When error is a sign of maturity…

 

Few days back you would have come across some news clips that Khap Panchayats were actually barring people marrying within the same Gotras. This went to the extent of encouraging honor killings, some politicians supporting it and most of the media and “rationalist” variety opposing it.

Curious to understand the origin of Gotra and the reason behind it I was reading some articles and came upon very interesting pieces which i thought would share here. Now the disclaimer would be that these are part of the Hindu scriptures and we always have a choice to discard them as mythology or read them with an open mind. I decided to stick to the later.

Lets start with few questions:

1. Are you aware that there was a stage when fire did not burn anything and everything like it does now and it started doing it after it was cursed?

2. Are you aware of an instance that a male sage was pregnant (by mistake) and delivered successfully through C Section millions of years ago?

3. Are you aware of the origin and history of ayurvedic vitalizer Chyavanprash? You would have heard as Dabur Chyavanprash or other brands as Chyavanprakasam etc?

4. Are you aware of a pregnancy that lasted 100 years + and also instead of it being in the uterus the fetus was preserved and nurtured in the thigh for about 100 years?

5. Do you know who generated Fire /Agni from water first?

If you are interested in any of them then read on.

Seven great sages:

I am sure you would have heard about Saptharishi or the 7 great sages in Hinduism. The  constellation with 7 stars (Ursa Major aka Big Dipper) represents 7 great sages not only in Hinduism but also in many of the other far eastern texts like Chinese & Japanese. You can Google for further information. Even if you have not read about this, i am sure you would have seen this constellation in a clear night sky.

Here is a quick link of Wiki.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saptarshi

Gotra to my understanding signifies ones family / lineage and they are innumerable depending on which lineage you belong to. Everyone is assigned a Gotra whether we know it or not and the belief is that all these Gotra evolved from 7 sages Bhrigu, Angiras, Atri, Vishwamitra, Kashyapar, Vashishtar, Agasthiyar. Now the objection of the Khap leaders is essentially saying that you can’t marry from the same lineage for what ever reason. But side stepping this topic and coming to our questions some of the interesting aspects i read are as follows:

1. Sage Bhrigu, who is son of Lord Brahma (born from Brahma’s Skin) is a very renowned and revered sage. Interestingly he is attributed with generation of fire from water. The scripture notes that the fire can produced from items like stones, leaves, space etc, but Sage Bhrigu is attributed with the generation of fire from water. Presence of Oxygen in water which is the basis of fire proves this theory today, but this was documented many years ago.
2. It was believed that Agni / fire consumes only items which were offered to it after a Yagna. That means it was not burning anything other than that. This state changed when Sage Bhrigu cursed Agni that you shall consume anything and everything. The term he used is “Sarvapakshakan”. So why did the sage curse Agni?
3. It is told that Sage Bhrigu instructed Agni to protect his wife Puloma from a demon during his absence and Agni neglected his duty and allowed the demon to carry Puloma. This invited the curse from Sage Bhrigu. Hence fire started to consume anything and everything from that day… so goes the story.
4. Sage Bhrigu’s son is Sage Shyavanar again with great qualities and very respected. It seems that in those days invitation to a Yagna and receiving the produce of Yagna is a very exclusive thing. Sage Shyavanar once invited Ashwini devas for a Yagna and as per the protocol these Ashwini Devas were not supposed to attend. Yet the sage invited them for some reason and honored them with the produce of Yagna despite stiff opposition from his peers. Ashwini Devas are the doctors / ayurvedic experts for the gods and they pleased with the Sage gave him a potion to regain his youth and vitality. This medicine which Ashwini devas gave to Sage  Shyavanar is called as “Shyavana pracha valeham”. Leham means Lehyam which is a medicine in thick gel form and the original ‘Shyavana Pracham” is what is currently branded, labeled and sold as vitality medicine.
5. After Sage Shyavanar in the same family his successors started marrying from “Kshyatrias”/ warrior clan. If you read the scriptures then its clear that the Brahmins actually married from different caste without any problems and I am not sure why this is being made such an issue now. Some of the great sages had quick over night stands too. (You may be interested in this http://ragsgopalan.blogspot.com/2010/01/yours-weakly-part-22.html ). Some difference in opinion grew so strong that the Brahmins and Kshatriyas started fighting each other and no marks for guessing that all the Brahmins especially the kids / pregnant woman were killed to eliminate Brahmin clan altogether.
6. Sage Shyavanar’s wife was pregnant and to escape being killed by the enemies she moved her fetus from Uterus to thighs and sustained / nurtured it there for about 100 years. The kid who was born after 100 years of pregnancy was called Sage Auravar”. Aurava signifies thigh.
7. If you have heard of Sage Jamadagni, Lord Parasuram (Vishnu’s avatar) and Sage Vishwamitra – all of them are from the same Sage Bhrigu’s clan. This may also give you some idea as to why Lord Parasuram (grandson of Auravar) was against the Kshatriyas and eliminated 21 generations of them.
8. But lets focus on another Sage called Angiras. Sage Angiras is again a son of Lord Brahma and you may be interested to know that Lord Rama (Raghu vamsa), Guru Dronacharya (of Mahabharata fame) are part of Sage Angiras clan.
9. Sage Yuvanas (son of Sage Angiras) did a Yagna to beget a good son. The holy water which was to be given to Mrs.Yuvanas the next day was kept in the house. Sage Yuvanas by mistake drank that water in the night without knowing that this is the holy water that is capable of producing an offspring.
10. Since the water was powerful there was no way the effect can be reversed. Ashwini Devas (the medical team) came to the rescue. This became the first male pregnancy in the history of mankind, successfully delivered to give birth through “C-Section” and Sage Mamdatha was born.

