Reading Notes: Seven Secrets from Hindu Calendar Art Part C

(Goddess Kali)

Ardhanari's Secret

"God is stillness within. Goddess is movement around." God cannot be limited to one form because any representation of God will be inherently flawed because it must by nature of being a physical form, exclude some other material forms.

Three human couples are the main forms of God in Hinduism:

1. Brahma and Sarasvati
2. Vishnu and Lakshmi
3. Shiva and Shakti

Male Trinity (verbs)

1. Brahma the creator
2. Vishnu the sustainer
3. Shiva the destroyer

Female Trinity (nouns)

1. Sarasvati - goddess of knowledge
2. Lakshmi - goddess of wealth
3. Shakti - goddess of power

The video suggests that the image of gender was simply an act of dividing ideas rather than a suggestion of what the form might entail. The male form was used as a vessel to represent the spirit within each person. The female their physical, mortal aspects.

The experience of material reality is confined within space and time. This video rationalizes the use of the gendered forms in this visualization of God by elaborating on the way that life is created using the two genders.

Therefore the Goddess is the great one who can be measured and evaluated while the God can measure and evaluate. She is ever changing as we attempt to measure and define and control her existence because she is all things of the material world.

There is a difference between the changing truth and the permanent truths. The difference between these concepts is often illustrated through a number of symbols.

I enjoyed the story of the ascetic who wished to pass between Shiva and Parvati in order to honor Shiva but not his consort. He ends up being cursed to lose all parts of his body given to him by his mother and is only allowed to stand when Shiva grants him a third leg as a sign of pity on the man. He is punished for disrespecting the Goddess.

Shiva's Secret

Withdrawal leads to destruction

Shiva is the destroyer of desire, death, and the three worlds. What the three worlds are vary from person to person, but the explanation for his titles is clear. He destroys desire and the god of death, thereby halting the karmic cycle and destroying the three worlds. Shiva destroys by making all things one.

Kali is the polar opposite to Shiva who must persuade him to open his eyes and be aware of the world around him. Tripurasundari is the form of Kali that forces Shiva to create life and forces the cycle of rebirth and death to continue. The Shakta sect may be matriarchal based on the importance of women in their lore.

STOP

Bibliography: Seven Secrets from Hindu Calendar Art

Reading Notes: Seven Secrets from Hindu Calendar Art Part B

(Statue of Lakshmi and Vishnu)

Narayan's Secret

What dies is always reborn. I knew about the Hindu concept of reincarnation, but I had never considered extending it to include the world as a whole cyclically developing and being destroyed throughout time. There's something very beautiful in that.

It makes sense that having many worlds and lives removes some of the sense of urgency of living. Sesha is the remainder, the serpent bed for Narayan when he sleeps. So the world exists while Narayan is asleep, but no one can conceive of it or be aware of its presence ergo it may as well not exist. Essentially this is examining the semantic difference between a person's world and the whole world, between existence and experience.

Lakshmi is Narayan's consort. Narayan is called Vishnu when he's awake. I find it very interesting that Narayan becoming Vishnu is associated with Shiva becoming Shankara. I find it very interesting that these stories make the distinction between loving someone and desiring them for a spouse.

Narad is the source of so many problems because he has grown listless with his cursed existence. This harks back to the question of whether or not one would actually want to live forever. Narad must continue to exist even once he has grown bored with the world. His character is a very direct representation of the fact that men are neither truly good nor truly evil in general in Hindu mythology. In fact, there are several examples in which rakshasas can be good or devas can be punished for evil behavior.

Garuda is the hawk Vishnu rides to set the world right. I like the idea of Garud provoking the evil parts of the world to move by the very nature of his existence as a hawk. Rama is an avatar of Vishnu. I like that in Hinduism gods take a very direct interest in the workings and balance of the human world. "[Creation] is a subjective realization."

Water is the symbol of formlessness, entropy, and disillusion. When a sage visualized the end of the world, his vision of destruction and the world being submerged in water was punctuated by his finding a newborn baby. "The end is actually just a phase."

"Death is a comma - there is no full-stop." The Banyan tree represents things that cannot be destroyed. Essentially, the baby is representative of the immortal soul. I love how even something as simple as the different sides of the body are representative of more intricate ideas. The right side is the considered representative of the soul and spirit while the left side represents the physical aspects of existence. Even a simple image of a human person can be considered representative of the commune of the physical and spiritual world.

Imperfect forms to communicate a perfect truth. It is intent and behavior that create demons, not birth. Bhagavad Gita means the song of god. Vishnu takes the form of Krishna, Arjuna's charioteer. Matter exists to draw our attention to the soul.

There is no definitive good and evil when all things are based on context and perspective.

