The Fallacy of Custom August 5, 2008
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Every morning some brahmanas would take their bath in the Ganges and offer their daily prescribed prayers to the Lord. All of them were taking their own copper vessels for offering water to the Lord. But through oversight, all the copper vessels invariably changed hands everyday. Finally an elderly brahmana, in order to differentiate his own copper vessel from others, put a lump of sand on his own copper vessel and went to take a bath. Observing this practice, all the other brahmanas assumed that this must be a holy custom and imitated the said elderly brahmana by putting a lump of sand on their vessels. After taking bath, the elderly brahmana came out of the river and found that it was impossible to identify his own copper vessel, because each and every vessel had a lump of sand on it. At this, the elderly brahmana said to himself, “How over-attached to rituals these fellows are! Without realizing the real purpose of anything, they just imitate others. If they had applied their common sense, they would not have marked their copper vessels in the same way.” PURPORT In modern society, practice of religious performances is quite often like this. There are so many customary practices in the field of literature and social conduct in respect of usages and performances that most of the people follow them blindly without making assessment of their validity and authority. The End
