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Kalpavriksha, the Hindu Holiday in December by Dr. A. V. Srinivasan

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Kalpavriksha, the Hindu Holiday in December by Dr. A. V. Srinivasan Kalpavriksha, the Hindu Holiday in December by Dr. A. V. Srinivasan Every year and especially at Christmas time, all of you from Hindu households watch your Christian neighbors getting busy shopping for a Christmas tree, preparing the house to put up the tree, hauling the tree on to their cars, shopping for gifts, putting up the tree, decorating with lights and ornaments, packing presents and leaving them under the tree until they are all ready to open them on the special day. There is a lot of excitement during those festive days and everyone seems to be happy and having a good time. And you watch all this and you may wonder: God, I wish we had a similar festival and I wish we could be happy receiving and giving gifts and enjoy the holidays. Guess what? You can be! You know why? Because in the Hindu mythology, there is in fact a gift giving tree called Parijata. It is known by the name Kalpavriksha. The story of Kalpavriksha is found in the Indian epic, the Mahabharata in the very first volume called Adi Parva. You can read about it. When we were active in planning, organizing and building the Satyanarayana temple in Middletown, my wife Kamla came up with this idea of invoking the Parijata as the basis for a new festival called Kalpavriksha as the Hindu equivalent for our children to enjoy the season. So what you do is to get a Christmas tree and arrange it either at a temple or in your own home and assemble all the gifts and the items described below under that tree. You may then invite your friends and start putting all the items one by one on the tree. The items will now be described in the story below. I will tell you the story of Kalpavriksha and you can all from this year onwards celebrate the festival of Kalpavriksha on the third Saturday in December. We at the temple in Middletown, CT started celebrating this festival in 1982 and it has become a tradition. I hope you can make that your tradition too. As a part of the festival you may have contests in coloring, essays, puzzles and fancy dress. And of course gift exchange. Everyone 1 enjoys the program and feel they have not been left out of the season of joy, peace and friendship. The story of Kalpavriksha is known as Amritamanthana or churning for amrita or nectar of life for the Gods. Long, long ago, people on this earth were really very happy. There were great seasons every year that produced good climate, rains on time, lots of sunshine, good crops, and good food. People enjoyed themselves by learning, playing, singing and dancing, being in each others' company, worshipping their gods and goddesses, and generally living and leading a good life. They pursued happiness and did their duties at the same time. It was perfect. We Hindus have a name for it. We call it Dharma Rajya meaning that it was a nation in which everyone practiced Dharma, a system in which people observed a set of values leading to right conduct. But then, gradually people forgot something very basic. They forgot that the good life they were enjoying was partly because of a very important factor. That factor is called the grace of god and respect for nature. We Hindus believe that we must work hard to reach our goals, we must do our duty but we also believe firmly that nothing can be accomplished without divine grace. That is precisely the reason we build temples, conduct worships, meet and work with the community and serve the country. So when they stopped conducting homas, havanas, pujas, abhishekhas, and offering of foods, clothing and ornaments to gods and goddesses, they stopped following our Dharma. They forgot their duty. Remember it is not just the offerings that are important, but more important, is the faith with which these offerings are made. We call it shraddha and in fact Lord Krishna has declared in the Gita that it is simply useless to offer anything to gods or conduct any worship if there is no faith in it. When homas or havanas are perfored with shraddha, when you sing a song or do a bhajan in praise of a god or goddess with faith, or when you perform a dance in praise of a god/goddess with faith and when people do those all over the world, the belief is that all of those offerings reach the heavens and produce what is known as amrita, the nectar of life for the Gods. It is this amrita that Gods need to be strong and healthy so that they will have the power to bless us on this earth to lead a life full of happiness. 2 So when people on earth forgot to do their duty and practice dharma, lo and behold, the gods became weaker and weaker. Remember what happens when good people become weaker and weaker. There is chaos. Just like what happens when your father or mother falls sick, you feel sad, things don't get done, may be your house is not as clean and inviting as it used to be, you may not eat the good food you are used to - and you wish your mom or dad become well again so that you can feel comfortable, have fun, be happy and confident so that you can go about doing what you like to do with family and friends. So when gods became weaker and weaker, their power to protect people was also becoming weaker and weaker. Nature also became weaker and weaker as respect for nature was lessened. Crops began to fail. The supply of amrita was getting low up in the heavens. The Sun, the Moon, gods and goddesses became weaker and weaker. At the same time, the demons who used to interfere with rituals and worships, who never liked the practice of dharma became powerful. Before, the gods were supreme as they received amrita from the devotees' worships and they had the power to hold back the demons from causing death and destruction. They were strong enough to maintain a balance between good and evil between dhrama and the opposite of it called adharma. But when the balance was lost, there was danger - there was chaos. Even the gods feared as to what might happen to them and the people on the earth whom they protected. With the weakness of the Sun and the Moon, the seasons suffered and as a result there was a great flood and this great flood swallowed everything. The vessel in which the gods had stored amrita was also lost. Many gods/goddesses went under and it looked as though the world was about to end. Every being that helped sustain life was hiding somewhere in the great ocean of milk. It was clear that unless something was done soon, it will all be over and the world will come to an end. Many of the devas and their precious gifts were absorbed back into the ocean. Even Chandra, the moon, went into hiding. The whole cosmic order was in danger. Even the asuras (anti-gods, titans, danavas) realized that they were in peril themselves and that the dharma they had opposed had in fact sustained the world in which both the devas and the danavas operated. It was 3 this realization which brought them to a meeting called by the devas who asked the asuras to help them churn the Milky Ocean to recover amrita and all the other precious things lost in the deluge. Hoping to get possession of the amrita which had always been denied to them, the asuras agreed. It was Mahavishnu who came up with the plan for the Amritamanthana, the great churning. In a little pot, churning will bring up butter from milk but how do you churn an ocean? The mountain Mandara was chosen as the churning stick and, to prevent it from sinking, Mahavishnu took the form of a giant tortoise, Kurma-avatar, on whose finely polished, curved back the mountain rested. The great serpent Vasuki volunteered to be the churning rope. Now all was set for the great endeavor. The devas stood on one side and the danavas on the other. They pulled, as before, in opposite directions, but this time towards a common goal. One by one the lost treasures came up from the Ksheerasagara. The elixir of life, amrita, came up, carried in a pitcher (kumbha) or chalice by the heavenly physician Dhanvantari; Kamadhenu the cow of plenty; Mahalakshmi, goddesss of fortune and consort of Vishnu; Chandra the moon who went towards Shiva; Rambha the first of the apsaras or celestial dancers; the wine Soma, Visha the poison with no antidote; the white elephant Airavata and the beautiful horse Uchchaishravas, mount of Indra; Kaustubha the jewel that went to the breast plate of Vishnu; Shankha the conch of victory; Dhanus or Sarunga, a great bow. Along with these and other marvels came the Parijata, the wish-tree (Kalpavriksha) which was given to Indrani, Queen of Indra’s heaven. Now all was back to normal. World order was restored once more. So put the Kalpataru, the symbol of that great Amritamanthana this December and continue the tradition introduced over a quarter century ago at our temple in Connecticut . Let the last Third Saturday or Sunday be reserved as a day for spreading joy and happiness, courtesy of the magic of this Kalpavriksha. May our children and their children and succeeding generations celebrate this occasion and share their joy with children of other faiths.
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