Creativity blooms from divine grace

He is a novelist, a short-story writer and a screenplay writer, all rolled into one. Peace has been his mission and the essence of his writing. Balakumaran explains to M. Balaganessin how the temples in and around Tiruchi have been a catalyst to develop tranquillity, peace and noble thoughts. Be a writer or a painter or an artiste, any creativity will be ideal and perfect, only if the creator is blessed with peaceful thoughts, the veteran writer pronounces.

For him, a visit to Tiruchi is a delight for more than one reason. Temples in and around the city have been a source of inspiration for him, blessing him with a gift to realise divine grace. Mr. Balakumaran says that he had meditated at various temples in Tiruchi, constantly uttering some sacred ‘mantra'. He specifically says that it was the Sri Samayapuram Sri Mariamman temple where he realised the eternal bliss differently. “The Divine Mother at Samayapuram has been a guiding force in my quest for realising the supreme power,” he says.

Full report here Hindu

Humanity needs to change course

The existential predicament of man is usually approached and analysed in two ways. The first is to examine the personal, social, political and economic circumstances that contribute to it and theorise on possible solutions. Many of the theories advanced are at best ad hoc rationalisations drawn from skewed perceptions of human behaviour. In practical terms, they are of little value. Further, the real villain is not the ‘circumstances' but the human mind, which is what creates endless problems.

At another level, neither the philosopher who pursues Truth, nor the religious teacher who offers to reveal Truth, nor the spiritualist who promises to lead us on to wisdom is likely to carry conviction because man's afflictions demand instant remedy and cannot brook any delay. The troubles stem from man's “over-worldliness”, with the human consciousness being unable to extricate itself from the shackles of the external world. When the scientist started peering into matter, searching for laws that governed its working, he began unleashing vast energies. He was not concerned with the ethics, good or bad, and it became the lot of the turbulent mind to make the choice. An objective, detached choice-making is difficult when the mind is not free from baser passions. The mind having created the demons is not going to destroy them. In the words of Einstein, the problem that man creates with his mind he cannot solve with the same mind. The “superficial mind”, as Aurobindo calls it, has grown to such dimensions that it has begun to wreck the fabric of harmony and happiness.

Full report here Hindu

The God next door

Vishnu: Hinduism’s
Blue-skinned
Savior
Editor: Joan Cummins
Mapin
Rs 3,500; Pp 296

A little-known fact about Hindu religious practices is that no priest can possibly start any ritual worship of any deity without invoking Vishnu or his hallowed memory. Even when the priest, irrespective of the school to which he belongs, worships the other two members of the Hindu Trinity of Gods — Brahma, the Creator, and Shiva, the Destroyer — he has to start the process by paying obeisance to Vishnu. There seems to be no getting away from Vishnu, the Preserver, or the one who maintains order and balance in the cosmos by means that are both violent and peaceful. Such is the primordial importance conferred on Vishnu by those who wrote the Hindu religious scriptures.

The importance of Vishnu in the Hindu way of life arises for another reason. Of the three members of the Trinity, Vishnu appears to be the most real, infinitely more human, more balanced, present in many more forms and incarnations than the other two, and certainly better understood by most practitioners of the Hindu religion over the ages.

Brahma is the most remote of them all. You can count the number of temples at which you can worship Brahma. Shiva is more popular, but his bohemian way of life and mercurial behaviour inspire awe and fear, and do not make him easily acceptable. Therefore, Shiva remains a distant God. In sharp contrast, Vishnu is the God next door, manifesting all the qualities including the virtues and the minor foibles that a Hindu householder has no qualms in identifying with. He is like the Shakespearean tragic hero — who does not hold an ordinary position in life, but whose hubris helps ordinary folk empathise with him. For Shiva, there is reverence and fear. For Vishnu, there is reverence, but hardly any fear. In addition, there is affection and empathy.

Full report here Business Standard 

A tome on Vishnu

Here is a book that traces the growth of Vishnu within the Hindu pantheon.

The book bears the title of an exhibition that was opened in North America and coordinated by the First Center for the Visual Arts drawing from at least 45 collections in the U.S. Going by the book, this seems to have been a superb exhibition and the text and the photos of the exhibits do full justice to what seems to be a mammoth and ambitious undertaking.

The various images of the exhibits are intermingled across three important and well-written themes that governed the layout of the objects.

