Merit is made and shared through daily, periodic, and special rituals and yearly festivals. Morning and evening services of chanting or worship take place in every monastery, temple, and home. With the placing of flowers and the lighting of candles and incense before a Buddha-image or some other symbol of the presence of the Buddha, monks chant together and the lay family offers a prayer. The flowers, beautiful one moment and wilted the next, remind the offerers of the impermanence of life; the odor of the incense calls to their mind the sweet scent of moral virtue that emanates from those who are devout; the candle-flame symbolizes enlightenment.

The central daily rite of lay Buddhism is the offering of food. Theravada laity make this offering to the monks. Mahayana laity make it to the Buddha as part of the morning or evening worship. In both settings merit is shared.

The weekly Observance Day rituals at the Theravada monastery are opportunities for both laity and monks to quicken faith, discipline, and understanding, and make and share merit. On these days, twice each month, the monks change and reaffirm the code of discipline. On all of these days, they administer the Eight Precepts to the gathered laity, the laity repeating them after the monks and offer a sermon on the Dharma. The monks our water to transfer merit to the laity; the laity pour water to share this merit with their ancestors.

Zen monks twice each month gather in the Buddha-hall of their head temple and chant for the welfare of the Japanese people. Pure Land Buddhist congregate at the temple once each week to praise Amida.

Rites of Passage

There are special rituals to mark, protect, and bless the occasions of major life transitions. They publicly mark and protect times of passage from one status to another times of unusual vulnerability such as birth, birthdays, coming of age, marriage, the entering into a new house, and death. Monks preside over ordinations, funerals, and death commemoration rites. In the Theravada tradition, ordination is a puberty or coming-of-age rite. Theravada monks also preside over birthday and new-house blessing rites. Ex-monks elders in the lay community perform the rituals for childbirth and marriage.

In Japanese Pure Land, the lay priest presides over rituals of the first presentation of a child at the temple, confirmation of boys and girls at the age of puberty, and death. Japanese Buddhists undertake marriage at the Shinto shrine, presided over by Shinto priests.

Yearly Festivals

Buddhists everywhere celebrate the New Year and the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and death. The beginning of a new year is, generally, a time for "taking stock" of one’s karma, cleansing, and well-wishing. In Theravada communities the New Year is celebrated in mid-April on the lunar calendar and lasts for two or three days. The laity ritually bathe the Buddha-images and sprinkle water on the monks and the elders, showing respect and offering good wishes. The monks chant blessings on the laity, and together they share the merit of the occasion with the dead. The New Year appropriately begins at the end of the dry season and the beginning of new life in nature. The pouring of water is not only an honoring of the Buddha, the monks, the elders, and the dead but also an offering for plentiful rain and prosperity in the days to come. In Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, the laity build sand mounds (stupas) at the monastery or on the bank of the river. Each grain of sand represents a demerit, and placing the grains in the monastery or letting them be washed away by the river symbolizes a cleansing from bad deeds. Bringing sand to the monastery also serves to renew the floor of the compound.

Zen and Pure Land Buddhists celebrate the New Year on the Western calendar. This is an occasion for Zen monks to publicly read large volumes of sacred sutras, thereby sending out cleansing and enlivening sound waves for the benefit of all beings. Pure Land Buddhist hold special services at the temple twice daily in praise of the Buddha Amida.

Theravada Buddhists celebrate the birth, enlightenment, and death of the Buddha on the same day the full moon of May, called Vaisakha. In Sri Lanka, it is a festival of lights, and house, gardens, and streets are decorated with lanterns. It is not a major festival in other Theravada countries, but, occurring on an Observance Day, it is at least an occasion for special food offerings to the monks and more than the usual devotion to keeping the moral precepts.

Japanese Buddhist celebrate the Buddha’s birth, death, and enlightenment on different days of the year: the birth on April 8, the enlightenment on December 8, and the death on February 15. The birth celebration, Hanamatsuri, is a flower festival and time for ritually bathing images of the Buddha. Enlightenment Day (Bodhi) and Death Day (Nehan [Nirvana]), are simply occasions for social worship.

Theravada Buddhists mark the beginning and end of the rain-retreat, which generally coincide with the beginning and end of the rains. They conclude the year with a harvest festival. Theravada monks enter rain-retreat on the full moon of either June or July. The three- or four-month period is a time of relative austerity for both laity and monks.

The monks remain in the monastery, spending more than the usual time in study and meditation. No marriages or public entertainments occur in the lay community and the laity are more devout in their attendance of Observance Day ceremonies and in their daily food offerings. The Observance Day on which rain-retreat commences is generally occasion for the entire lay community to offer food and many more than usual undertake to spend the day at the monastery, keeping the monastic precepts.

The full-moon observance with which the rain-retreat ends is much like that with which it begins, with the exception that the monks gather privately and invite each other to point out infractions of the monastic code during the retreat period. The mood of this observance is a happy one the rains have ended (usually), the monks may again move about, and public celebrations are in order. The month that follows, mid-October to mid-November, is the time for Kathina, the offering of cloth from which the monks prepare new robes. Kathina offerings are typically a group effort of an entire village, a lay association for merit making, a government agency, or the employees of a prominent commercial establishment. Typically, the group approaches the monastery in joyful procession. Upon arrival, the presiding monk administers the Five Precepts to the laity, receives the cloth, and declares the great merit of such offerings. The monks jointly chant a blessing verse and the laity pour water, symbolically transferring apportion of the merit to the ancestors.

Theravada Buddhist honor and transfer merit to their ancestors on every occasion of merit making and sharing. Japanese Buddhist give special honor and merit to their ancestors three times each year: on the spring and autumn equinoxes in March and September and during the month July 15-August 15. The equinox festivals, called Higan, "Other Shore," mark times of transition in nature and therefore are occasions to reflect on the passage of time and the progress of being toward enlightenment — the other shore.




Copyright © 1987 by Robert C. Lester

From Religious Traditions of the World, edited by H. Byron Earhart (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993). Used by arrangement with HarperSanFrancisco, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

The Drama of Transformation: From Baptism to Eucharist
by Sandra Sizer Frankiel

Baptism is clearly the primary Christian rite of initiation. Sometimes it is highly dramatic; at other times it appears largely perfunctory. But in any case it is understood as a powerful reenactment of the death (through immersion) and resurrection (coming out of the water) of Jesus himself. Of course, baptism also imitates Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan River. Further, Judaism already had a similar ritual of conversion: a long period of study and examination followed by immersion in a naturally constituted body of water. There, as in many other religions, immersion symbolized the death of the old person and rebirth f the new. For Christians it was appropriate to adapt this ritual to their new understanding of existence: as Jesus had died and been "reborn," so with every Christian. Thus Paul wrote in his letter to the church at Rome:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Rom. 6:3-4, RSV)

The drama of baptism, which in the early church was usually on Easter morning after a fast and an all-night vigil, culminated with the new Christian donning white garments, a symbol of purity and new birth that is echoed in the white baptismal gowns of babies even today.

The next part of the initiations confirmation originally an anointing with consecrated oil, the "Christing" of the believer, for Christos meant "anointed one," like a king. In this act the believer becomes like Christ and at this moment receives the gift of the Holy Spirit. Just as the Spirit descended on Jesus in the shape of a dove after he came up out of the Jordan, so the oil of anointing represents the descent of the Spirit on the Christian. The rite of confirmation is still practiced immediately after baptism in Eastern Orthodox churches; Roman Catholics and most Protestants perform it at a time when the person has reached an age of understanding. In churches where ecstatic experience is the goal, for example the Pentecostal, the gift of the Holy Spirit has again come into prominence as the mark of the true Christian, although it is not usually considered a ritual of confirmation.

