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| Shiva Nataraja dances in Pondicherry guesthouse hall |
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| street leading to Chidambaram temple east gate |
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| Shiva Nataraja and company of worshippers outside Chidambaram temple |
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| Nandi, Shiva's bull, and worshippers. But who is the fat guy with the shell? |
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| Brahmin priest in one of many courtyards |
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| Tank and smaller shrines |
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| The Matri Mandir in Auroville (photo misplaced here) |
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| Dancers in classical positions on east gopuram dear blog readers: these are some photos that illustrate the portion of my essay on the Shiva Nataraja temple at Chidambaram. it is difficult for me to place them correctly throughout the text, so consider this a photo section.
Shiva’s Temple
Outside the
temple entrance, I handed over my shoes in a ramshackled palm-thatched hut that
keeps them safe for a small donation. The Hindu temple is the residence of the
god or goddess; just as you would not be rude enough to wear shoes in a person’s
home, so you would not in a temple. A steady stream of mostly middle-aged men
and women were hurrying in one direction, so I followed them under the tall
east gopuram, the tower that serves as
an entrance gate to Sabhanayaka Shiva temple in Chidambaram. This ancient
temple dates back to the 9th century Chola dynasty in South India,
with mentions of it as early as the sixth century BCE. It was built on the
place where Shiva won a dance competition, overcoming the goddess Kali, and the
deity has been dancing his perpetual dance of creation and destruction leading
to cosmic bliss ever since. A major place of pilgrimage for faithful Hindus, it
is sometimes considered to be the center of the universe.
I recognized the roof of the inner sanctuary from a photo in the
guidebook: it is covered with 26,000 gold tiles, symbolizing the number of
breaths a human being takes each day. Gathered there was an eager chatting
crowd, forty or fifty people, men and women, lined up in front of a high stone platform.
Other worshippers were handing up offerings of fruit, flowers, coconuts, and
small butter lamps to half-naked Brahmin priests. Fires burned in large bronze braziers
and incense released clouds of strong fragrant smoke rolling through the air.
At exactly eleven, three enormous bronze bells at the side of the
shrine began to boom and a brace of smaller ones chimed in and the worshippers quieted
down and placed their hands in the position of worship. The ritual puja began. The several priests began to
chant, one lifted up and swirled around a brass tray holding flaming small butter
lamps, holding it high and low, turning it in clockwise then counterclockwise
circles in front of a small dark doorway that led to the inner sanctum. Chanting
by the faithful began, including the refrain “Om nama Shiva-ya” (praise the name of Shiva.) Drums and gongs
sounded from additional priests on the sidelines.
I stood at the side towards the back and couldn't see much. Nearby a
couple of students were explaining the ritual to a young Japanese guy. When
they noticed me eavesdropping, they beckoned me to come closer.
“Hello. We’re from Delhi,” a handsome one shouted above the din.
“He’s from Osaka.
Exchange student.” said a tall guy wearing aviator sunglasses and a Bob Marley
tee-shirt. “My name is Lucky.” He shook my hand.
The Japanese guy nodded slightly in my direction.
The chanting and bell ringing intensified.
“Look, look, now we see the god.”
The priests pulled back a curtain far back in the innermost chamber.
This was the moment of darshan, heightened
spiritual "seeing," when the worshipper comes into the presence of
the god and goddess, expresses their devotion directly, personally to the deity, and the deity also sees
the worshipper, offers protection and reveals to them the path to divine wisdom.
The eager crowd strained forward, some on tiptoe.
I couldn’t see anything but a dark rectangular opening.
In fact, I read later there is nothing to see in this sanctuary but a
garland of fifty-one leaves of the Bilva tree sacred to Shiva, symbolizing the
presence of the deity. (Aegle marmelos,
Stone Apple or Bengal Quince, rich in medicinal properties.)
When the curtain was closed and the ritual came to an end, Lucky went
up to the priests and returned with a mound of prasad in his hand. This was a sticky yellowish-orange colored
confection. I recognized it from my previous trip to India.
“The god is here. Shiva. Please.” He offered me some first.
It seemed rude not to accept it, even though I’m not in the habit of
eating things directly off the palm of strangers. It was sweet and fruity with
a hint of coconut. Working on the same basic principle, it was certainly far prettier
and tastier than communion wafers.
