Shiva & Shivalinga

Today is MahaShivaratri, the great night of Shiva and since morning I was trying to think of something to write but without success. And suddenly, at about ten in the night, when my father was waiting to go to the Shiva temple to witness the ’Akashdeep’ being raised on to the ‘Garbhagriha: the sanctum santorum’, narrated a story about the curse of the Ketaki flower. The story is:

” Once Lord Brahma and Lord Vishnu got it into a fight over who is supreme. To sort out the issue Lord Shiva made His first appearance in the form of Jyotirlinga or Lingodabhavamurti (a column of fire with no end or beginning) before Lord Vishnu and Lord Brahma. Lord Shiva intervened in the fight and said whoever can find out the origin or end of the Shivling is superior.

Lord Brahma and Vishnu set off to explore the beginning and end of the mighty column of light. Vishnu went down in the form of a boar and Lord Brahma went up in the form of a swan.

Lord Vishnu was unable to find the base and came up and admitted defeat.

Brahma on his journey upwards came across a Ketaki flower. Brahma again went up but was unable to find the uppermost limits. So He decided to take the help of the Ketaki flower.

Brahma decided to take the Ketaki flower back to Vishnu to bear witness that he had reached the top of the pillar of light. Brahma said he found the Ketaki flower atop the Jyotirlinga and ketaki supported it.

This lie infuriated Shiva. Brahma was cursed that for telling lie, He would not be worshipped on earth by people. Similarly, ketaki was also cursed that she would never again be used in worship of Shiva. Thus, ketaki is debarred forever from pujas and worship of Lord Shiva.”

This legend reminded me of the views of Swami Vivekananda, which i had read some years ago, about the origins of Shivalinga, which i have reproduced here:

According to Vivekananda, the worship of the Shiva-Linga originated from a hymn in the Atharva-Veda Samhitâ sung in praise of the Yupa-Stambha, the sacrificial post. In that hymn a description is found of the beginningless and endless Stambha or Skambha, and it is shown that the said Skambha is put in place of the eternal Brahman. As afterwards the Yajna (sacrificial) fire, its smoke, ashes, and flames, the Soma plant, and the ox that used to carry on its back the wood for the Vedic sacrifice gave place to the conceptions of the brightness of Shiva’s body, his tawny matted-hair, his blue throat, and the riding on the bull of the Shiva, and so on — just so, the Yupa-Skambha gave place in time to the Shiva-Linga, and was deified to the high Devahood of Shri Shankara. In the Atharva-Veda Samhita, the sacrificial cakes are also extolled along with the attributes of the Brahman.

I have a beleif that the stories or the legends that abound so much in Hinduism are woven around some concepts of the Vedas or esoteric philosophical ideas. Probably,To make these palatable to the common man, the wise men took the help of stories.  If you have noticed in the above legend and the hymn of the Atharva Veda, there is a common idea of a never ending column- there is an eternal coloumn of light in the story and a never ending stambha or column in the hymn.

May be the story is made up to get across the concept of Shiva in the Atharva Veda to the masses.

Reading and the Internet

It’s always, the next book or  next website would be the better one. So, save this one or bookmark it and click forward in search of the alluring better site. In this search for the oasis of a website, one never sits down calmy and with a purpose to read the books dowloaded or take a long look at  the bookmarked sites. Months pass, and you realise that you have wasted all those days and hours in a useless search: in all those days you could have read ao many books or if used the internet sensibly, could have accomplished some work.

Internet has given an almost infinite amount of information at our fingertips but the flip side of it is that one gets swamped by so many options and it’s impossible to focus without immense self control.

Most of the times, I have seen, that I would resolve to read a book online or to research about a topic and in a few minutes I would be surfing the net without any aim or direction. For example: there are any number and type of free e-books available online but I seriously doubt any one reads them with concentration. It’s all about skimming through some sentences and then jump on to another book or to some other site.The attention span has shrunk to some seconds, and with this shallow interest levels we can only create water poodles: shallow and muddy. The depth, width and flow of the river will always elude us.

I have downloaded scores of books to read, though almost a year has elapsed; I could finish only one book- The story of Dr. Doliitle: a charming story about a Doctor and a bunch of animals and their sea voyage to Africa and back to England. This was possible only because of my little daughter who would ask for a story every day and I was forced by her pestering to read a bit of it each day to tell her it in installments to make her go to sleep.

Though the book is labeled as children’s literature, I enjoyed it as much as my daughter. Some one has rightly said; I don’t remember the exact words but it something like to the effect that: there is nothing called children’s literature, if it doesn’t interest an adult it would not interest a child.

