Coming Full Circle

Diwali - Festival of lights, they say. It symbolises the victory of good over evil.

The story of Lord Krishna's victory over the demon Narahasura is celebrated during Diwali.

All these seem to give one the impression that Evil is real and it exists as an entity of its own like in the form of demons of the mythological age and terrorists of the current age).

What needs to understood is that Evil much like any other negative quality doesn't and cannot exist on its own.

For example, darkness is not an entity, it cannot exist on its own, it can exist only as long as "light" is absent. So are attributes like

cold(absence of heat), hatred (absence of Love) and so on.

What's the point of my saying all of this.... Well, if you want to reduce or eliminate cold in a room, the only way is by focussing on adding more heat. The only way to eliminate darkness in a room is to focus of bringing light in.

Focussing on attributes like cold and darkness is futile. It is either heat or absence of heat, light or absence of light, love or absence of love, goodness or absence of it...

By focussing on the negative attributes, we empower them and fighting them is like chasing a shadow.

Ok, back to Diwali, my point here is, the mythological stories where evil is personified and depicted as being killed by goodness personified seems to do a disservice to folks that read them as it insinuates the notion that we can find evil lurking around with a life of its own that is out there to destroy us and so we have to find them and destroy them.

This mindset seems to have carried over into this day and age.

Whereas, Diwali is a reminder to light up the goodness in your life and the darkness will vanish away, just like that.