Namaroopa...

This morning my good friend from Norway, whom I like to call my little brother, and I went up Chamundi Hill. It's really a mountain and in Hindu mythology Chamunda, or Chamundeswari, who is a version of Durga (or is actually Durga, in different locales in India different gods are called different names), killed the demon Mahiasura on this hill and saved Mysore from his terrible reign. There is much more to the story but that story is not the point of this blog entry.

Lately I've been drawn to Kali, or the divine feminine in its most ferocious form. Normally I'm really drawn to Shiva, but Kali is Shiva's consort, and is the ferocious form of Durga, who is the more tough form of Parvati, Shiva's wife. Yes I know, but again, not the point of this entry. So going up the hill was appealing to me and Jorn, we've both been reading about her a lot this trip. So we went.

There is a lovely, huge temple to her, behind it a lovely small temple (really my favorite one) to a form of Shiva called Mahabaleshwara and behind that is a Krishna temple. We went into all three. There is much ceremony involved and much devotion from the locals who live this devotion and believe in the goddess and her saving grace.

It was a great experience in part to being with my baby brother and in part to take part in the ritual of worshipping the goddess, in part because I got to take my first ride in a bus here in India and in part because I've been exploring the idea of moving here and want to learn more and more about the culture. And in a big part because the form of my worship is changing and I want to explore that.

The name I titled this entry with means Name and Form, to me name and form of god and how its perceived by each of us. And yes each of us is individual and see things through our own experiences and circumstances, so its very different for each one of us.

In the west we're trained that there is only one right way and that way often condemns Hinduism because it worships so many gods, not the one and only true god and his son Jesus. It pretty much condemns everyone anyway, saying you have to work your ass off not to go to hell, and basically you're going there anyway so it seems like a thankless fight, but you're still meant to keep the fight up. Not for me anymore, maybe it never was.

I'm reading a book by Robert Svoboda, a well known author of Ayurvedic informational books, and his studies with his teacher who was an Aghora. Aghora being what would be considered an extreme form of worshipping the divine by most people. But there was a passage I read today where Robert had asked him about Jesus and how does he reconcile his upbringing worshipping him and the Hindu stuff that Vimalananda had been up to that time teaching him. Considering Vimalananda talked a lot about Jesus it was throwing him off.

So his teacher asks him why would he stop believing in Jesus? Jesus was a great man, so he should still worship him. He worships the goddess himself mostly but never discounts any other form of the divine and worships each of them when given the chance and talked for quite a few pages about this. The one thing that stuck with me was this, we are really worshipping the One behind all the forms. The forms they show up in don't matter so much because the devotion is going towards the one, but we should worship the form because its easier for us to identify with a humanized idea of what God is.

This in itself is much easier for Hindus I believe because they have so many forms of god already that adding another one is not a hard concept, but underneath it all they believe they are extensions of one thing, one energy, one underlying field that manifests in many different ways, is a part of us, moves through us and all around us. Can anyone say "The Force" from Star Wars? Yes...

Now, I've heard this a thousand times from many different sources and for some reason this time it made sense and stuck. I'm not doing his words justice here, but again that's not the point of this entry. The point is that I got something, deeply understood it finally, that I've been trying to get for a long time. But it took all of this cultivation of the field before the seed being sewn actually took root.

I can believe in God in any way I want, it doesn't meant I'm not believing in God and seeing that spirit in everything. It may mean I'm offending someone who is an absolutist and believes their way is the only and right way, but it doesn't meant they're right. It just means that I'm right for me and they want to believe that I'm wrong and put their energy into worrying about that, then that is one them, but what I'm believing and living is for me. Not for them. And that's okay.

I know I've written about this before, many times probably, but just now I've gained a deeper understanding of this concept and have wanted this for years. So am feeling a bit excited about it hahaha!

This goes back to a blog I wrote not so long ago about judgment, and not judging others or myself. Now I think that may actually be possible. So I can go and worship Kali as Chamunda up on the the hill, or her consort Shiva in any of his many forms, even by reading the Shiva Puranas which I am, or I can go to church with my grandma and pray to Jesus or to my friends Zen center and meditate with her or anywhere I want to and be doing the same thing. Or I can go to Catholic mass and pray to Mary and think of her as the divine feminine form. Or go to a forest and sit against a tree and feel the god or goddess energy in it. Or I can sit in lotus in my room at the little altar I've created and chant and meditate and search for good feeling thoughts, which I do daily, and be happy with that.

As Sharath has said many a time in conference, they never went to temple. Guruji, Pattabhi Jois, his grandfather, was a priest, and so they had worship in their own home. And through the asanas which are a form of worship of the form we are currently inhabiting, he realized that this is our temple. This body. We are the spirit or soul behind all that, observing the human behaviors we are enacting all around us and living inside these bodies, which is the housing for us also called temples.

So whatever form your worship takes, enjoy it, be fully in it and do with bhavana (with heart) and don't let anyone else tell you its wrong, or blasphemous, because that's just bullshit. If you feel it in your heart, you are living and being it and they can go jump off a cliff! LOL