After baptism and (usually) confirmation, the convert comes for the first time to the Eucharist, literally the thanksgiving service, the meal celebrated on Sunday mornings in honor of the Lord’s Day by full members of the church. In the early church, candidates were excluded from this part entirely, even as observers; they could attend services only to the point where selections from the Bible were read and a sermon was preached. Their first communion after baptism therefore would have been a special event: At last they were part of the inner circle, the intimate community of the church. In the early decades this was indeed a small group, a dedicated band meeting quietly to avoid detection in times of persecution. Their meals, at which they ritually remembered Jesus and reenacted his last meeting with his disciples, would have been charged with tension, excitement, and joyous fellowship. Yet the meaning of the Eucharist did not depend on the feelings of the believers present; even when baptism and confirmation became less dramatic, the Eucharist remained powerful and mysterious. It continued as the heart of Christian worship for centuries.

We can develop some sense of the meaning of the Eucharist by looking at the way it was most likely practiced in the churches of the first hundred years of Christianity. The rite began with a greeting from the bishop to the people: "Peace be with you." They responded, "And with your spirit." The congregation exchanged the kiss of peace, men to mean and women to women. The laypeople brought their offerings, a small loaf of bread and a little wine in a flask. The deacons received them and laid the month altar, pouring the wines into larger flasks. The bishop and the presbyters (elders, primarily church administrators) rinsed their hands and then laid hands on the offerings. The bishop recited the Eucharistic prayer of thanks to God. The deacons or bishop broke the loaves, they partook, and then the bishop himself distributed it to the people, saying, "The Bread of heaven." Presbyters and deacons then distributed the wine, and also water, to the people, who came up in a row to receive three sip from each cup., At each sip the one who held the cup said, "In God the Father Almighty," "And in the Lord Jesus Christ," and then "And in the Holy Spirit in the Holy Church," with the recipient responding, "Amen." After this the vessels were washed and the communicants dismissed.

The ritual had three prominent dimensions, each of them important to the new Christian. The Eucharist was a joyous communal feast; it was a sacrifice; and it communicated great spiritual power. The communal nature would have been evident from the beginning, with the exchange of greetings and the kiss of peace; here was the goodwill and intimacy of a group of people who felt almost like a family. Moreover, each person had his or her role in an organic and interdependent society: The layperson brought an offering, the deacon presented and distributed the offerings, the bishop consecrated the ordinary bread and wine to be spiritual food. The community ate together, solemnly, affirming their unity, becoming more truly one in Christ. And as at a wedding, the community overcomes its differences and becomes one in rejoicing with bride and groom.

Second, the Eucharist was a sacrifice, with each member bringing something, a gift of his or her own substance in the form of bread or wine, to become part of the sacrifice. The form is reminiscent of the practice of sacrifice in many societies: The person who has sinned or who desires a spiritual benefit brings an animal or some loaves or fruit as offerings of the divine source of live. In giving over a part of oneself, one participates in a vital exchange with the deity. In Christianity, this fundamental structure is amplified. The offering one brings becomes transformed into the body of Christ, who is God, who has sacrificed himself for the benefit of all. The food offered becomes divine through the cosmic miracle of Jesus’ suffering and death; one eats not bread and wine but the body and blood of Christ.

In this miracle, the sacrifice releases great spiritual power, an infusion of spiritual nourishment for the Christian. For this reason some Christians have wished to partake of it often. The development of the "low mass," which requires only one other person to be present besides the priest, came from the wish of priests to commune daily for their spiritual nourishment. At the same time, the extreme holiness of the rite, the sense that it held enormous power, kept some away. About the fifth century the laity stopped communing each Sunday because they felt too impure to approach the altar; it also became the practice that only the priests would drink the wine, and the laypeople would take only the bread. Nevertheless, the meal remained the "bread of heaven" and the body of Christ. As Theodotus of Egypt (c. 160) wrote, "The bread is hallowed by the power of the name of God. It is transformed into spiritual power."

Because of the enormous power associated with the Eucharist, the awesomeness of the idea of God’s sacrifice, and the sense of unity it generated in the church, Christians throughout the ages have entered into the ritual with humility, awe, and gratitude. The taking of holy food has been the spiritual nourishment of the church continually, week to week, in the celebration of the Lord’s Day. As the culmination of the initiation of a new believer, the Eucharist has been a most powerful ritual; the seeker of salvation becomes a part of a holy community.




Copyright © 1985 by Sandra Sizer

From Religious Traditions of the World, edited by H. Byron Earhart (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993). Used by arrangement with HarperSanFrancisco, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

The Journey of a Lifebody
by David M. Knipe

The Journey of a Lifebody

On the fourth night after the marriage and prior to first intercourse the groom addresses the bride with the verse: “May Vishnu prepare the womb, may Tvashtar mould the embryo’s form, may Prajapati emit seed, may Dhatar place the embryo. Place the embryo, Sinivali, place the embryo, Sarasvati! May the Ashvins garlanded with lotuses provide the embryo, the Ashvins with their golden fire-churning sticks, the embryo that I now place for you to bear in ten months.” (Jaiminiya Grihya Sutra 1.22)

Hindus recognize multiple sources of power in the world about them, sacred forces in rivers and rocks, in village temples and on hilltop shrines, even in holy women and men. It has been noted that time, like physical space, also reveals an abundance of spiritual meanings and events. There is the time of nature, a cosmic time of seasons and universal changes, measured by celestial bodies and monsoon winds, and evident in the alternations of light and darkness, warmth and cold, rain and drought, growth and decay. But there is also the time of an individual in the hoped-for span of a hundred years between birth and death. Like cosmic time, carefully segmented into memories of important events of the seasons and the deities, so too personal time is ritually marked. The marks are called samskaras, rites of passage and transformation.

Some ritual manuals consider as many as forty samskaras to be worthy of performance, but a more traditional set of ten to eighteen is characteristic. A samskara is literally an accomplishment, perfection, or refinement, and therefore the ritual advancement of a lifebody from its moment of conception to the moment just beyond its bodily death. Since many of the symbols are agricultural, the metaphor of ripening is often employed: A single cycle of life proceeds from seed planting to harvest sacrifice and beyond to rebirth in the succeeding cycle. Therefore food and its transformation, both material—in processes within the body—and spiritual—in ritual exchanges—remain dominant expressions.

Every culture, every religion, pays ritual attention to the life cycle. Not all of them, however, place as great an emphasis as Hinduism does upon the substantive transformations that occur in such procedures. There are several significant features of Hinduism to keep in view during a survey of the samskaras.

First, because of unquestioned acceptance of the concept of transmigration, the personal journey from conception to cremation or burial is not a singular one. Rather, each life is one of a great number of rebirths for that self until the achievement of its final state of liberation from the birth-and-death cycle.

Second, this personal journey of a lifebody is not a lonely one. It begins, obviously, as an extension of an existing parental family with all of its remembered forebears. It ends, ideally, with a living son, one further extension of the lineage, acting as performer of the last rites, the final sacrifice of the used-up body. If our own cultural image of a family tree is a great spreading oak or chestnut with many branches, the Hindu image is a slender bamboo, tall and undeviating, with regularly spaced joints (vamsa, “lineage”) to represent an unbroken descent from father to son. The masculine character of this lineage is one of the central features of Hindu ritual and kinship: Every attention is given to producing a son to keep the lineage and its ritual structure intact. A daughter is only a temporary member of the family, since she will be assumed into her husband’s lineage, first during the marriage ceremony itself, and then, after her life in his village or town, again at death when she may join the company of his ancestors. From the point of view of the personal journey of each lifebody, however, it is important to remember this wider community that is involved in every ritual. It is composed not only of all the visible relatives, but the invisible ones as well. The participant presence of the deceased, both male and female, is never forgotten, and offerings of food with accompanying mantras are invariably shared with them, as with the living.

Third, there is in the series of samskaras, to borrow a current media expression, an apparent front-loading. The majority of the rites occur before the age of six months and, in fact, several are accomplished before the severance of the umbilical cord. Since a dominant concern of thesamskaras throughout a lifetime is refinement, that is to say, the elimination of impurities, attention is drawn once more to the previous career of this self, including its dangerous passage from body to body. What follows is the orderly sequence of samskaras, the ritual passage from conception through childhood, initiation, marriage, death, and beyond.

