Is ‘Diwali’ about going back home, indulging again in your set routines that you anyway follow, eating a lot of sweets and oil, then using small electric bulbs to light up your home, then bursting crackers, then unnecessarily saying ‘Happy Diwali’ to everybody, when there is, in fact, hardly anything happy about it? In the name of religion, all that we know is rituals, rituals, and rituals.
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Questioner: What is religion? Why do we pray?
Acharya Prashant: The mind is off-center. It remains distracted, a little away from its core. That is the reason it feels restive, uneasy. That is why there is always an urge to achieve, to reach somewhere, to feel fulfilled. All of that is because the mind is not really at its center.
Religion is the way that brings the lost mind back to its center; its Home. That is religion.
Now when you are away from your Home, then what brings you back, that way too, is not really your Home. It’s a path in space, an area, other than your Home.
So essentially, religion consists of: saying something to the mind, doing things that calm the mind down; all in the domain of mind itself.
