Bhogi Pongal

January 13, 2002

Pongal is widely celebrated in Tamil Nadu. The

festival is for 3 days - Bhogi Pongal, Surya Pongal and

Maattu Pongal. Today is Bhogi Pongal. Many

people know of Bhogi wherein only the old, and unwanted

things from the house are thrown out and burnt. But

Bhogi doesn't just involve the physical cleaning of the

houses, by discarding the old, unwanted things, but also

spiritual cleaning of our minds. Mind is nothing but

a collection of thoughts. We all have both good and

bad thoughts. Depending on what thoughts dominate the

mind, we say a person is of 'such and such' nature. But

no matter how good we consider ourselves to be,

there are some unwanted elements in us like anger,

jealousy, pride, hatred, lust, greed etc. We may not have

all of the stated elements, but have one or a few of

them. He, whose mano(thought), vaaku(word) and

kaayam(deed) are synchornous with each other is said to be a

mahatma. But for most of us, the 3 don't match each other.

for eg. when our boss suggests some idea, and if we

think to urselves, that it's lousy, we say to

ourselves, " What a lousy idea ! , What a peabrain he is ! "

etc. but aloud we say, "Wow, what a brilliant idea !

Boss you are a genius ! " This is a case where the

thought and word are not in sync. Or sometimes we

promise to do something for someone, but fail to do so,

due to lack of time or whatever. Here the vaaku and

kaayam are not in sync. Similarly we come across

various instances in our real life, where we do not

exhibit sync of mano, vaaku and kaayam. On this

day of Bhogi pongal, let's all join hands, and help

each other to cleanse our mano, vaaku and kaayam.

Let's only think good thoughts, speak good words, and

perform good deeds. Hari Aum !!!

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