February 26 – March 11
Holi
In early spring each year, the festival of Holi is celebrated in many parts of India. It is a called the festival of colors and people greet each other by smearing different color powders on each other and also pouring water and bursting balloons. It is a day when differences of wealth, station, age are all forgotten and everybody plays together with colors and water. As with all Indian festivals, many sweets are offered as prasad to God and shared together.
What is Holi? Why do we celebrate it? We all wondered and Swamiji explained it to us in a special class. Swamiji read the story of Hiranyakashipu, Prahalad, and Vishnu from the Swami Purana book. He answered questions sent to us by viewers around the world to mandirclass@yahoo.com. Knowing the stories from the Puranas and understanding the spiritual principles made the celebration meaningful and more applicable to our lives in the present time.
Swamiji explained to us that Prahalad, a devotee of Vishnu who was saved time and again from many dangers by His devotion to the Lord. Shree Maa sang songs to awaken that same devotion in our hearts. On Saturday night satsang, a week before Holi, Shree Maa sang songs to Lord Krishna and we all joined joyously in anticipation and devotion. Shree Maa sang a new song that She had just composed and viewers on the web cam across the world wrote in to say how inspired and moved they were by the sublime music!
On the day of Holi, all the Gods were greeted by red holi color in the morning! Holi falls on the full moon day in the month of Phalgun, and in the evening we all performed the Satya Narayana Vrat Homa. We read the story and renewed our promise to God to live in truth. After reading the story and doing arati to God, Shree Maa led us all in devotional singing. Once again, we felt we were with Krishna and the Gopis in Vrindavan, dancing with God and playing with colors together! At the end of the evening, Shree Maa and Swamiji blessed us with Holi colors and we prayed that we could be colorful flowers at the Feet of Divine Mother and be steadfast in our devotion like Prahlad.