By the time I finished the book I realized that it becomes a chore and a great effort to read digitally, even though it’s as gripping a book as Dr.Dolittle, with the internet with its infinite charms lurking just a fingertip away.

With the realisation that i can’t read books the digital way ( it has not worked for me though i know people who can read a e-book and accomplish so much work); i have resolved to stay away from the net as much as possible and to focus on reading the printed matter. In pursuit of this new goal,  i bought some all time reliable classics by James joyce, virginia woolf, charles dickens and Rabindranath Tagore, though all these books are available free online.

The first book that i received by courier was “The home and the world” by Rabindranath Tagore. It’s a novel set in the initial years of twentieth century pre-independent India telling the story of Bimala:the heroine of this story, Nikhil and Sandeep. I have not finished the whole book yet but from the word Bimala started narrating the story, I have fallen in love with her. May be i could write a post about the book when i finish it, but for now let me finish this drivel of mine with some beautiful lines of Rabindranath Tagore from this ageless book:

I knew exactly the time that he could come to me, and therefore our meeting had all the care of loving preparation. It was like the rhyming of a poem; it had to come through the path of the meter.

and

His love for me seemed to overflow my limits by its flood of wealth and service. But my necessity was more for giving than receiving; for love is a vagabond, who can make his flowers bloom in the wayside dust, better than in the crystal jars kept in the drawing-room.

Wisdom of Gautam Buddha

Source: Dhammalove

Colors of India

Being a Railwayman, i just can’t resist sharing this smashing photo I found  while browsing the net –  of a Steam locomotive with the Taj as the background.

Source: Smashing Magazine

Happy Birthday, Swami Vivekananda

“Vivekananda’s words are great music. They are like Beethoven’s symphonies, they are like the stirring rhythms of the Handel’s Chnrus. I cannot touch these utterances of Vivekananda without getting a thrill through my body as of an electric shock. And what shocks and transports must have been produced when in burning words they are issued from the lips of the hero!”

Romain Rolland

“If you want to understand India, study Vivekananda. In him everything is positive, nothing negative.”

Rabindranath Tagore

On 12 January, 1863 was born this colossos of a man, who came , surveyed all, ruled this subcontinent without a crown and left like a comet, at the age of 39, as if to prove his own predictuion that he will not live to be 40.

Today on his birthday I had planned to write something but thought it would be better if i just present some of his own literature.

No man ever born uttered such powerful words to arouse a nation and an ancient race from slumber and inferiority complex.

Here is a speech; his  first ever series of public lectures delivered at the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893.

All of these lectures, except a paper on Hinduism he presented there, were extempore.  This talk was given by him, when he was invited to speak a few words on September 15, 1893 (the fifth day of the Parliament) at the end of a long afternoon session.

******************

Why We Disagree

I will tell you a little story. You have heard the eloquent speaker who has just finished say, “Let us cease from abusing each other,” and he was very sorry that there should be always so much variance.

But I think I should tell you a story that would illustrate the cause of this variance. A frog lived in a well. It had lived there for a long time. It was born there and brought up there, and yet was a little, small frog. Of course the evolutionists were not there then to tell us whether the frog lost its eyes or not but, for our story’s sake, we must take it for granted that it had its eyes, and that it every day cleansed the water of all the worms and bacilli that lived in it with an energy that would do credit to our modern bacteriologists. In this way it went on and became a little sleek and fat. Well, one day another frog that lived in the sea came and fell into the well.

“Where are you from?”

“I am from the sea.”

“The sea! How big is that? Is it as big as my well?” and he took a leap from one side of the well to the other.

“My friend,” said the frog of the sea, “how do you compare the sea with your little well?”

Then the frog took another leap and asked, “Is your sea so big?”

“What nonsense you speak, to compare the sea with your well!”

“Well, then,” said the frog of the well, “nothing can be bigger than my well. There can be nothing bigger than this. This fellow is a liar, so turn him out.”

That has been the difficulty all the while.

I am a Hindu. I am sitting in my own little well and thinking that the whole world is my little well. The Christians sit in their little well and think the whole world is their well. The Muslims sit in their little well and think that is the whole world. I have to thank you of America for the great attempt you are making to break down the barriers of this little world of ours, and hope that, in the future, the Lord will help you to accomplish your purpose.

(All his works can be found free online here.)

Quote

Laziness to write and the wonderful distraction of Internet makes you browse through a lot of crap. Going away from the crap you can stumble on some great sites. Among some of the gems I collected, this little Gem, I found here.

Philosophy books

Sometimes, it seems; the books we read, the friends we make, the places we visit, or whatever  comes across us in our life’s journey and the impressions we make from them are all pre-destined – designed by ‘nature’- or however we may call the all encompassing energy - according to our emotional and psychological needs.

