Significance of Pradakshina

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Pradakshina is an age-old devotional practice associated largely with

temple-visits. Before the devotees enter the inner shrine that houses

the deity, they go round the shrine as a token of their reverence and

self-surrender. The purpose is to afford the devotees sometime to halt

their flow of worldly thoughts, before they come face to face with the

deity. Hindu marriages are often sanctified by pradakshina by the

bridal couple around the fire. In all such pradakshinas, the devotees

follow the clockwise direction, i.e., they move round keeping their

right side towards the object of devotion. The number

circumambulations are left to the choice of the devotee: but generally

an odd number is preferred. When the occasion is inauspicious, the

pradakshina is done in the anticlockwise direction, e.g., around the

funeral pyre while conducting last rites ... Ramana Maharshi has

assigned a special place of importance to pradakshina round the

Arunachala hill. He not only endorsed and encouraged this strongly,

but set an example by undertaking it by himself at frequent intervals

till 1926. He held that Arunachala is Siva's manifestation. He often

referred to it unequivocally as his Guru. The very name of the hill

arises from Aruna for 'red' with connotation for 'fire', 'light' and

'knowledge', and achala for 'hill'. It is thus the 'hill of jnana'.

Sri Bhagavan says that one should go around either in mouna or dhyana

or japa or samkeertana and thereby think of God all the time. One

should walk slowly like a woman who is in the ninth month pregnancy.

He further says that it is difficult to describe the pleasure and the

happiness one gets by this pradakshina. The body gets tired, the sense

organs lose their strength and all the activities of the body become

absorbed within. It is possible thus to forget oneself and get into a

state of meditation. Tuesdays are generally believed to be auspicious

for this pradakshina. Going barefoot is the norm.

(Taken from Sri Ramana Jyothi, January 2009)