A.K.A. Ghostface Buddha's Guide To Travelling In India
First a note to my Indian readers: this is a labor of love; do not worry overmuch about the terms with which I describe your noble land to these Firangi worms.
I have begun penning a manifesto of sorts, a Compendium of Truth, you could say. Though I did not know it at the time, the first instalment of this work was my ethical treatise Ghostface Buddhism, which conclusively answered the age-old question "How ought Man to live?" Though no doubt ennobling, it did not answer the more wordly question that Ghostface Buddha has made it his life's work to address, "So how about that India?". I now proudly present to you Ghostface Buddha's Guide To Travelling In India, also known as The Critique Of Pure India.
The Indian's view of the cosmos is highly deterministic; so too is any adventure in this country. There are but three paths your life can take here, depending upon the station of your birth; that is, how much money you've got when you splash out of the spiritual darkness of the heathen foreign womb into the motherly arms of the Indian subcontinent.
If you are of the spoiled, dumbass strain of the larger hominid species Homo Hippis, you will come to India and immediately sport "Indian" clothing that no South Asian person has worn since the age of the last Levitating Sages. You will find many other pseudo-hippies and form a herd. You may even mate. You will cross the dessicated land together from watering hole to watering hole: the timeless migration in search of Bob Marley, tabla lessons, and pancakes.
If you are a wealthy, over-leisured jackass, you will also form a herd, crossing the parched, poverty-ridden wastes in an air-conditioned bus from one repository of medieval sculpture to the next. Men in safari hats will teach you to recognize the esoteric figures of Hindu art, such as cows. Men in turbans will serve you tea. Weeks later in your well-appointed home you will look up from your self-soiled hands and your glossy copy of Vanity Fair and lay eyes on the reproduction Chola bronze you purchased at the Sai Krishna Antiques Emporium. You think to yourself, "I am well-travelled, and aye, well-learned." Suddenly, you are gripped by a moment of guilt and self-doubt. "No!" you exclaim inwardly as you feel a spot of seminal fluid on an open magazine page nearby. "Not the latest Foreign Affairs!".
The third path is the most treacherous. If you find yourself walking it, you are in many ways like Ghostface Buddha. You are of no great means, yet you make ends meet, and you have come to sample whatever India has to offer, except perhaps opium. And fucking paan. I just don't get that shit.
Close your eyes and travel with me. Now open your eyes because this will require some reading.
You arrive at the train station. There is an entire village of peasants residing on the platform. They arrived here two days ago, all sharing the top of two overloaded tractor-pulled grain wagons and a single donkey, and they have been here since, apparently waiting for the day for which they have train tickets. Most of the adults are permanently sleeping on tatty blankets while their insectoid multitudes of offspring crawl over them like logs. A handful are awake, opening mysterious cement-shipping sacks to produce from them all 5 pieces of the village's metal cookware and about a month's supply of loose barley. A handful of women have been sent around the city to random roadsides, offering to sell 500 leftover onions for $0.20 per metric tonne.
You get on the train. It is crowded beyond all reason. You realize that not all human beings are identical, but they enough alike to tessellate. Through the forest of limbs and wobbling luggage you see the source of a warbling melody: a blind minstrel shaking a tambourine and singing a timeless tune from the hearts of the people in such a voice as calls to question the accepted theories of heightened acoustic awareness among the visually impaired. A saffron-robed saddhu squats in the hallway while seven small-town cousins huddle together, their closeness to one another made all the more urgent by the fact that they are hanging to the outside of the train. A sticky brown glob of fried dal falls on your head from the inattentive hands of a youngster fiddling with the tuning of his cellphone-radio up in the luggage racks. A smile beams towards you from between a tangle of sequin-studded jeans. "This is crowded train," the smile says, "you are seeing Real India!"
You arrive at the the terminus sometime the next afternoon. After fighting your way off the bus, repelling waves of maddened humanoid creatures who for some reason wish to board the sweat-rusted rattletrap without first allowing your escape, you burst forth into the city street and the blinding light of the Indian day. The throng is hardly any less dense, and are joined by a boisterous menagerie of camels, cows, and goats going whither they will at their own particular paces. You first cross paths with a wedding, where a single powdered transvestite leads a gaggle of flailing men who are far worse at dancing despite trying much, much harder. Cutting through the back alleys and jumping hopscotch-like around the open sewers and the piles of animal shit which have missed that half of the street, you make it to the next avenue, where a horde of drum-rattling and banner-hoisting men approach, signalling the vanguard of yet another utterly pointless political rally. "Wow, the Nationalist Progessive Aloo Paratha Party have snare drums!" you say, "I was wrong to be a Muslim Socialist all along."
The monsoon begins. There are torrents in the streets. As you struggle to make progress through the rushing channels it begins to not only rain with the power of the heavens, but also to rain coconuts. "What the fuck?!?!" You shout as you duck between the trajectories of the fuzzy but distinctly hard projectiles that are shattering against walls all around you and falling to be swept away by the currents forming eddies around your knees. A voice shouts through the pounding of water on metal roofs, and you see a man leaning out of a window. "Many coconuts are being thrown! Rejoice, sir! Surely we shall be safe from the floods this year!" You pause for a moment as a piece of driftwood floats by on the water that is rising to the top of your shins and wonder if you have time for sarcasm. "Doesn't it flood most years?" you ask with a smirk that is obscured, with the rest of your face, by drenched bangs. "Last year was bad. The Divine Mother was angry. This year, more coconuts will be thrown."
"You are lucky, sir! This is Real India!"
You spend the night stranded in a hotel, your laundry laid out in the hopes that the inevitable sweltering heat will dry them in time for your next nautical expedition to centers of public transport. There are roaches in the toilet. You are lucky; this means they haven't been eaten by mice living in the shower. The echoes of a thousand throat-clearings vibrate through the city. The Real India is purged of sputum.
Now you are on a bus. You take a seat. Somehow, a backpack can't fit comfortably on board but a used air-conditioner in a broken chicken-cage can. You cross hour after hour after empty brown fields. It is just brown, with ireegular outcrops of brown rock and brown farms. The monsoon is a thousand miles away, a thousand years ago, but the Suck, like God, is all-pervading. The weather is always terrible. You cower in the bone-slicing cold, flounder in the diluvian rains, or stew in the barbaric heat. Life moves in the bursts of heedless children, the walrus-like lounging of the men with their walrus-like moustaches, and in the interminable shuffle of the women engaged in "housework" carrying a pile of firewood across the poor land which looks increasingly like a desert. In the height of summer, countless piles of combustible brown cakes remind you that the earth is scorched and cow shit has become its only marketable commodity.
You reach a provincial crossing. A mere 20 buses pass through a week, yet there are 18 frenzied hawkers awaiting your arrival. All of them board the bus at once and scram "CUCUMBER! CUUUCUUUUMMMMMBEERRRSSSS!" All 18 vendors pass by. 5 cucumbers are sold. You decide, what the hell, to buy one. It is served in an old newspaper at $0.05 a pop. You are satisfied with the transaction and assume that people can now stop hollerin' about vegetables. You blink...you blink and no matter what kind of fruit or vegetable you have just purchased, the hawker whips out a bottle of red powder and coats your produce with the annual paprika production of a small Malayan isle. You claw your ears at the sound of a nearby mobile phone scratchily playing Hindi pop hits. There's always one. Then the bus's sound system turns on and drown out with an audio Uberblitzkrieg of its own, indistinguishable from the sound of a million distressed animals. This is particularly confusing, since the bus may actually contain distressed animals. A man with paan-rotted teeth shakes your hand and offers to host you for dinner and a night of rest at another, even more provincial crossing 50 miles into nowhere. As a Tata truck barrels headlong towards you and the bus swerves, only to narrowly miss a trio of buffaloes, he says "You must come at my house. You have taste the Real India!"
Seventy miles more and you are sure your ass bones have worn through your flesh and buried themselves somewhere in the seat "cushions". Finally you alight in a small village, and no more than a minute away sit the towering remnants of one of the mightiest empires to have ever ruled in this world. Your jar drops at the immense mass of stone and its exquisite detail, and wonder how the whole world has not come to see it. By a small subsidiary shrine you just make out the fringes of a conversation amongst people who have just noticed you.
"Noooo, noooo, you are too wrong! Loke, Stoke, And Two Smoking Barrels is too much better than the Reserwaar Dogs!"
"Have you heard the new Linkin Park?"
"Yes, he is a very good rapper, but I think he is almost like rock."
You can feel yourself gawping at the massive granite pinnacle which has loomed over the surrounding fields since before the invention of the words that are currently failing to come to you. You are unable to snap out of it, until you are interrupted by one of the garrulous Indian tourists. "Hello. Your name?" he asks as you half-listen. "My name is Some Bangalore Fucker" he says, or whatever. "Aaaahhh, come, come, my very touristic friend," he says with a hint of condescension as he himself stands beneath a placard of the State Tourism Ministry. "You must not see only the touristic sites. Come to Bangalore me with you. Can you have some cocaine together? I must show you the Real India!"
Awake now, my friend, from your journey through space and time and rejoin me in the present moment, for I have something I must tell you.... Don't come to fucking India. Seriously. What a pain in the ass. You are much better off staying at home. Might I recommend an alternative interest? Anime, perhaps? Here is Ghostface Buddha's Guide To Travelling In India: by far the best way to travel in India is to sit on you lazy fucking ass, read my blog, and let me do the hard bits for you. And when I leave India, still yet you may read these words and in them find Guidance and Wisdom. Fear not, for though we know not what realms and planes we visit upon departure from the soil of Blessed India, we surely know there will be a Second Coming, when Ghostface Buddha walks upon these trails once more, and the Cow shall be sent to realms and planes where it belongs: that scorching, acidic Abyss.... my stomach.
But what have we learned here, if we have learned anything at all? Where in fact does the Real India lie, and is it Good? We find our answer harmoniously in accord with the wisdom of the Ancients. There is no Real India. Verily, all is but an illusion, for surely no god would really make a country this fucking weird. This country can only be the product of thousands of years under the yoke of the warped and deluded human mind.
I reverse my judgement. Do come to India, because the greatest surprise of all is that, for better or worse, no other country has been made like it.
Showing posts with label Ghostface Buddha's Guides. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ghostface Buddha's Guides. Show all posts
May 3, 2010
Mar 13, 2010
Feb 24, 2010
GFB's Guide To The Ramayana, Pt. 2
Fact: if you start typing "how" into Indian Google, the top suggestion is "how to get pregnant". Clearly, this country needs my help with a few things.
Anyways, we're back with the second half of our guide to the Ramayana. This guide is part of an ongoing series on Hinduism starting...now. Read the first half first, or you'll find it even more confusing than reading a book about demons and shapeshifting monkeys should be.
We left off with our hero Rama vowing to protect the jungle sages from the predations of demons. However, he doesn't seem to run into any, and ten years pass without event.
By "ten years pass without event" I mean nothing directly happens to the protagonist. As usual, a bunch of crazy other stuff happens, not least of which is a story in which a pair of demons kill sages by transforming into food, then resuming their demon form when they are inside the rishi's stomach. One sage gets wise to the play and asks the gods for a boon. When he eats the demon, the other demon shouts that it's time to transform back and burst the sage asunder, but the sage just smiles and says that demon number one has been thoroughly digested. The reader is left to imagine the sort of gas the rishi must have had after dinner.
Anyways, ten years pass, and the heroes have made a new friend of the old eagle-king Jataayu, who tags along and becomes Sita's escort so the boys can go out hunting without worrying about her. For their last two years in exile, they decide to build themselves a proper ashram, which Lakshmana does skillfully.
One day Rama and Lakshmana are lounging out in the woods, reminiscing about what a sweetie their brother Bharata is, when the she-demon Soorphanakha stumbles across them. She is immediately overcome by the burning desire to jump Rama's bones, because let's face it, Rama is a hot hunk of man. She gets so hot and bothered that she forgets to even change forms and begins to hit on Rama, basically by calling herself the world's number one hot mommma, while still in full-on hideous demon mode. Rama has a good laugh at this, shrugs her off, and jokingly suggests she try her luck with Lakshmana, who is also a delectable slice of all that is man. When Lakshmana scoffs at her too, she realizes she's been played and becomes furious. She takes her anger out on Sita, making the ever-foolish choice of attacking her. She can't understand what Rama sees in her, but it's probably that Sita is literally the incarnation of the goddess of beauty and embodies the qualities of the perfect Indian woman. Soorphanakha gets a fight with Rama for her troubles, and he shoots her nose off. She goes crying to her brother Khara, who by the way is king of the jungle demons, and is also the brother of Ravanna. Fate begins to draw its noose ever tighter...
Khera assembles all the demon-warriors of his domain and marches against Rama's ashram. The demon army is 14,000 strong, and Sita becomes a little concerned for their safety. Sita, being the perfect Indian woman, is quite wise and raises reasonable concerns, but these are always pithily smacked down by Rama the way Socrates just so happens to have an answer to every question his challengers present him with. Rama's answer in this case is "sigh...women. I'll take care of this, sweetie. Here, let Lakshmana guard you." Rama then goes off alone to fight the demon army. Wave after wave assail him but he fends them off with a machine-gun-like spray of arrows and magic charms, slaughtering them dozens at a time until he has singlehandedly killed every last bastard in the entire demon army. He shoots incoming arrows and javelins out of the sky, launches arrows with such skill they pass ricocheting through seven demons in a row, and is generally un-fucking-touchable. He stands over a pile of 14,000 demon corpses, walks up to the last surviving demon general, and goes "You got some dirt on your shoulder...let me brush that off for you."
Far away in Lanka, Soorphanakha has run awauy and cried to her other brother Ravanna, who is even more powerful, having recently returned victorious from a campaign to the underworld and also having conquered the mountain fortress of Kubera, the god of wealth. Curses are shouted. Vengeance is sworn. He is still a little slow to act...until he hears about Sita and decides he would very much like to add a five-star biddie to his harem. The plot is hatched.
Ravanna slinks over to Rama's ashram and conceives of a ploy to separate Sita from her escorts. He teams up with the demon Maricha, who has a long-standing grudge against Rama. Maricha transforms into a gold-skinned deer and prances about merrily. Sita sees the deer and immediately demands that Rama capture it because it is just so pretty. Rama replies to the effect of "No, woman! You fool! Don't you see this could be a trap! Forget your womanly desire for shiny things!", but the quintessentially feminine Sita throws a fit and more or less implies that if Rama can't catch a bejeweled deer for her, he's going to find himself sleeping in the living room. Rama sighs, and sets off after it, leaving Lakshmana in charge. Once Maricha has lured Rama far, far away he parrots Rama's voice and cries out in distress "Oh ouch! Oh help! Lakshmana! Come save me!" Lakshmana hears the cries in the distance but isn't buying it. Rama has after all just slain 14,000 demons. He can take care of himself. Sita on the other hand is utterly duped, throws a hysterical womanly fit again, and threatens Lakshmana that if he doesn't go after Rama she will kill herself. Lakshmana says "ok ok ok, I'm going.....women" and runs off with a bad feeling in his gut. As soon as Lakshmana's gone, Ravanna easily kidnaps Sita and hauls her into his magical flying chariot.