We exchanged the usual tourist game of “Where from?” None of them
seemed to register the word “Detroit.” How the mighty are fallen. “Near
Chicago.” That registered.
Lucky was eager to talk, telling me that he had read about Abraham
Lincoln, a great man.
I agree with him, and asked him, “So, are you lucky?”
“Yes,” he said, “I am very lucky.”
“Me too,” I said, “I am very lucky too.”
“Why?”
“Because I am here, meeting you.”
Lucky grinned and gave me a high five with a slightly sticky hand, and
we parted company.
I walked around the long dark stone corridors of the temple,
punctuated with smaller shrines to various deities. Gods and goddesses sat on blackened
altars piled with flowers, coconuts, small burning lamps. They wore multiple
garlands of yellow or white flowers and white silk scarves, were smeared with
red or sandy-colored pastes. There was a dank smell, the accumulation of
centuries of incense, butter lamps, humanity, and warm humid air. I had a look outside
at the large tank (reservoir) whose water is said to have healing properties,
and tried to make sense of the endless tangle of sculptures on the four gopuram. Signs inside warned that photos
were not allowed--"your camera or mobile phone will be seized,"-- but other groups of students were posing for each other here
and there outside, so I risked taking a few.
Then at noon another ritual puja was about to begin, so I made my way
back to the sanctuary. An elderly gentleman in thick glasses and his wife from
Bombay initiated a little “first time in India?” conversation. Now there was a
group of six or seven well-dressed lay people standing up on the platform with
the priests close to the entrance to the sanctuary, where previously only the priests
had been. I asked those privileged ones were and the woman replied, “They have
paid money.” So here too a contribution gets you a front pew, closer to the
deity.
I watched the ceremony again from a closer position, with a keener eye
for the details and a little more understanding. Afterwards, many people
approached the priests for prasad and some received three horizontal marks (the
symbol of Shiva, who carries a trident) on their foreheads made with the ashes
of the offerings that had been burned in the large brazier.
The temple closes for several hours after
the noon ceremony, so I didn’t have time to explore around the whole enormous
complex with hundreds of smaller shrines and altars. I retrieved my shoes and
easily found my driver as he had parked directly across from the entrance and
was waving energetically to me.
On the drive back to Pondicherry I had
plenty of time to think. The driver spoke only a few words of English. Long
stretches of the East Coast Highway were in terrible condition and the forty-three miles stretched out over two
hours. The usual mix of trucks of all sizes from mammoth gravel haulers to
little three-wheelers, buses large and small, SUVs, cars, autorickshaws, bicycle
rickshaws, motorcycles, bicycles, ox carts, cows, goats, dogs, and pedestrians
were squeezed into one paved lane and the muddy dirt shoulder, which had ruts
and humps deeper and higher than seemed navigable.
I’ve been to quite a few important sacred places in the
world, but Chidambaram had to be one of the most impressive. It’s huge size,
great antiquity, and colorful visual complexity alone would qualify. The loud bells booming and tinkling, the clouds
of smoke both sweet and acrid coming from the platform, the chanting, the
half-naked priests, the burning lamps swirling around, the intense looking and
jockeying for position of the crowd, and the fervor of the whole occasion made
me realize I’d never seen such intense devotion in a religious ritual. In a
way, I envied the worshippers and admired them for their conviction, knowing
full well that this was not a spiritual practice open to an American secular humanist.
Ashram
The next morning in Pondicherry I walked
over to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in the old part of the city without having any
idea of what to expect. Again, shoes off; this time you had to leave them
across the dusty street from the entrance and I had brought no socks. Large signs
proclaimed the rules: silence at all times, no chanting, no smoking, no
photographs, turn off your mobile phone, children under three not permitted.
You
enter through a carefully tended garden lined with flowering shrubs and palms;
the stone paths swept clean. In the center of a shady outdoor courtyard was a
large tomb, the samadhi of the guru
Sri Aurobindo and his collaborator known as The Mother. He died in 1950 and she
in 1973 at the age of 97. The finely streaked white and gray marble was covered
with fresh flowers and flower petals arranged in elaborate symbolic patterns,
including a yin-yang and a six-pointed star. Signs warned that the flowers must not be disturbed or
removed and no additional flowers may be placed there. Long sticks of delicate incense
burned at the foot of the tomb. A constant slowly moving line of men and women
reverently passed the tomb, bowed, knelt and kissed it, many placing their fore
heads on it and lingering with eyes closed.