From Conception Through Childhood

Vedic manuals for domestic rituals begin the life cycle with marriage procedures. It is on the fourth night of the wedding ceremony that consummation should occur, and sexual union is actually the rite of impregnation. According to the mantra of a famous wedding hymn in the Atharvaveda, the bride is earth and the groom is heaven. This notion of woman as crop field and man as provider of seed remains throughout Hindu myth and experience. Furthermore, the embryo that grows in the bride as a consequence of the marriage rite is itself a new being composed partly of the father’s semen—the source of bones, teeth, bodily channels, and semen—and partly of the mother’s uterine blood—the source of blood, flesh, and internal organs. If the father’s contributing substance predominates, the new being will be male; if the mother’s is stronger, then female.

The next samskara, however, performed in the third month of a woman’s first pregnancy, is the “generation of a male.” This indicates that ritual action may still determine the sex of the fetus. Beans, barley, berries, or banyan tree shoots may all play a part in the ritual. In the fourth or a later month is the ritual “parting of the hair” in which the father-to-be parts his wife’s hair three times upward, from front to back, using for a “comb” a porcupine quill, tufts of sacred grass, or a full spindle. Ripening fruits are also employed in this ceremony that, like the others, takes place at the hearth fire of the home and involves special mantras. In some parts of India the mother-to-be looks at cooked rice, envisioning the child yet to be born.

The ritual of birth itself is performed immediately upon delivery, before the umbilical cord is severed. The first part of this samskara concentrates on the “production of wisdom” in the newborn; the father touches the baby’s lips with a gold spoon or ring dipped in honey, curds, and clarified butter. The name of the goddess of sacred speech, Vach, is whispered three times into the infant’s right ear. The second part of the rite includes mantras, for “long life.” After the cutting of the cord the infant may be given a secret name, known only to the mother and father, before being placed at the mother’s breast.

In the Vedic period several mysterious feminine powers were in attendance during birth, functioning as midwives of the child’s destiny as well as its physical arrival into the world. Worship of the goddess Shasthi (“Sixth”) on the sixth day of life is a contemporary survival of such ancient feminine guardian figures.

Ten or twelve days after the delivery (or in some areas, one year later), the baby undergoes the name-giving samskara and receives an everyday name, often that of an astrologically appropriate deity, by which she or he will be known. This name serves as a “cover” or distraction from the real one, still a secret from the evil eye or other dangerous elements. Amulets, black threads around the wrist, lampblack marks on the body, and other devices may also guard the child from now until puberty or later.

Some time in the fourth month the newest addition to the family may be taken out of the house for the first time. That event, witnessing the sun and the moon, is a samskara, as is the moment of first feeding with solid food (cooked rice), usually in the sixth month. A month or so later is the ear-piercing ceremony, the earlobes being ringed with wire, the right ear first for boys, the left one first for girls. Ritual shaving of the head and direct removal of impurities held by the hair is an important procedure throughout life in Hinduism and is often connected with special pilgrimages and vows as well as standard rites of passage. Thus the first such tonsure is the forerunner of a continuing voluntary ritual. When the hair is shaved away a small lock is left at the back of the bare skull, a twist of hair as a visible reminder of this consecration . Incidentally, the first tonsure rite is the only samskara that may be performed in a temple, often an ancestral goddess temple, as well as in the home. A secondary tonsure for males in their sixteenth year is sometimes considered a samskara, this one including the first shaving of facial hair as well as the scalp.

Education, Marriage, and Adulthood

The most powerful of samskaras between birth and marriage is certainly the initiatory thread-ceremony known as the upanayana, the ritual “leading near” of a student to his guru for religious instruction. Nowadays only the most exacting Brahman families request such a performance for a son; more frequently an abbreviated version serves as a preliminary to the marriage vows.

Through the Vedic era and on into classical Hinduism the upanayana was the indispensable second birth for all twice-born classes, that is, the Brahmans, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas, who received their threads at the ages of eight, eleven, and twelve, respectively. Being “born again,” bound for a lifetime by a sacred thread worn over the left shoulder, was a transition of great community as well as personal significance. An initiate was not merely introduced to the Vedic tradition, both textual and sacrificial, when he heard from his guru the first mantra (the gayatri, which is Rigveda 3.62.10) and learned from him the procedures for offering into the sacrificial fire (the standard homa). At that moment he became a link in the ageless transmission of knowledge and assumed his part of human responsibility for maintaining cosmic truth and order. No small step was that.

The elaborate ritual itself opened the door to the first stage of life, that of the student “living according to brahman,” the brahmacarin, receptive to his guru and all that this spiritual father would turn over to him in this lengthy birthing process. The Atharvaveda speaks with awe of the Vedic student more powerful than a thousand suns. Still today a few Brahman boys from special families follow the ancient tradition, living in the home of the guru for a period of years, learning daily the Vedic texts, orally, one line at a time, reciting the line back until the entire Veda, or significant parts of several Vedas, are committed to memory.

Another samskara marked the other end of the brahmacarin’s career, the “return” to the parental home after a ritual bath signifying graduation. The second stage of life, that of the married householder, became the focus of ritual attention. The ancient student received his entire education during the years with his teacher; nowadays, of course, a Brahman boy will normally be in public schools like everyone else. Today the tradition has been trimmed down to a symbolic studenthood of the religious life: the investiture with the thread, whispering of the gayatri mantra, instructions in domestic sacrifice, and the ritual bath and “return” all occur on the same day in the boy’s own home, usually on the day before his departure for the marriage ceremony that takes place in the village or town of the bride.

The marriage arrangements, for all castes, are the responsibilities of parents, and preparations may take a great many months. The ceremony proper, a samskara transforming both bride and groom, occurs at night in the house of the bride’s father. It is embedded in a wide range of other rituals and local practices that may go on for several days and usually have all the traits of a community festival. One preliminary ritual of significance, done in the privacy of the respective bride’s and groom’s homes well in advance, is the anointing of their bodies with an oil of turmeric, the yellow root known for its powers of fertility.

Already in the ancient period there were many variations of procedures and levels of symbolism in this union of two individuals, two cosmic principles, male and female. Modern India has even greater diversity in this universally observed samskara, but a number of features have carried over from the Vedic manuals and may be recognized in most parts of India and the wider Hindu world today. These include construction of a ritual booth of auspicious banana and mango leaves, tying of a thread around the wrist of the bride, first gazing of the couple at one another after the removal of a separating cloth, placing the bride’s foot three times on the family grinding stone as a vow of fidelity, the important seven steps northward from or around the ritual fire, and an initial offering into the hearth of the new home. The homa that the boy learned in his initiation is now performed with the bride as the pair assumes the role of householders in the community. Together they observe the pole star, Dhruva, and the nearby star, Arundhati (wife of the sage Vasistha), who is, like Dhruva, a model of loyalty and steadfastness. Usually there is a ritual marking of the part in the bride’s hair with a stroke of vermillion, a signal to all of her marital status but also the symbol and promise of her powerful new role as mother-to-be.

Death and Beyond

The last samskara in the journey of a lifebody is the ritual disposal of the material body after death, either by cremation or by burial. This is a “final offering,” as the samskara is named. Cremation and burial are both known from the time of the Rigveda, and both are widely practiced in Hinduism today (although the tendency for higher caste groups is to burn, for lower caste groups in South India to bury their dead). Funerary rites highlight once again Hinduism’s claim that death is a continuing experience in the long course toward liberation, while the self in process remains indestructible.

This samskara declares the same ends as all the previous ones. It celebrates the completion of a stage of life, in this case, the end of the lifebody. It refines, by eliminating impurities and rendering the entire material body to ashes or earth. And it promotes, by liberating the subtle body for another birth in the long course. Again, this set of rituals, like the preceding ones, is subject to wide variation, but the traditional ritual sequence includes preparation of the body in or just outside the home; a procession to the burning-ground or cemetery, both usually found together at a river bank in or just outside the village or town; a ritual lighting of the pyre or placing of the body in the grave; circumambulation of the pyre or grave by the chief mourner, usually the eldest living son, who is the “offerer” of his father’s body; the breaking of a large ceramic pot of water over the fire or grave; ritual bathing by the mourners along with shaving and tonsure of the men; the symbolic or actual gifting of a cow. If cremation is the means of disposal, a bone-gathering ceremony follows; later these fragments are dispersed in a sacred river.