Apparently there is some divergence in the tale here if you read the North Indian version. In North India they allegedly teach that Ravanna did not actually lay hands on Sita herself, but on a spiritual holographic projection of Sita's body. This, the translator points out, is because North Indians are raging misogynists, even compared to other Indians, and believe that a woman who is manhandled is as much a slattern disgrace as the man who committed the offense. And obvi, because Sita is perfect she could not be disgraced, so it must have been a hologram that was physically touched. Basically it's a lot of logical hoops to jump through to continue being able to treat women like shit. The South Indian version, which has traces of the attitude that maybe she should have been in the kitchen instead, at least concedes that it isn't her damn fault she got grabbed a bit while being kidnapped by a nigh-omnipotent demon king. Alas, in the getaway our dear eagle friend Jaatayu intervenes but he is too old to fight Ravanna and is tragically slain.
Lakshmana finds Rama and they piece together they have been tricked, and Lakshmana tells Rama everything he knows. They hurry back to the ashram and find the dying Jataayu, who tells them what happened, in full. When you read the Ramayana and one character recounts events to another, the poet never says "...and then Lakshmana told Rama all that had happened." The poet actually has Lakshmana repeat verbally every damn thing that happened, in slightly altered words, for the other characters' benefit. Many religious types think this style of writing is a good thing and love nothing more than reading over the same story five or six times, but for the reader who isn't trying to be put into spiritual bliss might question whether every one of the 25,000 verses is really necessary.
The damsel is in distress, and we have two heroes sworn to retrieve her. Rama and Lakshmana move southwards, turning over every possible place the demon could have taken her, but to no avail. Sorry, the princess is in another castle. In their dismayed wanderings they might the deposed monkey-king Sugreeva, and his minister Hanuman. Sugreeva is engaged in a tragic struggle with his brother who has taken the throne, and would very much like it back. Rama thinks about this for a minute and tells Sugreeva that if he gets the throne back, the entire monkey kingdom has to help find Sita. Hanuman strokes his monkey-beard throughout. To make a long story (a very long story) short, Sugreeva draws his brother into an unprotected duel and Rama rather sneakily shoots him in the back. A dirty trick, but you do what ya gotta do.
The Ramayana suddenly takes a turn into realism and has the heroes doing jack shit because they can't go marching around outside for months during the monsoon. As Rama and Lakshmana huddle in their hut under the torrential rains, Sugreeva spends the summer getting fat and drunk. When the rains finally stop, Sugreeva is still pretty much drunk all the time and doesn't move his fat monkey ass. Rama sends Lakshmana over for a little chat knowing that Lakshmana has ways of...motivating people. Just having Lakshmana show up is enough to scare Sugreeva shitless and he orders his army of monkeys to scour the ends of the Earth in search of Sita.
When I say "army of monkeys", strictly speaking they are vanaras a plentiful race of monkeys and bears that were actually offspring of the gods and capable of limited shapeshifting and other godly powers. So Rama has an army of a few million superhuman monkeys on his side now. Things are looking up.
The armies sent north, east, and west return with no luck, but the southern army accompanied by Hanuman meet Sampati, king of the vultures. Sampati has had his wings clipped off so he can't fly, but he still has incredible eyesight and sees all the way to Lanka, where he spots Sita. He then reveals he is Jataayu's brother. It is revealed that Jataayu is dead, and guess what, time for more obsequies.
For whatever reason, possibly because they are monkeys, it doesn't occur to the vanaras to ask Sampati where on the island of Lanka Sita is. They need to send a scout. Hanuman volunteers, and from this point on the Ramayana becomes one long stream of simian badassery. Hanuman grows to the size of a tree and jumps across the ocean. No...he doesn't just jump across the ocean. He half-jumps-half-flies and kicks the living shit out of anything that tries to stop him. As he reaches the opposite shore, he is ensnared by the tongue of a large fish. About to be eaten, he shrinks into a tiny monkey and painlessly enters the fish's digestive tract before regaining his massive size, ripping the fish apart from the inside, and landing on Lanka roaring with victory and drenched in blood and tattered fish guts. Hanuman is the shit.
Hanuman becomes a tiny monkey again and infiltrates the city of Lanka, eventually finding Sita in the garden where she is imprisoned. Sita has had a rather rough go of it but has nobly maintained her chastity through her despair. She tells Hanuman all that has befallen her, treating the reader to the third telling of those events. Having accomplished his mission, Hanuman decides to start some shit and climbs into Ravanna's palace, annoys the crap out of everybody, and gets into a fight with several platoons of demons who he kills in open combat, crushing walls and ceilings in a Godzilla-like struggle of titans. He hops off with a smug grin on his face from the chaos he's caused and says goodbye to Sita. He prepares to jump back to India, only to be seized by a magic rope. Some dumb ass demon supplements this with a normal rope, which negates the magic rope's power, but Hanuman plays along. He is brought before Ravanna's ministers, who decide to torture the monkey in the most cruel way possible: by setting his tail on fire. With his tail lit, Hanuman miraculously feels no pain and bursts from his bonds, then rushes about the city setting things on fire until he's burnt half the city to the ground and killed a few more notable demons. He hops back to Sita and says "Well, I could rescue you here and now, but.....nah, let's have a giant war instead."
Hanuman tells Rama everything that happened (and oh boy, he sure tells Rama everything that has happened). Rama presumbaly raises an eyebrow at Sita not having rescued already, but no matter. There's only one problem: Rama can't jump over the ocean, and neither can most of the monkey army. But there's a solution. The monkeys gather millions of stones and build a bridge all the way to Lanka. You can still see the bridge today on Google Maps. Yup, that was monkeys.
Rama's army invades Lanka, and after all diplomatic entreaties are refused by the stubborn Ravanna, war is declared. When your council of unvanquished demon ministers is divided on whether war is advisable, you might want to think twice, but Ravanna is trapped by his pride and his yet-unquenched desire to motorboat all ten of his heads in Sita's bosom.
The battle begins, and it goes on and on and on and on. Though not as egregious as the battle in the Mahabharata in this regard, it is still extremely tedious. The different vanara and rakshasa champions face each other off in duels many times, invariably destroying each other's chariots and so on but never managing to kill the opponent. Occasionally, after maybe seven duels one particular demon general might finally be slain under a hail of magical arrows or whatever. The good guys prove most luckily unkillable, constantly being knocked unconscious by their foes, only to be rescued in the nick of time by another vanara hero, living to fight another day and almost, almost kill demons yet again. While these duels are taking place, regular vanaras and demons are being killed by the champions in the tens of thousands and the fields sprout rivers of blood. The problem in this war is that every damn character is unbeatable. Hanuman can kill a thousand demons, but then he runs into demons that can fight gods, and calls on Rama, who can also fight demons and gods, but this demon is immune to Rama and can only be killed by Hanuman, who is currently overmatched by another demon who only Rama can kill, but right now Rama can't kill him so Rama goes to kill a thousand other demons instead and then an unkillable demon gets in his way and Hanuman has to....you get the idea.
Rama, Lakshmana, and Hanuman are the ultimate badasses in this fight, firing volleys of arrows that block out the sun, so on and so forth. However, they are not totally unbeatable. Not once, but twice they are immobilized by magic arrows that knock them unconscious. Hanuman knows the magic and flies off to the Himalayas in search of a magic plant to heal them, then realizes he doesn't know which plant to pick, and flies back carrying the entire mountain. Then rather foolishly he spends the time to put the mountain back, which is a mistake, because this is such a fucking ridiculous book that Rama and Lakshmana get immobilized again, and Hanuman has to fly back and retrieve the same goddamn mountain. LISTEN, POET VALMIKI, YOU POEM IS TOO FUCKING LONG. YOU ONLY NEED TO HAVE THE MONKEY FLY CARRYING THE MOUNTAIN ONE FUCKING TIME.
At the end of the war, Rama kills Ravanna. Big surprise. Hey, Valmiki, thanks for keeping us all in suspense. You had me thinking Rama wasn't going to fulfill his destiny for a minute there. Gotta say, it was one of my favorites of the eight million duels. Could use some touching up though. Maybe Lakshmana gets knocked unconscious and rescued by Neela the monkey? I'm just making suggestions. You're the poet; do what feels best.
Triumphantly, the forces of righteousness enter the city and Rama rescues Sita. They walk away, and one imagines they are soon to cuddle before an epic sunset. But no, Rama has to be a dick. He refuses to believe Sita could have been faithful for six months, and considers her rescue to be the completion of his duty and wants nothing more to do with her. She pleads and begs and Rama relents, provided she pass a test. Sita is outraged and resolves to burn herself alive rather than be subjected to a test. Way to go, girl,....sort of. Needless to say, this is the North Indian version of Rama's conduct. In South India they realize this is a little unbecoming of a hero and awkwardly try to patch things up by having Rama explain that he was only pretending to test her for the benefit of his troops, who would otherwise assume that the returning prince had been cuckolded. I guess that's an improvement.
It's a shame that while this is all being explained, Sita has jumped into a pyre. Oops.
But it's alright! Sita's divine truth and purity have saved her! Agni, the god of fire walks out carrying Sita in his arms, and flowers rain from the heavens in celebration of Sita's virtue! All of the gods assemble within the flame and continue to shower flowers. Rama is like, "Whoa man, all the gods are here! Yo, is that Indra? and Brahma? Holy shit!" and Brahma is like "Yo, dude, you're Vishnu! DUUUUHHHHH" and Rama is like "Say what?" and Brahma is like "You are the latest avatar of Vishnu" and Rama is like "Oh Brahma, you playin'" and Brahma is like "Nuh-uh" and flowers rain from the heavens.
Rama and Sita return to their kingdom in a magic chariot, Bharata gives Rama his rightful throne. And everyone lives happily ever after.
The end.
Except in North India; there's another act and Rama exiles Sita to the fucking woods.
The end.
Anyways, we're back with the second half of our guide to the Ramayana. This guide is part of an ongoing series on Hinduism starting...now. Read the first half first, or you'll find it even more confusing than reading a book about demons and shapeshifting monkeys should be.
We left off with our hero Rama vowing to protect the jungle sages from the predations of demons. However, he doesn't seem to run into any, and ten years pass without event.
By "ten years pass without event" I mean nothing directly happens to the protagonist. As usual, a bunch of crazy other stuff happens, not least of which is a story in which a pair of demons kill sages by transforming into food, then resuming their demon form when they are inside the rishi's stomach. One sage gets wise to the play and asks the gods for a boon. When he eats the demon, the other demon shouts that it's time to transform back and burst the sage asunder, but the sage just smiles and says that demon number one has been thoroughly digested. The reader is left to imagine the sort of gas the rishi must have had after dinner.
Anyways, ten years pass, and the heroes have made a new friend of the old eagle-king Jataayu, who tags along and becomes Sita's escort so the boys can go out hunting without worrying about her. For their last two years in exile, they decide to build themselves a proper ashram, which Lakshmana does skillfully.
One day Rama and Lakshmana are lounging out in the woods, reminiscing about what a sweetie their brother Bharata is, when the she-demon Soorphanakha stumbles across them. She is immediately overcome by the burning desire to jump Rama's bones, because let's face it, Rama is a hot hunk of man. She gets so hot and bothered that she forgets to even change forms and begins to hit on Rama, basically by calling herself the world's number one hot mommma, while still in full-on hideous demon mode. Rama has a good laugh at this, shrugs her off, and jokingly suggests she try her luck with Lakshmana, who is also a delectable slice of all that is man. When Lakshmana scoffs at her too, she realizes she's been played and becomes furious. She takes her anger out on Sita, making the ever-foolish choice of attacking her. She can't understand what Rama sees in her, but it's probably that Sita is literally the incarnation of the goddess of beauty and embodies the qualities of the perfect Indian woman. Soorphanakha gets a fight with Rama for her troubles, and he shoots her nose off. She goes crying to her brother Khara, who by the way is king of the jungle demons, and is also the brother of Ravanna. Fate begins to draw its noose ever tighter...
Khera assembles all the demon-warriors of his domain and marches against Rama's ashram. The demon army is 14,000 strong, and Sita becomes a little concerned for their safety. Sita, being the perfect Indian woman, is quite wise and raises reasonable concerns, but these are always pithily smacked down by Rama the way Socrates just so happens to have an answer to every question his challengers present him with. Rama's answer in this case is "sigh...women. I'll take care of this, sweetie. Here, let Lakshmana guard you." Rama then goes off alone to fight the demon army. Wave after wave assail him but he fends them off with a machine-gun-like spray of arrows and magic charms, slaughtering them dozens at a time until he has singlehandedly killed every last bastard in the entire demon army. He shoots incoming arrows and javelins out of the sky, launches arrows with such skill they pass ricocheting through seven demons in a row, and is generally un-fucking-touchable. He stands over a pile of 14,000 demon corpses, walks up to the last surviving demon general, and goes "You got some dirt on your shoulder...let me brush that off for you."
Far away in Lanka, Soorphanakha has run awauy and cried to her other brother Ravanna, who is even more powerful, having recently returned victorious from a campaign to the underworld and also having conquered the mountain fortress of Kubera, the god of wealth. Curses are shouted. Vengeance is sworn. He is still a little slow to act...until he hears about Sita and decides he would very much like to add a five-star biddie to his harem. The plot is hatched.
Ravanna slinks over to Rama's ashram and conceives of a ploy to separate Sita from her escorts. He teams up with the demon Maricha, who has a long-standing grudge against Rama. Maricha transforms into a gold-skinned deer and prances about merrily. Sita sees the deer and immediately demands that Rama capture it because it is just so pretty. Rama replies to the effect of "No, woman! You fool! Don't you see this could be a trap! Forget your womanly desire for shiny things!", but the quintessentially feminine Sita throws a fit and more or less implies that if Rama can't catch a bejeweled deer for her, he's going to find himself sleeping in the living room. Rama sighs, and sets off after it, leaving Lakshmana in charge. Once Maricha has lured Rama far, far away he parrots Rama's voice and cries out in distress "Oh ouch! Oh help! Lakshmana! Come save me!" Lakshmana hears the cries in the distance but isn't buying it. Rama has after all just slain 14,000 demons. He can take care of himself. Sita on the other hand is utterly duped, throws a hysterical womanly fit again, and threatens Lakshmana that if he doesn't go after Rama she will kill herself. Lakshmana says "ok ok ok, I'm going.....women" and runs off with a bad feeling in his gut. As soon as Lakshmana's gone, Ravanna easily kidnaps Sita and hauls her into his magical flying chariot.
