By Sadhguru – Founder, Isha Foundation

In the Indian culture, there was a time when there used to be a festival every day of the year — 365 festivals in a year — because a festival is a tool to bring life to a state of exuberance and enthusiasm. That was the significance and importance of festivals. The whole culture was in a state of celebration. If today was ploughing day, it was a kind of celebration. Tomorrow was planting day, another kind of celebration. Day after tomorrow was weeding, that was a celebration. Harvesting, of course, is still a celebration. But in the last 400 or 500 years, poverty has come to our country, and we have not been able to celebrate every day. People are satisfied if they just get some simple food to eat. So all the festivals fell away and only 30 or 40 festivals remain. We are not even able to celebrate those now because we have to go to the office or do something else daily. So people usually celebrate only around 8 or 10 festivals annually.

If we leave it like this, the next generation will not have any festival. They will not know what a festival is. They will just earn and eat, earn and eat — they will go on and on with just this. It has already become like this for many people. A festival means they give you a holiday, and you wake up only at noon. Then you just eat more, go for a movie or watch television at home. And only if they take some external stimulants, will these people dance a little. Otherwise they will not sing or dance. It wasn’t like that before. A festival meant that the whole town would gather in a place, and there would be a big celebration. A festival meant we got up at four in the morning, and very actively, lots of things happened all over the house. To bring back this culture in people, Isha celebrates four important festivals: Pongal or Makar Sankranti, Mahashivratri, Dussehra and Diwali.

Non-serious but Absolutely Involved

If you approach everything in a celebratory way, you learn to be non-serious about life but absolutely involved. The problem with most human beings right now is, if they think something is important, they will become dead serious about it. If they think it is not so important they will become lax about it — they don’t show the necessary involvement. When someone says, “He is in a very serious condition,” that means his next step is you know where. A lot of people are in a serious condition. There is only one thing that is going to happen to them which is of any significance. The rest will bypass them because with anything that they think is not serious, they are unable to show involvement and dedication. That is the whole problem. The passage, the secret of life is in just this — seeing everything with a non-serious eye, but absolutely involved — like a game. That is the reason the most profound aspects of life are approached in a celebratory way so that you don’t miss the point.