Anushthan-Ganesh Chaturthi

Dear readers,

Aug 27th. is Ganesh Chaturthi.

Wish all readers a peaceful and joyful Ganesh Chaturthi.

May Vighneshwer remove the obstacles in your life.

Regards,

Souvik

From here.

Festivals and Worship of Ganesha

In India, there is an important festival honouring Lord Ganesha. While it is most popular in the state of Maharashtra, it is performed all over India. It is celebrated for ten days starting from Ganesh Chaturthi. This was introduced by Balgangadhar Tilak as a means of promoting nationalist sentiment when India was ruled by the British. This festival is celebrated and it culminates on the day of Ananta Chaturdashi when the murti of Lord Ganesha is immersed into the most convenient body of water. In Mumbai (earlier known as Bombay), the murti is immersed in the Arabian Sea and in Pune the Mula-Mutha river. In various North and East Indian cities, like Kolkata, they are immersed in the holy Ganga river. One who really wants to taste the festival needs to come down to the city of Mumbai; particularly at Lalbaug where the divine idol of Lalbaugcha raja (The Lord Of Lalbaug, as Ganesha is fondly called) is set.

The Ganesha festival starts on Ganesh Chaturthi (fourth day of Hindu calendar month Bhadrapada) and ends on Anant Chaturdashi (fourteenth day of Bhadrapada). It is widely believed that every wish one expresses to Lord Ganesha must come true. All devotees from every corner of the globe gather at Lalbaug for the festival.

Representations of Shri Ganesh are based on thousands of years of religious symbolism that resulted in the figure of an elephant-head god. In India, the statues are impressions of symbolic significance and thus have never been claimed to be exact replications of a living figure. Ganesh is seen not as a physical entity but a higher spiritual being, and murtis, or statue-representations, act as signifiers of him as an ideal. Thus, to refer to the murtis as idols betrays Western Judeo-Christian understandings of insubstantial object worship whereas in India, Hindu deities are seen to be accessed through points of symbolic focus known as murtis. For this reason, the immersion of the murtis of Ganesh in nearby holy rivers is undertaken since the murtis are acknowledged to be only temporal understandings of a higher being as opposed to being 'idols,' which have traditionally been seen as objects worshipped for their own sake as divine.

The worship of Ganesha in Japan has been traced back to 806.

Resurgence of Popularity

Recently, there has been a resurgence of Ganesha worship and an increased interest in the "Western world" due to a spate of alleged miracles in September 1995. On September 21 1995, according to Hinduism Today magazine (www.hinduismtoday.com), Ganesh statues (as well as other statues) in India began spontaneously drinking milk when a spoonful was placed near the mouth of statues honoring the elephant god. The phenomena spread from New Delhi to New York, Canada, Mauritius, Kenya, Australia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Hong Kong, Trinidad, Grenada and Italy among other reported places. This was seen as a miracle by many although skeptics contend that this was another example of collective hysteria. Some scientific experiments conducted in that time frame suggested capillary action as an explanation for this phenomenon. It had remained a mystery why such capillary action did not repeated itself [2] until the same thing happened again on 21 August 2006 [3]. Of course, now the question is why it happened again.
The book Ganesha, Remover of Obstacles by Manuela Dunn Mascetti is another of many resources that testify to the Hindu milk miracle.

Ganesha has two Siddhis (symbolically represented as wives or consorts): Siddhi (success) and Riddhi (prosperity). It is widely believed that "Wherever there is Ganesh, there is Success and Prosperity" and "Wherever there is Success and Prosperity there is Ganesh". This is why Ganesh is believed to be the harbinger of good fortune, and why he is invoked first at any ritual or ceremony. Whether it is diwali puja, a new house, a new vehicle, students praying before the exams, or people praying before job interviews, it is Ganesha they pray to, because it is believed that he will come to their aid and grant them success in their endeavor.
Ganesha is worshipped as Vinayak (knowledgeable) and Vighneshwer (remover of obstacles). It is believed that he blesses those who meditate upon him. Ganesha, in astrology, is believed to help people know what can be achieved and what cannot be.