Seeing and Being Seen

Darshan, literally seeing, sight, or vision, is the central act of Hindu image worship: to behold the deity and, crucially, to be beheld by it in return. To take darshan of an enshrined image, a sacred place or a holy person is to enter into a reciprocal gaze in which grace is understood to pass through the eyes. The worshipper comes to the temple above all to see the deity's form and to stand within its regarding, and the high moment of temple worship is the drawing back of a curtain or the opening of the shrine so that the image is revealed and the exchange of looks can take place.

This makes seeing, rather than hearing or reading, the primary religious sense in much of Hindu practice, and it gives the consecrated image its particular status. Through the rite of establishment the deity is held to become truly present in the image, so that the eyes of the figure are the eyes of the god, and the devotee's looking is met.