WEBZINE ACC

On March 25, past the vernal equinox, when the Sun crosses over the equator and the length of the day becomes the same as the length of night, the Indian subcontinent erupts in colors. Around 1.3 billion people come out to the streets, with pails of colorful paint in their hands that they splash to one another.

This is the festival of Holi, a festival of colors and love. It is the festival that announces the triumph of good over evil, the end of winter, and the beginning of spring.

Asia Culture Museum, Religious Rituals of Asia: The Holi festival in India is an ancient Hindu festival that is rapidly becoming a festival enjoyed by people across different cultures.

… The year was a closed circle; it had a beginning and an end, but it also had the peculiarity that it could be reborn in the form of a new year. With each New Year, a time that was “new,” “pure,” “holy” — because not yet worn — came into existence. *

This holds the same for the time-honored tradition of the Holi festival, where people return to the moment of chaos as they splash each other with colors, participating through their actions in the movement of spring and the explosion of colors that sheds the snow-white cover of winter.

Unlike modern natural science, which sees the visual sense as a simple receptor of light, ancient wisdom and contemporary physics see colors as creations of light and the human eye. Paul Cézanne said that “color is the place where our brain meets the universe.” The phenomenon in which light becomes colors is “scientific” evidence that testifies to the connection between humans and nature.

“If the eye were not sunny,
how could we perceive light?” **

Asia Culture Museum Archive, photography by Lee Kyong Mo: Korean Azaleas in Gwangyang, Jeollanam-do

The word for spring in Korean, 봄 (Bom), is said to come from the act of gazing (보다) upon the mysteries of birth and the seed of life through the human eye. To “see” is to know, and to know is to be deepened. Flowers return and color themselves red, drawing upon the force of life that they had buried under the snow for many months. Spring is the time when one gazes deep into the world and draws upon the force of life to live the full year.

“The meaning of color is that it is there before us and we see it,”
said the other…
“It is for this reason that the Koran states that the blind and the seeing are not equal.” ***

[Go to] Asia Culture Museum, Religious Rituals of Asia