If arati is so powerful, why do we say chanting matters more?

Both are real, but they belong to different ages. Arati and deity worship were the recommended path of the previous age. In this age of Kali, the main way to become God-conscious is to chant the holy names of the Lord. Deity worship still does great good, since it gathers up the mind, the intelligence, and the ego and turns them toward the Lord in gratitude, but the central practice for our time is the holy name.

Who is Garuda, and must we always bow from the side?

Garuda is the carrier, the vahana, of Lord Vishnu. Many temples keep a separate pillar, a Garuda stambha, near the entrance with Garuda on top, gazing straight at the Lord and waiting for his order. Where he stands at the back facing the deity, bowing straight ahead would point our feet at him, so we bow from the side. Where a temple has no Garuda, lying straight down is perfectly fine, since the point is to turn the heart toward the Lord, and a body lying straight faces him just as truly.

Is the food offering part of the arati?

The food, the prasad or samagri, is offered separately from the arati items, though both belong to the worship of the Lord. Whatever we eat we first offer to him, fruits, dried fruits, cooked preparations, anything, and that offered food becomes prasad. This is distinct from the havan samagri burned in a fire sacrifice.

Why are women asked to stay away from the deity during their monthly cycle, and how do we make sense of it?

This is one of the harder customs to explain, and it is worth handling with care. The tradition asks a woman to keep away from the deity for the few days of her period. The roots of it are not an insult. Scripture traces the monthly cycle to a curse: when Indra incurred the grave sin of killing the brahmana Vritrasura, he distributed shares of that reaction, and one share was taken on by women, who received the monthly period as their portion. The practical principle behind temple restrictions is cleanliness, which is the single most important requirement of deity worship. Anyone arriving from outside carries some uncleanliness, which is why the pujari stays especially clean and softly chants "Radhe Radhe" as he moves, so that people keep their distance from him. Seen rightly, none of this calls a woman impure as a person. Men in fact carry far more impurity, and women are generally the purer of the two. The cycle is simply the body clearing out what it must. In Kali Yuga there has to be flexibility here. Teachers in this tradition have allowed women even at that time to come to the temple, only keeping a little apart from the main altar and the pujaris. Other traditions hold similar customs, and women in the Jewish community also stay away from the synagogue during menstruation. There may even be a practical science to some of it. Certain temples in South India were built with such precision, by the principles of Vastu, that their construction is thought to suit or not suit different people's energy at different times, which is one reason a few temples advise women between roughly sixteen and sixty not to enter. Practice today varies, and the honest answer is that the custom leans on a mix of scripture, cleanliness, and an older science of how a temple is built.

Is home worship different from temple worship?

Yes, it is far more relaxed. At home you need not follow the temple's strict rules and timings, and you can be very personal and affectionate with the Lord, bathing him and caring for him as your own.

Temple Worship and the Meaning of Arati

A temple is not a building we visit. It is a piece of the spiritual world set down in this one, and arati is not a routine of waving lamps. Every item on the tray hands one of the elements of our body back to the Lord. This lesson walks through both, how to approach a temple and stand before the deity, and what the whole ceremony of arati is quietly saying on our behalf.

Why is a temple called an embassy of the spiritual world?

Think of an embassy. India keeps an embassy in London, and the moment you step through its door you are no longer standing on British soil. You are on Indian ground, under Indian law. The officers inside are not subject to local rules, free even of the parking fines and speeding tickets the rest of us have to pay, and even their holidays follow the calendar of their home country. A temple works the same way. It is an embassy of the spiritual world planted in the material one, and once you are within it you are no longer in this world at all.

The boundary is not the gate. It is your consciousness. While you are still on the way, if your heart is leaning toward the temple in devotion, you have already crossed over and stepped into the spiritual world. That is why the mood we travel in matters as much as the visit itself.

How should we approach a temple?

Go with a heart full of devotion. If a bad mood is riding on you, set it down and shift into a good one before you arrive. A few inner attitudes carry the whole approach.

