mit one's own in­grat­i­tude to one's fel­low­man.