Bibliography: 7 Secrets from Hindu Calendar Art Part B

Week 13 Storytelling: Bahuchara from the Seven Sectrets of Hindu Calendar Art

 

(Bahuchara)

Once upon a time, in a village hidden away deep within a forest where men and animals lived so close together that each could hear the other settling off to sleep at the end of every day, lived a beautiful young woman named Bahuchara. Her parents had perished in a devastating forest fire when she was 10, and Bahuchara lived with her brother on the family’s small chicken farm. For many years, Bahuchara had been praying and praying for a handsome husband, but the village was small and isolated so for some time her prayers went unanswered.

Night after night, the desolate girl would weep and offer up her tears as supplications to the gods that they might mitigate her loneliness and bring her a husband and children to bring life and light to her day. During the day, she spent every moment working and contemplating the gods and their power. Every morning and evening she spent devoting herself to prayer, but the girl did not have much to offer in the way of gifts for the deities.

She would place small measures of food out for crudely carved wooden idols on poorly built altars, but that was the best that she could do. Eventually, however, Parvati took pity on the girl and decided to grant her the husband she so desired. Taking on the form of an aged grandmother, Parvati came down to earth and visited Bahuchara’s shrine.

“Take courage, young one, the Devas smile even upon humble offerings. They have so smiled upon you, and you will be wed within the month.”

Shocked, Bahuchara asked the woman on whose authority she made such fantastic claims, but Parvati only laughed at her surprise and told her that it was the gods’ will she professed.

Parvati then travelled down the only road leading away from Bahuchara’s village and stopped the first man she came across riding down the road about to branch off onto another path. Parvati stopped him and asked if he was married. When the man, surprised though he was by this stranger’s prying, answered that he was not, Parvati directed him back down the path and explained that in the village at the end their lived a young, very beautiful, unmarried woman on whom the Goddess Parvati herself had smiled.

The man then rode down the path with some eagerness now, searching for the village the old woman had described. When he finally found it, the man rode from home to home, searching for and quickly finding Bahuchara in her hut, preparing her brother’s supper.

The man took one look at the young woman and fell for her completely. She seemed so beautiful, and her nature so cheerful and vivacious that he couldn’t resist her charm for a moment. He resolved that if she showed herself to be well-mannered as well as gorgeous, he would propose immediately.

Realizing that it was growing late, the young man introduced himself to Bahuchara’s brother and requested some food and a place to stay for the night. Although they had little to share, it would have been rude to turn away this traveler so the siblings gave him a space on their floor and a place at their table for the night.

The very next morning, the young man proposed to Bahuchara, and her brother quickly agreed to the match, realizing that this was an immense opportunity given how few people came this way. The three agreed to travel into the city immediately to take care of the ceremony. Arrangements were made for the care of the chickens, and they left that very day.

After they arrived, the couple was married in a small, modest ceremony, and the young man took his bride home. To the dismay of Bahuchara, the woman discovered that her new husband was a man in all but body. Though she loved him dearly, knowing that he was brought to her by the gods, Bahuchara knew that she would never have children.

As she came to this knowledge, Bahuchara was filled with desperation and prayed more fervently than she ever had before that she be given the power to overcome this obstacle with her new husband. Parvati, realizing what she had done, felt sympathy for the young woman and granted her the power to do what she needed to do.

That prayer granted Bahuchara divine power. That night, when she went to see her husband, she was able to grant him a man’s body. From that day on, Bahuchara was imbued with the divine power Parvati had granted her, and she became the patroness of the isolated and those rejected from society. She became the embodiment of inclusivity.

Author’s Note: Bahuchara is an actual Hindu goddess. She embodies inclusivity and is specifically considered the goddess of hijras, individuals who feel that they were born the wrong gender. She comforts these individuals, and many people pray to her that they will be reincarnated as another gender. Hindu lore suggests that she may have been deified when she was accidentally married to a woman whom she was able to transform into a man. I decided to write this origin story because I like the idea of a goddess of inclusivity being born as she attempts to grant the wish of her beloved partner to be a man.

Bibliography: Seven Secrets from Hindu Calendar Art

Reading Notes: Seven Secrets from Hindu Calendar Art Part A

(Ganesha)

Ganesha’s secret

What I really like about this piece so far is that it’s structurally very different from the other pieces I’ve examined up to this point. While those generally have a focused storytelling agenda, this purpose of this piece is to educate people about the Hindu religion through stories about their Gods, Goddesses, gods, and goddesses.

Initially, the video discusses the multiplicity of divinity and the concept that Hindu deities are the most comprehensible embodiments of various aspects of divinity as a whole. It then goes on to explore the difference between Gods and gods. I find this an interesting distinction. It becomes even more interesting when one considers local gods and goddesses and their roles in the Hindu pantheon.

