Papa and Punya (HinduDharma: Religion In General)

Nobody wants to be known as a sinner, but all the same we keep transgressing the bounds of morality and disobey the divine law. We wish to enjoy the fruits of virtue without being morally good and without doing anything meritorious. 

Arjuna says to Bhagavan Krsna: "No man wants to commit sin. Even so, Krsna, he does evil again and again. What is it that drives him so? ". The lord replies "It is desire. Yes, it is desire, Arjuna ".

We try to gain the object of our desire with no thought of right or wrong (Dharma or Adharma). Is fire put out by ghee poured into it? . No, it rises higher and higher. Likewise, when we gratify one desire, another, much worse, crops up. Are we to take it, then, that it would be better if our desires were not satisfied? - No. Unfulfilled desire causes anger, so too failure to obtain the object we hanker after. Like a rubber ball thrown against the wall such an unsatisfied desire comes back to us in the form of anger and goads us into committing sin. Krsna speaks of such anger as being next only to desire (as an evil).

Dharma Alone Protects (HinduDharma: Religion In General)

The pipal and the neem are the royal children of Mother Nature's kingdom of trees. As the new year approaches they shed their leaves, sprout tender green shoots again not long after. It is all the work of Mother Nature.

The custom of marrying the pipal to the neem and of installing the idols of Vinayaka and Nagaraja under them goes back to the dim past. After the winter months these trees will be bare and Vinayaka and Nagaraja will remain exposed to the sun. This is the time when we may sit under the open sky and bask in the sun because it is now neither too warm nor too cold. When it rains or when the sun beats down harshly on us, we need to shield ourselves with an umbrella. And when it is bitterly cold we cannot sit in the open and gaze at the sky. But now, when the leaves fall and the warmth of the sun is comforting (it is believed that with Sivarathri the cold season bids you goodbye with the chant, "siva, siva"), we may sit in the open, by day or at night, to gaze upon the sky. To proclaim the beneficial nature of this season as it were- when the pipal and the neem are shorn of their leaves- Mother Nature worships the gods under the trees (Vinayaka and Nagaraja) with the rays of the gentle sun.