Rising above some of these interesting tit bits and studying the articles with a deeper contemplation reveals that:

• So called Hinduism has always stressed the importance of Intuition subordinating the Intellect, Experience subordinating Inflexible dogma, Inner realization taking precedence to outer expression and more importantly Conduct subordinating Creed / belief.
• Even the so called perfected souls / sages have faltered in their conduct not in our eyes with contemporary values but per the standards they had set for themselves. The so called “best of periods” did have brutality that is spine chilling.
• The effort has never been and never should be to create a common creed but align ourselves for a common quest.

Instead of using a brutal force imposing an opinion to develop blind faith in an inflexible creed, the society and more so the leaders need to inspire the community to aspire for experiential living and self realization.

Lets realize that the great ones have faltered and yet recognized the mistake and evolved out of it. Then the society and environment was open enough to allow these mistakes and corrective enough to put them back into the right path.

I think we need to be open enough to encourage the sinners to condemn the sin instead of condemning the sinners.

“There never was
There never will be
There is no now
A man for whom there is
All blame or all praise!”

As one wise man said “The muddy roots justify themselves with the gorgeous flowers…”

Lets long for a society where errors are seen as a sign of maturity and relive our lives When errors are seen as a sign of maturity…

 

Yours Erroneously…

Happy Reading!

Musings: Hail the frailty

 

We are conditioned and brought up in a world which eulogizes qualities like strength, hardness, manliness, power and mightiness. There is a very small section of people who recognize softness, womanhood, frailty and yielding can overcome the qualities of hardness and brutal force. This blog is an attempt to highlight that softness which is apparently a weak, meek and frail nature of things is superior to its manly counterpart on the following accounts:

1. In the process of evolution the more evolved things / beings are softer / weaker / meeker / more frail. That is harder and so called manliness are less evolved…. in the scheme of nature.
2. We can also see that the higher the complexity and criticality the softer the beings / things are. The same is true that the essence and quality of softer things / beings is higher and better than the hard / grosser items.

While it is true that manliness (Yang) and womanliness (Yin) are two sides of the same coin and one cannot exist without the other, but it is important to highlight that while celebrating the “Yang”ness we seem to belittle or condemn the “Yin”ness in anything.

