Welcome to Temple City

Madurai is known as “The Temple City,” and for good cause. It is one of the most important Hindu sites in India, specifically for the entire region of southern India’s large Shaivite population.

The main temple complex is named after Meenakshi (meaning oblong or fish-eyed), one of Shiva’s consorts, is the center of an enormous Mandala design upon which the city is planned, dating back a couple of thousand years ago, making Madurai one of the longest-continuously inhabited city on the planet. Meenakshi holds an unusual place of prestige then as she is the female consort, who is usually secondary to the main deity, in this case Shiva.

 As such, the temple of Meenakshi has a large fertility cult following, but moreover, because of the passionate bonding of Meenakshi and Shiva as the King and Queen of the Pandyas, their story is unique in that it is the only one involving Shiva in which he remains faithful to his consort. Like the Greek Gods of Olympus, the Hindu deities were not known for their fidelity.

The large temple complex is squared by one of four towering pyramidal structures known as gopuras on each of the four cardinal points, enhanced by eight more, though smaller gopuras, interspersed amongst them. The effect while in the inner courtyard is quite dramatic as each of the gopura constructions is literally inundated with thousands and thousands of highly ornate and colorful, complicated sculptures within sculptures that are dizzying to look at, to say the least. It is estimated that there are 30 million discreet sculptures in the entire complex, and before going there last evening, I had believed that this was mere tourist-jargon hyperbole. Hardly. It is truly impossible to focus one’s gaze while in the temple complex, and being non-Hindu, I was also not allowed to enter the most elaborately decorated portions of the sancta sanctorum, something I actually cannot fathom having seen the mere build-up to it in the hallways.

Again, as in Rameshwaram, it is not a quiet experience. The stone-cut hallways are buzzing and echoing with prayers, chants, music, and the mere chit-chat from the hoards of families going around the temple complex. Paying your respect and devotion at a Hindu temple is very much a family activity, in addition to the various mendicant, solitary monks and ascetic sadhus that also pepper the galleys. The halls, already brilliant with colors everywhere on the painted statues and electrifying mandalas on the ceilings, were furthermore resplendent with thousands and thousands of saris and dazzling children’s clothing of every conceivable color on the visible spectrum. Incense, candles, and the constant jingle-jangling of bangles and anklets of the women and small children who were racing around through the dense forest of stone pillars took the sensory experience once again to a new level. I had thought having been in India for a month that I had become more used to the tsunami of sensory input, but I was once again proven to be mistaken. I was just as dazzled by the immensity of it all as I had been the first day I set foot in Madurai’s frenetic cacophony symphony of sights, sounds, smells , tastes, and textures .

Last evening, I spent about 2-3 hours in various locations of the temple, at least the places where I was allowed and it was a pure pageantry of images, sounds, and smells that I will not soon forget.  I am glad that I waited to go the Meenakshi Temple for the first month as otherwise it may have just been a sensory overload, but now, having been here long enough to absorb more, it was truly a moving experience and was a testament to the highly reputed devotion, or bhakti, that the Tamil Nadu citizens have for Shiva and Meenakshi.

Road Tripping

Yesterday was a long day, but it was good to get out of the hustle and bustle of Madurai for a while. One of the other volunteers here, Gitesh, is also Indian, but he lives in England, so he is excited to see many of the Hindu sites here. Next to Madurai, Rameshwaram is one of the most important Hindu sites in Southern India. Literally it means the place of “Lord Rama,” it is a rather non-assuming small town on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, due East of Madurai. It is purported to be the temple which houses a linga that Sita fashioned for Rama and to observe the Darshan, or viewing of oblations on it is highly significant.

Rama is the protagonist of one of the primary Hindu epics, the Ramayana. Every Sanskrit primer will have such sentences as, “Why did Rama go to the forest?” referring to his exile into the forest and the pursuit of the Monkey God, Hanuman, and the ire of the Demon King Ravana of Lanka. Rameshwaram is also significant for Hindus because it is one of the few temples in which Shaivites and Vaishnavites revere on an equal basis. Usually, as in Madurai, you will have predominantly Shaivites with horizontal lines of colored paste pressed onto their foreheads after a devotion (much like for Christians, the ashes on the forehead for Ash Wednesday), or a vertical stripe or two for Vishnaivites, who are predominately in the North, such as in Varanasi. However, in Rameswharam, because the site is highly regarded by both sects, you will see a mixture.

As I am not a Hindu, I was not able to go past the initial hallways leading up to the sancta sanctorum, so Alex (another volunteer who went with us from Wales and who is now the other “white guy” in South India) and I waited for Gitesh to go in alone. One of the signature events at the temple there is that there are 22 tirthams, or sacred bathing places located in a labyrinthine pathway around the inner sanctum. The tradition is to be doused with water in each one of these 22 stations, to remove the sins and debts of the pilgrims. The scene there is one that is quite to behold. Basically everyone does this fully clothed, most of them carrying a change of clothes for latter in a bag, but you see families complete with children and grandparents doing the rounds getting absolutely soaked in their nice clothes. This offers quite a twist to wearing your Sunday best. So, the hallways are filled with dripping sarees and dhoti-clad women and men chanting Om Namo Shivayah, echoing throughout the temple gangways. Indians are not quite in temples. There is quite a bit of talking, chanting, jingling, jangling, laughing, and singing. Not what I had expected, but it was indeed a pleasant surprise and change from the ghostly silences that you will encounter going into the cavernous cathedrals of Europe. Though, there of course, one may have the unexpected organ recital or Mass in full session as I was fortunate enough to see in Notre Dame in Paris once, so merely different, not better or worse I would say.

Although Gitesh did not do the rounds of the tirtham, he was in the Darshan long enough for me to get a pretty good feel for a Hindu visit to the temple, save for the ultimate of viewed the godhead. My Tamil teacher told me of how once a western scholar who had studied the Menaakshi Temple here in Madurai for her doctorate was not allowed to go in, so he smuggled her in, clad in a sari and with his wife’s mangalam, or wedding necklace, and claimed they were married, much to the consternation of the guards, but she was able to attend the viewing. I most likely will not be so fortunate, but it was an unforgettable experience yesterday nonetheless.

Another highlight was going to the thatched-hut village of Danushkodi, which rests on the peninsular formation, which separates the Bay of Bengal from the Indian Ocean. Having been on the crowded bus from Madurai for nearly five hours, it was quite a breath of fresh air to get out and walk along the gorgeous beach there. There, people were blowing conch shells in honor of Vishnu, again, a rarity in the South. Although we had wanted to go to the end of the peninsula, which is called Adam’s Bridge, we were not able to do so in the time we had. Very precarious jeep-like trucks with open-air beds were taking up to 30 people out there at a time, and our Tak-Tak driver told us it was a 3-hour roundtrip as there were no roads. I am not convinced that he was just talking us out of going as he had agreed to wait for us for a fee, but it was not worth it at the moment, thinking about our bus ride back. Adam’s Bridge, however, is a series of small islands that are legend to be the stepping stones that Hanuman used to cross from Sri Lanka to India in search of Sita, Rama’s wife, who had been abducted by Ravana.

So, all in all, it was quite a long journey, nearly 10 hours in the bus as well as various Tak-Tak rides and whatnot, but it was a good escape from the congestion of the city. 

Face-to-Face with an Elephant

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