Apparently there is some divergence in the tale here if you read the North Indian version. In North India they allegedly teach that Ravanna did not actually lay hands on Sita herself, but on a spiritual holographic projection of Sita's body. This, the translator points out, is because North Indians are raging misogynists, even compared to other Indians, and believe that a woman who is manhandled is as much a slattern disgrace as the man who committed the offense. And obvi, because Sita is perfect she could not be disgraced, so it must have been a hologram that was physically touched. Basically it's a lot of logical hoops to jump through to continue being able to treat women like shit. The South Indian version, which has traces of the attitude that maybe she should have been in the kitchen instead, at least concedes that it isn't her damn fault she got grabbed a bit while being kidnapped by a nigh-omnipotent demon king. Alas, in the getaway our dear eagle friend Jaatayu intervenes but he is too old to fight Ravanna and is tragically slain.
Lakshmana finds Rama and they piece together they have been tricked, and Lakshmana tells Rama everything he knows. They hurry back to the ashram and find the dying Jataayu, who tells them what happened, in full. When you read the Ramayana and one character recounts events to another, the poet never says "...and then Lakshmana told Rama all that had happened." The poet actually has Lakshmana repeat verbally every damn thing that happened, in slightly altered words, for the other characters' benefit. Many religious types think this style of writing is a good thing and love nothing more than reading over the same story five or six times, but for the reader who isn't trying to be put into spiritual bliss might question whether every one of the 25,000 verses is really necessary.
The damsel is in distress, and we have two heroes sworn to retrieve her. Rama and Lakshmana move southwards, turning over every possible place the demon could have taken her, but to no avail. Sorry, the princess is in another castle. In their dismayed wanderings they might the deposed monkey-king Sugreeva, and his minister Hanuman. Sugreeva is engaged in a tragic struggle with his brother who has taken the throne, and would very much like it back. Rama thinks about this for a minute and tells Sugreeva that if he gets the throne back, the entire monkey kingdom has to help find Sita. Hanuman strokes his monkey-beard throughout. To make a long story (a very long story) short, Sugreeva draws his brother into an unprotected duel and Rama rather sneakily shoots him in the back. A dirty trick, but you do what ya gotta do.
The Ramayana suddenly takes a turn into realism and has the heroes doing jack shit because they can't go marching around outside for months during the monsoon. As Rama and Lakshmana huddle in their hut under the torrential rains, Sugreeva spends the summer getting fat and drunk. When the rains finally stop, Sugreeva is still pretty much drunk all the time and doesn't move his fat monkey ass. Rama sends Lakshmana over for a little chat knowing that Lakshmana has ways of...motivating people. Just having Lakshmana show up is enough to scare Sugreeva shitless and he orders his army of monkeys to scour the ends of the Earth in search of Sita.
When I say "army of monkeys", strictly speaking they are vanaras a plentiful race of monkeys and bears that were actually offspring of the gods and capable of limited shapeshifting and other godly powers. So Rama has an army of a few million superhuman monkeys on his side now. Things are looking up.
The armies sent north, east, and west return with no luck, but the southern army accompanied by Hanuman meet Sampati, king of the vultures. Sampati has had his wings clipped off so he can't fly, but he still has incredible eyesight and sees all the way to Lanka, where he spots Sita. He then reveals he is Jataayu's brother. It is revealed that Jataayu is dead, and guess what, time for more obsequies.
For whatever reason, possibly because they are monkeys, it doesn't occur to the vanaras to ask Sampati where on the island of Lanka Sita is. They need to send a scout. Hanuman volunteers, and from this point on the Ramayana becomes one long stream of simian badassery. Hanuman grows to the size of a tree and jumps across the ocean. No...he doesn't just jump across the ocean. He half-jumps-half-flies and kicks the living shit out of anything that tries to stop him. As he reaches the opposite shore, he is ensnared by the tongue of a large fish. About to be eaten, he shrinks into a tiny monkey and painlessly enters the fish's digestive tract before regaining his massive size, ripping the fish apart from the inside, and landing on Lanka roaring with victory and drenched in blood and tattered fish guts. Hanuman is the shit.
Hanuman becomes a tiny monkey again and infiltrates the city of Lanka, eventually finding Sita in the garden where she is imprisoned. Sita has had a rather rough go of it but has nobly maintained her chastity through her despair. She tells Hanuman all that has befallen her, treating the reader to the third telling of those events. Having accomplished his mission, Hanuman decides to start some shit and climbs into Ravanna's palace, annoys the crap out of everybody, and gets into a fight with several platoons of demons who he kills in open combat, crushing walls and ceilings in a Godzilla-like struggle of titans. He hops off with a smug grin on his face from the chaos he's caused and says goodbye to Sita. He prepares to jump back to India, only to be seized by a magic rope. Some dumb ass demon supplements this with a normal rope, which negates the magic rope's power, but Hanuman plays along. He is brought before Ravanna's ministers, who decide to torture the monkey in the most cruel way possible: by setting his tail on fire. With his tail lit, Hanuman miraculously feels no pain and bursts from his bonds, then rushes about the city setting things on fire until he's burnt half the city to the ground and killed a few more notable demons. He hops back to Sita and says "Well, I could rescue you here and now, but.....nah, let's have a giant war instead."
Hanuman tells Rama everything that happened (and oh boy, he sure tells Rama everything that has happened). Rama presumbaly raises an eyebrow at Sita not having rescued already, but no matter. There's only one problem: Rama can't jump over the ocean, and neither can most of the monkey army. But there's a solution. The monkeys gather millions of stones and build a bridge all the way to Lanka. You can still see the bridge today on Google Maps. Yup, that was monkeys.
Rama's army invades Lanka, and after all diplomatic entreaties are refused by the stubborn Ravanna, war is declared. When your council of unvanquished demon ministers is divided on whether war is advisable, you might want to think twice, but Ravanna is trapped by his pride and his yet-unquenched desire to motorboat all ten of his heads in Sita's bosom.
The battle begins, and it goes on and on and on and on. Though not as egregious as the battle in the Mahabharata in this regard, it is still extremely tedious. The different vanara and rakshasa champions face each other off in duels many times, invariably destroying each other's chariots and so on but never managing to kill the opponent. Occasionally, after maybe seven duels one particular demon general might finally be slain under a hail of magical arrows or whatever. The good guys prove most luckily unkillable, constantly being knocked unconscious by their foes, only to be rescued in the nick of time by another vanara hero, living to fight another day and almost, almost kill demons yet again. While these duels are taking place, regular vanaras and demons are being killed by the champions in the tens of thousands and the fields sprout rivers of blood. The problem in this war is that every damn character is unbeatable. Hanuman can kill a thousand demons, but then he runs into demons that can fight gods, and calls on Rama, who can also fight demons and gods, but this demon is immune to Rama and can only be killed by Hanuman, who is currently overmatched by another demon who only Rama can kill, but right now Rama can't kill him so Rama goes to kill a thousand other demons instead and then an unkillable demon gets in his way and Hanuman has to....you get the idea.
Rama, Lakshmana, and Hanuman are the ultimate badasses in this fight, firing volleys of arrows that block out the sun, so on and so forth. However, they are not totally unbeatable. Not once, but twice they are immobilized by magic arrows that knock them unconscious. Hanuman knows the magic and flies off to the Himalayas in search of a magic plant to heal them, then realizes he doesn't know which plant to pick, and flies back carrying the entire mountain. Then rather foolishly he spends the time to put the mountain back, which is a mistake, because this is such a fucking ridiculous book that Rama and Lakshmana get immobilized again, and Hanuman has to fly back and retrieve the same goddamn mountain. LISTEN, POET VALMIKI, YOU POEM IS TOO FUCKING LONG. YOU ONLY NEED TO HAVE THE MONKEY FLY CARRYING THE MOUNTAIN ONE FUCKING TIME.
At the end of the war, Rama kills Ravanna. Big surprise. Hey, Valmiki, thanks for keeping us all in suspense. You had me thinking Rama wasn't going to fulfill his destiny for a minute there. Gotta say, it was one of my favorites of the eight million duels. Could use some touching up though. Maybe Lakshmana gets knocked unconscious and rescued by Neela the monkey? I'm just making suggestions. You're the poet; do what feels best.
Triumphantly, the forces of righteousness enter the city and Rama rescues Sita. They walk away, and one imagines they are soon to cuddle before an epic sunset. But no, Rama has to be a dick. He refuses to believe Sita could have been faithful for six months, and considers her rescue to be the completion of his duty and wants nothing more to do with her. She pleads and begs and Rama relents, provided she pass a test. Sita is outraged and resolves to burn herself alive rather than be subjected to a test. Way to go, girl,....sort of. Needless to say, this is the North Indian version of Rama's conduct. In South India they realize this is a little unbecoming of a hero and awkwardly try to patch things up by having Rama explain that he was only pretending to test her for the benefit of his troops, who would otherwise assume that the returning prince had been cuckolded. I guess that's an improvement.
It's a shame that while this is all being explained, Sita has jumped into a pyre. Oops.
But it's alright! Sita's divine truth and purity have saved her! Agni, the god of fire walks out carrying Sita in his arms, and flowers rain from the heavens in celebration of Sita's virtue! All of the gods assemble within the flame and continue to shower flowers. Rama is like, "Whoa man, all the gods are here! Yo, is that Indra? and Brahma? Holy shit!" and Brahma is like "Yo, dude, you're Vishnu! DUUUUHHHHH" and Rama is like "Say what?" and Brahma is like "You are the latest avatar of Vishnu" and Rama is like "Oh Brahma, you playin'" and Brahma is like "Nuh-uh" and flowers rain from the heavens.
Rama and Sita return to their kingdom in a magic chariot, Bharata gives Rama his rightful throne. And everyone lives happily ever after.
The end.
Except in North India; there's another act and Rama exiles Sita to the fucking woods.
The end.
GFB's Guide To The Ramayana, Pt. 1
Before I had completed my critical-authorial tour de force on the Ramayana and grew entirely sick of that book, I had actually half-completed a set of notes that I had intended to use for this blog. Having read the damn thing, which repeatedly implores the reader to never leave a thing half done, here is Ghostface Buddha's guide to the Ramayana, replete with typos because some asshole has put Firefox's dictionary in French and there are red lines under fucking everything. Suckez vous mon cock, Francois
The story begins in the abode of the gods, where the ten-headed demon Ravanna, drunk with power, causes incredible amounts of danger and nuisance to the gods and other celestial beings. The problem is that Brahma has rewarded him with invulnerability against all enemies but men, and there is no man bad-ass enough to take him. The gods beg Vishnu to incarnate himself on Earth as a man and take care of everything, again. In Hinduism there is the well-known trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, but nearly everybody has a favorite that they call the "one supreme God." In the tradition of this epic it is Vishnu, but many people prefer Shiva or various versions of the Mother Goddess. Shiva followers aren't too disturbed by their man playing second fiddle, as they are pleased to point out that Shiva is aloof from ever having incarnated himself.
Anyways, whatever, in this story Vishnu's the Man. At the same time the emperor Dasaratha has ruled his kingdom for many hundreds of years but has sired no heir. I think you see where this is going. Vishnu surreptitiously conceives four children by Dasaratha's three wives, who give birth to Rama, Bharata, Lakshmana, and Shatrughna. You can forget about Shatrughna, because he doesn't do shit.
At this point in the narrative, there are a lot of flashbacks and a lot a crazy shit with no connection to the plot happens. You don't want to know. For starters, some sage tries to create a second universe and almost succeeds, but this is given only a passing mention. Like I say, crazy shit happens. It is perhaps worth noting at this point that I read a mercifully abridged version that was still hundreds of pages long, and of course that I read it in translation, so this commentary is on the version I read, not the complete Sanskrit epic. Perhaps everything is beautifully linked and relevant, and all the wild stories are explained to the skeptic's satisfaction. But on the other hand this story is probably just insane.
Anyways, Rama and his brother Lakshmana are but lads when the sage Viswamitra, who is sort of a Merlin figure who regularly shows up the gods, asks their father to borrow them for an errand. Viswamitra wants to do a spectacular Vedic sacrifice but some demon keeps meddling with his plans. But Viswamitra, being omniscient, knows who Rama and Lakshmana are and sees the twisted path of destiny. Only a few charachters in the book know Rama's secret, of which even he himself is ignorant. Rama is just living his human life, completely unaware that he is God on Earth and is was born to save the universe. Viswamitra helps to put the wheels in motion and he decides to take the boys along for a little demon-slaying. The opening act of the Ramayana is kind of like the first season of Buffy, but with way more angst. Viswamitra teaches the boys in the use of magical spells gives them extremely powerful holy weapons, and then sets the young'uns on the demon. The demon's ass is thoroughly and comprehensively kicked.
Another interlude of crazy shit. Some far-away queen gives simultaneous birth to an army of 60,000 sons, who many years later are all turned to ash after pissing off a sage who is Vishnu's homie. Seriously, this book is nuts. Where else do you spawn 60,000 warriors from an enchanted coochie only to have them all die at the end of the chapter?
Years pass, and Rama isn't quite so wee a lad any more. It's time for him to get married. Our omniscient friend advises the king to try and get Rama to marry the foreign princess Sita, who is conveniently the worldly incarnation of Vishnu's wife Lakshmi. Rama goes to win her over, and finds her father has initiated a contest between the many princely suitors. He presents a mighty bow and says that whoever can string it wins the girl. The bow, by the way, happens to have belonged to Shiva, so nobody is pulling that bitch. The bow, I mean. Nobody but Vishnu, that is. Rama steps up to the plate and not only strings the bow but accidentally breaks it in half, unwittingly earning himself access to his own wife's earthly pleasures. When Rama strings the bow, the gods rain flowers from heaven. Flowers rain from heaven a lot in the course of this book.
One day when he's out walking, Rama stumbles into Parasurama, an angry, axe-wielding brahmin dwarf who also was an incarnation of Vishnu and has spent his life furiously unleashing his dwarven battle-priest might on uppity members of the warrior caste who think they're above the clergy. This prevents something of a paradox. Parasurama is all like "Whatever, kid, so you broke Shiva's bow. But can you string...VISHNU'S BOW" and Rama is all like "Well, I'll try" and then Rama strings the bow and Parasurama is all like "Oh snap. He Vishnu. I guess I'm not Vishnu any more" and walks off into newfound irrelevance. This episode represents a passing of the torch and is where Rama's period as "avatar" truly begins. Parasurama grants all of his (essentially Vishnu's) power to Rama, as well as Vishnu's bow. So now Rama is Vishnu, has Vishnu's power, and Vishnu's weapons, but he and the world still don't know that he is really, really not to be fucked with.