I didn’t know that Ganga was said to flow from the top of Shiva’s topknot. The really cool thing about that is that I’ve actually read an alternative source story regarding Ganga. In fact, I wrote in my storybook about a different relationship that Ganga and Shiva are said to share.

This discussion of local gods and goddesses is very interesting to me because it shows how culture impacts religion and people’s interactions with religion. For example, the fact that there are some earthly people who are considered to be the consorts of various deities.

It is particularly interesting to me that they are exploring the similarities between various historical pantheons and the Vedic pantheon. I also like the thread of subjective truth they are pulling through the video in conjunction with the initial story about Ganesha.

I had never considered greek mythology from the perspective of gods and goddesses fearing that the human race would eventually overthrow them. Vishwakarma is the one who creates. Bahuchara is the goddess of hijras who can turn a woman into a man. She is the embodiment of inclusive divinity.

Annapurna, the mother who feeds, becomes Lakshmi. Gayatri becomes Saryaswati. Ganesha is one of the most popular gods in modern Hinduism. Ganesha represents a balance between spiritual and physical desires.

Bibliography: Seven Secrets from Hindu Calendar Art

Storytelling: The Gander-Eater

 

(Cell Phone)

Lila never meant to raise a monster, but sometimes if you’re not careful enough, you reap weeds you never meant to sow. She had been careless, but Lila never dreamed that trying to give her son everything she could afford would end the way it had.

Our story, as so many stories before it, begins with an unforeseeable tragedy. Shortly after their son Lyle was born, Lila’s husband was killed in a mugging on his way home from work. The couple didn’t even have much money to speak of in the first place. After his death, Lila and her newborn son were left destitute, the former beyond desperate.

Finding a full time job and some kind of childcare for her infant was no easy task. Lila was forced to move to the city and take any position she could find, often working upwards of 70 hours a week. Between all her jobs and an intense sense of frugality, Lila managed to ferret away enough money to get a small one-bedroom apartment and send her son to a high-end private school in the area.

All that work exhausted her, but Lila would have done anything for her son. He was her pride and joy, and anything Lyle asked for he received, one way or another. Eventually, without meaning to, Lila spoiled her son, and he became a selfish, implacable nuisance. No matter how much he received, nothing was ever enough to satisfy him.

One day, some of Lyle’s school friends got to talking about the different gifts their parents had given them as a result of the performance in the last semester. Lyle listened for almost an hour to his friends discussing brand new cell phones, expensive computers, and imported gifts Lyle couldn’t even pronounce.

When he came home that night, Lyle walked straight up to his mother who was collapsed, exhausted on the couch. He began wailing at the top of his lungs, startling his mother awake.  Lyle bawled and squalled without end, demanding to know why she hated him so much that she wouldn’t give him a brand new phone like his friends had. Seeing her only son so distraught upset Lila, and she began to cry quietly, trying to assure her son that she would save up and get him a good cell phone as soon she could afford it.

Dissatisfied, Lyle only screamed louder. Lila offered him her cell phone, saying she would get herself a cheap one from the supermarket. Without warning, the screams ceased. Lyle glared at his mother and in a dark, soft tone warned her that he would have the phone he wanted or nothing.

Unfortunately, Lila knew she could do nothing and had to watch as her spoiled son locked himself in the only bedroom and refused to let her in or speak with her. Resolving to do what she could after work the next day, Lila laid down on the couch and fell asleep almost immediately.

When Lila woke up the next morning, she saw Lyle sitting at the foot of the couch playing with an expensive looking phone, the box and wrappings sitting beside him. Lila knew her son couldn’t have gotten the phone legally, but he wasn’t screaming anymore, and she was so tired. She simply didn’t have the energy to fight the boy she had created so she let him keep it. She said nothing.

Imgaine then, Lila’s guilt when the police showed up and took her son into custody based on fairly damning video security video. Lila spent the next week crying in the temple down the road from their apartment. Her son had been arrested and she was alone. Lost for options, she began to beg god for an answer to her son’s imprisonment.

Author’s Note: I chose to make this into a two-week story because I wanted to explore some of the later impacts of such a selfish and poorly behaved boy being given immense power, but I didn’t want to write an unreasonably long story. The source material is about a widowed woman who sends her son to school using what money she can beg and finds that he is dissatisfied when he discovers that his classmates can all afford to eat meat while he can have only vegetables. The boy steals a goose from the king’s aviary and eats it. When he’s caught and sent to prison his mother prays for his release. I’ll explore the end to this tale next week.

Bibliography: Neogi's Sacred Tales of India