In about 48 hours from writing this post I will be taking the train from Antwerp to Zaventem Airport outside of Brussels to board a plane bound for London, connecting to Mumbai, India. Three countries, three land masses, three different languages, and three different worlds in a span of less than 24 hours. The modern world.
I have just returned from a trip to the United States with my daughter for about a month traveling in the area of the Texas Panhandle, Northern New Mexico, and Southwestern Colorado. Those memories of people and places are still swimming in my head as I now try to wrap it around the fact that soon, quite soon, the reality of being in India is about to materialize. A trip that I have been preparing for, whether consciously or not, for the better part of my life.
Currently I am wrapping up some things that I need to take care of with regards to my life in Belgium that has been my focus for the past few years before I make the mental and physical stride to India. Perhaps this weigh station is a type of Purgatory, preparing my soul for something that is beyond my capacity to even imagine. I can read guide books til I am as blue in the face as Krishna, but nothing, truly nothing will prepare me, that much I know. I have spoken to too many people who have been to India, and the message is always crystal clear, like a diamond bullet to the forehead, "nothing can prepare you for the reality of India."
Flying into Mumbai has one purpose for me at this point, to leave from the Gateway of India on Mumbai's Harbor and go visit the Caves of Elephanta of the port of Mumbai on the Island of Gherapura, known colloquially as "Elephanta" for the small elephantine statue found on the island's port in conjunction with the caves. It is an auspicious image as Ganesha, the elephant-headed deity is the guardian of ports and liminal spaces to transverse, so I would like to pay homage to his island namesake upon arrival to India.
There is but one attraction at Gherapura, the rock-hewn cave sculptures, most notably the gigantic Trimurti (three visage) Shaivite sculpture. Why does Shiva have three faces? To understand that is to understand quite a great deal about the tenets of Hinduism.
Shiva is most popularly seen as a dancing god, dancing the dance of Creation, the creation of the universe. Nietzsche pays homage to Shiva in an allusion to the deity in his Also Sprach Zarathustra with an oft-quoted line: Jetzt bin ich leicht, jetzt fliege ich, jetzt sehe ich mich unter mir, jetzt tanzt ein Gott durch mich. (Now I am light, now I fly, now I see myself below me, now a God dances through me), (and, which is incidentally the epitaph I chose for my novel, Instant Karma Koffie....))
But, back to Shiva and his three faces.
One face is the face of the dread god Bhairava, or the angry Shiva as Destroyer. A second face is Vamadeva, or Shiva the Creator. Finally, there is Mahadeva, Shiva as the Supreme Preserver. One deity, three faces, three gods. A Ensorian trinity of masks.
A danger when talking about different religions is the assumption that when you use the same term for different manifestations, the mistake can be made of false comparisons. While Shiva is a trinity-entity, he is not to be confused with the Christian Trinity, though comparisons can be made, though I will leave that for another time. For now, I am more concerned with how this trinity speaks to me.
Shiva creates, destroys, and preserves. A contradiction? If you think so, it may be tough to accept the answer that "Indian" philosophy will give you. There is no contradiction for there is no distinction amongst the three. To create, destroy, and to preserve are merely illusive manifestations of the Universal Atman, the Universal Soul.
Theodicy is the attempt to explain the presence of "evil" in a world created by God. How can there be Evil at the hands of a supreme, omnipotent, omniscient God? Was it a mistake? But, if God is perfection, how can it be a mistake? If not a mistake, then it was intentional, meaning that Evil was the intent of God, so how could that God be the Benevolent Preserver as well?
Shiva's trimurti reflects the Hindu conceit that there is no division between Good and Evil, but that there is something greater than both. In other words, the hang-up is on the division, but that is not going high enough. Nietzsche also borrowed this concept with his landmark work, Jenseits Gut und Böse, or Beyond Good and Evil.
What then, is beyond Good and Evil? I believe that for me, at least, this has been the most important question that I have asked myself for many years. It is the question that I have kept at the forefront of my mental, philosophical, and religious quests.
I look forward to seeing the physical embodiment of this question face-to-face in the Caves of Elephanta, for I have found certain answers already for myself in my life. I am not going to Elephanta to find those answers, nor to India for that matter, but to see how others have answered the question for themselves.
Namaste
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