Part 1: The image of Vishnu, his attributes, his consorts, his female form, Garuda and legends associated with him.

Part 2: Deals with his avatars and the various images of Vishnu.

Part 3: Deals with the worship of Vishnu.

In all parts the text is lucid, yet packed with information. Joan Cummins, in her introduction, offers an excellent analysis of the Hindu religion and presents the uniqueness of the religion with a variety of choice for the spiritually inclined and the plethora of sub cultures the religion contains. She believes this is because of its age and because, it is a religion that has no single prophet/founder and has therefore grown in a cumulative process so that, “two people might find themselves praying next to each other in a Vishnu temple, repeating the same words and looking at the same sculpted icon, while holding radically different visions of the god and completely divergent spiritual objectives.”

Full report here Hindu

The mother of all goddesses

In a fascinating recounting of the story of Hariti, a child-devourer whom the Buddha brought to the path of Righteousness, and who then went on to become one of Buddhism’s — and

From Ogress to Goddess: Hariti
Madhurika K Maheshwari
IIRNS Publications
Rs3,000; pp 244

India’s — foremost Mother Goddesses, Madhurika K. Maheshwari’s From Ogress to Goddess — Hariti — A Buddhist Deity focuses on a deity that once enjoyed more prominence in the Indian subcontinent and beyond than it does today. Maheshwari’s study is very readable and wide-ranging, with its focus being the erstwhile prominent deity.

According to early Buddhist tradition, Hariti the Yakshini (yakshas and yakshinis being divine beings with benevolent and malevolent aspects), was an ogress who also became the city of Rajgriha’s protector demi-goddess, changed her wicked propensity for devouring children after Gautama Buddha helped her understand that her anguish for her missing child was no different than the sorrow felt by the parents of children she had eaten. Following her repentance, the Buddha raised Hariti to a divine status, making her protector not just of children and expectant mothers, but also of the Buddhist Sangha and its stupas, viharas, monastery-structures, people and morals.

Hariti became the predominant Mother-Goddess in India from about circa 1st century BC to 1st century AD and retained her relevance over the centuries, often becoming incorporated with local sub-regional goddesses, and with goddesses called upon to protect children from disease, death and disaster. It may be noted that Hariti became not just a protective deity and  fertility goddess — in common with other yakshinis in Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism — but she was also the consort of Panchika Kubera, king of the Yakshas and Lord of Wealth.

Full report here Hindustan Times

Faith, cyclical and sublime

In the spring of 1907, the London publisher, John Murray, published a book on Persian mystics by one F. Hadland Davis. The book appeared in a series called “The Wisdom of the East”, whose editors desired their publications to be “ambassadors of good-will and understanding between East and West, the old world of Thought, and the new of Action”. Through the books in the series, it was hoped that the Western (and Christian) reader would acquire “a deeper knowledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought [which] may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour”.

One of the first readers of the book was an Easterner educated in the West, Mohandas K. Gandhi. Then based in Johannesburg, Gandhi may have acquired the book from a local store, or perhaps ordered it from London. At any rate, he was deeply impressed, writing about it in Indian Opinion, the journal he then edited. Of the mystics whom Hadland Davis had profiled, Gandhi was charmed most by Jalaluddin Rumi, who aspired to “a pure heart and love of God”. Gandhi quotes Rumi saying, when asked where one could find god, “I saw the Cross and also Christians, but I did not find God on the Cross. I went to find him in the temple, but in vain. I saw him neither in Herat nor in Kandahar. He could be found neither on the hill nor in the cave. At last, I looked into my heart and found Him there, only there and nowhere else.” Gandhi ended his review by saying that he would “like to recommend the book to everyone. It will be of profit to all, Hindus and Muslims alike”.

Full report here Telegraph

Connect the dots

Dancing with Kali; Lalita Das
Niyogi;

Dancing with Kali has its moments of brilliance, amidst many literary clichés. The author seems to have written the book, keeping in mind, non-Indian readers; where she goes that extra mile to familiarise us with the Hindu ethos and culture. It raises your intrigue, builds your suspense by the time a two-third of the book is over, and suddenly throws in a lot of revelations.

Any connect between Goddess Kali and any character in the book is cleverly kept under the wraps and Das beautifully connects the dots towards the end. The characters are well-turned out, but the repetitions dampen your interest. The streams-of-consciousness mode is not deftly dealt with, and it makes for a confusing read at various places.

Full report here Hindustan Times