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Because Hinduism has not traditionally broken the world into a secular and a sacred sphere, there is no real sense of sacred time. All time is sacred, and the gods are eternally in the present. However, certain times are more auspicious for certain things than others.

Thousands of minor and hundreds of major sacred places and spaces are scattered throughout the Indian subcontinent. Indeed, in an important sense the entirety of India is understood to be a sacred space.

Although the Hindu tradition has over the centuries produced an incredible array of complex philosophical and theological doctrines, it has always been a religion of practice, of ritual acts, of rites, and of ceremonies.

There is virtually no act that is not in some sense religiously significant in the Hindu world, and thus there is a vast array of rituals and ceremonies that take place in the context of daily life.

The Hindu world is permeated by symbols. Religiously significant symbolic images adorn temples, statues of the gods and goddesses, sacred texts, and even individual people. Furthermore, most religious rituals are themselves highly symbolic, with each action and gesture resonating with symbolic significance.