Bhrantirupena
The human inclination toward superiority so often leads us to condemn that which is incomplete or partially limited. Sri Aurobindo does not glorify or glamorize atheism or materialism, but he also does not unduly dismiss them or deny the good that they have brought to humanity. Instead, he invites us to "observe with respect and wonder the work that Atheism has done for the Divine and admire the services that Agnosticism has rendered in preparing the illimitable increase of knowledge."1
In the portion of the Markandeya Purana called the Devimahatmya, or Glory of the Devi, the sage Markandeya tells a story about the radiant ones (devas) who have been defeated by an army of demons (asuras). They remember previous times that the Devi, the Mother of All, has saved them from evil, and so they gather together and travel to the Himalayas to invoke Her. They call out to Her in a poignant prayer called the Aparajitastuti, or the Chandipath.
The prayer includes a series of repetitive verses invoking the Devi as She Who lives within all beings as various qualities, such as power, hunger, sleep, shadow, forgiveness, modesty, peace, and faith. The mantra repeats namastasyai, namastasyai, namastasyai namo namaha - bowing and bowing, accentuating the humility of these divine beings in their supplication of She Who embraces and protects them all.
The last repetitive verse of the Aparajitastuti before the closing invokes Devi as She Who lives within all creation as error:
Ya Devi sarvebhuteshu bhrantirupena samsthita
How much more compassion and understanding would we have for ourselves and each other if we could fully grasp the reality that error serves our growth toward wholeness? How would it change our lives to know that error is in fact the Divine Mother, the Devi in disguise? When a child stands for the first time and then falls, we don't dismiss its efforts and damn its failure. We celebrate the first wobbly steps, knowing that they are the beginning of a powerful transformation, and not an end.
Our individual and collective errors are the heroic attempts of a toddler: faltering steps toward the light of truth. We grope in the half-light cast by mind, we stumble, or we mistake the rope hanging from the ceiling for a snake, and run screaming from the house. All these errors reflect the horizon of our growth, and if we can be humble enough to accept our limitations then we will celebrate our errors as steps toward our hearts' aspirations and desires.
The secret ingredient is faith. Faith in God, in the inevitability of a Life Divine on Earth, kindles hope. Hope creates space for accepting error. And acceptance is compassion, for ourselves and for all our fellow explorers.
[1] Sri Aurobindo. ‘The Two Negations: The Materialist Denial’ in The Life Divine, CWSA vol.21.
very insightful. I’ve had some difficultly translating the Devi’s qualities into true insight and recognition.. Making the connection with the nurturing aspect of our exierience - which is always present though sometimes hard to recognize, is a beautiful step to fuller recognition.
ReplyDeleteHi, this may seem quite far off the topic, but i see the hand of the Mother in this:
ReplyDeleteAn editorial from Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times - Kristof has been traveling the world with his wife for years, looking for inspirational stories like this in some of the poorest regions of the planet.
https://www.nytimes.com/.../kenya-development-slum.html
EXCERPT:
....Yet this is an uplifting slum. Against all odds, Kibera is also a place of hope, and it offers a lesson in bottom-up development that the world should learn from.
The tale begins with a boy whose single mom — 15 years old when she gave birth — named him Kennedy, because she wanted him to be like an American president she had heard of. Little Kennedy Odede didn’t attend formal school, and at the age of 10 he ran away from a violent stepfather and ended up sleeping on the streets.
Kennedy taught himself to read and was inspired by a biography of Nelson Mandela that a researcher shared with him. Kennedy, ebullient and charismatic, then formed a Kibera self-help association called Shining Hope for Communities, better known as SHOFCO.
An American student from Wesleyan University, Jessica Posner, volunteered at SHOFCO and then persuaded Wesleyan to accept Kennedy as a full scholarship student, even though he had never even gone through a real elementary school. Jessica and Kennedy fell in love and married when he graduated.
One of SHOFCO’s early projects was Kibera School for Girls, which recruited some of the most impoverished girls in the slum. Their parents were sometimes illiterate, and one-fifth of those little girls had been sexually assaulted. Yet the girls knew that they were special, and with intensive tutoring they turned into star students, outperforming children at expensive Kenyan private schools.....
take 5 minutes; it's worth reading the whole thing.
Mr. Kristof concludes;
Sorry, the conclusion: Kibera still needs sewers, schools and decent roads, but Lauren’s success (a young girl who against all odds developed computer skills which led to successful employment) is a reminder of what a grass-roots organization can accomplish against all odds in even the grittiest slum. That fills me with hope. Shining hope.
Delete