il puja di Durga

[stuart mill]

Durga puja nears crescendo

[stuart mill]

D EVI IS the ultimate Indian paradox and many consider her the deepest reason for why so many Indians exult in their religion and have clung to it despite every persuasion over the centuries and even today, to switch allegiance to newer, richer and more politically powerful belief systems. She is tenderness and ferocity, softness and strength, beautiful and frightening. Millions of miles of Sanskrit slokas exist extolling her.
They range from the verses of the Devi Mahatmyam in the ancient Markandeya Purana that are still recited every year during Puja three millennia later to Adi Shankara’s lyrical Saundarya Lahiri and rousing Mahishasuramardini Stotram to the beautiful Chandi Charitar in the Dasam Granth.
When Indian freedom fighters were hanged by the British, many were reported to have put the noose around their own necks, defiantly shouted ‘Jai Bhavani!’ as the ultimate homage to and belief in physical and mental courage and leapt in the air, snapping life.
However, the concept of Devi is not easily understood by the modern, deracinated urban Indian, Hindu or otherwise. If she is the celebration of the sacred feminine, why, then, does so much horrendous gender inequity still prevail in Hindu society? Why does female foeticide rank highest in states like Punjab and Tamil Nadu, both with feisty Devi traditions? Isn’t it time people began respecting the right of women to live and breathe easy without constant censure and assault from the male gaze?
The answer to that is depressingly apparent: there is a huge chasm between theory and practice in traditional societies. Yet, just having the concept of the powerful sacred feminine embedded in religion and culture has helped social reformers, right from the time of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, to push for enlightened change.
The positive take on this, like on much else in India, is that it is a work in progress. Everyone can see that since the late 19th century, many Indian fam ilies have educated their daughters, who now go everywhere and do everything. The task ahead, obviously, is to colour the whole map.
That said, the unabated love and enthusiasm for Navaratri and for Devi worship, begs the question: why has she remained so dear to the people? The answer seems to go beyond the usual clinical explanations that she is part of the Hindu theogony, that her cult is historic and has always had its adherents and so everlastingly on. Yes, but why does Devi rock?
Perhaps it is because we are deeply attuned to the emotional logic of the concept of Jagadamba, the Universal Mother, the Jagatjanani who contains all life. And who needs the need for a mother explained? Those with earthly mothers may in fact find them terrible nags and control freaks, while those without, pine all their lives for one. Either way, the idealised concept of an unconditionally loving Mother, who nurtures, soothes, heals and ultimately, saves, is patently central to the human psyche.
Who can be surprised, then, that this entire civilisational weight of love and longing is emotionally transferred to the idealised personality of the Mother Goddess?
Moreover, Indian mythology firmly states that Devi is the concentrated energy of all deities, that she is in fact ‘Adi Parashakti’, the First and Supreme Power, who makes herself mani fest as Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva as well as their consorts. So in worshipping Devi, every deity is neatly addressed.
Some refine matters fur ther with the idea that the three Mothers, Parvati, Lakshmi and Saraswati, embodying valour, fortune and knowledge respectively, represent a spiritualprogression from tamasik (fierce) to rajasik (worldly) to sattvik (purified) states of being. But all three are considered necessary for making life happen. That is why the traditional morning prayer before getting out of bed involves holding one’s palms up together and reciting this small but significant verse:
Karagre vasate Lakshmi, kara madhye Saraswati Kara moole sthithaye Gauri: prabhaate kara darshanam ‘With luck in my fingertips, learning in the middle and valour in my palms, I look at my hands in the morning.’ (The order is mixed, but that’s poetic licence!). The purpose of the prayer is to charge oneself up mentally every day to go out and face the world and whatever challenges it has waiting to club us on the head with.
But the hard message given by looking at one’s own hands, is: “So deal with it.” Now this is bedrock Hinduism at its scariest, that one must take responsibility for one’s deeds, that our actions bind us and carry inevitable consequences. Nobody is expected to come and save a Hindu from bad karma, it is a terrifying personal responsibility, meat for strong stomachs.
Given this frightening soul scenario impassively laid out by the belief system known as Sanatana Dharma, the Eternal Way, can we wonder at the deep emotional need for the Mother of the Universe?
She is a Hindu’s Jesus, going deeper it seems, than even Krishna, everybody’s darling, who dulcetly invites surrender and promises salvation in the Bhagvad Gita. But Devi has no need to say anything, or if she does, to intellectualise the argument or get into long explanations about right and wrong. She simply is.
Is that why the cry has resounded for millennia: Ya Devi sarvabhootheshu Shakti roopena samastitaha/ Namastasyai namastayai namastasyai namonamaha?