(Photos of the samadhi can be seen by googling Sri Aurobindo ashram)
A
contemporary devotee explains the experience:
“Out of his
Samadhi, a thousand flames seem to be mounting up and, lodged in our soul,
burning in an ever rejuvenating fire, while His Presence enveloping and merging
with and radiating from the Mother’s being and body is pervading the whole
atmosphere. One can see His Presence, hear his footfalls, his rhythmic voice,
ever vigilant, devoid of the encumbrance of the physical body.”
The
center of the courtyard was shaded by an enormous Service Tree (Sorbus domestica), its gnarled trunk
circled by a garland of flowers. Some of the faithful touched it reverently as
they left the tomb.
Around the edge of the courtyard was a
low wooden platform where people sat, many in the posture of meditation. Almost
all were Indian; I noted only one or two Western visitors, tourists like me. I
skipped entering the queue for the samadhi but sat down and watched the quiet
scene. South Indian women passed by in gorgeous silk saris: bright blue and
pink, with metallic gold trim; beige, maroon, and green, with gold; gray, dark
green, with brown; mango and olive green with magenta spangles; orange and dark
chocolate brown; pale apricot, olive, and pink, with gold…and many more. It
struck me that these worshippers were probably wealthier, more up market, than most
of those at the Shiva temple. The only noises came from the ubiquitous hooded
crows and small twittering birds. The sun filtered down through the branches of
the big tree on tidy gardens with careful arrangements of flowering plants
between marble walkways. All was light, airy, open, clean, quiet, slow paced,
and orderly. How different the ashram was from Chidambaram, and how it was much
more familiar to contemporary Western eyes, including mine.
I went into a small, carefully organized
bookshop, selling exclusively the teachings on of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother
in many languages. “It is in life
that we wish to find the Divine,” said The Mother. That sounds okay to me, but
she should have stopped there. Glancing through some of her writings, I found
them rather muddled. English was not her first language. There were a few
postcards, including one of The Mother’s feet as she stood, with the hem of a
pink sari showing above her light pink polished toenails. I looked briefly
through a few of the books and pamphlets, and finally bought a small Introduction to Integral Yoga written by
the guru himself.
I retreated to the courtyard and found a
spot in the quiet sitting crowd. The silent, meditating men and women seemed
familiar after my experiences in various Buddhist establishments. I liked the
fact that there was no dark sanctuary presided over by a garlanded, red-smeared
or golden god or goddess, no chanting in forgotten ancient languages. Peace,
quiet, sunlight, trees, birds, flowers, and air. A welcome, restful escape from
the chaos that can be overwhelming in India. I left after an hour or so,
feeling calm and rested in body and mind.
Back at the guest house after lunch, I
started to read the small booklet I’d bought on Sri Aurobindo’s teachings.
Here’s a sample sentence from the first page of his introduction:
To
know, possess and be the divine being in an animal and egoistic consciousness,
to convert our twilit or obscure physical mentality into the plenary
supramental illumination, to build peace and a self-existent bliss where there
is only a stress of transitory satisfactions besieged by physical pain and
emotional suffering, to establish an infinite freedom in a world which presents
itself as a group of mechanical necessities, to discover and realise the
immortal life in a body subjected to death and constant mutation, — this is
offered to us as the manifestation of God in Matter and the goal of Nature in
her terrestrial evolution.
My afternoon nap commenced almost immediately.
Utopia
The next day I was off to Auroville, ten
kilometers north of Pondicherry on a small side road that alternated between dirt and asphalt. A
few small shops displaying tie-dyed bedspreads, tee-shirts, and salwar, the popular baggy pants,
appeared out of the scruffy jungle. Established by The Mother in 1968, the aim
of this utopian community is for all sorts of people to live in harmony,
working together in agriculture, handicrafts, and alternative technology—all is
run on wind and solar power. Anyone wanting to get a big dose of New Age ‘60s
culture with a garnish of Green Living could hardly do better than visiting Auroville,
or even its extensive well-organized website.