Feel fortunate. Going to the temple is no small thing. It is enormous, and we are lucky to be allowed.
Feel unqualified. I have no real right to enter. It is only the mercy of the Lord and his devotees that lets me in.
Feel grateful. Thank everyone who made the visit possible, the parents who raised you, the devotees who invited you, and the devotees whose work built and maintains the temple. They deserve honour.
Glorify and meditate. Praise the Lord's lotus feet, dwell on his form and his pastimes, and take in the beauty of the Lord and his consort.
Keep to Krishna-katha. A temple is no place for gossip or politics. Speak only of the Lord while you are there.
Bow. The moment you catch sight of the temple, and again when you see the Lord's feet, offer your pranams.

A devotee lying fully prostrate in dandavat, offering full-body obeisance before the deities of Radha and Krishna

What is the etiquette inside a temple?

The outward customs all carry an inner meaning. None of them is empty.

A devotee at a temple doorway ringing the brass bell with folded hands, sandals left at the threshold

Pause at the gateway. Hindus stop outside the entrance and pray with the hands raised above the head before going in.

Remove your shoes. This keeps the dirt of the streets out, and it points to something deeper. In this tradition the feet are sacred, since we touch the Lord's lotus feet and touch the back of our own feet to take the blessing, and shoes are the one thing we cannot touch. The same habit is worth keeping at home, because we walk through more filth than we can imagine.

Ring the bell. Ringing the bell as you enter tells the Lord, humbly, that you have arrived. It is not a loud announcement of yourself. The sound is auspicious, welcoming the divine and driving off what is inauspicious.

Bow to the guru on your right, the deities on your left. As you enter, offer obeisance to the guru on your right side and to the deities on your left. The reason is tender. A Vaishnava surrenders the heart to the supreme Lord, and the heart sits on the left, so turning the left side to the deities places the heart toward him, wanting only the Lord seated in its core. We also take care never to point our feet at the guru, or at Garuda, who usually stands at the back of the temple facing the Lord. That is why full obeisances are offered from the side rather than straight ahead, so the feet never point back at Garuda.

Offer full obeisances. Lying fully down before the Lord, the dandavat, is the offering of body, mind, and soul to him at once.

Circumambulate clockwise. Walk around the deities in a clockwise direction, pausing at each one with palms joined at the chest in Namaste. Place your offering before the deity or hand it to the attendant priest.

Receive with the right hand. A priest may pour water over your hands, a gesture of spiritual cleansing, so let him. He may give you prasad, the sanctified vegetarian food first offered to the deities. Prasad is holy, and it is eaten outside the temple, since eating in front of the deities while the curtains are open is not correct. Take anything the priest gives, and give anything, with the right hand only. The left hand is treated as unclean and the right hand as pure (shuddha).

Dress respectfully. Come to the temple well and modestly dressed rather than in shorts or hot pants, the women often in a sari or colourful clothes. Dressing with care is itself a way of pleasing the Lord.

What is arati, and why do we offer it?

In the temple the aratis are usually done by the pujaris, so we may not get the chance there. At home we have every right to it, and most devotees offer some form of arati to the Lord each day.

Here is the heart of it. In arati we are thanking the Lord for everything he has given, and each item answers to one of the elements that our body is made of. The body has two layers. The gross body is built from the five great elements, earth, water, fire, air, and ether. The subtle body is made of mind, intelligence, and ego. A full arati offers all eight back to the Lord, the whole of what we are, saying in effect: thank you for the facility to live in this world and in this body, and now I offer the body to you, so please come and live in it with me, that I may serve you.

The reference points for how the items are offered come from the Narada Pancharatra, a scripture given specifically to the worship of the deity. What follows is the way of the Gaudiya tradition, and other temples may differ in the details.

What does each arati item mean?

The ceremony begins with the blowing of the conch, which alerts the Lord that the arati is about to start and calls the devotees to come and watch. Then each item is offered, and each one stands for an element.

An arati tray holding the ghee lamp, incense, conch, bell, flowers, chamara, and peacock fan

Element	Offered with	What we are saying
Ether (the sky, the space we think in)	the blown conch and the bell	thank you for the ether you have given us
Air	incense, the chamara (yak-tail fan), and the peacock fan	thank you for the air we breathe, without which we cannot live
Fire	the ghee lamp	thank you for the fire element
Water	water held in a conch shell	thank you for the water element
Earth	a flower and a cloth	thank you for the earth element
Mind	the bhajan sung during arati	thank you for the mind that thinks, and let this song connect me to you
Intelligence	the focus on the meaning of each item	thank you for the intelligence I now turn toward you
Ego	the offering of obeisances	take my false ego, and give me my real one, for I am your servant

