The Very Real Body

January 24, 2009
[I’ll spare you the details – a beautiful journal ended on descriptions of pain and mess of the hemerhoid surgery, which I bring up because):
Isn’t that exactly what I am supposed to be learning right now? That the “dirt” of life, and the messiness of the body are just as much me and as important to my journey, my spiritual growth, as the sublime, the ecstatic, the intellectual moment? I know this year I need to have a lot more experiences with my body. Yoga, obviously. Walking, working in the garden, smelling flowers and incense and just trying to learn to experience the Divine in ways that aren’t filtered through my brain so much. And I’ll try to NOT write about all of them, either! : )

January 25
[Just to give you a taste of what trying to truly live in my body was like at the time . . .]
I don’t know if I can do this. I am more miserable than I know how to describe. Broken glass is a fairly good description of how it feels inside my rectum, except it doesn’t capture the sense that there is also a wound that has healed shut that I must break. I’m repeating myself. Its just that the more stressed I get, the more my PHN [post herpetic neuralgia] flares. The higher the pain level, the less control over my heart rate, blood pressure, tension. So the sphincter spasms, which is AGONY – chewing glass with your butt. I actually have bands of pain across my nose and cheeks and a few other strange sensations, all derivations of the extreme pain my behind is in. It’s like a kind of shock, I think. Nausea also playing a role, of course.

January 26
I am finally reading the Changdogya Upanishad, which is focused primarily on the High Chant, OM. The texts are not as easy for me to enter into as the BU, because they largely provide history, theory or rationalization for ritual. Or instruction for rituals that are laid out in the Vedas and most of which I don’t imagine I’ll ever pick up. Of course, that isn’t necessarily true. Ritual is important and I’m not knocking it. But I didn’t grown up with these, I’ve never seen them, I have no idea if they are – or which ones are – ancient history and never practiced now, and which are daily habits for modern Hindus. I don’t have access to a temple or any of the appropriate priests. In fact, I know that some of these priests – the Udgatr, Saman and Prastotr priests have been replaced by those for the gods from the Mahabharata.

I’m learning what I can. Getting a better feel for how scriptures and stories work, in themselves, in India. And the role of the Upanishads. I see better why it is called the Vedanta, the “End of the Vedas,” but yet is still classified as part of the Vedas, part of Vedic time. It is very in-between. At one momen very magical – mix this, say this, stand here and eat that three times in order to . . . At other times there are appeals to a priestly or deity’s authority “just because I said so.” But the general tone and thrust is one of attempting to explain the rituals, provide some philosophical basis or foundation for the things that make sense and an attempt to eliminate or reform all that has become empty or meaningless.

One can also see parallels with the Old Testament – the time of Judges and Kings. A certain kind of thinking that must have been common in those early states. Trickery on the part of the holy men and the kings. It is not considered deceit, somehow, to pretend to be someone else in order to avoid paying people, or giving them a blessing or whatever. I admit this drove me crazy in the Bible. How can these supposedly “good” people do things like . . . Abraham pretending Sarai was his sister and prostituting her to Pharoah, and a hundred smaller deceptions and tricks? But the truth is that different cultural rules apply. Now in the Abraham case, even Pharoah and Abe’s own people were horrified. But a certain amount of trickery seems to indicate craftiness is admired. It is not considered evil or bad.
Another sort of contradictory thing – the sages in the Upanishads are always being rewarded with cows and riches and kingdoms. If they are sannyasin, what do they do with those? Maybe the category doesn’t really exist yet, nor the ideal.
The CU devotes whole chunks to not only translating but deeply exploring some of the chants in the Vedas, like the five-fold Saman chant, described in CU2. I have no idea if those are the same chants that are used in yoga classes today, or in any temples, but surely having some familiarity with these chants and knowing their “hidden wisdom” (the meaning of upanisad) of each syllable will make any chant more open to meaning for me.
In fact, I just began to make some connections between what Turlington said about pranayama – breath control – and these first few chapters. So let’s look a little closer.

The Saman Chant
Opening – OM
Introductory Praise – hum/upsamai gayata narom
High Chant (Udgatr) – om/pa(2)va(2) manayendava (2) abhi devam iya (1212)
Response (Pratihartr) – hum/a (2)
Female (Udgatr) – Ksato
Concluding (all 3) – sa (345)t

Then all of chapter 2 explains how various aspects of the world, the body and the spirit are reflected in or by this chant. The seasons, the rain, the digestion, sexual intercourse, breathing – everything. If you know this, and you can “hear” the rhythm of the chant in these everyday things, multiple blessings unfold for you. I wish I could hear it, I think I would understand it better. It would also be nice to have a translation. But maybe, like OM, there is no translation, really. Or not a full one.
The chant is woven upon all these things, so when one knows this, one doesn’t mindlessly repeat words but has the tools to meditate upon the ways this chant weaves the universe together. I think that is what the chapter is saying. And so one’s life becomes even richer and more blessed. Instead of complaining about rain, or Brahmins (both specifically mentioned) one sees their place and how to fit in with them, how to “use” them.

