I do not support it and I always believe using coconut in temple as in India is always better than this. Anybody wanna get meat can buy it from butcher's shop. Stop killing innocent animals in the name of God!! I dont know why people find it so hard to understand it.

I 100% support you, bullish.

As far as I am aware, in the Hindu custom, animal sacrifices are offered to Devi, Durga. She is a female entity- symbol of maternity, love.

Somewhere in the श्रीमद्द्वेवीभागवत, it is said,
देवी प्रपन्नार्ती हरे प्रसीद, प्रसीद मात: जगतोऽषिलष्य
प्रसीद विश्वेश्वरी पाहि विष्वम त्वमिष्वरी देवी चराचरस्य ॥

My rough translation is,
You are the great Devi who is the mother of the whole universe, I pray you, you are the Devi of the 'charachar' (every being).

Wonder, how a mom (of charachar) would appreciate one scion murdering the other- and even bless the murderer with power and prosperity.

The above is the most fundamental 'mantra' to all forms of Devi. No Devi pooja can begin without the above mantra. When you begin performign the pooja, you have to kind of pray as 'request for invitation' and ask for her प्राण-प्रतिष्टा in some idol or 'kalash' or whatever statue and you HAVE TO recite the above sloka, otherwise she wont come. Even while chopping a boka, it is always done, see how hypocritical it is. The most hypocritical a$$hole Gyanendra even sacrifices a rat.

Even in the three forms of the Devi, Saraswati and Laxmi simply hate meat. They are just like you and me.

Its the Kali who is mistakenly supposed to like meat. Hell, no, she hates it more than others. I had a chance to read the nepali translation of "chandi" book and she says that if you need education, pray me as saraswati but sacrifice your attitude of ignorance, if you need wealth, pray me as Laxmi and sacrifice .... (dont remember, i dont need it so), if you need power, pray me as Kali and sacrifice ...( this one too, dont remember, i dont need power). And if you want Moxa (liberation of soul) she wants to sacrifice the four sins - Kaam, Krodh, Lobh, and Moha.

Merely by looking at Gyanendra and Paras, one can easily deduce whether it is right. (Axiom of Murphy's law: if someone has zero good attitute, then whatever he does is zero good).

Finally, me: a proud veggie.

Keep rolling...

However,

the use of recreational POT during the pooja of the Bhole Baba Mahadev Shiva Shankar is in no way hypocritical. Its totally chaste and holy method of worshipping the Shambho. POT is the thing Mahadev really craves, u can imagine how cold it is in Kailash parvat . He loves it more than he loves us.

जय शम्भो कैलाशपतिकी

Keep rolling...

No I dun support BALI PRATHA

oh bali pratha...well i'm so used to it....being a girl i'm not supposed wacth the whole ordeal..but every now and then specailly dashain back home...just to wacth maar hanneko boka,, and the blood gushing out their neck and onto my feet..gives me so much high...just like hunting..it gives you an adrenaline rush...

To make it short, I don't like halaal, but bali as in hindu style is not bad.then again if you visist all the slaughter houses where they hack animals and puoltry you would never wanna eat meat again..but again all people in this thread are non veg..so this discussion is so void..

kapish

oh i just realised shree5 is a veggie which is good..i cud never be..i just had sushi for lunch..well you were talking about..laxmi and saraswati not being responsible for sacrifices...Laxmi pujas have always been clean..but even for saraswati puja, we sacrifice duck..and some people eggs...hmm..i dunoo.. i guess it differes from culture to cutlure..

Come to think of it all..whenever the brahmins looked at my janmapatra and saw if the year will have any mishaps, not only they asked for more daans but there were years that i responsible for over half a dozen sacrifices..the naughtier i got the worse it'd get..the day i was flew off as a supergirl from the attic window, the broahmins had a sheep head buried under my bedroom.....just it would work to keep my spirits mellow..

then there were other occaisions, if you had a new car, if you you were travelling somewhere, ..its only been few years away from home and i am already missing the craze..at least the hunting...you never have to touch the treadmill to keep your heart beating....

Also if you know..that some Devis actually want sacrifices, specially the kumaris over each corner of Kathmandu have had many accidental sacrifices..Nepal as a whole is bleeding right now..not properly though.. i think to end all the trouble ther otto be a great DEVI puja cause she seems pretty mad..

