Today is Ganesh Jayanti. It means the great God Ganesha was born today. I love the anthropomorphism involved in this concept. A god is born, just like us mortals. In my opinion, this concept makes Ganesha more lovable.
Anyways, Ganesha always has such intimate connections with us mortals. In our family, for example, the Ganesh Visarjan happens with the Gauri Visarjan. The idea behind this practice is that Lord Ganesh comes to his Mama's, maternal uncle's, place with his mother, Gauri, gets feted and celebrated with lots of love, and returns home with his mother. Imagine being the 'Mama' of the Lord! I adore my father and brother for that unique identity.
Lord Ganesha thus forms very strong emotional bonds with us, mere mortal human beings. Hence, may be, it is easy to imagine him in (m)any form. All of us can draw the Ganesh idol, however bad our drawing otherwise may be. Even a kid can make a clay idol of Ganesha.
Sant Dnyaneshwar has a lovely description of Lord Ganesha in the beginning of 'Dnyaneshwari'. It is an extended metaphor which provides beautiful analysis of each one of the Lord's unique features by relating them with the entire philosophical thought in our tradition. Indeed worth a read or two! As Sant Dnyaneshwar would say, he is the beginning and the end of everything. Here is bowing down with ultimate most reverence to the Lord!
Pratima@In my opinion, the birth of god would essentially mean the Vaidic prayer, "tamaso ma...". In other words, this birth takes us from darkness to light, from mortality to immortality, from all the falsehoods to the ultimate truth.
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