Today I got fed up with the WordPress logo at the top of my page. It’s impersonal, and a clear indication that I’m a complete noob at this–and I am, but I don’t want it to be so obvious. So after some initial challenge in that my current Bluehost template (Bluehost is my web host) doesn’t seem to allow a way to change it, I found the method and realized I lacked the inspiration. For a bit, I made my favicon (the icon on your browser tabs) a simple orange ‘A’ inside a navy blue square, playing on the website colors, and–more importantly, but subtly–the Broncos colors. Truthfully, it was almost as impersonal, and only showed that I could change a favicon. So I cast about, seeking alternatives, considering various light bulbs, but they struck me as trite, and I sought other lights. And so I came across the diya.

To quote Wikipedia: “The warm, bright glow emitted from a diya is considered auspicious–it represents enlightenment, prosperity, knowledge, and wisdom. Diyas represent the triumph of light over dark, [and] good over evil, with the most notable example of this being on the day of Diwali.” A symbol of warmth and wisdom in a sea of dark ignorance seems like a better symbol than a light bulb suggesting a sudden idea. But rather than expose myself to the criticism of cultural appropriation (by my many, many readers looking to malign me), I figured I should expand a bit on the diya, Diwali, and some of the traditions that surround them.

Diwali is a festival of lights (in a way similar to Hanukkah) celebrated by Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs, occurring over five-ish days between mid-October and mid-November. According to the Hindu calendar, it lands in the lunisolar month Kartika, and its third day falls on the darkest night of the year–hence the candle. Similar to the diya, Diwali “represents the spiritual victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance,” and is associated with Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity. People will prepare for Diwali by cleaning, renovating, and decorating their homes and workplaces with divas and rangolis.

Truthfully, Diwali appears to celebrate different occasions for different peoples, and this is where I want to shift focus from the holiday, toward the Jains, Sikhs, Hindus, and Newar Buddhists who celebrate it. The name Hindu is derived from old Persian, and came there from the Sanskrit name Sindhu, referring to the Indus River. So to some extent, Hindu refers to the people from this area. By the 1500s, the term had begun to refer to people of the area who were not Turkish or Muslim, and it’s only in the last couple centuries that they’ve begun to be considered separately from Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains. Buddhists can more simply be thought of as people who follow the teachings of Gautama Buddha/Siddhartha Gautama, and his four noble truths that suffering is a natural part of existence, this suffering comes from attachment, the suffering can be ended by relinquishing attachment, and the Eightfold Path is the way to relinquish this attachment. Newar Buddhism is practiced by Newar people in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, and since it broke off and isolated itself in the first millennium, it has preserved some traits of Buddhism that have disappeared in more recent iterations. Sikhism is in some ways akin to Christianity, in its faith in one god that permeates all, though the Bible portrays the Christian god as more humanized, while Sikhs emphasize god’s formlessness, and though they consider him benevolent, they consider god both a creator and destroyer, rather than setting him against a malevolent antagonist. Like Buddhists, Sikhs also believe in reincarnation. Jains focus on neither a single man nor god, but see the divine in all souls, and they also believe in reincarnation. They vow to avoid superstitious beliefs and to avoid praising superstitious lords and gods, and they believe in non-violence, a complex reality, non-attachment (similar to Buddhists), and being always truthful. These various sects of (mainly Indian) people generally get along despite their different beliefs, and their celebrations of Diwali are not that different.

At some point I’d like to design, or have designed for me, a better diya favicon. If you know someone interested in helping, let me know! I was going to talk about some of my resources for studying coding here, but it feels like too big a divergence from a pretty weighty topic. Instead I’ll leave you with this.

I heard there was a secret chord

That David pressed and it typed a word

But you don’t use a chorded keyboard,

Do you

It goes like this, <control> and <shift>

The other hand hits H and <left>

And all at once it types out

Hallelujah

Randall Munroe, of XKCD