This week, millions of Hindus around the world will be celebrating Diwali. Among the many traditions that are honored this time of year is the worship of the Goddess Lakshmi (Laxmi). According to the creation myth of the Samudra Manthan, Lakshmi is one of the goddesses who emerges during the churning of the cosmic ocean. This event created numerous divine and terrible things, including the poisonous hala-hala that was powerful enough to destroy all of creation. It was the goddess Parvati who prevented this destruction, saving all that existed and was yet to be.
Lakshmi is celebrated as the goddess of wealth, but what she represents is far more than material wealth. Her four hands represent artha, dharma, kama and moksha or material well-being, morality, love, and liberation. These four aspects are inseparable in Lakshmi. That is, morality and well-being, love and liberation are indivisible. One must accompany the other to realize its true potential.
The world that Lakshmi promises is not yet our reality today. This is partly because we separate these four aspects and approach them individually. As a society, we have come to believe that it is through individual well-being that we will achieve social well-being, and, inversely, social ills reflect individual failures.
This understanding of ours is failing us. In our world, material needs are not met, even when the wealth and resources exist to meet these needs. Instead, wealth is concentrated among fewer and fewer people, with 62 people owning as much as more than 3 billion of the poorest people. And when this is how the world’s resources are allocated, 43 million gallons of milk are dumped in the U.S., while more than 13 million children in this country are food insecure, because that milk could not be sold for a profit. In this world, we have empty homes and homeless families and oil is revered more than water.
All of this reveals a fundamental devaluation of life that has become normalized by an ideology that asserts that anything can be bought or sold. Where everything has a price, there is no unconditional love. And so in this world, where material well-being, love and morality are wanting, liberation is not possible.
What Lakshmi reveals to us, however, is a world that has become possible if we understand the four aspects as a whole. Let us feed the hungry. Let us provide shelter to everyone. Let us care for our resources for the generations that follow. Let us realize a new morality guided by our love of God and an enduring respect for life. And let us thereby be free.
A Prayer for Diwali
Om Jai Lakshmi
Goddess born from the struggle between good and evil
Guide us toward the light.
In a world where plenty is possible,
Let us end hunger, thirst and homelessness.
In your nurturing hands,
Let us seek refuge from want, fear and violence.
With your grace,
Let our world be reborn in your image,
Where all needs are met,
Where morality and love are abundant,
And whereby we are free.
Om Jai Lakshmi.
Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.