The Mother decreed: Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to
humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville, one must be a willing servitor
of the Divine Consciousness.
The widely spread out community covers
over 50 square kilometers and houses some 2,000 people, who live in groups with
names like Sincerity, Revelation, and Transformation. One third of the
residents are Indian, with French and Germans making up another third; the rest
come from as many as forty other nations. Religious individuals are not welcome
in Auroville, as the Mother pointed out that religions divide us, and this
community is all about unity. “To live in Auroville, one must be a willing
servitor of the Divine Consciousness.” The Aurovillians are busy with their
work and lives and don’t welcome visitors, unless you are willing to stay in
one of their guest houses for at least ten days and donate your labor. While
founded by The Mother, Auroville is not part of the ashram in Pondy but exists as
an entity on its own with a charter from the government of India.
All the tourist can easily access is the tidy,
modern Visitor Center, where you are required to watch a 15-minute video
(available in many languages) on the teachings of The Mother and about the important
building that is the spiritual center of Auroville, the Matri Mandir. Then you
are given a pass to walk along a mostly shaded path through a thin tropical
forest for a kilometer to see this strange building. Working with a French
architect, The Mother planned it, and it is dedicated to the Universal Mother,
the force behind all life.
The Matri Mandir is a slightly flattened sphere, about 120 feet in diameter, covered with 1,400 larger and smaller golden disks. Only Aurovillians and their paying guests are allowed inside; the rest of us can only observe it from a distance on a little rise under a large spreading neem tree. It is a place for sitting in silent meditation by the devotees, with sunlight hitting the sphere and thus focusing all energy and attention on the divine spirit in the universe. “It may evoke the image of the New Consciousness breaking forth from Matter,” again words of The Mother. The futuristic building is surrounded by twelve symbolic gardens, each designed by her. Nearby is a large open ampitheater and an enormous banyan tree, which is considered the soul of the community.
A young woman who spoke English with a
German accent was giving a talk to a group of older Australians, so I listened
to her answers to their questions.
What’s inside?
The walls inside of the sphere are white
marble, the carpet pure white wool, there is a large glass crystal sphere in
the center. No words or symbols.
Only members of the community can even approach it on Sundays or during festivals. Yes, it is air-conditioned. No chanting; only for silent meditation.
The Matri Mandir, like the Shiva temple,
has a golden roof over its shrine; the former is created with gold leaf on
metal disks, where the latter has overlapping tiles of solid gold, or so they say.
(With the price of gold soaring, is Chidambaram the only place in the world
where substantial quantities of gold are not hidden away in secure vaults?) At
the center of each place of worship is, essentially, nothing: an optically
perfect clear glass sphere (made in Germany by Zeiss) in one and a spray of
gilded leaves symbolizing the presence of the god in the other. Fire ceremonies
are held at dawn outside the Matri Mandir to commemorate important spiritual
events, like the birthdays of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. And fire is essential
to worship in the hourly darshan at
Chidambaram.
While the ashram and its practice of
Integral Yoga seems more accessible to me than the mysteries of the panoply of
Hindu gods and goddesses, nonetheless, reading some of the obtuse and obscure
writings of both Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, and thinking about the weird
Matri Mandir and what it cost to build, and the lofty, almost impossible ideals
of Auroville, admirable though they may be, it too all looks like a cult or a
religion, which of course is forbidden there.
Sometimes I feel like I am on a personal study
of comparative religions, visiting the sites of worship in different parts of
the world. I’ve been called a spiritual seeker, but I am driven by intellectual
curiosity rather than a desire to settle on the right religion for me. My thoughts were formed by the secular
philosophers, writers, and scientists of the Enlightenment, Montaigne,
Voltaire, and Jefferson, who lead me back to Lucretius and Epicurus. Those ancient
Stoics and Epicureans weren’t aetheists; they considered that gods and
goddesses simply had no concern for us mortals: we’re on our own to make our
lives and our worlds by ourselves. To accept the world as it is, to enjoy it,
and to question everything.
None of the sacred places or works of art
have moved me as much as watching the last of the yellow maple leaves falling
outside my window.
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