Moving on. Dasaratha is an old fart and he wants to retire to the forest and be a sage. He announces he will crown Rama, his eldest and most noble son.
This is where shit gets real.
A servant of one of Dasaratha's other queens decides to stir the pot. She is a hunchback, and therefore an evil, manipulative bitch, as all hunchbacks are. She recklessly ignores Lil Jon's immortal advice "Don't start no shit, won't be no shit", and to put it mildly, there is shit.
The hunchback convinces the innocent queen Kaikeyi that having Rama on the throne will result in terrible consequences for her branch of the family, and reminds Kaikeyi that the king owes her big-time. The king granted her two wishes for saving his life, and she still hasn't cashed them in. She is moved to request her first wish, which is that her son Bharata be placed on the throne instead. Her second wish is that Rama be exiled to the forest.
There is then an incredible amount of drama. Soap-opera levels of drama, where just about every single member of the royal household rolls around on the floor crying as they try and cope with their great emotional distress. And on it goes for many, many chapters. It's really quite tedious. The crux of it is that Dasaratha can't refuse the wish because the king's utmost duty is to uphold truth and justice and must keep his word, yadda yadda yadda. When Rama is told he's being shipped off to the woods, he also is obnoxiously noble, but at least stands on his feet and doesn't cry. He just chills there and makes a speech to the effect of "Nothing would make me happier than helping my beloved father comply with his duty! The woods will be lovely!" This is who we are supposed to emulate. But all is not over. Lakshmana hears about it and explodes with righteous anger, offering to help Rama overthrow the state. Lakshmana is cool because while he is also extremely noble, he has a hot temper and human reactions to things, and itches to kick ass at every oppurtunity.
Rama, being so very wise, is able to untangle the complicated interlocking web of dharma("duty") of the parties concerned, and concludes that the only solution is for him to go to the forest. Lakshmana, who isn't really bound one way or the other, vows to accompany him to the ends of the Earth. Sita also vows to follow her husband wherever he may go. This stuns everyone because she is a woman and obviously ill-suited for a life of hardship, but she then awes them with her wifely loyalty, her conviction that the woods will be lovely, and her trust in the two studly men who will be guarding her. Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana take up the dress of ascetics and go off into the jungle, while Bharata is crowned king and the entire kingdom weeps at Rama being sent away.
In the woods, our intrepid trio meets the king of the forest but decline his gifts because they are supposed to be ascetics. They go and build a hut and prepare for their life of twelve years in the jungle.
Bharata is summoned back to the city and informed he is going to be king. Bharata, like his father, is a big noble crybaby and a whole 'nother series of chapters ensues in which Bharata grovels at the feet of everyone, begging not to be king because he just loves Rama so much and Rama would be the perfect king and so on and so on. Bharata is supposed to be the embodiment of noble spirit and righteous ruling, but he's really rather irritating. Since he's such a darling little angel, he decides to go to the woods and bring Rama back. He assembles the kingdom's army and has them start cutting a road through the jungle to go fetch three people, an approach to environmental awareness the people of North India share to this day.
Whil they're gone Dasaratha recounts a story about how when he was young he was so good at hunting he used to do it with his eyes closed, and shot a human being by the side of the river while he was showing off this talent. The parents cursed him, and Dasaratha is convinced that all that has happened was due to fate. Then he thinks about Rama some more and cries himself to death.
A sage stumbles across the heroes and praises Mahadeva, for reasons unkown to the group. Mahadeva, you see, is one of the thousand or so names of Vishnu. The gods have many names but are all the same being. Confusing? Perhaps, but not wrong-headed. Do we not in our own pantheon have gods who go by many names? Is the RZA not also the Rzarecta, Bobby Steels, the Abbot, Bobby Digital, and Prince Rakim? Is Jay-Z not also Jigga and Hove? So as the Hindus have sacred verses reminding us of the many names of the gods do we not also have songs that proclaim this same quality? "Dirt Dog"? "Izzo(H.O.V.A)"? "The Real Slim Shady"?
Bharata eventually finds his brothres, and the whinery repeats itself. Rama reassures Bharata that is is his duty to rule the kingdom, but Bharata is so damn noble he comes up with a cmopromise. He takes Rama's sandals and places them on the throne. He himself takes up a life of penance and administers in Rama's absence from the shittiest village he can find near the capital. Harmony returns to the land. Flowers may or may not have rained from heaven.
Somewhere in all of this, Rama, Lakshmana, and Bharata perform the obsequies for their dead father. This is a scene you would see a lot of. The book is obsessed with people preforming obsequies for their relatives, and as more and more characters get knocked off there is a great deal of pausing the narrative to have someone stroll to a river and make offerings to the sun, etc. etc.
By the way, just so my friends who are reading this know, for the duration of the time I was involved with reading the Hindu scriptures, the "Document Rule" was most emphatically in effect.
Some time passes out in the jungle. One day a demon tries to eat Sita. There are several varieties of 'demon' in Hindu mythology. The baddies in this book are the rakshaasas, a race of super-ugly, usually wicked creatures with shape-shifting abilities who for some reason usually remain in their fugly-ass "true forms" most of the time. Anyways, Rama and Lakshmana come to the rescue but just can't seem to kill the demon. Turns out that the demon has received a 'boon' from the gods, probably Indra. Indra is second only to Brahma in giving out ill-advised boons. A boon is essentially a holy power-up. This demon's power-up is that he can'e be killed by any weapon whatsoever. He foolishly informs Lakshmana of this, so Lakshmana and Rama proceed to pump him full of arrows, which can't kill him but still hurt like a motherfucker. They then deliver a speech for the benefit of the demon's soul, and having thus absolved everyone involved, they exploit the boon's "catch", wearying the demon with weapons, and then killing him with their bare fucking hands. Rama and Lakshmana are Bad Ass.
The rishis (sages) who live in the forest hear about this exploit and are overjoyed. They have been plagued by demons for years. Countless rishis out in the jungle to meditate and do penance have been eaten up by rakshaasas. They see Rama's prowess and beg him for protection. As a member of the warrior caste, Rama accepts the duty of protecting the helpless, even if it means making enemies of all the demons in the woods.
Sita has a bad feeling about this...
Part 2 coming up
The story begins in the abode of the gods, where the ten-headed demon Ravanna, drunk with power, causes incredible amounts of danger and nuisance to the gods and other celestial beings. The problem is that Brahma has rewarded him with invulnerability against all enemies but men, and there is no man bad-ass enough to take him. The gods beg Vishnu to incarnate himself on Earth as a man and take care of everything, again. In Hinduism there is the well-known trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, but nearly everybody has a favorite that they call the "one supreme God." In the tradition of this epic it is Vishnu, but many people prefer Shiva or various versions of the Mother Goddess. Shiva followers aren't too disturbed by their man playing second fiddle, as they are pleased to point out that Shiva is aloof from ever having incarnated himself.
Anyways, whatever, in this story Vishnu's the Man. At the same time the emperor Dasaratha has ruled his kingdom for many hundreds of years but has sired no heir. I think you see where this is going. Vishnu surreptitiously conceives four children by Dasaratha's three wives, who give birth to Rama, Bharata, Lakshmana, and Shatrughna. You can forget about Shatrughna, because he doesn't do shit.
At this point in the narrative, there are a lot of flashbacks and a lot a crazy shit with no connection to the plot happens. You don't want to know. For starters, some sage tries to create a second universe and almost succeeds, but this is given only a passing mention. Like I say, crazy shit happens. It is perhaps worth noting at this point that I read a mercifully abridged version that was still hundreds of pages long, and of course that I read it in translation, so this commentary is on the version I read, not the complete Sanskrit epic. Perhaps everything is beautifully linked and relevant, and all the wild stories are explained to the skeptic's satisfaction. But on the other hand this story is probably just insane.
Anyways, Rama and his brother Lakshmana are but lads when the sage Viswamitra, who is sort of a Merlin figure who regularly shows up the gods, asks their father to borrow them for an errand. Viswamitra wants to do a spectacular Vedic sacrifice but some demon keeps meddling with his plans. But Viswamitra, being omniscient, knows who Rama and Lakshmana are and sees the twisted path of destiny. Only a few charachters in the book know Rama's secret, of which even he himself is ignorant. Rama is just living his human life, completely unaware that he is God on Earth and is was born to save the universe. Viswamitra helps to put the wheels in motion and he decides to take the boys along for a little demon-slaying. The opening act of the Ramayana is kind of like the first season of Buffy, but with way more angst. Viswamitra teaches the boys in the use of magical spells gives them extremely powerful holy weapons, and then sets the young'uns on the demon. The demon's ass is thoroughly and comprehensively kicked.
Another interlude of crazy shit. Some far-away queen gives simultaneous birth to an army of 60,000 sons, who many years later are all turned to ash after pissing off a sage who is Vishnu's homie. Seriously, this book is nuts. Where else do you spawn 60,000 warriors from an enchanted coochie only to have them all die at the end of the chapter?
Years pass, and Rama isn't quite so wee a lad any more. It's time for him to get married. Our omniscient friend advises the king to try and get Rama to marry the foreign princess Sita, who is conveniently the worldly incarnation of Vishnu's wife Lakshmi. Rama goes to win her over, and finds her father has initiated a contest between the many princely suitors. He presents a mighty bow and says that whoever can string it wins the girl. The bow, by the way, happens to have belonged to Shiva, so nobody is pulling that bitch. The bow, I mean. Nobody but Vishnu, that is. Rama steps up to the plate and not only strings the bow but accidentally breaks it in half, unwittingly earning himself access to his own wife's earthly pleasures. When Rama strings the bow, the gods rain flowers from heaven. Flowers rain from heaven a lot in the course of this book.
One day when he's out walking, Rama stumbles into Parasurama, an angry, axe-wielding brahmin dwarf who also was an incarnation of Vishnu and has spent his life furiously unleashing his dwarven battle-priest might on uppity members of the warrior caste who think they're above the clergy. This prevents something of a paradox. Parasurama is all like "Whatever, kid, so you broke Shiva's bow. But can you string...VISHNU'S BOW" and Rama is all like "Well, I'll try" and then Rama strings the bow and Parasurama is all like "Oh snap. He Vishnu. I guess I'm not Vishnu any more" and walks off into newfound irrelevance. This episode represents a passing of the torch and is where Rama's period as "avatar" truly begins. Parasurama grants all of his (essentially Vishnu's) power to Rama, as well as Vishnu's bow. So now Rama is Vishnu, has Vishnu's power, and Vishnu's weapons, but he and the world still don't know that he is really, really not to be fucked with.
Moving on. Dasaratha is an old fart and he wants to retire to the forest and be a sage. He announces he will crown Rama, his eldest and most noble son.
This is where shit gets real.
A servant of one of Dasaratha's other queens decides to stir the pot. She is a hunchback, and therefore an evil, manipulative bitch, as all hunchbacks are. She recklessly ignores Lil Jon's immortal advice "Don't start no shit, won't be no shit", and to put it mildly, there is shit.
The hunchback convinces the innocent queen Kaikeyi that having Rama on the throne will result in terrible consequences for her branch of the family, and reminds Kaikeyi that the king owes her big-time. The king granted her two wishes for saving his life, and she still hasn't cashed them in. She is moved to request her first wish, which is that her son Bharata be placed on the throne instead. Her second wish is that Rama be exiled to the forest.
There is then an incredible amount of drama. Soap-opera levels of drama, where just about every single member of the royal household rolls around on the floor crying as they try and cope with their great emotional distress. And on it goes for many, many chapters. It's really quite tedious. The crux of it is that Dasaratha can't refuse the wish because the king's utmost duty is to uphold truth and justice and must keep his word, yadda yadda yadda. When Rama is told he's being shipped off to the woods, he also is obnoxiously noble, but at least stands on his feet and doesn't cry. He just chills there and makes a speech to the effect of "Nothing would make me happier than helping my beloved father comply with his duty! The woods will be lovely!" This is who we are supposed to emulate. But all is not over. Lakshmana hears about it and explodes with righteous anger, offering to help Rama overthrow the state. Lakshmana is cool because while he is also extremely noble, he has a hot temper and human reactions to things, and itches to kick ass at every oppurtunity.
Rama, being so very wise, is able to untangle the complicated interlocking web of dharma("duty") of the parties concerned, and concludes that the only solution is for him to go to the forest. Lakshmana, who isn't really bound one way or the other, vows to accompany him to the ends of the Earth. Sita also vows to follow her husband wherever he may go. This stuns everyone because she is a woman and obviously ill-suited for a life of hardship, but she then awes them with her wifely loyalty, her conviction that the woods will be lovely, and her trust in the two studly men who will be guarding her. Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana take up the dress of ascetics and go off into the jungle, while Bharata is crowned king and the entire kingdom weeps at Rama being sent away.
In the woods, our intrepid trio meets the king of the forest but decline his gifts because they are supposed to be ascetics. They go and build a hut and prepare for their life of twelve years in the jungle.
Bharata is summoned back to the city and informed he is going to be king. Bharata, like his father, is a big noble crybaby and a whole 'nother series of chapters ensues in which Bharata grovels at the feet of everyone, begging not to be king because he just loves Rama so much and Rama would be the perfect king and so on and so on. Bharata is supposed to be the embodiment of noble spirit and righteous ruling, but he's really rather irritating. Since he's such a darling little angel, he decides to go to the woods and bring Rama back. He assembles the kingdom's army and has them start cutting a road through the jungle to go fetch three people, an approach to environmental awareness the people of North India share to this day.
Whil they're gone Dasaratha recounts a story about how when he was young he was so good at hunting he used to do it with his eyes closed, and shot a human being by the side of the river while he was showing off this talent. The parents cursed him, and Dasaratha is convinced that all that has happened was due to fate. Then he thinks about Rama some more and cries himself to death.
A sage stumbles across the heroes and praises Mahadeva, for reasons unkown to the group. Mahadeva, you see, is one of the thousand or so names of Vishnu. The gods have many names but are all the same being. Confusing? Perhaps, but not wrong-headed. Do we not in our own pantheon have gods who go by many names? Is the RZA not also the Rzarecta, Bobby Steels, the Abbot, Bobby Digital, and Prince Rakim? Is Jay-Z not also Jigga and Hove? So as the Hindus have sacred verses reminding us of the many names of the gods do we not also have songs that proclaim this same quality? "Dirt Dog"? "Izzo(H.O.V.A)"? "The Real Slim Shady"?
