There is a tradition in many Hindu households to light a lamp in the evening and pray. I remember my grandmother lighting up a small earthen oil lamp in front of our family altar and summoning me to recite the evening prayer. My primary motivation for showing up was getting to eat the sweet offerings (prasad) to the Deity after the worship.

DR. MANDAR PATTEKAR

Once she explained to me the symbolism of an earthen lamp. It’s like a human body made of material that is temporarily borrowed from the earth. It lives its allotted span and then falls apart, returning to the Mother Earth. The oil in the lamp represents the person’s ego and worldly attachments. The wick represents a single-pointed mind, which is lit by prayer and through gaining the knowledge of the Truth. The resultant flame of wisdom has to be protected from wayward gusts of desire. As the wick is lighted, the ego is consumed, and desires dissipate. At that age, I did not grasp the significance of this explanation, yet I remembered it because of the pleasant association with munching on the sweet treat of peanuts, jaggery, and rock sugar.

Although the act of lighting a lamp or a candle is a universal act associated with praying, I feel that the act itself is akin to a  prayer itself. The process of lighting a lamp or a candle requires concentration, even for a moment. For that fleeting instant, we are in true communion with the Divine as we watch the tip of the wick transform from an ordinary piece of cotton to a luminescent source. The light emanating from the lit lamp spreads all over, traveling within and towards the infinite space. Similarly, a pure prayer, untainted by the bartering of devotion for some earthly desires, sublimes to the infinite omnipresent Divine.

Recently, the Deepavali festival (Deepavali: row of lamps) was celebrated all over the world by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists, as well as many Indians of other faiths who may realize that they are culturally Hindus. During Deepavali (also called Diwali), the Peoria Hindu community and its friends collected and donated the equivalent of 12,000 pounds of food to four local organizations, namely, the Center for Prevention of Abuse, Neighborhood House, Trewyn School, and Peoria Grown market. This collective act of sharing was part of a massive national initiative called Sewa Diwali. In 2025, nearly a million pounds of food were collected and locally distributed throughout the USA.

The act of sharing expresses the true meaning of lighting a lamp. Just as an unobstructed ray of light from a lamp travels infinitely, the act of sharing expresses the boundlessness of universal love and kindness. While a physical barrier stops the light, the bounty of love and kindness becomes limited when curtailed by the feeling of ‘otherness’ towards fellow human beings.

As I thank our donors, calling them “generous” almost feels redundant. The word to describe the true nature of human beings is empathy (Karuna in the Sanskrit language). During this year’s Peoria food drive, the four hundred-plus donors were just revealing their true nature.

As the less fortunate around the world are facing darkness and cold due to all kinds of “winters,” I pray to the Divine that the recent succession of festivals of various faiths may become a continuous row of lights exhorting us humans to manifest our true nature.