More or less elaborate preparations, depending upon the ritual and financial status of the mourners, are immediately begun to promote the deceased on to a new journey. No longer technically samskaras, these shraddhas, as they are called, constitute a whole ritual enterprise in itself and an important dimension of Hindu life and thought.

To summarize and reflect upon what can be learned from this review of a life cycle according to Hinduism, a number of insights into the tradition as a whole become available. For example, there are correspondences between cosmic time and personal time, as well as an apparent symmetry of generation and regeneration. The seed of a lifebody is ritually placed in the field-womb, where it germinates after ten lunar months (“days”). After death the used-up body is ritually devoured by the funeral fire or the earth and a new temporary body is ritually begun, one that also germinates after ten days, then functions to carry the self to the company of ancestors. The clustering of essential rituals at the points of birth and death-rebirth is best understood in this light.

Throughout these rituals there are strong continuities with the oldest layers of Hinduism. It is perhaps in the samskaras and ancestor rites that India best remembers its ancient Vedic heritage. Basic samskaras have endured through centuries of change in doctrine and practice. They proved to be an all-Indian template, a unifying pattern that countered the regional diversities and popular innovations that inevitably sprang up across the subcontinent. Of course not every householder today performs the entire set of samskaras, but everyone knows the system, participates in the most essential ones, and attempts, even if the scale is abbreviated or several rites are telescoped into a single performance, to accomplish as many as possible on the oldest surviving male child. Here, too, we learn of the ritual need for continuing lineage, a link in the living present to connect the ancestors to those not yet born, a link who must by long tradition be male provider of seed. And as noted more than once, in these rituals there is an underlying spiritual basis for Hindu physiology.

Above all, a lifebody does not begin, nor does it remain, whole, pure, or safe. It requires ritual prescriptions in a lifelong process of ripening and refinement. This process is accomplished within the context of the family and its sacred hearth. Household deities may be invoked or mentioned, but no one of them is credited with these mysterious transformations. The male head of the household or an invited Brahman priest is the outward visible performer, but it is the ritual “work” itself that succeeds in refining, shaping, perfecting the ongoing lifebody and advancing it on yet another step on the path toward ultimate liberation.




Copyright © 1991 by David M. Knipe

From Religious Traditions of the World, edited by H. Byron Earhart

The Life Cycle of Holiness
Rites of Passage
by Michael Fishbane

In addition to the recurrent daily and seasonal patterns of Judaism, the nonrecurrent moments of personal life are also given ritual distinction. These moments celebrate or mark times of new beginning and transition from one life stage to another. They dramatize the transience of individual existence, while highlighting those social symbols that give the community its identity and integrate the person into a larger sphere of meaning. Moments of passage are thus crucial in a double sense. First, while stressing the transience of life, they also provide the means of transcending this terror through the enduring symbols of religious meaning. Thus if the individual life is mortal, the ongoing community is a symbol of collective immortality and the permanence of values. Second, while stressing the transience of life, rites of passage also provide the means of transition from one life stage and one sphere of responsibility to another. They thus confirm the hierarchies of value of the community. And they also project an ideal sequence of personal development the individual can look forward to, so that, upon reaching each stage, a person can evaluate his or her maturation against a collective standard.

Birth

Birth is naturally the first major moment in a person’s individual and communal life. When a boy is born, a circumcision rite called a brit ("covenant," short for brit milah, "covenant of circumcision") can be expected eight days later. This ceremony, of great antiquity, confirms the transition of the infant from being a child of Adam, as it were, to a member of the Jewish people. Thus the boy enters the "covenant of Abraham." The minor operation is delegated by the father to a ritually trained surgeon, called mohel. The mohel receives the child after he has been passed among the relatives, beginning with the mother (in a separate room; she is customarily secluded at this time). Just before the boy is given to the godfather (called sandek) to hold while the operation is performed according to the ancient procedure, the mohel temporarily places the child on a "chair of Elijah" symbolic of the hopes of redemption. After the actual circumcision, the child is handled to the father (or an honored guest) while the mohel recites blessings in praise of God and for the welfare of the child. It is then that the boy’s name is announced. The name (e.g. David son of Abraham) will be how the boy will be "called up" when he is honored to bless the Torah in later years, and this name will be marked on his tombstone at death. From antiquity some Jews have had double names, a Hebrew name and a related vernacular name (e.g., in Hellenistic times one might be Jonathan or Matthew and Theodore, names all meaning "gift of God") or names that could function in both the ritual and secular communities. Among Ashkenazi Jews, it is customary to name the boy after a deceased relative; Sephardis, however, do not adhere to this practice. A joyous moment in the circumcision ceremony is when the entire assembly exclaims: "Just as he has entered the covenant, so may he enter [the study of] Torah, the wedding canopy, and good deeds." Thus a life cycle is outlined, which all the adults confirm through their own lives.

The naming ceremony for a girl traditionally takes place in the synagogue during a subsequent Sabbath service, when her father is called up to the Torah. In recent times in more liberal contexts, the mother is involved in this occasion, and new rituals for the birth of a girl have been developed. One of the more popular designations for these ceremonies is simhat bat, joy [for the birth] of a daughter.

Religious Majority

The study of Torah traditionally begins quite early, for boys perhaps when they are three or four years old; and, according to custom, this event is inaugurated by having the child find and trace the letters of his name which are covered with honey. This act symbolizes the hopes for the sweetness of life devoted to Torah and the commandments. From youth, a boy will instructed in Hebrew and the traditional classics of Judaism, but he will not be a formal member of the halakhic community until he is thirteen years old. At that time he will become a bar mitzvah, literally a "son of the commandment(s)." He can then perform all the mitzvoth and is required to do so with full responsibility for his religious behavior. When the boy is first "called up" to the Torah, symbolic of his attainment of majority, the father utters a blessing commemorating this transition to adulthood.

A girl traditionally achieves majority at twelve years and a day, a time symbolic of the onset of menstruation, and is by then fully instructed in the intricacies of maintaining a ritually correct home, in the traditional rules of menstrual purity, and in some of the sacred texts. In recent times, girls are given fuller academic instruction in the traditional literature (though this varies by group) and in liberal contexts a bat mitzvah ceremony ("daughter of the commandment[s]") has been developed to mark the rite of passage. The degree to which this ceremony is part of the traditional service depends upon the strictness of the group. Some communities give a girl the same Torah ceremony as a boy; others only give her some ritual part in the Friday evening service; and still others limit this involvement of some celebratory action outside the framework of the halakha. There is naturally a high correlation between how a girl celebrates her majority status as a doer of mitzvoth and the role of women in a given ritual community. Strict traditionalists, concerned with the separation of these and the more minor ritual status of the female, will thus regard the moment as a female affair. Those groups that variously reject traditional rules about women (particularly matters of segregation in prayer, formal exclusion from the prayer quorum, and fewer required positive commandments) will correspondingly regard the moment of a girl’s majority as a more ritual event along the lines enjoyed by males. Nowadays, such matters are subject to local rabbinic-communal regulation, though the communities themselves feel subject to the authority of different rabbinical institutions and their rulings on these halakhic matters.

Marriage

For traditionalists and nontraditionalists alike, the wedding canopy is a major moment of personal and social transition. The male and female take their lace as productive communal citizens and fulfill the first mitzvah of the Torah: to "be fruitful and multiply." The wedding is thus the transition to the basic Jewish institution of the home and to responsibility for the welfare of the community. In earlier times and still in some ultratraditional circles, marriages are arranged among peer groups. In such traditional groups, a bridegroom will not see his bride until near or on the wedding day; though nowadays when marriages are generally affected by more romantic inclinations, and contact between groups is also more flexible, a period of acquaintance for the future couple is more common. Most modern traditionalists enjoy more flexible dating patterns, as do liberal Jews.

