Namaste.
In the literal sense 'rasa' means the experience of taste or flavour. In the spiritual/metaphorical sense, rasa means to experience the lifestyle, rituals and tradition of Hinduism with a unique mindfulness or through the mindset of devotion or cultural conditioning.
I have been looking for a while now to find something...
anything that made me feel anything other than spiritually and emotionally numb...something that bought back pleasant memories and something I could actually apply in my life that has meaning to me, besides going through prayer and worship only
wanting to feel, instead of actually feeling it like I used to.
I then watched a video on youtube and by the end of it, tears were stinging my eyes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viNuxD7AJ34
With the dancer, every movement is an offering to the Divine within and without. With the weaver, every soul is a thread interwoven in the tapestry of space/time...worn as a garment by the Divine beloved.
Hinduism isn't about parroting/reading the scriptures and having dry discourse like Adi Shankaracharya...a lot is missing. A lot gets left out and it involves the heart and it involves intuition and a sense of the sacred or sublime either within or beyond the reach of one's understanding.
The dancers, the weavers...the sculptors, carvers and the puppeteers are all doing their art for love of God and not for money and not 'mass producing' artefacts for the tourism market and even little babies are taught to follow these rituals until they become 'second nature'...only later do they find out exactly
why they are doing them and what they actually mean.
This is the Hinduism I was raised into and the practice that brings about the 'warm fuzzies' inside when I consider how timeless it is...how these practices have not changed for thousands of years despite the world changing around them.
I am tired of reading religion vs science debates (and partaking in them) and I am tired reading about the scientific basis for consciousness or the biology of belief or anybody making any attempt to
rationalise God and then turn around and say that I am 'irrational' for believing in it...and all I can do, is say "yep, I am
totally irrational". lol
It's amazing how much emphasis human beings place on 'mind' and on 'knowledge' when they miss the whole point of existence by doing so and their 'knowledge' is only as good until the
next scientific discovery disproves it.
Om Namah Shivaya