Kindred Visions: Darśan and Eucharistic Adoration

The practice of darśan, particularly as it relates to Hindu images, arguably resembles practices of Eucharistic adoration performed in the Roman Catholic Church. A similar logic of “real presence” links darśan and these practices of Eucharistic adoration. In both cases, the consecration of an object makes the object a true locus of divinity available to worshippers. Worshippers, through meeting a divinely occupied object, through spatial proximity to and visual encounter with the object, experience some “blessing.” These meetings and practices also occur in similar settings in each case, in houses of worship and, in the case of Hindu and Eucharistic processions, in the wider civic arena. This theological-practical examination of these consonances identifies darśan and adoration as distinctive concepts nevertheless connected by significant similarities. While not collapsing the two and noting differences, this examination nonetheless detects real and important parallels between the concepts and their practical applications.