Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[Duffman_Comics]

Good stuff (thumbs u

 

Reminds me of the temples/carvings at Khajuraho (especially the naughty bits).

 

The Khajuraho carvings haven't been exposed to salt air, though, and are therefore a little better preserved.

[Flex Mentallo]

Kajuraho

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

I have taken refuge at your feet, my beloved.

When I do not see you, my mind has no rest.

you are to me as a parent to a helpless child.

You are the goddess herself, the garland about my neck, my very universe.

All is darkness without you; you are the meaning of my prayers.

I cannot forget your grace and your charm, and yet there is no lust in my heart.

Chandidas (a Bengali poet of the 14th century)

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Once, long ago, Kajuraho was a thriving community.

 

 

But it is now a hot, dusty hamlet in the middle of nowhere, with a couple of hotels and restaurants to accommodate the visitors who come to view the temple complexes. If I remember right, it has an airport, but I got there by bus - a seemingly interminable, rickety ten hour journey from Bhopal.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

As Duffman says, they are reminiscent of Konarak, and though better preserved are in fact several hundred years older.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Like Konarak, they are a World Heritage site. But where Konarak is singular, there are over 20 temples in Kajuraho.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

And that means many times more "naughty bits". And it is these erotic sculptures I'd like to try to explain.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

"Energy is eternal delight."

William Blake

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

In the Weltanshauung or world view of Ancient India, the function of erotic statuary - which would originally have been brilliantly colored like the Shri Meenakshi Temple of Madurai shown below - was neither symbolic nor erotic alone, but rather both in equal measure.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

To think of Hinduism as an eastern religion corresponding to Christianity is a misconception. For example, Hinduism is not about establishing beliefs or conceptions to be held as Truth.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Instead, the focus is on immediate experience, not ideas. It is about not confusing what we conceive with what we perceive. Because conception is a barrier to perception. The reality about which we form ideas is not itself an idea. It is an experience.

 

 

Edited September 6, 2014 by Flex Mentallo

[Flex Mentallo]

The Hindu way is to strive to experience reality much as a new born child, to let go of ideas, to become unselfconscious.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Our minds insist on separateness. This separateness is false. When we confuse reality with the separate name forms we ascribe to its multiplicity we are trapped in Maya, what the Hindus refer to as "the world illusion".

 

 

Edited September 6, 2014 by Flex Mentallo

[Flex Mentallo]

In order to transcend Maya we must silence the mind. "Citta vritti nirodha", which means "being aware without thinking."

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

We give names to forms. Give them other names; they remain as before. But what through naming we may be led to conceive of as separate, is in reality a continuum from which we are not separate.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

In our civilization mental silence is almost non-existent. But unrelieved thinking turns everything into objects, including ourselves.

 

 

Edited September 6, 2014 by Flex Mentallo

[Flex Mentallo]

Life - our experience of it - fragments. Only our symbols remain real to us, mediating between us and the reality from which we are therefore apart. It is as though we had become lost. The alien gains access from within.

 

 

Edited September 6, 2014 by Flex Mentallo

[Flex Mentallo]

The state of awareness sought through the practice of Yoga is ecstatic, insofar as it is a loss of self but not awareness.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

They did not hide ecstasy in the dark. The sexual act was in no way shameful. They recognized it as positive and life sustaining, as celebration, as immanence.

 

 

Edited September 6, 2014 by Flex Mentallo

[Flex Mentallo]

It was not to experience love but to become it. (Ek-stasis means, literally, to stand outside, to be liberated from the bondage of oneself.)