[stuart mill]

ecco un articolo sul sati, che accontenterà pure vurdak

I T MAKES you wonder about your religion and culture when people kill themselves in the belief that they will attain spiritual reward by so doing. Here are some variations on ritual suicide: ¦ Hindu scripture does not sanction the self-immolation of widows but sati became a popular practice, as we all know. It takes its name from the early avatar of Parvati, Sati, who killed herself because her rich father insulted her mendicant husband, Shiva. The practice was outlawed by the British and remains so. ¦ Jauhar, equally famous, is the terrible rite of mass self-immolation by Rajput women whose men faced certain defeat in battle against invaders. The women dressed as brides and, to the chanting of prayers, jumped into a huge fire where they all burned to death rather than face dishonour when captured by invaders. After dispatching their womenfolk, the Rajputs donned saffron robes and tilaks and dashed out to be slaughtered, fighting. ¦ Hindu ascetics are known to have taken jalsamadhi or death by drowning in holy rivers like the Ganga, Sarayu, Kaveri and Tungabhadra. Shri Ram in scripture is a famous example, as is the former Shankaracharya of the Sringeri Math. Medha Patkar, in recent times, threatened to do so in the Narmada. ¦ Jain ritual suicide, explained as ‘holy death’ like sati, is a voluntary fast unto death called sallekhana vrata or santhara. The person concerned takes formal permission to die from an acharya and initially gives up solid food, subsisting on milk, buttermilk or fruit juice. The next stage involves drinking only warm water. In the final stage, even that is given up and the person waits to die, praying and meditating. Jains distinguish this as a ‘pure death’ from the suicide committed by unhappy or mentally disturbed people. ¦ A popular form of ritual suicide among Hindus was the death leap, called Kashi Karvat and Amarkantak Karvat. In the former, the person hanged himself in the territory of Varanasi while at Amarkantak, the source of the holy Narmada, the death leap was off a mountainside in the Vindhyas. Dying in these sacred sites was believed to upgrade a soul's chance of reaching heaven.

Such acts reinforce the notion put forward by the sage Bhrigu in the Bhrikurvalli of the Taittiriyo Upanishad, a notion he discovered after profound tapas (after being sent by Lord Varuna to go figure, when he asked the triad of existential questions: Where does life come from?

What sustains it? Where does it go back into?) The answer he comes up with is: Manaso hy eva khalvimani bhutani jayante/manasa jatani jivanti/manah prayanti abhisamvisanti. ‘Life comes from the mind, is sustained by the mind and goes back into the mind.' Earlier, I understood these lines to mean, ‘It’s all in our attitude — positive or negative.’ But when I hear of ritual suicide, I can’t help thinking of another angle: disability.

Ask the mother of a handicapped child and she will tell you what a miracle it is to be born sound in limb, in full possession of all your faculties. This precious gift of human birth surely deserves that we should appreciate it by nourishing our bodies well, letting them grow to their full potential and do likewise for the mind? Does it not seem a betrayal of our covenant with life to starve and torture our body, home to our immortal soul during its earthly span? We are taught to consider the body as a mere change of clothes for the soul, but in order to not be bound by it to our mental detriment. But surely, there is also a responsibility towards the gift of life, to live well and keep well?

I guess this difference in perception is because ideas on religion came from ascetic men, whereas women — and many wonderful men — are, instead, nurturers of life. Doesn’t the Mrutyunjaya Japam seem a more truthful expression of life and death, instead? At the stark end of this disconnect is the concept of ritual suicide. But surely Divinity is not so pinch-hearted as to think well of souls that claim redemption because they reduced themselves to look like Holocaust victims? Indeed, is it not ironic that those who covet virtue by starving themselves to skeletal proportions look exactly like those on whom great evil was done?

[stuart mill]

tutto è tratto dal the hindustan times, edizione di mumbai, a cui è possibile abbonarsi online GRATUITAMENTE

[Antiokos]

Non trovate che questa immagine di Durga sia particolarmente inquietante? (rende bene l'alone inquietante della Dea, anche se non nell'aspetto più terrifico che invece è Kali).

[stuart mill]

effettivamente è inquietante.
A Vrindavan vidi Kali però, quindi non mi fa più di tanto impressione
i suoi seguaci sono, mi dissero, particolarmente nemici delle foto, quindi nio riposi immediatamente la macchina fotografica

[stuart mill]

[Nyxum]

Non trovate che questa immagine di Durga sia particolarmente inquietante? (rende bene l'alone inquietante della Dea, anche se non nell'aspetto più terrifico che invece è Kali).

Si, fa decisamente paura!