A few of these deserve a closer look. The water in the conch shell is considered extremely pure, and after it is offered around the Lord a little is returned to the pot and then sprinkled over everyone present. Anyone who visits a temple has felt those potent drops thrown from the conch at the end of arati. The bhajan is more than the mind element, because singing the Lord's names and pastimes connects the singer directly to him. For that we should enter into the song, and it helps greatly to know not just the words but their meaning, which is why singing a bhajan and then reading its translation is such a good practice. The obeisance is the offering of the ego: "My dear Lord, take away my false ego and give me back my real ego, which is yours."

How is arati offered, and for how long?

Each item moves in a particular way. Incense is circled seven times around the body of the Lord. The ghee lamp is traditionally offered four times at the feet, twice at the navel, three times at the waist, and seven times around the whole body, though even seven circles around the body is enough, since the Lord knows what is being offered and is pleased by the love behind it. Water is offered seven times around as well. The chamara and the peacock fan are waved any odd number of times. The peacock fan belongs to summer and is set aside in winter, when it would be too cold for the Lord.

A typical arati tray holds the incense stand, the water pot, the ghee lamp, the conch and its stand, the achaman pot, the bell, and the flower holder, with a separate conch kept for blowing.

How long it takes is flexible at home. One devotee may take a full hour, offering very slowly, while another takes five minutes, and both are right. In the temple the full arati is far more regulated, with the standard offering running about twenty-five minutes at fixed times each day. Where a temple has several altars, a pujari stands at each, all offering the same items to their own deities in synchrony. In Vrindavan, for instance, there are three altars, Radha-Krishna, Krishna-Balaram, and Gaura-Nitai, each with its own pujari, each arati taking the full twenty-five minutes. The arati is offered not only to the main deities but to the gurus and devotees on the altar too, which is part of why it can run long.

What stands on a home altar?

A home altar can hold a good deal. Alongside deities of Krishna and Balaram, a household may keep a Shaligram shila from the Gandaki river, which is regarded as Lord Vishnu directly. This matters for a reason worth knowing. When a temple installs marble or metal deities, a ceremony called prana-pratishtha is performed to invoke the Lord's presence into the form. A Shaligram needs no such ceremony, because it is already the Lord himself. A Dwarka shila may be kept as Balaram, along with Jagannath, Baladev, and Subhadra, and Radha-Gopal, and on a second tier Tulasi Maharani and the line of gurus. The pujari offers the incense not only to the Lord but to the gurus and devotees as well. A good practice is to keep the altar near the centre of the home rather than tucked into a spare room, so that you cannot help but meet the Lord each time you come in.

Lord Garuda, the eagle carrier of Vishnu, kneeling with folded hands on a Garuda-stambha pillar

Key terms from this lesson

Term	Meaning
Arati	the ceremony of offering items to the deity, each standing for an element
Darshan	seeing, and being seen by, the deity in the temple
Dandavat	full prostrate obeisance, offering body, mind, and soul
Pradakshina	circumambulating the deity in a clockwise direction
Prasad	sanctified vegetarian food first offered to the Lord
Pujari	the priest who performs the worship and arati
Garuda	the eagle carrier (vahana) of Lord Vishnu, often on a pillar facing him
Prana-pratishtha	the rite that invokes the Lord's presence into a marble or metal deity
Shaligram	a sacred stone from the Gandaki, worshipped as Vishnu directly, needing no prana-pratishtha
Narada Pancharatra	the scripture that lays out how to worship the deity

What to carry forward

A temple is an embassy of the spiritual world, and your devotional mood, not the gate, is the real boundary.
Approach feeling fortunate, unqualified, and grateful, speaking only of the Lord.
Remove shoes, ring the bell, bow with the heart (left side) to the deities and the right to the guru, and receive everything with the right hand.
Arati thanks the Lord by offering the five gross elements and the three subtle ones, the whole body, back to him.
Conch and bell are ether, incense and fans are air, the lamp is fire, the conch-water is water, flower and cloth are earth, the bhajan is mind, focus is intelligence, and the bow is ego.
The exact counts matter less than the love behind the offering.
In this age the holy name is the central practice, while arati gathers the mind and heart toward the Lord.

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