When I look back on the things that shaped my interests, this conviction gets more stronger. Just to give an example: take my interest in Books. I read all kinds of books - fiction: from Charles dickens to chetan bhagat and non-fiction of all genres; though i prefer to steer clear-most of the times-  from political, religious and philosophical books.

Religion/Philosophy category books are not a very substantial portion of my reading portfolio, but they have been a major influence in shaping my tastes and worldview. Considering that I used to avoid them initially, I find it preordained that I would place two greatest philosophers – Swami Vivekananda and J.Krishnamurty-as the best writers i have read among all genres. It was not the content of these two stalwarts that always attracted me, but the style of their writing and their language had my imagination in its grip.

The outward mind feels someway, but nature knows the best about our inner needs – that’s the lesson i have gathered after looking back at the process that leaned my interests towards philosophy and particularly towards the worldview of  Swami Vivekananda and J.Krishnamurty. These two writers have given me the greatest pleasure from a literary point of view; though that’s not the thing that one generally seeks from philosophy or religious studies.

They are completely different people, their take on philosophical questions totally different but I have found both of them complimenting my mental make up. I don’t find anything contradictory in their teachings. For fanatic followers of each of Vivekananda and Krishnamurty – if such fanatics exist at all - it would be akin to blasphemy – i am committing- by placing the books of Vivekananda and Krishnamurty in one stack.

Some two decades ago, i found J.Krishnamurty in a village i was residing then, because of my father happened to be posted there. Even in the most odd and unlikely places you seem to find what you actually need or it is the other way round; the things, or the book in this case found me. I say, the village was an unlikely place, because the educational achievements – which can be taken roughly as an indicator for a person’s reading habits or inclinations – of this particular village was nothing to speak of. It had only one school, situated some three kilometres away from the village, where we had to walk everyday.There was only one student three years senior to me, who was almost a star in the village for his achievement in the matriculation examination to cross the sixty percent marks. This kind of  ’feat’ used to happen in that village once in every four or five years and till the next first division student came, the old student was the role model for the subsequent students to emulate. No one took the achievements of the star student seriously was obvious by the results of the matriculation exam every year – there used to be more failed candidates than pass ones. Most of the students along with a large chunk of the successful students used to give a full stop to their educational pursuits to concentrate on agriculture; particularly betel leaf trade; which was the mainstay of the economy of the village.

So, in this village, it was nothing less than a miracle to find a library with two cupboards full of books, though mostly unused. Here I found J.Krishnamurty translated in Oriya. Until then i had no idea who Jiddu Krishnamurty was. In those days i used to read only fiction – novels and short stories. Non-fiction was completely unintelligible and philosophy was for maniacs - as far as my thinking went back then. But somehow or some force must have guided me to open the books and read. I didn’t understand a word of what Krishnamurty wrote or said, but something; may be his language or the freshness of his approach appealed to my inner self. I used to read them without understanding anything, i finished some of his books, all in Oriya; for English books were not available there, and even if they were available, the language was beyond my comprehension back then.

After a couple of years, my father got transferred from that village and i lost touch with Krishnamurty. But somewhere deep inside a lamp was flickering all along. A couple of years ago, in a book exhibition I found a stall selling Krishnamurty books exclusively. I went there, probably guided by the old memories, with an intention to browse but ended up buying this book – First and Last Freedom-, simply because it ‘s cost was only Rs.50/- and it had 264 pages.

In the last couple of years the book is with me I have read it randomly, without any planning; just dipping into it from time to time and putting it aside. In the meanwhile many other books of Krishnamurty have found their way in to my book stand but i have not read any one of them completely or with any plan. Very little I understand but most of the content of these books goes way above my head; but some kind of beauty or a sense of aesthetics has kept me bound to these books and i keep on reading them.

I have started to read again this book, probably with a plan to finish it this time and probably there will be posts about this book and other books by both the philosophers -Swami Vivekananda and J.Krishnamurty.

Record Dance

History was created on Friday when 555 Odissi dancers, a large number of them belonging to foreign countries, performed in unison at Kalinga stadium here in the city, to enter their names in the Guinness Book of World Records.

The artistes, in their 30-minute show, presented all forms of the dance like Mangalacharan, Botu, Vandana, Abhinaya and Moksha.

This spectacular performance was completed in my city, Bhubaneswar, yesterday.

Read the full story here.

Technological device that influenced me

Every technological device that came into our house, since my childhood, at regular intervals, depending on the rise in my father’s income; be it a Radio,a table fan, an Iron box ,a grinder, a television, a fridge, a phone connection, a mobile or a computer; has left its inevitable and indelible mark on me. Some of these had just utility value only but nonetheless they were milestones of the fact that the household was climbing the economic ladder and this in itself had its positive psychological value. Of all these things; the Radio, TV and Laptop played a very significant role in my life: in developing my tastes and shaping my inclinations.

