Raksha badhan marks the celebration of a lovely bond of protection!
This special Rakhi festival, celebrated on the full moon day of the Hindu (lunar) month Shravana, traditionally, entrusts the male siblings with a responsibility to look after their sis and be her saviour in times of need.
In Indian mythology, it is said that seeing Krishna’s finger bleeding, Draupadi immediately tore a piece from one of the most expensive saaris that she was wearing and tied it around his hand. In return, Lord Krishna vowed that he would always be there to protect Draupadi. Krishna kept his commitment to Draupadi's welfare right upto the end of his life; remember the Cheerharan episode, where Lord Krishna protected Draupadi in time, saving her of incredible humiliation!
This is what the Indian tradition of Rakhi festival symbolizes, when a sister ties a rakhi around her brother’s wrist and the brother, in turn, promises to protect his sister, just as Lord Krishna did!
However, is this promise easy to keep?
Lord Krishna was a ‘Vasudeva’, having extraordinary super-human energies and accomplishments. On the other hand, the era that we all are living in today (Kaliyug) is characterised with incessant obstacles and miseries in every person’s life. Therefore, even while a brother is all-willing to protect his sister from every problem in life, the ordeals are far too many and quite complicated.
Then, from where do we get the protection we need? In whom do we find the refuge we seek?
Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan gives us the all-powerful Tri-mantra and says, “The significance of this Trimantra is such that it will destroy all your worldly obstacles. If you recite it every morning, all your worldly difficulties will be destroyed.”
This mantra protects us in every way. It helps reduce the burden of our heaviest of karma and thus makes the pain of even severe suffering feel as a mere pinprick to us. Consequently, we gain stability and peace of mind.
In this mantra, we pay our obeisance to the elevated beings of the highest order!
By reciting the Trimantra, we receive the divine blessings and gain the supreme energies of these Enlightened beings, which enable us to rise spiritually higher and make us become stronger in the true sense of the word.
So, if we wish, we can, on this auspicious day of Raksha bandhan, tie a rakhi, iconic of an eternal bond of protection, to the Enlightened beings (referred to in Trimantra) as well. While we tie the rakhi to our brother, let us both, brother and sister, recite the Trimantra together, with an earnest internal prayer that, ‘Oh Enlightened Lords, May we siblings soon meet Gnani (the Enlightened One), and from Him attain the path of liberation from all our miseries in worldly life.’