So without ignoring the importance of Yin-yang balance, i am going to bat for the “Yin”ness and encourage you all to “Hail the frailty”, “Celebrate the meekness” and “Be proud of your weakness”.

First lets look at the nature’s scheme of evolution:

• In the plant life, the roots are the strongest part and the roots are stronger than the stem. The stem is stronger than the branches. The leaves, flowers and fruits are progressively softer / weaker than the earlier one. The seed which evolves from the fruits are the softest, weakest and most frail thing in the plant life. So what we see is essentially that as the evolution progresses the nature of things becomes more frail. The gross becomes subtle, and the hard evolves into soft.

“The duty of the root is in taking but the duty (beauty) of the fruit is in giving”… Isn’t giving is more evolved than taking?

Next lets look at the composition of human body:

• I am going to quote some concepts from TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) for it to be little more authoritative but if you ignore the framework of TCM and just logically look at this argument still this will hold good.
• There are 12 major organs in the body and these organs are classified as Yang organs and Yin organs. You can Google about Yin and Yang but broadly they refer to the bipolar nature of things viz. Yang / Yin represents - light / dark, hard /soft, man/woman, Heat / Cold etc in that order.
• The 6 Yang (male / hard) organs which are Gall bladder, Large Intestine, Small Intestine, Stomach, Urinary bladder and Triple warmer.
• The 6 Yin Organs are heart, Lungs, Liver, Kidney, Spleen and Pericardium.
• Needless to explain that as the internal body organs evolve the more critical the functions are the softer / weaker / more frail the organs.

Next lets look at the Yogic way of explanation on nature of bodies:

• Every living organism is made of multiple bodies primarily ranging from 3 to 5.
• They are Annamaya Kosha (Physical Body), Pranamaya Kosha (Etheric Body), Manonmaya Kosha (Astral Body), Vignanamaya Kosha (Mental Body) and the Anandamaya Kosha (Causal Body). Kosha actually means ‘Sheath” and not body. So it can be considered as layers.
• It is told that organisms like plants have the first 3 sheaths / bodies / layers and human beings and animals have 5. But irrespective of how many we have each one is more subtle than the previous one and causal body is the most subtle of them all.
• The point i am trying to make is not that one is superior to another since all the 5 form one organic entity but certainly in the scheme of nature the more a component / organism evolves the more subtle / frail / softer it becomes.

Let me also quote the words of our friend, Lao Tzu, highlights the importance of being soft, yielding etc. Generally Taoists say that we should be like water, very soft, very yielding, takes the shape of the container yet it can exert the greatest force and can overcome the hardest things like steel and rocks. In Tai Chi and other internal arts the brutal force of the opponent is not countered with an equally / more brutal force but with a soft / yielding force.

• “Yield and Overcome”…
• “Soft and weak overcome the hard and strong”… The softest thing in the universe overcomes the hardest thing.
• Returning is the motion of Tao.
• Yielding is the way of Tao”

• "To bend like a reed in the wind, that is real strength" - Taoist philosophy

We can stack more and more examples that highlight this phenomenon. So, let me summarize the argument:

• The secret of the nature and nature of the secrets are in Subtlety and are frail. At the primordial source the subtleness merges into / as formless. In other words the source has devolved into more gross things in nature and our evolution is in moving towards the source.
• If we claim woman to be more frail / weak than men, then does it not mean that they are more evolved than us.
• As one wise man said “Women when made equal to man, is superior to him”. That’s the reason in many cultures / races it is designed as a male dominated society.
• No wonder women, being more subtle, they are tuned to finer things. They can see 15 odd shades between any 2 colors segments to pick up a matching dress but most men cant see anything more than 7 colors… all hues and tints put together. It applies to other aspects also.
• Isn’t rather unfortunate that we see a “Yang” driven world where woman having ignored their “Yin”/ feminine qualities want to live and behave like a man? Isn’t this a downward spiral movement?
• If this is applicable from every organism to macro universe then why is that we shun and belittle the subtler, frail and weaker scheme of things within us. Why is weakness abhorred? Why should it be strengthened?
• By this logic, is it not the weakness  and frailty in us the most evolved aspect or part of us? Should we not recognize this and celebrate this instead of shunning / belittling this?
• Isn’t love forgiveness and divinity are the most subtle aspects of human life?