When the technological horizon was very limited, the Radio was the cynosure of all eyes. The Radio, a huge rectangular “Bush” Make; we had at our home, in the pre television days. It brought the world in to my audible range. It has given a treasure of memories which include the unmatched voice of Amin Sayani, BBC, Radio Cyclone, Vividh Bharati, the baritone voice of All India Radio’s English news readers announcing “This is all India Radio and the news is read by—–” and starlit summer nights on the rooftop of our house with the radio for company. This is the first medium which inculcated in me an appreciation for the English language as well as the love of Hindi film songs.

The television, a black and white piece came in to our house on 26th December 1984, the day we were celebrating the 21 days ceremony of my youngest sister’s coming in to this world. The sister rose to become young and to be a Manager in a Bank and in the same time the television rose to rest in the attic of our village house after a quarter century of being our window to the world. In its prime, it had to show only one channel; Doordarshan. Doordarshan With all the criticisms of being a government mouthpiece served some very good non-political programmes. It must have had some brilliant men to mind it, for who could think of airing award winning regional films, every Sunday afternoon. This slot brought alive the worlds of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak, Adoor gopalkrishnan and a galaxy of greats, who opened to me a world beyond Hindi Cinema and more importantly taught me to appreciate art, culture and all beautiful things in general. I remember there used to be serials like Darpan and Katha Sagar, which were a series of short stories by some of the best literary figures in the world; like O’Henry, Katherine Mansfield, Saki, Maupassant, Chekhov et al. It also gave me the innocent, laid back world of “Malgudi Days”. These programmes led me to read the source of the stories and in the process I learnt to appreciate the written word and as these were available in English, I fell in love with the language.

The fascination grew with my growing years and a time came when I wanted to write; what to write I didn’t know, but I was sure that I would write in English. With my woeful lack of English,(that does not mean that I am good at any of the other three languages I know) it was almost impossible to write with the long hand, for every sentence needed to be rewritten, for every word written I had to search a synonym in the thesaurus to replace with. At the end of a page of scribbling, the paper remained fit only for the dustbin. All my romantic ideas about writing vanished as the truth dawned on me that writing is not my cup of tea.

In this gloomy and frustrating scenario computers came like a savior to me. The two buttons of a computer key board “delete” and “backspace” proved to be magical remedies for my handicaps and to top it, you just have to click the right button of the mouse and the synonym, thesaurus and the spell checker were at your beck and call. The panacea was found for my ills, so I decided to plunge myself into the sea of words. At this juncture, like a conspiracy of destiny, I stumbled on the blog world. This platform gave me the power of instant publishing and in turn instant gratification. The computer became a practice board for honing my writing skills and to improve English. I still take couple of days to produce a page of understandable written material; but what do I care, as long as I am doing the thing that i love just for the sake of it.

The computer and its allied uses have given me the joy to pursue my passion; and a recklessness to place my writing to the scrutiny of the world.

Simply, the computer has given a pair of wings to my Dream.

Extract from my occasional Diary

Donated Blood for Ram Vikash, who has his heart operation scheduled for tomorrow at a private Hospital.The Blood was  collected by the Blood bank at a Government Hospital, which would supply the blood after testing, to the corporate hospital, where the heart surgery  is going to be carried out.

I went there riding the motorcycle along with Sanjeev- a friend- riding pillion. 450ml blood was taken out-generally it is 250 or 350 ml is injected out;i am not sure which figure is correct; though has donated earlier. This extra blood was taken- and this was informed to me by the blood bank employee who took  the blood out from my system- as I was the only one having matching blood group with Ram vikash, among the four persons who donated for this surgery, and this fresh blood is required for operation tomorrow, after some kind of testing which is called ‘cell separation’.

After pulling out  the syringe from my vain,the man who performed the blood extraction process from my system with his eyes rivetted on the TV watching a Sas-Bahu serial, went inside the office, came back with a plate with three refrigerator cold sweets -which is the government sanctined food for blood donors- and offered them to me. They looked very  stale and had become sour. Somehow I thrust one into my mouth and came out of the room and heaved a sigh of releif that the rest two sweets were not forced on me.

I was confident of riding back on the motorcycle, the ten kilometers back home, after the donating the blood but with the sweet inside my system, i was not so sure.

There was no option as Sanjeev Can’t ride a bike, so i started the bike with the name of  ‘Shiva‘ on my lips.

(From the entry of 9^th November 2010)