Shailaza's Blog

Tag: mahavidya

  • The Past Few Months and The Void

    The Past Few Months and The Void

    I can sincerely confess that in the past few months, I have done little or no work. I have been staring into the space and whiling away time everyday. My head was like the blue sky, thoughts kept floating about like clouds but whenever I tried to make sense of a thought or write it down, it vanished without a trace.

    I remember spending my class X holidays in a similar way. But, I did read a lot in those days. I used to get lost in worlds of fantasy, mystery and magic.

    However, this time, it was different. I was lost but I don’t know where. I thought but I don’t know what I thought. My entire day passed in staring into nothingness and thinking nothing. In this time, nothing existed for me, neither the past or the present or the future. All my life, I have worked for success but now, it seemed as if there was no desire left for success or achievements or accomplishments. Questions like who was I or what was I kept floating around in my mind. Am I the mind or the body? What is my identity? People know me by my name, but am I really a name?

    During this time, I read about Mahavidya Dhumvati. She is pictured as a widow, sitting on a horseless chariot. A crow sits on the top of the chariot. Dhumvati holds a winnow in her hand which she uses to separate the grain from the chaff. Dhumvati or she who has a smoke like appearance is considered the personification of the void which swallows everything and from which everything emerges.

    For most seekers, Dhumvati is the dreamless sleep where nothing exists. She is that which emerges after all forms of identification is wiped out- the dark void which swallows everything. Perhaps, she is the black hole from which the universe emerged and by which it will be eventually swallowed. Interestingly, she is also considered the giver of siddhis or powers in the occult world.

    When we are born, our parents become our world. Slowly, we realize that we are separate from our parents. We work so hard to create our identities, our values, our world. We achieve our goals, aims and targets. Our journeys are full of challenges and we do our best to overcome those challenges.

    Slowly, as a result of these exploits, we accumulate stories of our triumphs and failures. Time and again, we narrate these stories to others and ourselves to assert our identities. We even fight wars to maintain these identities or defend them. We forget that there was a time, these stories did not exist but we existed even then in sheer bliss and joy. As children, we were always in a state of bliss because nothing really mattered and we knew the art of doing nothing.

    But, how will the world function if we do nothing? Is doing nothing not against the very doctrine of karma where we are taught to play our role to the best of our capacity without bothering about the end result?

    Dhumvati is not beyond karma. Dhumvati simply teaches us to remain in awareness of who we truly are. We are not our names or titles or accomplishments. We are beyond those. I remember a friend who was the vice president of a very big company telling me, ‘I am not the vice president but I work as the vice president.’ Similarly, we simply have donned our roles and identifications.

    Dhumvati urges us to drop all identifications and simply play the role that time demands.We are not the role. We are no-thing. We are no-one. Our true self lies beyond the object, observer boundary. We are the awareness that always is. The awareness from which the experiences emerge and to which the experiences return. We are the stage which witnesses the play of the object and the observer for the stage will remain even when the play ends and the players vanish!

    If you ever experience this stage in your life, think about what you really identify yourself with. Who you are really when you are stripped of all the identifying badges? What are you without this game of winning and losing?

  • Tara: Above All Emotions

    Tara: Above All Emotions

    What lies beyond our ordered lives? What lives beyond desires, death and destruction? What lies beyond our perceptions?

    Tara, the second of the Mahavidyas is as fascinating, intriguing as death itself. In a culture, where goddesses are mostly well-dressed, adorned with jewels and smiling sweetly, Tara dressed in a tiger skin comes across as a wild child wielding a bloody scimitar, wearing a garland of skulls and dancing on a corpse or Shiva. Her background is not an affluent palace or a serene garden but a cremation ground where most people would not go in their wildest of dreams. Though statues of Kali are still revered in our world, one seldom sees statues of Tara or Shamshan Bhairavi in shops or online. Why is it? Are we scared of death?

    Isn’t it interesting to see both Tara and Kali have their tongues lolling all the time? Their swords are smeared with blood. Whose blood? Human or animal? Is that why innocent animals and in some cases even humans are sacrificed to these goddesses? Is that how they offer moksha or liberation from the endless cycle of birth and death?

    The name Tara means someone who can take you across. Across what? She is said to live in the cremation ground, a place where everything ends. Some even say that she is the energy of the cremation pyre. The energy that transforms everything- love, hate, empires, destruction, creation and everything else. In a way, she seems like a black hole of the universe from which nothing can escape…not even light.

    As humans, we are adrift on the ocean of emotions. Emotions rule our lives. Happiness, sadness, anger, joy govern our actions and reactions. The origin of these emotions is desire that flows like the blood fed by our ego. A desire arises, it longs for the fulfillment; waves of anxiety, expectations and desperation engulf our light. As that desire is fulfilled, another wave arises of happiness, ecstacy, joy. If that desire is not fulfilled, we sink into the depths of despair, pain and sadness. Desire after desire catapults us into new emotional waters- it seems like a never ending storm.

    But then, everything must end for nothing lasts forever. Kali as time descends over these desires and Tara laps them up with her forever lolling tongue. She slashes the ego with her scimitar and snips away those bonds of attachments with her scissors. As she dances and transforms our ego and smashes our desires, the lotus in her hand blooms with new creativity which is not born out of the egoic desire but out of the universal expression.

    Everything ends. All induvidualism must end. All that is created must be destroyed to create once again. It must be renewed and reborn from its very own ashes.

    Tara takes us across the churning stormy ocean of emotions and helps us realize that induvidual desire is never ending. Tara reminds us that we are nothing but the mediums through which the universe expresses itself. When all desire ends, the ego is quelled, the attachments are snipped off, we bloom like the blue lotus in her hand…endless and timeless. At that time, we overcome even death for beyond death of the ego lies endless creativity.

    This creativity is different than the creativity that comes from the egoic expression. We experience pure bliss in creating this way because then there is no fear of rejection, failure or no expectation. The creation happens only because the universe has willed it. The creation is neither good nor bad. It just is. Perhaps it is the same emotion that a mother experiences when her baby is born. The joy of creating a life, no matter how it is. That is why this creation can only happen through Tara- a mother who in her endless dance creates the cosmic expression which is beyond all the known boundaries of the universe, which is beyond all ego and knowledge and desire ; where there is nothing but joy of creation!