NI Membership News, July 2008

Havan

Havan (also known as homam or homa) is any ritual ceremony performed in a temple or home that involves a sacred

fire. Fire ceremonies hold an important place in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and many other traditions. The words

havan and homa both derive from the Sanskrit root hu, meaning to offer, to present and to eat. Here Swamiji

explains the purpose and value of havans as they pertain to our spiritual practice:

“The havan is a metaphor for a human being and for the universe—it is a continuous process of giving, receiving and transformation. The fire in the havan is a metaphor for

the energy of the deity or the vital energy of life, and the havan ceremony as a whole is a metaphor for the process of transformation. It’s really a metaphor for the ultimate reality.

“In participating in a fire ceremony or havan, what we are doing is remembering every aspect of our existence, thinking about every living being from the simplest elements to the most complex and sophisticated combinations of same. In a havan all different dimensions of power are represented. And in remembering these energies, we are giving our love and respect, our worship, to all these.

“Rudi called his book Spiritual Cannibalism to

put us all in touch with the need for us to sacrifice everything about ourselves that is limited for the sake of the realization of the

very simple, pure part of us that is profoundly unlimited. In making the havan offerings, we are symbolically sacrificing all of our self into

life. We are offering food to all of life. We are offering nourishment to all of life. We are offering nourishment to nourishment. We are

offering life to life. We are expressing our feeling of respect and appreciation for this unimaginable possibility that we are

participating in. You may think it strange that there’s a bunch of people there throwing food

NI Membership News, July 2008

into a fire. But what we’re doing is we are making an offering. We’re offering life to life. We’re offering fire to fire and water to water, and we’re acknowledging and loving the elements and the processes and all of the different forms of life that exist.

“In the havan each of the different offerings relates either to a different deity or a different part of the retinue of Maha Lakshmi, the main deity in our particular havan. There is an order and a significance to the offerings, which has to do with the relationship between matter and spirit –outer offerings first, then inner offerings and secret offerings. Ultimately, the highest significance is to demonstrate the total continuity and unity of all things.

“For me, the most important thing in doing one of these fire pujas is to enter into it with a generous spirit. I feel if you’re going to interact with any energy—deities, spirits or with people—you have to do so from a generous place within yourself. To be anything other is

to set up tensions and boundaries that are completely arbitrary. Ultimately, to hold back is a kind of disrespect to our own possibility.

“If there’s anything about this ashram that is similar to the havan, I would hope that it is the generous spirit in which we live our lives and share with one another. That would be

the main thing that I would hold in my heart during the havan ceremony—a generous spirit.”