In Talmudic times, a stage of "betrothal" (kiddushin or erusin) preceded the "nuptials" (nisu’in) by some time period. The two stages were combined in the post-Talmudic period and are celebrated together in the present Jewish wedding marriage ceremony. This latter formally begins in the afternoon (the bridegroom and bride having separately returned form ritual ablutions, a traditional practice), when the ancient contract formulas are reviewed by the "Arranger of kiddushin" and the document (ketubbah) is signed by witnesses. This ketubbah is read at the ceremony itself, along with seven blessings extolling the beauty of creation and the joys of companionship. The male will customarily wear his white kittel and recite the traditional marriage formula ("You are betrothed to me, with this ring, in accordance with the laws of Moses and Israel"). In Ashkenazi ceremonies, the couple share wine and the groom breaks a glass. One explanation of this old custom is that it is popular defense against evil spirits. Another interpretation gives a more moral explanation, saying that it recalls the sadness of the Temple’s destruction in moments of joy. Among some Sephardis, the cup is smashed with wine in it as a sign of plenty. Related to such gestures of good omen, or mazel tov, it is customary to perform weddings at nightfall in view of the stars (which symbolize the divine promise to Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars), and on Tuesday (because of the double repetition in the biblical creation account of the phrase "and God saw that it was good" on that day). In certain periods associated with death or unfulfillment, marriages may not be performed.

It is considered a special mitzvah to praise the bride and entertain the room. A whole repertoire of how one should dance before the bride and of the mirthful or mocking songs are part of the rich tradition linked to the event. In strictly traditional groups the dancing is performed by males and females in separate groups, and the bridegroom and bride are each hoisted up on chairs as the guests whirl roundabout. It is also customary to extend these festivities over along period of time after the wedding day. Thus friends in different locales may invite the couple to a joyous reception where the seven blessings of the marriage ceremony are recited by honored guests. Torah teachings are given, and the mitzvah "to make the bridegroom rejoice in his bride" is fulfilled. Since the covenant at Sinai was imagined by the ancient rabbis as a wedding between God and Israel, with the Torah as the ketubbah and Moses the "go-between," a deeper theological background is conveyed by the marriage occasion. The mystical understanding of the unity of male and female as symbolic of deper divine and cosmic harmonies adds to the aura of the event.




Copyright © 1987 by Michael Fishbane

From Religious Traditions of the World, edited by H. Byron Earhart (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993). Used by arrangement with HarperSanFrancisco, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

The Realization of the Goal of Islam In Faithful and Observant Communal Life
The Five Pillars of Islam
by Frederick M. Denny

Muslims believe that they have been called by God to establish a righteous human political and social order on earth. The only way to live gratefully as God’s caliphs is to make full use of what he has bestowed on humankind. The fundamental Islamic doctrine of the divine unity requires a unified human religious community as well. Tawhid is the Islamic name for this unity. But it is not a matter of mere number, in the sense that one is different from two and three and so forth. Rather, tawhid means "unification"; it has verbal force. Muslims declare God to be One and reinforce, indeed embody that declaration with strenuous efforts at unity in their doctrinal, ritual-devotional, and communal lives, which are regulated by the Qur’an and Muhammad’s teaching and example as contained in his Sunna.

Faith

The elements of Islamic faith, known as iman, can be briefly summarized, even though there has never been anything like a universal uniform creed in the sense of a formal statement that Muslims have been required to recite and endorse. The closest thing to such is the Shahada, the "witnessing" both to the unity of God and the messengerhood of Muhammad. But this two-part utterance does not have sufficient specific detail to be a comprehensive creed; rather it provides a crisp summary of the two vast areas of theological awareness and reflection: God and humankind, the vertical dimension being belief in no god but God and the horizontal dimension being the recognition that Muhammad has been chosen to be God’s messenger on the human historical plane. But nothing is said in the shahada about the Qur’an, or about the Last Judgment, or other central elements of Islamic faith.

The first basic doctrine of Islam is the belief in the divine unity, tawhid. This belief is easy to declare but difficult to understand and apply; indeed, the whole edifice of Muslim religion is dedicated to realizing tawhid. The second great doctrine is belief in angels as the divinely appointed agents of God’s revelatory activity and helpers in myriad other tasks. The third is belief in prophecy and sacred books that have been revealed to prophets in the past and, especially, acceptance of Muhammad and the Qur’an as the final "seal" of the cycle of prophecy in history. The fourth belief is in the Last Day, when all the dead will be raised and humankind shall be gathered before the Judgment Seat of God, the righteous to be saved in eternal heavenly bliss and the unbelievers to be cast down guilty into hell. The final doctrine is the Divine Decree and Predestination. Its workings are a mystery to humans, who nevertheless are given sufficient freedom and responsibility to make genuine moral and spiritual decisions.

The Pillars of Islam

Islam is a religion with an emphasis on orthoprax issues; that is, the acting out of basic beliefs and attitudes is central. This orthoprax character of Islam can best be seen in the five basic devotional-ritual duties called the Pillars of Islam, required of every Muslim; these work together to form a potent inner structure for the Umma and at the same time demarcate it from and defend it against outsiders.

Muslims have a strong sense of distinction between themselves and non-Muslims. The universal Islamic greeting as-salamu ‘alaykum, "Peace be upon you!" is normally used only between Muslims. It is forbidden for female Muslims to marry outside the faith and male Muslims who do are restricted to monotheistic spouses, and children of such a union are considered Muslim and must be brought up so. The closed community of the Umma is not inhospitable to outsiders in the sense of being cold or indifferent to common human needs and problems. Rather, the Umma is closed in the sense that it does not permit its members to stray outside the fold and still be considered Muslim.

Shahada

As far as welcoming outsiders into the fellowship of faith is concerned, the gates are wide open at all times and there is always hearty rejoicing when a person responds to the call of Islam, pronounces the Shahada, and becomes a brother or sister in the faith. It is necessary only to perform the first pillar of uttering the Shahada ("I bear witness that ‘There is no god but God’; I bear witness that ‘Muhammad is the messenger of God.’") once, with sincere conviction, to become Muslim.

Once, in a university class on Islam, one of my students was inspired to utter the Shahada in the middle of my lecture. He had evidently been thinking about his potential commitment to Islam for some time, but when he felt the call of God in the classroom, he could not resist. Two Muslim students in the class embraced the student and together the three performed a joyful prayer prostration while the class looked on in surprise, awe, and respect lightened by cheerfulness.

Salat: Worship

The Pillars of Islam begin with the Shahada, which is both a doctrinal declaration and an act of public witnessing. As soon as this brief confession has been uttered, the appropriate next expression is formal worship, known as Salat. This act of worship is the most frequently performed and pervasive of Islam’s devotional duties; it is required five times daily and also at other times such as funerals and eclipses. The Salat is highly formalized and minutely regulated in its precisely observed cycles of spoken formulas and bodily postures. Prescribed in the Qur’an and developed by Muhammad for the earliest Muslims, the Salat has bound the Umma together across the ages and geographical frontiers of Islam at a more nearly uniform level of performance than the practice of any other world religion. There is no priestly clergy in Islam, so all adult Muslims must know the Salat and be able to lead it if called upon.

Muslims learn early how to perform the Salat as they are trained to form straight rows behind the imam, the prayer leader who serves as a pattern and pacer for the series of standings, bowings, prostrations, and sittings that make up a cycle within the service. All eyes are directed straight ahead, with the heart and mind focused on precisely what is to be done during the service. The entire congregation faces in the direction of Mecca and the sacred Ka’ba there. The Salat is observed at dawn, at noon, during the mid-afternoon, just after the sun has set, and in the evening. A prescribed number of cycles is required at each of these times, but each worshiper may also perform additional ones.

A prime prerequisite for performing the Salat is ritual purification for every individual; usually (unless there is major impurity) purification is achieved by means of simple washing of the face, head, ears, mouth, nostrils, hands and arms to the elbows, feet, and ankles, while uttering certain invocations for purity and guidance. However, if the individual has experience what is considered a major impurity, such as sexual intercourse or contact with foul substances such as pig's or dog's saliva, then she or he is obliged to perform a major ablution in the form of a ritualized full bath of the entire body. Purification is of such great importance for Muslims that they constantly distinguish between a pure state and an impure state. This distinction stems from the closed nature of the Umma and protects it. Closely associated with purity and avoidance of categories of permitted and forbidden. Not only is it forbidden to perform the Salat without first becoming purified, it is understood that if one observes the Salat while impure, the performance is invalid. The Salat is both an individual and a communal ritual act that strongly symbolizes the specialness of the Muslim community and sets it apart from profane and impure objects and associations. "Cleanliness is next to godliness" is as pervasive an ideal among Muslims as it has been among pietistic Protestants.