Damn i didn't realize that i was sssssssssssoooo into these stuff..hahaha enuf!!!!

Well,
as far as i know, Hindu religion is pretty democratic (no offence to ones having different beliefs, it is about bali-pratha anyway).

At the core of Hinduism- there is no god and only one dharma/ karma, the reverse of which is the sin. This is the abstract class, in OOP terms. In that abstract class, there is no god- its only some form of energy- the ॐ. A share of the AUM, in whatever proportions, dwells in every living soul and the AUM itself being the entity formed by the aggregation of all such living souls. This means, every living being has a share of god or whatever this super-being distributed in the form of soul (or vital force). This is what the Rigveda means. And the main principle or the dharma/karma or whatever is "परोपकाराय पुण्याय पापाय परपिडानाम" which implies if you hurt the next soul, it is a sin, if you make it happy, it is a dharma/karma. That's it, no more, no less.

Then, you can derive to virtually any level of hierarchy from tht abstract class. One compilation believes in Trimurti or Tridev(Brahma, Bishnu, Shiva) and says that AUM is the collective power of the Trimurti. True worshippers of Brahma are rare, haven't heard abt them. followers of Bishnu are Baishnavas and Krishna pranami and alike, they never eat meat- this cult is attributed for the Gita and Yoga and so on. They also believe in the 10 Darwinism-type evolutionary incarnations. Worshippers of Shiva are pretty cool- they are called Shaivas and sometimes Sanyasis. Yeh, we like recreational POT at times but meat is always hated. Each of these cults claim their Dev is better than the other Dev (out of the Tridev). There is a pretty wide conflict between these cults in terms of faith and practice. Most of South Indian Hindus are divided this way into Vaishnavs and Shaivas.

The other compilation believes in the feminine power and interpretes the AUM to be the Devi, who again has three forms or TriDevi- Mahakali, Mahalaxmi and Mahasaraswati. Particularly who worship Kali (for power) are called Shaktas - after worshippers of Shakti.
However, there is no conflict in the TriDevi camp as in the Trimurti camp. Examples of Shakta are found in Bengal and Gujarat side.

Based on these two main branches - the trimurti-wala and tridevi-wala, any good person can be a "devta", or whatever. Their leader is called Indra. Indra is democratically elected by a constitutional-type assembly of rishi-munis although the head-of-state and the head-of-govt at that time was termed as king. There used to be no hereditary king, per se. If anyone did a good tapasya, he would shake the indra-aasan and the then indra would do lots and lots of 'Magh 19' type of coups but still the determined would easily dethrone him. It used to be quite a republic kind of set up. A learned person inclined to knowledge used to be a rishimuni or brahmin, there was no caste barrier. The caste system is not hinduism, it is a law that was enacted by "manu" quite later in India. Equating caste system to hinduism is simply ignorance. that said, there was no royal "khalak" in sanatan hindu philosophy, yeh - never, never.

For practical reasons and to make a compromise out of conflicts, some started worshipping 5 gods (Panchanga- brahma, bishnu, shiva, devi, and the sun) which is what most of the nepalese belong to.

Just like the caste system, bali pratha came into being by practice, it is not included in the fundamental principles of the religion. Perhaps the ancient kings (after the Dev-Yug) wanted to show off their power, sort of traumatize or glamorize or whatever and retain their "kurchi" and thus began the bali-pratha.

Keep rolling...

I do eat Khasi ko masu but I do not support Bali Pratha.

shree5, this is interesting stuff... would you know if there is an english translation of the chandi that i can get a hold of? i am especially curious to know about the kinds of sacrifice required to gain wealth and power (the ones you forgot)......i have my own opinions on the matter, but i am just curious as to what the ancient texts have to say. the sacrifice of kaam (lust), krodh (anger), lobh (greed) and moha (ignorance) as a pre-requisite to attaining nirvana has been identified in buddhist texts also. i think there were others too, but i forgot. is nirvana technically the same as moksha?

i liked your analogy of inheritance (from Object oriented programming) to describe the concept. i have been thinking about inheritance and polymorphism a lot too. i think we use the concepts of inheritance to structure our own vocabulary. for example, when a kid first sees any four legged animal, he constructs a superclass of a four-legged animal. as he sees other four legged animals, he thinks of them as extensions of the superclass. for example, a dog is a four-legged animal that barks, and a cow is a four-leeged anmal that gives milk. this seems to be a really concise and efficient way to both store the information, and to learn about new animals by simply adding the FEW ways that the new animals differ from the superclass.....man, sometimes i wish i were studying computer science or psychology...

also, i was curious to know about the role of tantra in the hinduism practiced in nepal. perhaps the custom of offering animal sacrifices has its root in the the tantric aspects of certain subsects of hinduism.