Bharata eventually finds his brothres, and the whinery repeats itself. Rama reassures Bharata that is is his duty to rule the kingdom, but Bharata is so damn noble he comes up with a cmopromise. He takes Rama's sandals and places them on the throne. He himself takes up a life of penance and administers in Rama's absence from the shittiest village he can find near the capital. Harmony returns to the land. Flowers may or may not have rained from heaven.
Somewhere in all of this, Rama, Lakshmana, and Bharata perform the obsequies for their dead father. This is a scene you would see a lot of. The book is obsessed with people preforming obsequies for their relatives, and as more and more characters get knocked off there is a great deal of pausing the narrative to have someone stroll to a river and make offerings to the sun, etc. etc.
By the way, just so my friends who are reading this know, for the duration of the time I was involved with reading the Hindu scriptures, the "Document Rule" was most emphatically in effect.
Some time passes out in the jungle. One day a demon tries to eat Sita. There are several varieties of 'demon' in Hindu mythology. The baddies in this book are the rakshaasas, a race of super-ugly, usually wicked creatures with shape-shifting abilities who for some reason usually remain in their fugly-ass "true forms" most of the time. Anyways, Rama and Lakshmana come to the rescue but just can't seem to kill the demon. Turns out that the demon has received a 'boon' from the gods, probably Indra. Indra is second only to Brahma in giving out ill-advised boons. A boon is essentially a holy power-up. This demon's power-up is that he can'e be killed by any weapon whatsoever. He foolishly informs Lakshmana of this, so Lakshmana and Rama proceed to pump him full of arrows, which can't kill him but still hurt like a motherfucker. They then deliver a speech for the benefit of the demon's soul, and having thus absolved everyone involved, they exploit the boon's "catch", wearying the demon with weapons, and then killing him with their bare fucking hands. Rama and Lakshmana are Bad Ass.
The rishis (sages) who live in the forest hear about this exploit and are overjoyed. They have been plagued by demons for years. Countless rishis out in the jungle to meditate and do penance have been eaten up by rakshaasas. They see Rama's prowess and beg him for protection. As a member of the warrior caste, Rama accepts the duty of protecting the helpless, even if it means making enemies of all the demons in the woods.
Sita has a bad feeling about this...
Part 2 coming up
Jan 5, 2010
Ghostface Buddha's Guide To Sikhism
Here we are again with another installment of Ghostface Buddha's guides. They aren't all going to be about religion, but guess what, this one is. Woop woop.
It was a hazy winter day. As the bus pulled into the town of Anandpur Sahib I was faced with a dilemma: everything I was looking for was the same shade of white as the humid, low-hanging sky. After some wandering the mist lifted and I was able to discern the main gurudwara, an enormous structure of absurd design. It looked like a baby, multi-domed Mughal structure sitting on top of a huge white platform suspended in the air by impressive columns that raised it over an ancient parking deck-like structure of assembly spaces. This gurudwara is the second-holiest shrine of the Sikh religion and marks the spot where the Khalsa, the armed wing of the Sikh religion, was founded in 1699. Around the corner is a smaller gurudwara which marks the spot where the 9th Guru's decapitated head was cremated after being retrieved from the Mughal Emperor's court. There was also a much-beleagured Sikh fort, but I am embarrassed to say that as it stood a kilometer or more away I was completely unable to locate it through the clouds. Nevertheless, being the site most directly related to militant Sikhism, I came almost exclusively for the purpose of hanging around hardcore Sikhs. In particular I wanted to see groups of the Nihangs, an ultra-hardcore orthodox group (Nihang means "Crocodile") that go around in brilliant blue robes wielding scimitars. The holy city of Amritsar draws Sikhs in all their many varieties; Anandpur Sahib is geared more narrowly to sword-brandishing zealots. Though belonging to the same faith, the two shrines give off very different atmospheres, owing to the militant/pacifist paradox lying at the heart of the Sikh religion.
The Sikhs, like so many Indian creeds, were founded by a guru who considered their contemporary Hinduism to be laden with hypocrisy, a ridiculous proliferation of myths and deities, superfluous rituals, and abominable social practices, especially the caste system. The first Sikh guru, Guru Nanak, essentially echoed the complaints of generations of Hindu reformers, but went a bit further in openly calling for his followers to throw away the constraints of mainstream Indian society and actually live by admirable religious principles. Unlike other religious figures who rebelled against Hinduism, such as Buddha and Mahavira, Guru Nanak didn't believe in renunciation of the world, and actively encouraged engagement with the community and having a healthy family life. He did the ascetic thang for a while, and like Buddha decided there must be some sort of compromise from complete asceticism, but leaned far more heavily towards worldly life. Suffused with agrarian metaphors and down-to-earth spiritual advice, his teachings quickly became popuar with the farmers of the Punjab region.
Sikhism is frequently described as a fusion of Hinduism and Islam, which it unashamedly is. The Sikhs'holy book, the Adi Granth , is a collection of the writings of a few of the ten Sikh Gurus, as well as a larger number of Sufi Muslim saints and a handful of Hindu saints, poets, and bards. Guru Nanak's teachings were basically as follows:
He was followed by nine other Gurus in succession. The second, his disciple Guru Angad was chiefly responsible for promulgating the Gurmukhi script, which is now used for the Punjabi language. It is a terrible form of writing that looks like this: ਠੀਸ ਇਸ ਆ ਔਤ੍ਰਗੇਔਸ ਅਤ੍ਰੋਕਿਟੀ. Simply disgusting. The fifth guru, Guru Arjun, compiled most of the Adi Granth, further enlarging the spread of this horrible script.
Sikhism is indelibly tied to its roots in the Punjab, where the faith was drastically transformed from its beginnings in the teachings of Guru Nanak by historical events. The most pertinent facts about the Punjab at this time were that A)It was part of the Mughal Empire, ruled by alternatingly tolerant or militant Muslims, B)It is located in India, where the overwhelming Hindu majority has a tendency to drown dissent whenever it isn't getting the tar beaten out of it by the Muslims, and C)It is located directly in the path of every invader that has come to India from Persia and Central Asia for the last 5000 years. Thus, the era of the first nine gurus largely consisted of the agrarian Sikhs getting their shit wrecked by Mughals and Afghans in turn. Things came to a head (har!) when the ninth guru was decapitated by order of the Emperor in Delhi.
The tenth guru, son of the ninth, was understandably perturbed by this development, and decided that the irregularly armed Sikhs should form a proper army for their defense. Guru Gobindh Singh thus formed the Khalsa, a brotherhood of arms sworn to uphold the faith and the freedom of all religions against tyranny when all peaceful means have failed. Needless to say, peaceful means had failed, and this marked a radical transformation of the religion into one of outright militancy against superior odds. At the formation of the Khalsa, which also saw the introduction of the ubiquitous new emblem of Sikhism, which looks as fitting for a galactic battlefleet as it does for a religion. The Sikhs were sworn to the "five K's", which were meant as much to promote a group identity in the face of adversity as they were to promote military discipline, and are as follows:
It was also by this time custom for all Sikhs to take the surname Singh (for instance the cuddly-looking Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh), which though an admirable way of getting rid of caste-based surnames, is just fucking confusing. It does however provide a handy English slogan for the people of Punjab, who opine that they are the best at pretty much everything, and cheerfully express this belief far and wide with the motto "Singh is King!" I have heard this slogan used to praise the strength of the Sikh religion, the agricultural proficiency of modern Punjabi farmers, Punjabi cooking, and even the sexual prowess of the comparatively liberated Punjabi girls, who are apparently coveted for this talent by men from other parts of India (this information is all too readily volunteered by excitable Indian men after about half a beer).
Gobindh Singh and his army then began an open rebellion against the Mughal Empire and got their asses handed to them. Many years later they became a formidable power, then ran into the British Army, and that was that. However, after some 100 years or so of near-constant war with their neighbors in India and Afghanistan had made them so keen on warfare that they happily joined the British Army that had trounced them, and to this day make up an absurdly disproportionate share of the Indian military. I can't tell you how many times I have been patted down at checkpoints by none other than Lieutenant Singh.
As you can see this is a far cry from the simple words of Guru Nanak, yet the two sides of Sikhism have existed more or less in harmony for centuries. God is both the amorphous source of life and virtue, watering peasant's fields and giving life to babies, and the source of destruction and death, sweeping away injustice and shielding the virtuous with his mighty power.
Sikhs believe in reincarnation and karma, but somewhat more nebulously than the Hindus, and they proclaim that righteous living alone is sufficient for salvation. Essentially, good people go to heaven when they die.
Sikhism is adamant in its denial of idol-worship, and of creating personalities, aspects, and incarnations of God. It is also one of the few Indian religions that has not been transformed by the later deification of its founders or the merger of parts of the mainstream Hindu pantheon into various strata of the cosmos. The Gurus themselves refused to be identified as saints or even as prophets. They were to be regarded merely as teachers. The closest thing Sikhism has to idol worship is the adoration of venerated copies of the Adi Granth, which in some places is treated almost exactly like a Hindu idol in terms of ritual, with the critical difference that nobody expects God to care about this ritual being performed. It is in no way an invocation of higher powers. Sikhism also denies the need for pilgrimage, although being completely swamped by Hindu society of course this has somewhat crept in and visits are frequently paid by observing Sikhs to a handful of special places such as Amritsar.
The Sikhs also don't have priests. Sikh congregations are more like community gatherings, and the leaders of religious meetings are chosen formally or informally from the community. Only in very large temples is there any sort of permanent religious office. They also don't have "temples", as they have no idol to worship and reject the idea that God should have a 'house'(because God is everywhere). Sikh gurudwaras combine the functionality of a temple, a town hall, a school, a hostel, and best of all a free kitchen, which derives from the Sikh belief in hospitality and open hearts to all people, even if they aren't Sikh, and they will never ask for a penny (though you should still offer it).
Of all the Sikh teachings, the most radical was the idea of being part of society while at the same time completely overthrowing the caste system. People of all faiths, classes, colors, and sex are regarded as equal.
NOT
If there is one thing that unites the scatter-shot sects that form the Hindu 'religion', it is the insistence that everybody in India act like a good Indian/Hindu("why, aren't they the same thing?" they like to assume) and know their damn place. You can do pretty much anything and call yourself Hindu and nobody will blink, because Hinduism as a whole isn't really about theology or faith, it's about sociology. And there are a LOT of Hindus in India.
Thus, it was almost tragically inevitable that the wonderful injunction to erase caste barriers was one of the ideas that is in practice almost completely ignored thanks to intercourse with mainstream Indian society. There is nothing in human nature that compels a man to shave, or not carry a comb under a turban other than sheer laziness or external threats. There is however, I am afraid, a near-universal human tendency to be a giant asshole to people lower on the social heirarchy. In a land where over a billion people practice a religion where this relationship receives holy sanction, it is unsurprising that most Sikhs now observe traditional caste restrictions, even if they don't really admit it. The preponderance of Hinduism in India is also responsible for the drift from the religion's Islamic precepts and the adoption of Hindu customs that are not in keeping with the spirit of the scriptures. But with all religions, such is the way of things. Any religion loses its original purity when it collides with the mighty force of the inbred habits of its receiving society.
Of all their unjustified observances of Hindu custom, undoubtedly the most silly is that Sikhs are absolutely crazy about protecting cows, despite there being absolutely nothing in their religion telling them to do so, and the explicit denial that animals are to be revered for anything. If I may understate a bit, on this point contemporary Sikhs and I are deeply at odds.
I was sitting outside the main gurudwara in Anandpur Sahib waiting for the visitors to become more interesting before I went inside. My attentions were particularly drawn to a man wandering around with a wool blanket and a 5-foot spear, which I thought looked strangely quaint and rustic. I then realized that the really interesting people were actually observing me, and a little more intently than I would have liked, considering that one of them had not one but two automatic weapons slung over his shoulder. As me and him made uneasy eyes at each other (I had been rather suspiciously loitering outside with a camera), a pickup truck swerved into a parking space, and out poured the Nahings. There were about a dozen of them, dressed from head to shoulder in blue, with blue and orange turbans, mighty grey beards, and very conspicuous curved scabbards swinging from their hips. There was a general murmuring and I quickly decided to act like a regular-ass tourist immediately and entered the gurudwara with an exaggeratedly gleeful countenance.
The gurudwara was attractive enough, but the weather made it look quite bland on the outside. I entered the inner chambers, curious how the formation of the Khalsa would be remembered. I probably shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. Hymns were being sung to Guru Gobindh's swords. I walked around the temple, and in every corner I looked, lovingly cared-for holy weapons rested on fine cloths, had incense burnt in the air around them, and were the objects of very devout attention from humming bearded men sitting cross-legged on the carpet with swords, daggers, and shotguns in their laps. I saw a glass case with the hymns of the day printed in Punjabi, Hindi, and English.
I could only read a few of the lines because to get closer would have meant stepping over a singing man gently rocking an assault rifle.
He was singing about flowers.
It was a hazy winter day. As the bus pulled into the town of Anandpur Sahib I was faced with a dilemma: everything I was looking for was the same shade of white as the humid, low-hanging sky. After some wandering the mist lifted and I was able to discern the main gurudwara, an enormous structure of absurd design. It looked like a baby, multi-domed Mughal structure sitting on top of a huge white platform suspended in the air by impressive columns that raised it over an ancient parking deck-like structure of assembly spaces. This gurudwara is the second-holiest shrine of the Sikh religion and marks the spot where the Khalsa, the armed wing of the Sikh religion, was founded in 1699. Around the corner is a smaller gurudwara which marks the spot where the 9th Guru's decapitated head was cremated after being retrieved from the Mughal Emperor's court. There was also a much-beleagured Sikh fort, but I am embarrassed to say that as it stood a kilometer or more away I was completely unable to locate it through the clouds. Nevertheless, being the site most directly related to militant Sikhism, I came almost exclusively for the purpose of hanging around hardcore Sikhs. In particular I wanted to see groups of the Nihangs, an ultra-hardcore orthodox group (Nihang means "Crocodile") that go around in brilliant blue robes wielding scimitars. The holy city of Amritsar draws Sikhs in all their many varieties; Anandpur Sahib is geared more narrowly to sword-brandishing zealots. Though belonging to the same faith, the two shrines give off very different atmospheres, owing to the militant/pacifist paradox lying at the heart of the Sikh religion.
The Sikhs, like so many Indian creeds, were founded by a guru who considered their contemporary Hinduism to be laden with hypocrisy, a ridiculous proliferation of myths and deities, superfluous rituals, and abominable social practices, especially the caste system. The first Sikh guru, Guru Nanak, essentially echoed the complaints of generations of Hindu reformers, but went a bit further in openly calling for his followers to throw away the constraints of mainstream Indian society and actually live by admirable religious principles. Unlike other religious figures who rebelled against Hinduism, such as Buddha and Mahavira, Guru Nanak didn't believe in renunciation of the world, and actively encouraged engagement with the community and having a healthy family life. He did the ascetic thang for a while, and like Buddha decided there must be some sort of compromise from complete asceticism, but leaned far more heavily towards worldly life. Suffused with agrarian metaphors and down-to-earth spiritual advice, his teachings quickly became popuar with the farmers of the Punjab region.