The English word mosque is based on an Arabic word (masjid) that simply means "place of prostration." A mosque, then, is not primarily a building, but a ritually dedicated space. The exclusive nature of the Umma is sometimes symbolized in some countries by forbidding non-Muslims to enter a mosque (e.g., Morocco, Iran). Even Muslims must leave their shoes at the door and in all ways deport themselves fittingly.

Muslim religious and aesthetic inspiration have come together in two supreme expressions in the art of Qur’anic Arabic calligraphy and sacred architecture. The mosque as a building has reached heights of symbolic expression in testimony to the divine unity by means of its simplicity, spaciousness, and manner of drawing the eyes, ears, and hearts to meditation on God. Sometimes mosque architecture has symbolized the vision of the garden of the afterlife in heaven, with pillars resembling tree trunks, and fountains and pools bubbling and spreading out as cool invigorating streams under the trees and domed heavens of the mosque as a miniature paradise.

The first requisite for a mosque is proper placement: The location should be free from pollution (e.g., not next to a tannery or brewery) and the main prostration area must be situated so that the worshipers face toward Mecca (Indonesian Muslims face west, whereas Syrians face south, and so forth). Mosques always have a niche (or other suitable marker) in the wall that faces Mecca, indicating the proper direction of prayer. The niche may be plain and unadorned or lavishly decorated, but the ritual purpose is unvarying. Next to it is a raised pulpit, with a stairway leading up and a canopy over the top. This pulpit is used whenever a sermon is preached, as at Friday congregational Salat, when Muslims are required to assemble together in a major mosque. The floor must be clean and clutter-free. There are no chairs or benches in mosques; the worshipers perform their services on carpeted or matted floors. Usually there are lamps, a clock, and a library corner with copies of the Qur’an and other religious books available for study. Adjacent to the worship area is a properly outfitted ablution area, one for males, another for females, with running water (ideally), toilets, and privacy. Usually there is a minaret next to or atop the mosque, from which the call to prayer is chanted. The minaret next to or atop the mosque, from which the call to prayer is chanted. The minaret, in fact, is a universal symbol of Islam. The word comes from the Arabic word for "lighthouse" and the symbolism is obvious it guides people to the Straight Path of Islam. The call that comes from this lighthouse is God’s summons to righteousness and truth: "God is most great! I bear witness that there is no god but God. I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God. Hasten to Salat! Hasten to success! God is most great! There is no god but God!"

Zakat: Almsgiving

The third Pillar of Islam is legal almsgiving, called Zakat. Zakat is a kind of religious tax on certain types of property and wealth, provided a minimum level is already owned. It is believed that Zakat purifies the remaining property for the giver.

This almsgiving is rendered at the end of each year for the support of various people: for poor Muslims, for converts who need help getting on their feet (in many societies, leaving a religious community for another has entailed a radical break, sometimes even social and economic "death"), for Muslim debtors of necessity, for Muslim wayfarers in dire straits, for Muslim prisoners of war, for Muslims engaged in the defense of or propagation of Islam, and for those whose job it is to collect Zakat.

Zakat is not considered charity. Rather, it is a religious obligation and placed right alongside the Salat as primary act of service to God. The Salat strongly symbolizes the total submission of the Muslims to the one, almighty God; the Zakat symbolizes the solid communal-mindedness of the Muslims, who support each other with their wealth and thus increase not only the cohesiveness and security of the Umma but also render it purer. The Qur’an likens the Zakat to a good loan paid to God, which he will repay multifold. God thus enjoins the Muslims to participate with him in sustaining the righteous community of faith. Human caliphal activity is a real responsibility and possibility, exercising stewardship of earth’s resources. God has endowed his creatures with wealth, and humankind is asked to return it through works enhancing the community. To support the community by Zakat, then, is to worship God.

Sawm: Fasting

Fasting, known to Muslims as Sawm, the fourth Pillar of Islam, is also prescribed for Muslim for the whole month of Ramadan, one of the lunar months of the Muslim calendar lasting either twenty-nine or thirty days. No food, drink, medicine, smoke, or sensual pleasure may be taken from dawn until dark. In the evening it is permitted to eat and enjoy marital relations, and before dawn a meal is eaten to provide sufficient strength for the coming day’s activities. The ill, children, the aged, and certain other classes are excused from the fast, although those who can should make it up later.

Ramadan is the month in which the Qur’an first came down upon Muhammad and it is considered auspicious for other reasons, too. Muslims try to improve their spiritual and ethical lives during this holy month. Evenings are spent in special prayer gatherings in mosques, where cycles of pious exercises are recited, some twenty in all. There is congregational recitation of the Qur’an, as well as increase individual recitation. Some people observe a retreat during the last ten days of Ramadan by residing in the mosque.

Ramadan is a time of sober reflection and, depending on the season and region, it can be a difficult discipline. But experienced fasters soon get into the rhythm of the observance and testify to physical as well as spiritual benefits of rhythm of the observance and testify to physical as well as spiritual benefits of fasting. One of the major benefits is a shared feeling of common humanity, with differences of rank, status, wealth, and other circumstances that distinguish people from each other minimized. With all the effort that the fast entails, Ramadan is not a sad or anxiety-ridden period. Evenings are usually joyful occasions and people strive to be at their best at all times and to be especially aware of the dangers of crossness and hasty, angry words. There may be weariness for some, but there is also keenness of perception and self-scrutiny.

At the close of the Ramadan fast comes one of the two canonical festivals of the Muslim year, the Feast of the Fast-Breaking, when Muslims send greeting cards to each other, enjoy special foods, and travel to be with family. A special Salat service opens the festival.

The Hajj: Pilgrimage

The fifth and final Pillar of Islam is the pilgrimage, or Hajj, to Mecca during the special month established for it. This is the only Pillar that is not absolutely obligatory. It is to be performed only if personal, financial, and family circumstances permit. Completing the Hajj confers on the pilgrim the honorific title Hajji, which may then be attached to the person’s name for the rest of his or her life.

The Salat is a continuous exercise in worship and communal strengthening, with ritual concentration directed toward Mecca. The Hajj permits the worshiper to travel in body to the sacred center, where Muslims believe that Adam and Eve lived, where Abraham and his son Ishmael erected the Ka’ba as the first house of worship of the One True God, and where Muhammad often raised up the Salat and led his fellow believers, even when they were persecuted cruelly as they prostrated in prayer and praise. Prostration was ridiculed as craven by the proud pagan Arabs, but it became a new symbol of pride for Muslims in submission before their Lord.

Pilgrims experience the thrill of seeing, hearing, and meeting fellow believers of all races and languages and cultures from the corners of the glove. Male pilgrims are required to don a two-piece, white, seamless garment, symbolizing their entry into the ritually pure and consecrated state of ihram. Women may also wear a white garment that covers their entire body and head, but they are also allowed to wear clean, modest clothing in their national styles. When men wear the ihram garment and women their national dress, Muslims rejoice at this dual symbolism of Muslim unity and equality alongside rich and creative cultural diversity. The Umma, thus, is both strongly focused in its common dedication of God, and brilliantly diffuse in its variegated cultural forms, all of which are turned toward the common task, which God commanded in the Qur’an, of "enjoining the right and forbidding the wrong."