Oh! This is too fantastic! As in what a cool scripture! Instructions for good comebacks if anyone criticizes the way you chant! I’m not kidding! The Cu 2.22.3-4. There it says vowels are the corporeal form (atman) of Indra. Spirants are the corporeal form of Prajapati, and stops are Death. So if someone criticizes you for the way you pronounce your vowels, “he should tell that man, “I have taken refuge in Indra and he will rebut you.” For spirants, “Prajapati will crush you,” and for stops, “I have taken refuge in Death, and he will burn you up!” Isn’t that great? A tool for stutterers!

When speaking, vowels should be uttered, “with resonance and emphasis, thinking “Let me give strength to Indra.” One should pronounce all spirants without swallowing or ejecting them, and with an open passage between the tongue and the place of articulation, thinking, “Let me surrender myself to Prajapati.” With stops, check slightly, separate them from following sounds thinking, “Let me save myself from Death.”
As I was copying all that out I got thinking about how slow you’d have to talk, or how fast you’d have to think to actually dedicate each noise to the appropriate deity. I know that such activities, practice, do occur at ashrams all over the world. You sure wouldn’t say much, would you? You’d think pretty hard about what was important to say.

January 27
Another rough night. Couldn’t fall asleep ‘til 2, then was up at 4:30 with abdominal pain. Could barely pull myself out of bed. These actions become contortionist challenges, trying like crazy to stay relaxed so that the sphincter won’t clinch, while not allowing one’s bottom to touch any surface – do that while rolling out of a bed so high you need a step ladder to climb into/out of, pull on socks (doubled of course because it is so cold) and pajama bottoms, all while trying to make it to the bathroom on time and not disturb your husband or the cat. The latter because she’ll go stomp on the husband. It just isn’t fun. All around, this recovery is the super duper pits.
I’m reading the 3rd chapter of the Changdogya Upanishad. Much of it is way over my head, with its references to the sun as the honey of the gods, and the various parts of the sun – the rays . . . No, the various parts of the honey – the honey cells, the bees, the flower – all correspond to the rays, chants and Vedas. The diferent directions correspond to different Vedas, e.g. East = Rg, South = Yaju and West = Saman. North = Athava and Angirasa. The “upward” cells correspond to the secret teachings – the Upanishads themselves, I guess. Okay, so I can parse all of that, but I have no idea what it means.
Maybe if I follow it out, because the next part is about nectar. I picked up my pen because I was going to write that I’m beginning to get a tiny inkling of the main classifications of the gods and how they came about, though I’m not sure that’s even true, as I write it. I was kind of giving up on figuring out the deeper meaning of the text, but maybe it is worth a shot. I’ve read it several times and it is pretty mysterious. It is also considered very important. In 3.11 it says a father should only teach this knowledge to his eldest son or a wealthy pupil, even if someone offered the world’s weight in riches to him.
The first verses seem to be setting up a metaphorical structure. A model of the world, the sacred universe is like a honeycomb. The purpose of which is to produce honey, or nectar. The next verses talk about how the various classes of gods subsist on the nectar that is produced by the – oh yeah, the Vedas - the chants! The gods survive on the chants. They exist because of ritual. That is what it boils down to, right?

When you realize this, it says, “When someone knows the nectar in this way, he truly becomes one with those very Rudras, with Indra himself as his mouth . . . he enters into this appearance and emerges from this appearance; and he will achieve dominion and sovreignty over these very Rudras for as long as the sun will rise in the south and set in the north, which is twice as long as it will rise in the east and set in the west.” 3.7.3
And so it goes through all the gods, beginning with the Vasus, with fire as their mouth, then Rudras, Adityas, with Varuna as their mouth, Maruts with the moon, Sadhyas with brahman as their mouth. All the gods exist through ritual, are kept alive through ritual remembrance and chant, and thus, if one knows that, one has dominion over them. That would have been a pretty big secret at the time.
It terms of gods, I’m still a bit confused, but I’m getting that these three groups go together – Vasus, Rudras and Adityas. There are 8 Vasus, but they are vague. There are 11 Rudras and Rudra is one of them. He is a storm god, also a healer, and may be a precurser of Siva, as he was sometime called Siva ahd shares some of his aspects. Rudra also rules over the Maruts, a group of – lesser? – deities. The Adityas are literally the children of Aditi, the Mother God. Associated with the earth (of course), she’s the mother of Varuna, Indra, Mitra and others, who are therefore the Adityas.
But what remains confusing – and likely always will because it reflects a bunch of diverse belief systems and mythologies – is the Varuna/Prajapati/Indra thing. It isn’t troubling; they are all “stand-ins” for an idea of Sky God in any case. I just marvel at how little trouble local peoples had with the name differences. After all the killing Western peoples have done over what name God wears, one becomes conditioned to believe it is somehow human nature to slaughter one another over what to call the Maker of Rain, the Creator of Life. If that isn’t sad, I don’t know what is. But how joyful, now, to realize all these other people never dreamed of fighting, much less killing over such a silly thing.
There is a lot more in the next verses I’m not going to go into, but if only I had the confidence! In 3.16 are instructions for how to avoid sickness in the various stages of life by chanting the appropriate word of the Soma metre. Life is divided into 3 stages according the length of the Soma verses, 1st 24 to Vasus, next 44 to Rudras, last 48 to Adityas. If you get sick you are to do certain dedications. But if you are a master, like Mahidasa Ditareya, you can say, “I am not going to die because of it, so you why do you have to afflict me like this?” And his troubles were presumably removed and he lived to 116. Guess that’s what happens when you have dominion over gods people still believe in.