The pendulum of nature has swung too much to the Yang side and the desire is to see the pendulum swing back before it balances itself close to the median.

“Might is right only if we are in a fight". If we consider life is a journey and not a race then lets celebrate our meekness, be proud of our weakness and Hail the frailty.

 

Yours frailly

Happy Reading !

Musings: When the "Seeker is the Sought"

Does the cooking vessel understand the sweetness of the dish it has cooked? It does not. One Tamil Siddhar compared human being to this stating that we are all like cooking utensils who do not understand the divinity within us.  I have given this beautiful poem in Tamil at the bottom of this blog with meaning.

In another instance attributed to mystic Sufi woman Rabia Al Adawia, she lost something inside her house and was searching for it under a street light outside her house. When asked how she can find what she has lost inside the house by searching it outside the house and why she is doing it, she quipped that there is light here and there is no light inside the house. To me, this parable has  great significance since the seeker is seeking something outside while what he / she has lost is deep inside.

We are continuously seeking something. The emphasis is on the direction of the search which is always directed outside but at one of point time in our life has to be be redirected within us. This is the journey inside when the Seeker seeks and realizes that seeker is the sought.

Not sure why such philosophical thoughts emerge when you are physically and mentally tired, but it surfaced yesterday when i was waiting at Mumbai airport taking the 20.20hrs flight to Bangalore which was delayed by over an hour. The working day was very hectic and I was brain dead. Its then the above 2 thoughts surfaced and i quickly scribbled the following lines as i settled inside the aircraft... Hope you like them.

"What did the seeker seek?

and

Where did the seeker seek?

As the seer peeks out within the seeker

Yet the sought is seen outside the seeker

In a materialistic world, marching to death

The seeker seeks the sought, that isn't worth

For what is lost is deep inside

Yet the lost is sought since there is light outside !

Lost somewhere, yet its sought elsewhere

A search so wrong, however hard leads nowhere

With love as the goal & life as the journey,

With the eyes closed, the wise tame the (mind) monkey

The blind search in the darkness lay

The brightest light showing the natures way

As the sought is seen

Beyond the soul of the dark night 

The wisdom dawns in us
Not by the seeker getting to his sought

But by realizing that
"The Seeker is the Sought"!

Yes,

May the wisdom dawn

That "The Seeker is the Sought"!"

Happy reading

PS:

This is a poem by Siddhar Sivakkyar. His compilation of about 400 odd poems is one of the best i have read. The line is consistent that the divinity is within us and lets not waste time and energy in rituals and idol worship. The following poem is a classic if you can read Tamil and understand the multidimensional power of these words. The last line of the poem is generally quipped by the wise when they come across some adamant or idiotic characters that they can't get them to see the truth / beauty.

நட்ட கல்லை தெய்வம் என்று நாலு புஷ்பம் சாற்றியே

சுற்றி வந்து சொல்லும் மந்திரம் முணு முணு என்று ஏனடா 

நட்ட கல்லும் பேசுமோ நாதன் உள்ளிருக்கையில் 

சுட்ட சட்டி சட்டுவம் கறி சுவை அறியுமோ! 

The meaning as i understand is as follows:

"You have installed a stone, calling it an idol / god and you are decorating it with flowers,

You are going around the idol and chanting mantras, why?

When the god is within you why are you expecting the installed stone to speak with you,

Does the cooking utensil know the sweetness of the dish inside.  

For those who like tamil siddhar poems check this out which was blogged by me some time back. http://ragsgopalan.blogspot.com/2009/09/blog-post.html

You may also like another blog http://ragsgopalan.blogspot.com/2009/01/musings-when-doer-disappears-yet-doing.html "When the doer disappears yet the doing continues"