Sikhism is frequently described as a fusion of Hinduism and Islam, which it unashamedly is. The Sikhs'holy book, the Adi Granth , is a collection of the writings of a few of the ten Sikh Gurus, as well as a larger number of Sufi Muslim saints and a handful of Hindu saints, poets, and bards. Guru Nanak's teachings were basically as follows:
1)There is no Hindu and no Mussulman. We're all human beings, man.The Sikhism of Guru Nanak was essentially Islam phrased for a mostly Hindu audience, and stripped of explicitly mandated social practices that divided the Hindu and Muslim communities. His first disciples came from both faiths and though we mostly won Hindus as converts, Muslims also revered him as a teacher. Then he died.
2)There is only one God, but this god has no form and no one name.
3)God is Truth, and is everywhere
4)True faith lies not in the performance of rituals or in any external displays, but in righteous living with a pure heart.
5)The same truths apply to people of all religions
He was followed by nine other Gurus in succession. The second, his disciple Guru Angad was chiefly responsible for promulgating the Gurmukhi script, which is now used for the Punjabi language. It is a terrible form of writing that looks like this: ਠੀਸ ਇਸ ਆ ਔਤ੍ਰਗੇਔਸ ਅਤ੍ਰੋਕਿਟੀ. Simply disgusting. The fifth guru, Guru Arjun, compiled most of the Adi Granth, further enlarging the spread of this horrible script.
Sikhism is indelibly tied to its roots in the Punjab, where the faith was drastically transformed from its beginnings in the teachings of Guru Nanak by historical events. The most pertinent facts about the Punjab at this time were that A)It was part of the Mughal Empire, ruled by alternatingly tolerant or militant Muslims, B)It is located in India, where the overwhelming Hindu majority has a tendency to drown dissent whenever it isn't getting the tar beaten out of it by the Muslims, and C)It is located directly in the path of every invader that has come to India from Persia and Central Asia for the last 5000 years. Thus, the era of the first nine gurus largely consisted of the agrarian Sikhs getting their shit wrecked by Mughals and Afghans in turn. Things came to a head (har!) when the ninth guru was decapitated by order of the Emperor in Delhi.
The tenth guru, son of the ninth, was understandably perturbed by this development, and decided that the irregularly armed Sikhs should form a proper army for their defense. Guru Gobindh Singh thus formed the Khalsa, a brotherhood of arms sworn to uphold the faith and the freedom of all religions against tyranny when all peaceful means have failed. Needless to say, peaceful means had failed, and this marked a radical transformation of the religion into one of outright militancy against superior odds. At the formation of the Khalsa, which also saw the introduction of the ubiquitous new emblem of Sikhism, which looks as fitting for a galactic battlefleet as it does for a religion. The Sikhs were sworn to the "five K's", which were meant as much to promote a group identity in the face of adversity as they were to promote military discipline, and are as follows:
1)Kesh: to never cut the hair or shave. Hence the turbans.There were also four additional rules of conduct.
2)Kungha: to carry a comb in the hair. Because kesh would just get disgusting.
3)Kuchha: to wear a certain style of shorts. Because these were much better battle dress than what the baggy farmers' clothes that were traditional.
4)Kara: to wear a steel bangle on the right wrist, for symbolism.
5)Kirpan: to carry a sword. Typically this means carrying a small ceremonial dagger at all times and wielding a proper sword when appropriate.
1) Don't cut your hair. Seriously, guys, I'm saying this twice.
2)To abstain from tobacco, alcohol, and all narcotics. You will find that of all the tenets of the Sikh faith this is the least scrupulously observed in modern Punjab.
3)Don't eat kosher Muslim meat, because the process of killing animals by slow bleeding is cruel.
4)Don't bone any Muslims. (Though the Sikh faith has always been open to outsiders, historians speculate this commandment was issued as the best way to keep his newly outfitted army from raping their way across the Muslim villages of North India.)
It was also by this time custom for all Sikhs to take the surname Singh (for instance the cuddly-looking Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh), which though an admirable way of getting rid of caste-based surnames, is just fucking confusing. It does however provide a handy English slogan for the people of Punjab, who opine that they are the best at pretty much everything, and cheerfully express this belief far and wide with the motto "Singh is King!" I have heard this slogan used to praise the strength of the Sikh religion, the agricultural proficiency of modern Punjabi farmers, Punjabi cooking, and even the sexual prowess of the comparatively liberated Punjabi girls, who are apparently coveted for this talent by men from other parts of India (this information is all too readily volunteered by excitable Indian men after about half a beer).
Gobindh Singh and his army then began an open rebellion against the Mughal Empire and got their asses handed to them. Many years later they became a formidable power, then ran into the British Army, and that was that. However, after some 100 years or so of near-constant war with their neighbors in India and Afghanistan had made them so keen on warfare that they happily joined the British Army that had trounced them, and to this day make up an absurdly disproportionate share of the Indian military. I can't tell you how many times I have been patted down at checkpoints by none other than Lieutenant Singh.
As you can see this is a far cry from the simple words of Guru Nanak, yet the two sides of Sikhism have existed more or less in harmony for centuries. God is both the amorphous source of life and virtue, watering peasant's fields and giving life to babies, and the source of destruction and death, sweeping away injustice and shielding the virtuous with his mighty power.
Sikhs believe in reincarnation and karma, but somewhat more nebulously than the Hindus, and they proclaim that righteous living alone is sufficient for salvation. Essentially, good people go to heaven when they die.
Sikhism is adamant in its denial of idol-worship, and of creating personalities, aspects, and incarnations of God. It is also one of the few Indian religions that has not been transformed by the later deification of its founders or the merger of parts of the mainstream Hindu pantheon into various strata of the cosmos. The Gurus themselves refused to be identified as saints or even as prophets. They were to be regarded merely as teachers. The closest thing Sikhism has to idol worship is the adoration of venerated copies of the Adi Granth, which in some places is treated almost exactly like a Hindu idol in terms of ritual, with the critical difference that nobody expects God to care about this ritual being performed. It is in no way an invocation of higher powers. Sikhism also denies the need for pilgrimage, although being completely swamped by Hindu society of course this has somewhat crept in and visits are frequently paid by observing Sikhs to a handful of special places such as Amritsar.
The Sikhs also don't have priests. Sikh congregations are more like community gatherings, and the leaders of religious meetings are chosen formally or informally from the community. Only in very large temples is there any sort of permanent religious office. They also don't have "temples", as they have no idol to worship and reject the idea that God should have a 'house'(because God is everywhere). Sikh gurudwaras combine the functionality of a temple, a town hall, a school, a hostel, and best of all a free kitchen, which derives from the Sikh belief in hospitality and open hearts to all people, even if they aren't Sikh, and they will never ask for a penny (though you should still offer it).
Of all the Sikh teachings, the most radical was the idea of being part of society while at the same time completely overthrowing the caste system. People of all faiths, classes, colors, and sex are regarded as equal.
NOT
If there is one thing that unites the scatter-shot sects that form the Hindu 'religion', it is the insistence that everybody in India act like a good Indian/Hindu("why, aren't they the same thing?" they like to assume) and know their damn place. You can do pretty much anything and call yourself Hindu and nobody will blink, because Hinduism as a whole isn't really about theology or faith, it's about sociology. And there are a LOT of Hindus in India.
Thus, it was almost tragically inevitable that the wonderful injunction to erase caste barriers was one of the ideas that is in practice almost completely ignored thanks to intercourse with mainstream Indian society. There is nothing in human nature that compels a man to shave, or not carry a comb under a turban other than sheer laziness or external threats. There is however, I am afraid, a near-universal human tendency to be a giant asshole to people lower on the social heirarchy. In a land where over a billion people practice a religion where this relationship receives holy sanction, it is unsurprising that most Sikhs now observe traditional caste restrictions, even if they don't really admit it. The preponderance of Hinduism in India is also responsible for the drift from the religion's Islamic precepts and the adoption of Hindu customs that are not in keeping with the spirit of the scriptures. But with all religions, such is the way of things. Any religion loses its original purity when it collides with the mighty force of the inbred habits of its receiving society.
Of all their unjustified observances of Hindu custom, undoubtedly the most silly is that Sikhs are absolutely crazy about protecting cows, despite there being absolutely nothing in their religion telling them to do so, and the explicit denial that animals are to be revered for anything. If I may understate a bit, on this point contemporary Sikhs and I are deeply at odds.
I was sitting outside the main gurudwara in Anandpur Sahib waiting for the visitors to become more interesting before I went inside. My attentions were particularly drawn to a man wandering around with a wool blanket and a 5-foot spear, which I thought looked strangely quaint and rustic. I then realized that the really interesting people were actually observing me, and a little more intently than I would have liked, considering that one of them had not one but two automatic weapons slung over his shoulder. As me and him made uneasy eyes at each other (I had been rather suspiciously loitering outside with a camera), a pickup truck swerved into a parking space, and out poured the Nahings. There were about a dozen of them, dressed from head to shoulder in blue, with blue and orange turbans, mighty grey beards, and very conspicuous curved scabbards swinging from their hips. There was a general murmuring and I quickly decided to act like a regular-ass tourist immediately and entered the gurudwara with an exaggeratedly gleeful countenance.
The gurudwara was attractive enough, but the weather made it look quite bland on the outside. I entered the inner chambers, curious how the formation of the Khalsa would be remembered. I probably shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. Hymns were being sung to Guru Gobindh's swords. I walked around the temple, and in every corner I looked, lovingly cared-for holy weapons rested on fine cloths, had incense burnt in the air around them, and were the objects of very devout attention from humming bearded men sitting cross-legged on the carpet with swords, daggers, and shotguns in their laps. I saw a glass case with the hymns of the day printed in Punjabi, Hindi, and English.
I could only read a few of the lines because to get closer would have meant stepping over a singing man gently rocking an assault rifle.
He was singing about flowers.
Dec 19, 2009
Ghostface Buddha's Guide To Jainism
Reversing recent trends, here comes an effort-post.
Another day another big-ass sacred mountain. As I stood at the bottom of Shatrunjaya hill, the most holy place in the entire Jain religion, the dholi litter-bearers were desperate to carry me to the top. "It's over 3000 stairs!" they would proclaim, sure that this would persuade me to retain their services. "Only 3000?" I replied, "Bitch, please", and set off up the stairs.
This post, centered upon my visit to Shatrunjaya hill, is the first in what will hopefully be a series of Ghostface Buddha's guides to various subjects of Indian interest. I had planned to begin with the vital subject of Hinduism, only to discover that it was incredibly difficult for the same reason it is neccesary: Hinduism is really, really complicated. I will instead delay that venture until I have a better understanding of it, and will instead begin this series with Ghostface Buddha's guide to Jainism.
The Jains revere Shatrunjaya as a piece of mountaintop plucked from the Himalayas (and coincidentally deposited in Gujarat where all the Jains happen to be living) where Adinath, the first tirthankar, and 19 of the other 23 tirthankars attained enlightenment. (However this is disupted; many are said to have attained enlightenment elsewhere. This discrepancy may be due to difficulties of translation, as their are multiple levels of enlightenment, and none of these should be confused with moksha or "liberation", which most found on the other side of the country). Below Shatrunjaya is the town of Palitana, a truly unremarkable dump of a town that with only one decent restaurant, and even it serves only Jain cuisine. You've been hearing a lot about the Jains from me lately because Rajasthan and especially Gujarat were strongholds of Jain influence. In Gujarat they are common enough that most Gujarati restaurants (which are marvelously quirky places) offer "Jain options" on the menu, and invariably serve onions, lemons, and chilis on a separate little plate so as not to mistakenly serve them to Jains. Gujarati restaurants also finish the meal with a little dish of lemon-water for you to wipe your fingers in, but this is probably just the product of Gujarati restaurants' pretensions of world-class service. It is also said that Shatrunjaya will be the one mountain that floats above the floods when the world is destroyed at the end of this age. The town of Palitana at the bottom will not be spared from the Deluge. I'm sure it won't be missed.
Anyways, as I ascended the 3000 fairly forgiving stairs the temple city at the summit slowly came into view. Shatrunjaya boasts over 900 temples. I was unimpressed by this figure. Indian sites always claim to have "hundreds of temples", most of which turn out to be little boxy shrines barely big enough for to contain a small idol or mini-temples to deities' animal servants and the like in the approaches to the main temples. I climbed first not to the main cluster of temples, but to the uppermost ones from which I had a view of the entire complex, and lo and behold, there actually were 900 real temples, containing thousands upon thousands of lesser shrines. Across the plateau the linear form of the fortified walls of the numerous tunks, or temple precincts was punctuated by a sea of mighty spires projecting from within. The tunks sitauated below me revealed a labyrinth of temples small and large, squeezed between eachother wherever they could fit. As I wandered through the precincts the temples only seemed to multiply, as popping through narrow passages, rounding corners up half-concealed stairways, and weaving through forests of columns and arches led to more and more of the magnificent Jain shrines. In the lesser-known upper tunks I meandered almost alone through the canyons of carved stone, from time to time stumbling across a small group of lay pilgrims or monks paying their respects to the main temples of the less-revered tirthankars. Young pujaris (I believe this is the term), or temple-keeping apprentice priests dressed in yellow and orange carried pots of burning incense and tended to the rituals on the thousands of unvisited tirthankar idols.
Tirthankar idols are perhaps my favorite of all Indian religious art. They are similar to Buddha statues, but usually carved of serene white marble, with facial features and simple accessories made from metals, jewels, and semi-precious stones. They sit in the kayotsurga position (closely related to the lotus position), and are frequently found with offerings of lotus flowers in their laps. The more magnificent idols reach tremendous sizes and positively shine from the radiance of their marble, the glittering of silver and gold on their bodies' energy points, jewels upon their heads, and glorious crowns. Far more common are the throngs of minor idols, often numbering 108, that line the periphery of many temples. These are small, simple marble idols adorned with ceremonial pastes that reside in their own little shrines in gallery-like collections of tirthankars. One temple I was invited into was a dark, cylindrical chamber built into the bastions of a tunk which contained a circular promenade of thousands of tiny idols, repeating the chain of tirthankars through some sacred number of repetitions. Photography of Shatrunjaya's idols is strictly forbidden, but this was perhaps the last Jain site I will visit in a long time so in an ancient subterranean temple I snapped a few shots of neglected old idols purely to illustrate the art form.