Yes i support bali pratha because this culture is meant to supply animal protein in human diet.

Zalim Singh

As far as I know, the different sects of Hinduism, the 'sanaatan' one, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikkhism all are inherited from the same thing- they are called the AUMKAR family. The essence of all of these (also called Indic, India-originated) religions is the welfare of the other soul. Moksha and nirvana are same, even yoga aims to take one to the same state. So the theory is like if you do welfare to other souls, you will be rewarded in heaven, if not you (the soul inside you) will have to make instances through 8.4 million forms of life, out of which human is the best form of life. Really good dharma/karma liberates your soul and it does not need to be reborn. In Buddhism, Buddha only talked about liberation while being on the earth itself, nothing abt other lives. On the other hand, religions from Israel (the Abrahmic family) stress on expansion- the Jews, Christians and Muslims- their dharma/karma is to expand at any cost, either convert others or make a lot of children.

No idea abt english translation of chandi. 'Tantra' or the science of black magic started when ppl began worshipping the other face of the divine one in the form of ghosts and demons. Because they observed that the super-natural is not always good, they though t there must be some power which supports the bad ones too. Then, there are 'tantrics' in the 'shaiva' and the 'shakta' sects too. Ones in the 'shakta' or Devi-worshipping camp are the ones who promote Bali, not in the shaiva camp even though they worship the 'black power'. About the tantrics of other sects and religions, i have no idea.

regarding animal protein, one can have milk, its not barred. The largest living protein-masses like the blue whale, the elephants and rhinos are all veg and they get it through varied hervi-diets. Human body mass is a fraction of them. For internal metabolism, human anatomy still resembles that of herbivores - like flat teeth, spiral villi structure in intestines (in carnivores, it is parallelly grooved), longer intestine length (carnivores have shorter intestines) which means meat, after being digested, still remains in our intestines at a time it already has to be ejected and so on. Veggies are surviving and had pretty developed brains too, notable examples being from Einstein, Tolstoy, Gandhi to Lenin, Amitabh Bachchan to Prachanda (Maobadi) just to name a few. It is said that enough soya intake can supplement the protein even if you dont drink milk.

What i believe is that dietary habit is a personal choice, one can choose whatever he or she likes. But regarding the Bali in the temples, well, it kind of offends me. Tetti ho.

My 2 cents

Keep rollling...

Tantra in Nepal...
One for civilians who just do the rituals as a tradition.
Another for real tantriks who do the rituals to get some results...
--------------
Bali pratha is wrong in the sense that it is offered to Deity.
Deity doesn't accept Bali of animals.
But there are many evidences that work is done when they do VAAKAL and offer bali.
That work is not done by the deity but instead done by the souls who guard that temple or environment. Those are responsible for taking control over the BALIed souls and then in return perform the VAAKALed objectives...
Anyway, these are not known to public. They just think "deity has done that for me because i offered her so many BOKAs...

Thank you all for your comments. I am also a vegeterian for 4yrs now. But, even when I wasnot, back in ktm , I didnt support and like the sacrifices of animals. We all know thats our tradition and culture, but these things should change with time. Now, we all are educated enough to know what the basic principle of any religion is, if possible offer help but in no way harm anybody. Other than this, bahun having a tuppi, wearning a janai, lower caste or upper caste and all other stuffs that come with any religion just group us in Bahun, Newar, Sarke or whatever. As shree5 said that we are more democratic in our religious belief, is what differentiates us from the radicalism of other religion like Islam. I do not know much about it but I am sure its main theme is similar to ours. Only the difference is that - people arent letting the change and we all know wheres its headed. Anyways, coming back to the topic again, wouldnt we feel better if were to buy a boka from their herds in khasi Bazar and let it walk free with a Ghanti (bell) in its neck in Pashupatinath. Atleast, it will give blessings for saving its life.