Although Islam knows no rite of passage into the Umma, the Hajj can be compared to a ritual of passage marked by separation from one spiritual status and movement of a higher one. The first step in this separation is formal leave-taking and the writing of one’s last will and testament. In Mecca, the dedicated state of ihram requires abstention form sexual relations, from shaving the beard or cutting one’s head or body hair, wearing scent or precious ornaments, hunting animals, and uprooting vegetation. The pilgrim is thus separated from everyday life and placed in a special ritual state, a common feature of rites of passage the world over. The actual time of the pilgrimage rites, in Mecca near the Ka’ba and in several locales outside, includes ritual reenactments of primordial spiritual events: Pilgrims pray where Abraham prayed; they run in frantic search of water as Hagar did for her defenseless son Ishmael, when they were cast out into the wilderness; they circumambulate the Ka’ba seven times on three occasions, just as the monotheistic worshipers of old were believed to do and as Muhammad prescribed by his example; and they perform a blood sacrifice of consecrated animals in commemoration of Abraham’s sacrifice of a ram when God had tested his faith and then released him from the awful command to sacrifice his son (who the Qur’an identifies as Ishmael).

The climactic event of the Hajj is a standing ceremony on the Plain of Arafat, several miles from Mecca, near the Mountain of Mercy, where Muhammad sat astride his camel as he delivered his farewell sermon to the assembled pilgrims in the last year of his life. The standing ceremony begins at noon with a special Salat and continues until sundown. The pilgrims observe a reflective afternoon, seeking God’s forgiveness of their sins and resolving to spend the remainder of their lives in renewed and more intense service of God and the Muslims. There may be as many as three million pilgrims gathered in the vast plain for the standing ceremony, ample witness to the great worldwide community of Muslims. If one misses the standing ceremony, for whatever reason, the entire pilgrimage is thus rendered invalid and must be repeated in another annual season. Notice that the standing ceremony focuses on the individual pilgrim’s own recommitment, which is renewed in light of the reenactments leading up to it. In ritual studies terminology, this is a "betwixt and between" time when a spiritual transformation and the graduation of the new status occur definitively, the status of Hajji.

After the standing ceremony comes the blood sacrifice that extends symbolically back to Abraham. This sacrifice of sheep, goats, camels, cattle is of double significance. Not only is it a high point of the pilgrimage, a sort of liturgical release just as it was for Abraham and Ishmael; it is also the one point in the Hajj when Muslims around the world also participate by means of a Festival Salat and animal sacrifices at home. This observance is known as the Great Feast and with the Feast of Fast-Breaking completes the annual canonical observances of Muslim festivity. The performance of the sacrifice is done by pointing the animal’s head toward the Ka’ba in Mecca, saying "God is great" and "In the Name of God," and then slitting its throat quickly and cleanly. The blood is thoroughly drained before the meat is butchered, in a way similar to the Jewish practice of koshering meat. Again, this is a kind of ritual separation and believed to render the flesh pure as well as wholesome. The meat is divided into portions, at least in the case of Muslims not on pilgrimage, and usually given to the needy, and to neighbors, with the third portion remaining for the use of the sacrificer and his or her family. Only males may perform the slaughter; females have it done on their behalf by a male relative or special agent.

During the final days of the Hajj and after the sacrifice, the pilgrims gradually emerge from the state of ihram by having their hair cut and beard shaved, by donning everyday clothes, and by beginning to focus on the tasks ahead beyond Mecca. Sexual relations are still forbidden until after certain final rites have been completed, like the ritual stoning of the devil and a farewell circumambulation of the Ka’ba. If they have not done it before the Hajj, pilgrims usually try to visit Medina, the City of the Prophet, some 280 miles to the north. Medina, like Mecca, is a forbidden city, open only to Muslims. Although the visit to Medina is not obligatory, it is meritorious and always deeply meaningful, because it provides an opportunity to pay respects at the Prophet Muhammad’s tomb and to visit other holy places nearby in this oasis city where the Umma was first organized under the guidance of the Qur’an and God’s Prophet.

Emergence from the pilgrimage, symbolized by the lifting of the requirements of ihram, departure from Mecca, and being welcomed home by relatives and friends (there is typically a large crowd of greeters at airports and seaports) marks the return to normal life in a new status, which ritual studies experts call "reincorporation." Not only is the Hajji permitted to bear that title before his or her name, but in some places there are additional marks of the new status. In Egypt, for example, it is common for pilgrims to have special Hajj paintings applied to the exterior walls of their homes. Typically, these paintings depict scenes of the journey — a steamship, airplane, camel, or horse with rider (some traditionalists like to enter Mecca as Muhammad did, on a mount) — and they always contain a representation of the holy Ka’ba and usually also the Prophet’s tomb in Medina. Such Hajj art can be interpreted at various levels, but the main meaning, according to recent field analyses, centers in Egyptian ideas of saintly persons and the blessings and spiritual power that they provide in a community. The returning pilgrim is, as it were, a living saint who resides in a sacred house marked by the symbols of the supreme centers of Islamic sacral power, Mecca and Medina.

Jihad

The five Pillars of Islam witnessing to God’s oneness and Muhammad’s messengerhood, worship through the Salat service, almsgiving, fasting in Ramadan, and pilgrimage to Mecca constitute only a minimum structure of Muslim orthopraxy. There are also many additional practices both at the individual and communal levels that make up the total way of life that is Islam. The Muslim term for worship is ibada, a word that literally means "service" in the same sense Christians mean it when they say worship service. God is served through worship, and worship is reserved for God alone. One additional form of service to god in Islam is jihad, whose meaning must be carefully explained. Jihad is often mentioned in news releases from the Middle East in which Muslims have proclaimed "holy war" against evil and Islam’s enemies, whether Western countries or fellow Muslims with whom they disagree (the extremist "Islamic Jihad" movement in Lebanon is an example). But jihad properly speaking means "exertion" in the way of God. It may mean fighting against Islam’s enemies or even attempting to spread the religion by force (although Muslim opinion on the latter differs sharply); but a famous teaching of Muhammad’s holds that the "greater jihad" is the spiritual struggle each individual has with her or his own faith and need for repentance, whereas jihad as armed conflict is called the "lesser" exertion. Whatever the prevailing opinion or practice, jihad has sometimes been considered a sixth Pillar of Islam, and thus a form of worship, or service according to specified rules.




Copyright © 1987 by Frederick M. Denny

From Religious Traditions of the World, edited by H. Byron Earhart (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993). Used by arrangement with HarperSanFrancisco, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

The Purpose of Ritual
Rites, Ancient and Modern
by Richard Smoley

It would be impossible to do justice in a short space to all the varied rites and rituals practiced over the world. So it would be best to focus on some general principles that can help us understand this universal phenomenon.

One function that religious ritual fills is quite simply social. Human beings like to do things together celebrate, rejoice, lament, and remember things gone by. And collective activity reinforces a sense of group solidarity, whether it is a matter of a Roman Catholic Mass, a municipal parade, or a group of women who get together to sew or make pies.

Another fact of life is that human beings like repetitive, familiar activities. Anyone who has ever been around a small child recognizes how she takes a strange delight in the familiarity of certain repetitive occurrences such as the reading of a favorite book that she has heard any number of times before. Adults are not so different. In ourselves we may recognize it in the desire for a cup of coffee at a certain time of the day, going to a favorite restaurant and ordering the same dish every week, or visiting friends and spending the evening in a completely predictable yet enjoyable way.

The part of the mind that likes this sort of activity is extremely important. It has many names in many traditions: in Hebrew, it is called the nefesh; in Arabic, the nafs; in Hawaiian, the unihipili. In today’s English we tend to call it the subconscious or the "right brain." It is the part of the mind that doesn’t understand words very well but responds extremely well to gestures and actions. And it is intimately connected to the physical body.

The subconscious is in its way rather childish, but it holds the key to a person’s vital energy. You will not be able to accomplish much without its consent. If it doesn’t like what you’re up to, it will make mistakes, forget, or if all else fails will simply get sick.

Ritual is a way of making contact with this somewhat primitive but extremely powerful part of the mind. Indeed much of religious rites are can be simply understood as a means of getting the subconscious to take the spiritual life seriously. One of the most interesting cases is that of Freemasonry, a fraternal lodge that embodies some very ancient and profound spiritual traditions. The Masonic rites do not involve any doctrine; each Mason is free to attach his own meaning and significance to them. Instead they accomplish their purpose in ritual; the Mason takes part in a carefully contrived mystery play, where he performs certain actions and recites certain lines.