Eventually I made it to the main tunk, which enclosed the temple of Adinath, the Holy of Holies in Jainism, the temple to the first tirthankara on the mountain where he found the Truth. Entering through a carved arch, the solemn austerity of the silent other tunks was replaced by the bustle of monks, nuns, and priests ascending and descending a wide staircase lined with twisting trees and marble temples with fantastic idols shining out through the many chambers. Many of these temples are the religion's principal shrine to that tirthankar, marking the point of his (or in one case, her) ultimate enlightenment, and the fineness of the idols within bears testament to their significance. Particularly striking were the figures of Neminath, in brillant black marble, and of Parsvanath with his hood of snakes.
At the top of this staircase a tunnel led into the final enclosure, the inner tunk-within-a-tunk that housed the Adinath temple. A great clamor or bells and chants echoed off the walls as hundreds of pilgrims recited prayers and from time to time praised "ADINATH....ADINATH". A pujari led me to a staircase that led to the roof of the tunk walls, from which I observed the activity below. The tops of arches formed stairs and bridges between the roofs of temples, and by one of these paths I entered the Adinath temple from above. A circular orifice allowed me to gaze down at the prostrated pilgrims in the main temple chamber below, engrossed in prayer. In the wings a long line of pilgrims snaked out from the courtyards, waiting their turn to approach the threshold of the sanctum sanctorum and pray before the main Adinath idol, a brilliant 7-foot seated statue with a silver and gold crown and huge jeweled eyes. Though high above the worshippers I remained unnoticed I took no pictures. Some things just have to be respected. From here I wandered across narrow bridges to other rooftops before returning to the Adinath temple where I stepped out onto the balcony and beheld a majestic view of endless temples crawling down the slope. The temples in the innermost tunk were unique, bizarre constructions, some with open-air shrines facing in all directions from atop towers, the shining tirthankars gazing in the cardinal directions from their lofty thrones radiating like lighthouses out to the world below.
I returned to the main level of the courtyard and circumambulated the Adinath temple. The temples behind were shaded by a revered tree, which I was told was the very tree under which Adinath achieved enlightenment (Buddhists have a similar practice, though the particular tree Buddha famously found enlightenment under is gone, and the trees revered today are ones carefully cultivated from that tree's descendants). How Adinath, who by all accounts was hundreds of meters tall and crossed kilometers with every step meditated under this tree was beyond me, but I felt it best not to poke at this precise moment. While I admired this tree, a lay Jain in pilgrim's attire approached me and spoke to me in flawless English. He took it upon himself, much to the satisfaction of his family, to explain Jainism and the Shatrunjaya hill to one of the few foreigners who had seen fit to make the journey to this sacred place. His name was Raaj, and I am indebted to him for his thoughtful explanations that demystified much of Jain belief and mythology for me.
The Jains do not believe in a "God" in the sense that Christians or even Hindus do. There is just the universe, whose lost shards are the souls of living beings. A Jain's highest goal then is to return to unity with the universe through attaining enlightenment and then liberation. The Jain cosmos is shaped like a hourglass, with this Earth in the middle. Above the Earth are about 26 layers of heavens, divided into 3 classes of abodes of gods and other heavenly beings that have attained different levels of enlightenment. This Earth is the home of humans, animals, and other lesser 'gods' (for the lack of a better term) that remain connected to earthly affairs. Below the earth are seven hells, and you do not want to be reborn there. In addition to this world, there is a parallel world, for reasons we will see later.
Time is infinite and cyclical. There is no Alpha and Omega. There are merely cycles, or chakras, of great duration in which all the events of the universe essentially repeat themselves. These chakras are divided into subperiods. We are presently in the age of kali-yuga, the age of wickedness and chaos, a concept shared with Hinduism (the age of Kali, mistress of Chaos). As the last age of the cycle, it is destined to be wicked as most of the finest souls have already been liberated from this world, leaving mostly the impure, the weak, and the wicked behind. Striving for total enlightenment in this age is hindered, in fact impossible. Thus, one must hope that the virtue of their life earns them rebirth in one of the lower heavens, from which it is possible to then hop via rebirth into the parallel world, which is currently undergoing the age of virtue. When this age ends, the world will be destroyed and history will begin anew. Raaj said we are quite close to the end, which will come in about 1000 years from today on some calendar. Jains that adhere to the other, "cosmic mind-fuck" calender of ridiculously long time periods (see below) also say that we are near the end, but have at least 100,000 years to spare.
In each cycle, many souls may achieve enlightenment, but exactly 24 will achieve such perfection as to shine as beacons to the rest of the world. These are the tirthankaras, or "crossing-makers". Of the 24 tirthankaras of the present age, the most revered are Parsvanath the 23rd, who laid out the most influential of the Jain teachings and Adinath, the first. Historians conclude that only the last two, Parsvanath and Mahavira can be dfinitively cited as historical figures, living around 800BC and 550BC respectively. Historians have traditionally said that Mahavira is the true founder of the Jain religion, and that earlier tirthankaras are likely myths, while clues indicate the some were prophets remembered from a distant, hazy past at the dawn of Indian civlization. Increasingly, they are beginning to reconsider some Jain claims that the religion is much older and may date hundreds of years earlier to at least Parsvanath's age in the same form, and may have precedents as early as the Indus Valley civilization. Jains claim that the founder of the religion (in this age) was Adinath, and depending on who you ask this happened about 80,000 years ago or some ludicrous distance (such as "592.704 Quintillion Years") in the past. Jains thus claim that they are the world's oldest active religion, Hinduism dating a mere 75,000 years in their view. From a historical perspective they may be correct, as some of the other extant religions of great age, such as Hinduism and Judaism did not exist in anything resembling their current form until well after Jainism and Buddhism were established around 550BC (Jainism slightly predates Buddhism. Some Jains will claim that Buddha himself was a Jain for some five years before rejecting it as one of the extremes to be avoided on his Middle Path to enlightenment. It is certainly known that Buddha was closely associated with some of Mahavira's disciples.)
I mentioned before that enlightenment is different from liberation. Liberation is the final act of uniting with the universe, i.e the death of an enlightened being, though "ascensions to heaven" in the Jesus-like fashion distinct from worldly death are possible but exceedingly rare. Enlightenment refers to the moment when the knowledge itself is achieved, in the Buddha-like fashion, and leaves the enlightened being time to live, walk the earth, spread his wisdom, and so on.
I gained little knowledge regarding the various fantastic myths of the various tirthankaras. There seems to be little agreement or consistency on the points of individuals living millions of years and so on. Some accounts from scripture read like the acid trips of an ascetic monk with a well-used graphing calculator, while some Jains cite figures that are surely legedary but at least try to ground themselves in the real world. If I ever get to the bottom of this matter I will let you know.
Just as there are multiple heavens, so too are there multiple levels of enlightenment, and every soul in the universe rests somewhere on a detailed map of how enlightened they are. For instance, a soul that has truly realized the principle of ahimsa, or non-violence, has achieved the second of about fourteen major levels. Jainism describes five main principles for humans to concern themselves with: Non-Violence, Detachment, and Truth are the most important. Non-theft and Celibacy (in a sense) also are significant. The principle of ahimsa is from which the Jains adopt their strict vegetarianism. Many Jains wear masks to prevent breathing in and killing insects, and taken to logical extremes many monks refuse to bathe for it will kill bacteria, which are deemed just as worthy. Jains praise the marvels of modern science for making them aware of such beings, but also hold some quirky scientific beliefs. For instance, some insist that it is quite impossible to take an airplane or boat across the South Pole because it passes on the lower half of the cosmic hourglass, while passage over the Arctic region is simple and commonplace. "Look at any airline chart" Raaj told me. I declined to contend that the dearth of flights across the Antarctic likely had much to do with a low demand to short flights between Sydney and Tierra del Fuego.
The principle of Detachment is where the sects of Jainism divide. Degembara monks insist this must include clothing and wander about naked, whereas Svetembara Jains believe that due to the nature of society, limited clothing must be worn if the message is to be shown to the people. As a consequence of Degembara belief, they also claim that since women can't go around naked, women can't achieve enlightenment. Svetambara find this mysoginistic and are one of the few indigenous Indian religions that actively encourage female participation in higher religious and monastic life.
The relationship between Jainism and Hinduism is vigorously, though amiably contested. Hindus will say Jains are part of their fold. However, this is part of the same process of "Hindu-ization" that has been going on for thousands of years. Essentially, the Hindu faith attempts to co-opt any sect it does not completely despise (i.e not Muslims) by merging their gods into the Hindu pantheon, typically as "aspects" of the major deities. Criteria for inclusion in Hindu-dom seems to rest more closely upon the sects' willingness to participate in the caste system. For this reason Hinduism clashes aggressively with Islam and Christianity, and has historically tried to subvert Jainism and Buddhism for denying caste. Their answer to Buddhism for instance is to claim that Buddha was merely the 9th incarnation of Vishnu and had some pretty nice things to say but y'all are missing the point and need to start being good Hindus again. Jains accept the existence of Hindu gods, but not as "Gods" per se. They are considered more as powerful, semi-enlightened souls in the heavens that also look up to the tirthankaras, and spend their time meddling in earthly affairs for human benefit. Lakshmi thus intervenes to ensure wealth, and Ganesh is like a cosmic accountant of karma, who can advance the fortuitous benefits of good karma you are destined to accrue at a later date. A key distinction is that although they are invoked as celestial actors, like the tirthankaras themselves (which they are beneath), they are not actually Gods and are thus not worshiped.
Jains now number some 5 million people, a paltry 0.5% of the massive Indian population, which leads some of them to pessimistically label their own religion extinct in the present age. Their influence however is widely felt, as they were once much more prominent. Even today, this 0.5% of the population controls 20% of India's wealth (they are prominent figures in commerce and industry), a staggering disproportion that even they themselves are at a loss to explain. In the past when they were much more numerous, Jain ideology had a significant impact on Hinduism and vice versa. Many scholars cite Jainism as the inspiration for many Hindu sects adopting vegetarianism and non-violence. Gandhi himself credited a Jain teacher for inspiring many of his own beliefs, and the ideals of ahimsa and satya (truth) for which he was best known are distinctly of this heritage. Jain art and archicture also intertwine with Hindu traditions. Jain and Hindu temples have similar external appearances, though the figures identfied as gods or earthly chrachters such as sexy musicians in Hindu temples are said to be residents of the lower heavens in Jain templs, a sort of angel-like position of semi-divine souls that sacrifice full enlightenment for the time being to focus on helping mortals along their path.
Raaj and I concluded our discussion with an exchange of contact information (so that Raaj's somewhat well-known scholarly uncle might forward me recommendations of good books on the subject of Indian religions) and the revelation that Raaj has moved from his home in Mumbai and currently resides in -I kid you not- Edison, New Jersey.
Reading this over, I seem to have engaged in a few too many digressions and may not have done the best job of explaining some of the central tenets. In particular I wrote this a little non-sequentially with insertions and re-shufflings galore so the division of paragraphs is far from optimal, but so it goes. This is as good an explication of a complicated, ancient faith as you are going to get from a writer whose usual material consists of dick jokes and antagonistic remarks towards cows.
I finally walked back down the mountain. I had poked into nearly all the tunks, and though a few remained I felt that laying eyes on 700 or so out of the 900 was probably good enough, and the day had reached a suitable climax at the Adinath temple, so I began my descent. As I neared the bottom a crooked-toothed old man in Jain robes hobbled up to me and spoke. "Did you climb the mountain?" He asked. I responded that I had, and he asked me "Did you see the Sanctum Sanctorum?" Taken aback by his startling vocabulary I replied that yes, I had seen that as well. "You are lucky" he said. I pressed him further. People had been calling me lucky all day, in a blissful way that indicated some sort of deeper luck than merely being fortunate enough to see a lovely place. He continued "Shri Adinath teaches us that only the most lucky people can climb this mountain. You the outsider have come a very long way and shown you are among the lucky. Surely you were called here, and are doubly blessed." The Jains, in my experience, have always been among the most welcoming and magnanimous people, and they often do make me feel as though I am truly lucky.
I got off the mountain and passed through the bustle in the town below. I had a ticket for a sleeper-bus that night out to the major cities and the 'real world.' As the bus began to thump along the awful rural roads and oblivious Indian youths used their speakerphones to blare "Filmi" music well into the night, I felt as though I really was re-entering a different world. And so it is too that we return now to Ghostface Buddha's usual fare.
The hell-forged iron can rumbled down the road, the diesel fumes sneaking through its broken window frames as proof of its diabolical origin. Somewhere in Elysium, a suddenly roused Plato raises his finger and proclaims to the unhearing world above "Aha, verily the Idea of the noisome shit-wagon has been at last realized in physical form!"....
Another day another big-ass sacred mountain. As I stood at the bottom of Shatrunjaya hill, the most holy place in the entire Jain religion, the dholi litter-bearers were desperate to carry me to the top. "It's over 3000 stairs!" they would proclaim, sure that this would persuade me to retain their services. "Only 3000?" I replied, "Bitch, please", and set off up the stairs.
This post, centered upon my visit to Shatrunjaya hill, is the first in what will hopefully be a series of Ghostface Buddha's guides to various subjects of Indian interest. I had planned to begin with the vital subject of Hinduism, only to discover that it was incredibly difficult for the same reason it is neccesary: Hinduism is really, really complicated. I will instead delay that venture until I have a better understanding of it, and will instead begin this series with Ghostface Buddha's guide to Jainism.
The Jains revere Shatrunjaya as a piece of mountaintop plucked from the Himalayas (and coincidentally deposited in Gujarat where all the Jains happen to be living) where Adinath, the first tirthankar, and 19 of the other 23 tirthankars attained enlightenment. (However this is disupted; many are said to have attained enlightenment elsewhere. This discrepancy may be due to difficulties of translation, as their are multiple levels of enlightenment, and none of these should be confused with moksha or "liberation", which most found on the other side of the country). Below Shatrunjaya is the town of Palitana, a truly unremarkable dump of a town that with only one decent restaurant, and even it serves only Jain cuisine. You've been hearing a lot about the Jains from me lately because Rajasthan and especially Gujarat were strongholds of Jain influence. In Gujarat they are common enough that most Gujarati restaurants (which are marvelously quirky places) offer "Jain options" on the menu, and invariably serve onions, lemons, and chilis on a separate little plate so as not to mistakenly serve them to Jains. Gujarati restaurants also finish the meal with a little dish of lemon-water for you to wipe your fingers in, but this is probably just the product of Gujarati restaurants' pretensions of world-class service. It is also said that Shatrunjaya will be the one mountain that floats above the floods when the world is destroyed at the end of this age. The town of Palitana at the bottom will not be spared from the Deluge. I'm sure it won't be missed.
