Along with rigorous spiritual disciplines and fasting, Hinduism prescribes feasting and festive gaiety. Holi, this festival of colour, is one such occasion. Falling in the month of the Indian Spring, where all nature bursts forth in an effusion of God painted colours, it lovingly nudges you to spread the colours of love and happiness in all hearts.
Holi prescribes the (Dahan) burning away of all your anger, prejudice, hatred, jealousy and any enmity or negative emotions that you may have harboured. It is a total unloading and cleansing of a burdened mind of all its garbage collected over the past. Then in this lightened spirit and with a pure mind one is advised to expand one’s limited identity to embrace all. Reach out and spread love, melt hearts, embrace the lonely, feed the poor, put smiles on the faces of the unhappy and bring the warmth of love and care to cold and barren lives.
When the flow of your thoughts is in harmony with the universe, where is the space for pain? When thoughts ‘choose’ to let go, when we choose to smile, to laugh , to dance, to love, when we ‘choose’ to give love rather than expect love, then the joy floods your own heart and pain and hurt have no chance.
It is a festival where you not only spring clean your house of useless clutter but also spring clean your mind of even more useless clutter, stored over the years in the form of hurtful memories, which stink like old garbage. Declutter, and feel the lightness of gay abandon. The spirit of Holi brings the joyous sunshine of inward peace and poise as the radiant colours colour your life with a vibrancy of resplendent love so that every person whose life you touch, can truly begin to sing “You colour my world”.
The Author is President of Chinmaya Mission, New Delhi