Rites of this kind are called initiations: they are a means of welcoming someone into a group. Many indigenous tribes perform such rites — sometimes accompanied by excruciating ordeals — on children who reach puberty. It is a way of bringing them into adulthood.

Not all rites are initiatory. Some are seen as having cosmic functions. In ancient times and often enough today these rites were closely tied to the seasons. Major events in the year, like the solstices and the equinoxes, have often been the focus of religious celebrations.

Originally this probably had a pragmatic aim. People did not know why the seasons came and went; they tended to attribute these changes to the sometimes capricious whims of the gods, whom they had to appease. The ancient Egyptians, for example, performed extensive rites to ensure that the Nile provided its annual flood that was so crucial to their crops. In this century, the great psychologist C.G. Jung was once told by a tribe of Indians in the southwestern U.S. that it was their nation’s job to make sure the sun kept its course in the sky. In other instances, such as in many Hindu rites, observances are made at specific junctures in the yearly cycle not because they are believed to affect the course of the seasons, but because they are thought to be more beneficial and auspicious at this time.

Over the course of history, however, rituals have tended to focus more on the commemoration of great events in history. Usually these are the defining moments of a religion’s existence. Anyone who has gone to a seder at Passover, for example, will understand how the remembrance of the liberation of the children of Israel helps Jews reconnect to their faith. Although Judaism is extremely ancient, generally speaking one could say that the newer the religion is, the more it focuses on commemoration of specific events: the birth or death of the founder, for example. But there are exceptions. In Neopaganism and Wicca, for example, which are attempts at reviving the "Old Religion" of ancient Europe, rituals are highly seasonal as a way of encouraging a more harmonious connection with the earth and the way of nature.

And yet, in the end, all these aspects of religious ritual are somewhat secondary. For there is one central point to all of them that goes beyond seasonality, commemoration, or speaking to the human subconscious. It is quite simply this: all religions teach that there are invisible as well as visible aspects of the universe, and that is part of the job of the human race not only to be aware of these different dimensions but to help connect them. (The very term "religion" is derived from a Latin word meaning "to bind or link again").

Ritual is, at its core, intended to make this connection. One of the most vivid examples is in Voudun (Voodoo) and Santería, which are transplanted versions of West African religion brought to the New World. Many of the rites of this religion are intended to generate a state of possession, where one of the gods literally comes down to inhabit the bodies of one or more devotees. But there are more familiar examples as well. What else is a Catholic priest attempting to effect when he causes the host to transubstantiate into the body and blood of Christ?

The rituals of a religion are in effect tried and true methods for this uniting of heaven and earth, of making God or the gods a little closer to the realm we see every day. If they are carried out with serious devotion and intent, they will leave an impact not only on the participants but perhaps on the larger world as well. But if, as often happens, they become matters of mere repetition, formula, and habit, they gradually lose their vigor, as does the religion itself. And then slowly they fall into disuse, and another impulse with fresher energy and livelier spirit comes to take their place. In this way the religious expression of humankind is itself constantly refreshed and renewed.




Copyright © 1999 by Richard Smoley

The Purpose of Ritual
by Richard Smoley

It would be impossible to do justice in a short space to all the varied rites and rituals practiced over the world. So it would be best to focus on some general principles that can help us understand this universal phenomenon.

One function that religious ritual fills is quite simply social. Human beings like to do things together celebrate, rejoice, lament, and remember things gone by. And collective activity reinforces a sense of group solidarity, whether it is a matter of a Roman Catholic Mass, a municipal parade, or a group of women who get together to sew or make pies.

Another fact of life is that human beings like repetitive, familiar activities. Anyone who has ever been around a small child recognizes how she takes a strange delight in the familiarity of certain repetitive occurrences such as the reading of a favorite book that she has heard any number of times before. Adults are not so different. In ourselves we may recognize it in the desire for a cup of coffee at a certain time of the day, going to a favorite restaurant and ordering the same dish every week, or visiting friends and spending the evening in a completely predictable yet enjoyable way.

The part of the mind that likes this sort of activity is extremely important. It has many names in many traditions: in Hebrew, it is called the nefesh; in Arabic, the nafs; in Hawaiian, the unihipili. In today’s English we tend to call it the subconscious or the "right brain." It is the part of the mind that doesn’t understand words very well but responds extremely well to gestures and actions. And it is intimately connected to the physical body.

The subconscious is in its way rather childish, but it holds the key to a person’s vital energy. You will not be able to accomplish much without its consent. If it doesn’t like what you’re up to, it will make mistakes, forget, or if all else fails will simply get sick.

Ritual is a way of making contact with this somewhat primitive but extremely powerful part of the mind. Indeed much of religious rites are can be simply understood as a means of getting the subconscious to take the spiritual life seriously. One of the most interesting cases is that of Freemasonry, a fraternal lodge that embodies some very ancient and profound spiritual traditions. The Masonic rites do not involve any doctrine; each Mason is free to attach his own meaning and significance to them. Instead they accomplish their purpose in ritual; the Mason takes part in a carefully contrived mystery play, where he performs certain actions and recites certain lines.

Rites of this kind are called initiations: they are a means of welcoming someone into a group. Many indigenous tribes perform such rites — sometimes accompanied by excruciating ordeals — on children who reach puberty. It is a way of bringing them into adulthood.

Not all rites are initiatory. Some are seen as having cosmic functions. In ancient times and often enough today these rites were closely tied to the seasons. Major events in the year, like the solstices and the equinoxes, have often been the focus of religious celebrations.

Originally this probably had a pragmatic aim. People did not know why the seasons came and went; they tended to attribute these changes to the sometimes capricious whims of the gods, whom they had to appease. The ancient Egyptians, for example, performed extensive rites to ensure that the Nile provided its annual flood that was so crucial to their crops. In this century, the great psychologist C.G. Jung was once told by a tribe of Indians in the southwestern U.S. that it was their nation’s job to make sure the sun kept its course in the sky. In other instances, such as in many Hindu rites, observances are made at specific junctures in the yearly cycle not because they are believed to affect the course of the seasons, but because they are thought to be more beneficial and auspicious at this time.

Over the course of history, however, rituals have tended to focus more on the commemoration of great events in history. Usually these are the defining moments of a religion’s existence. Anyone who has gone to a seder at Passover, for example, will understand how the remembrance of the liberation of the children of Israel helps Jews reconnect to their faith. Although Judaism is extremely ancient, generally speaking one could say that the newer the religion is, the more it focuses on commemoration of specific events: the birth or death of the founder, for example. But there are exceptions. In Neopaganism and Wicca, for example, which are attempts at reviving the "Old Religion" of ancient Europe, rituals are highly seasonal as a way of encouraging a more harmonious connection with the earth and the way of nature.

And yet, in the end, all these aspects of religious ritual are somewhat secondary. For there is one central point to all of them that goes beyond seasonality, commemoration, or speaking to the human subconscious. It is quite simply this: all religions teach that there are invisible as well as visible aspects of the universe, and that is part of the job of the human race not only to be aware of these different dimensions but to help connect them. (The very term "religion" is derived from a Latin word meaning "to bind or link again").

Ritual is, at its core, intended to make this connection. One of the most vivid examples is in Voudun (Voodoo) and Santería, which are transplanted versions of West African religion brought to the New World. Many of the rites of this religion are intended to generate a state of possession, where one of the gods literally comes down to inhabit the bodies of one or more devotees. But there are more familiar examples as well. What else is a Catholic priest attempting to effect when he causes the host to transubstantiate into the body and blood of Christ?

The rituals of a religion are in effect tried and true methods for this uniting of heaven and earth, of making God or the gods a little closer to the realm we see every day. If they are carried out with serious devotion and intent, they will leave an impact not only on the participants but perhaps on the larger world as well. But if, as often happens, they become matters of mere repetition, formula, and habit, they gradually lose their vigor, as does the religion itself. And then slowly they fall into disuse, and another impulse with fresher energy and livelier spirit comes to take their place. In this way the religious expression of humankind is itself constantly refreshed and renewed.




Copyright © 1999 by Richard Smoley