Anyways, as I ascended the 3000 fairly forgiving stairs the temple city at the summit slowly came into view. Shatrunjaya boasts over 900 temples. I was unimpressed by this figure. Indian sites always claim to have "hundreds of temples", most of which turn out to be little boxy shrines barely big enough for to contain a small idol or mini-temples to deities' animal servants and the like in the approaches to the main temples. I climbed first not to the main cluster of temples, but to the uppermost ones from which I had a view of the entire complex, and lo and behold, there actually were 900 real temples, containing thousands upon thousands of lesser shrines. Across the plateau the linear form of the fortified walls of the numerous tunks, or temple precincts was punctuated by a sea of mighty spires projecting from within. The tunks sitauated below me revealed a labyrinth of temples small and large, squeezed between eachother wherever they could fit. As I wandered through the precincts the temples only seemed to multiply, as popping through narrow passages, rounding corners up half-concealed stairways, and weaving through forests of columns and arches led to more and more of the magnificent Jain shrines. In the lesser-known upper tunks I meandered almost alone through the canyons of carved stone, from time to time stumbling across a small group of lay pilgrims or monks paying their respects to the main temples of the less-revered tirthankars. Young pujaris (I believe this is the term), or temple-keeping apprentice priests dressed in yellow and orange carried pots of burning incense and tended to the rituals on the thousands of unvisited tirthankar idols.
Tirthankar idols are perhaps my favorite of all Indian religious art. They are similar to Buddha statues, but usually carved of serene white marble, with facial features and simple accessories made from metals, jewels, and semi-precious stones. They sit in the kayotsurga position (closely related to the lotus position), and are frequently found with offerings of lotus flowers in their laps. The more magnificent idols reach tremendous sizes and positively shine from the radiance of their marble, the glittering of silver and gold on their bodies' energy points, jewels upon their heads, and glorious crowns. Far more common are the throngs of minor idols, often numbering 108, that line the periphery of many temples. These are small, simple marble idols adorned with ceremonial pastes that reside in their own little shrines in gallery-like collections of tirthankars. One temple I was invited into was a dark, cylindrical chamber built into the bastions of a tunk which contained a circular promenade of thousands of tiny idols, repeating the chain of tirthankars through some sacred number of repetitions. Photography of Shatrunjaya's idols is strictly forbidden, but this was perhaps the last Jain site I will visit in a long time so in an ancient subterranean temple I snapped a few shots of neglected old idols purely to illustrate the art form.
Eventually I made it to the main tunk, which enclosed the temple of Adinath, the Holy of Holies in Jainism, the temple to the first tirthankara on the mountain where he found the Truth. Entering through a carved arch, the solemn austerity of the silent other tunks was replaced by the bustle of monks, nuns, and priests ascending and descending a wide staircase lined with twisting trees and marble temples with fantastic idols shining out through the many chambers. Many of these temples are the religion's principal shrine to that tirthankar, marking the point of his (or in one case, her) ultimate enlightenment, and the fineness of the idols within bears testament to their significance. Particularly striking were the figures of Neminath, in brillant black marble, and of Parsvanath with his hood of snakes.
At the top of this staircase a tunnel led into the final enclosure, the inner tunk-within-a-tunk that housed the Adinath temple. A great clamor or bells and chants echoed off the walls as hundreds of pilgrims recited prayers and from time to time praised "ADINATH....ADINATH". A pujari led me to a staircase that led to the roof of the tunk walls, from which I observed the activity below. The tops of arches formed stairs and bridges between the roofs of temples, and by one of these paths I entered the Adinath temple from above. A circular orifice allowed me to gaze down at the prostrated pilgrims in the main temple chamber below, engrossed in prayer. In the wings a long line of pilgrims snaked out from the courtyards, waiting their turn to approach the threshold of the sanctum sanctorum and pray before the main Adinath idol, a brilliant 7-foot seated statue with a silver and gold crown and huge jeweled eyes. Though high above the worshippers I remained unnoticed I took no pictures. Some things just have to be respected. From here I wandered across narrow bridges to other rooftops before returning to the Adinath temple where I stepped out onto the balcony and beheld a majestic view of endless temples crawling down the slope. The temples in the innermost tunk were unique, bizarre constructions, some with open-air shrines facing in all directions from atop towers, the shining tirthankars gazing in the cardinal directions from their lofty thrones radiating like lighthouses out to the world below.
I returned to the main level of the courtyard and circumambulated the Adinath temple. The temples behind were shaded by a revered tree, which I was told was the very tree under which Adinath achieved enlightenment (Buddhists have a similar practice, though the particular tree Buddha famously found enlightenment under is gone, and the trees revered today are ones carefully cultivated from that tree's descendants). How Adinath, who by all accounts was hundreds of meters tall and crossed kilometers with every step meditated under this tree was beyond me, but I felt it best not to poke at this precise moment. While I admired this tree, a lay Jain in pilgrim's attire approached me and spoke to me in flawless English. He took it upon himself, much to the satisfaction of his family, to explain Jainism and the Shatrunjaya hill to one of the few foreigners who had seen fit to make the journey to this sacred place. His name was Raaj, and I am indebted to him for his thoughtful explanations that demystified much of Jain belief and mythology for me.
The Jains do not believe in a "God" in the sense that Christians or even Hindus do. There is just the universe, whose lost shards are the souls of living beings. A Jain's highest goal then is to return to unity with the universe through attaining enlightenment and then liberation. The Jain cosmos is shaped like a hourglass, with this Earth in the middle. Above the Earth are about 26 layers of heavens, divided into 3 classes of abodes of gods and other heavenly beings that have attained different levels of enlightenment. This Earth is the home of humans, animals, and other lesser 'gods' (for the lack of a better term) that remain connected to earthly affairs. Below the earth are seven hells, and you do not want to be reborn there. In addition to this world, there is a parallel world, for reasons we will see later.
Time is infinite and cyclical. There is no Alpha and Omega. There are merely cycles, or chakras, of great duration in which all the events of the universe essentially repeat themselves. These chakras are divided into subperiods. We are presently in the age of kali-yuga, the age of wickedness and chaos, a concept shared with Hinduism (the age of Kali, mistress of Chaos). As the last age of the cycle, it is destined to be wicked as most of the finest souls have already been liberated from this world, leaving mostly the impure, the weak, and the wicked behind. Striving for total enlightenment in this age is hindered, in fact impossible. Thus, one must hope that the virtue of their life earns them rebirth in one of the lower heavens, from which it is possible to then hop via rebirth into the parallel world, which is currently undergoing the age of virtue. When this age ends, the world will be destroyed and history will begin anew. Raaj said we are quite close to the end, which will come in about 1000 years from today on some calendar. Jains that adhere to the other, "cosmic mind-fuck" calender of ridiculously long time periods (see below) also say that we are near the end, but have at least 100,000 years to spare.
In each cycle, many souls may achieve enlightenment, but exactly 24 will achieve such perfection as to shine as beacons to the rest of the world. These are the tirthankaras, or "crossing-makers". Of the 24 tirthankaras of the present age, the most revered are Parsvanath the 23rd, who laid out the most influential of the Jain teachings and Adinath, the first. Historians conclude that only the last two, Parsvanath and Mahavira can be dfinitively cited as historical figures, living around 800BC and 550BC respectively. Historians have traditionally said that Mahavira is the true founder of the Jain religion, and that earlier tirthankaras are likely myths, while clues indicate the some were prophets remembered from a distant, hazy past at the dawn of Indian civlization. Increasingly, they are beginning to reconsider some Jain claims that the religion is much older and may date hundreds of years earlier to at least Parsvanath's age in the same form, and may have precedents as early as the Indus Valley civilization. Jains claim that the founder of the religion (in this age) was Adinath, and depending on who you ask this happened about 80,000 years ago or some ludicrous distance (such as "592.704 Quintillion Years") in the past. Jains thus claim that they are the world's oldest active religion, Hinduism dating a mere 75,000 years in their view. From a historical perspective they may be correct, as some of the other extant religions of great age, such as Hinduism and Judaism did not exist in anything resembling their current form until well after Jainism and Buddhism were established around 550BC (Jainism slightly predates Buddhism. Some Jains will claim that Buddha himself was a Jain for some five years before rejecting it as one of the extremes to be avoided on his Middle Path to enlightenment. It is certainly known that Buddha was closely associated with some of Mahavira's disciples.)
I mentioned before that enlightenment is different from liberation. Liberation is the final act of uniting with the universe, i.e the death of an enlightened being, though "ascensions to heaven" in the Jesus-like fashion distinct from worldly death are possible but exceedingly rare. Enlightenment refers to the moment when the knowledge itself is achieved, in the Buddha-like fashion, and leaves the enlightened being time to live, walk the earth, spread his wisdom, and so on.
I gained little knowledge regarding the various fantastic myths of the various tirthankaras. There seems to be little agreement or consistency on the points of individuals living millions of years and so on. Some accounts from scripture read like the acid trips of an ascetic monk with a well-used graphing calculator, while some Jains cite figures that are surely legedary but at least try to ground themselves in the real world. If I ever get to the bottom of this matter I will let you know.
Just as there are multiple heavens, so too are there multiple levels of enlightenment, and every soul in the universe rests somewhere on a detailed map of how enlightened they are. For instance, a soul that has truly realized the principle of ahimsa, or non-violence, has achieved the second of about fourteen major levels. Jainism describes five main principles for humans to concern themselves with: Non-Violence, Detachment, and Truth are the most important. Non-theft and Celibacy (in a sense) also are significant. The principle of ahimsa is from which the Jains adopt their strict vegetarianism. Many Jains wear masks to prevent breathing in and killing insects, and taken to logical extremes many monks refuse to bathe for it will kill bacteria, which are deemed just as worthy. Jains praise the marvels of modern science for making them aware of such beings, but also hold some quirky scientific beliefs. For instance, some insist that it is quite impossible to take an airplane or boat across the South Pole because it passes on the lower half of the cosmic hourglass, while passage over the Arctic region is simple and commonplace. "Look at any airline chart" Raaj told me. I declined to contend that the dearth of flights across the Antarctic likely had much to do with a low demand to short flights between Sydney and Tierra del Fuego.
The principle of Detachment is where the sects of Jainism divide. Degembara monks insist this must include clothing and wander about naked, whereas Svetembara Jains believe that due to the nature of society, limited clothing must be worn if the message is to be shown to the people. As a consequence of Degembara belief, they also claim that since women can't go around naked, women can't achieve enlightenment. Svetambara find this mysoginistic and are one of the few indigenous Indian religions that actively encourage female participation in higher religious and monastic life.
The relationship between Jainism and Hinduism is vigorously, though amiably contested. Hindus will say Jains are part of their fold. However, this is part of the same process of "Hindu-ization" that has been going on for thousands of years. Essentially, the Hindu faith attempts to co-opt any sect it does not completely despise (i.e not Muslims) by merging their gods into the Hindu pantheon, typically as "aspects" of the major deities. Criteria for inclusion in Hindu-dom seems to rest more closely upon the sects' willingness to participate in the caste system. For this reason Hinduism clashes aggressively with Islam and Christianity, and has historically tried to subvert Jainism and Buddhism for denying caste. Their answer to Buddhism for instance is to claim that Buddha was merely the 9th incarnation of Vishnu and had some pretty nice things to say but y'all are missing the point and need to start being good Hindus again. Jains accept the existence of Hindu gods, but not as "Gods" per se. They are considered more as powerful, semi-enlightened souls in the heavens that also look up to the tirthankaras, and spend their time meddling in earthly affairs for human benefit. Lakshmi thus intervenes to ensure wealth, and Ganesh is like a cosmic accountant of karma, who can advance the fortuitous benefits of good karma you are destined to accrue at a later date. A key distinction is that although they are invoked as celestial actors, like the tirthankaras themselves (which they are beneath), they are not actually Gods and are thus not worshiped.
Jains now number some 5 million people, a paltry 0.5% of the massive Indian population, which leads some of them to pessimistically label their own religion extinct in the present age. Their influence however is widely felt, as they were once much more prominent. Even today, this 0.5% of the population controls 20% of India's wealth (they are prominent figures in commerce and industry), a staggering disproportion that even they themselves are at a loss to explain. In the past when they were much more numerous, Jain ideology had a significant impact on Hinduism and vice versa. Many scholars cite Jainism as the inspiration for many Hindu sects adopting vegetarianism and non-violence. Gandhi himself credited a Jain teacher for inspiring many of his own beliefs, and the ideals of ahimsa and satya (truth) for which he was best known are distinctly of this heritage. Jain art and archicture also intertwine with Hindu traditions. Jain and Hindu temples have similar external appearances, though the figures identfied as gods or earthly chrachters such as sexy musicians in Hindu temples are said to be residents of the lower heavens in Jain templs, a sort of angel-like position of semi-divine souls that sacrifice full enlightenment for the time being to focus on helping mortals along their path.
Raaj and I concluded our discussion with an exchange of contact information (so that Raaj's somewhat well-known scholarly uncle might forward me recommendations of good books on the subject of Indian religions) and the revelation that Raaj has moved from his home in Mumbai and currently resides in -I kid you not- Edison, New Jersey.
Reading this over, I seem to have engaged in a few too many digressions and may not have done the best job of explaining some of the central tenets. In particular I wrote this a little non-sequentially with insertions and re-shufflings galore so the division of paragraphs is far from optimal, but so it goes. This is as good an explication of a complicated, ancient faith as you are going to get from a writer whose usual material consists of dick jokes and antagonistic remarks towards cows.
I finally walked back down the mountain. I had poked into nearly all the tunks, and though a few remained I felt that laying eyes on 700 or so out of the 900 was probably good enough, and the day had reached a suitable climax at the Adinath temple, so I began my descent. As I neared the bottom a crooked-toothed old man in Jain robes hobbled up to me and spoke. "Did you climb the mountain?" He asked. I responded that I had, and he asked me "Did you see the Sanctum Sanctorum?" Taken aback by his startling vocabulary I replied that yes, I had seen that as well. "You are lucky" he said. I pressed him further. People had been calling me lucky all day, in a blissful way that indicated some sort of deeper luck than merely being fortunate enough to see a lovely place. He continued "Shri Adinath teaches us that only the most lucky people can climb this mountain. You the outsider have come a very long way and shown you are among the lucky. Surely you were called here, and are doubly blessed." The Jains, in my experience, have always been among the most welcoming and magnanimous people, and they often do make me feel as though I am truly lucky.
I got off the mountain and passed through the bustle in the town below. I had a ticket for a sleeper-bus that night out to the major cities and the 'real world.' As the bus began to thump along the awful rural roads and oblivious Indian youths used their speakerphones to blare "Filmi" music well into the night, I felt as though I really was re-entering a different world. And so it is too that we return now to Ghostface Buddha's usual fare.
The hell-forged iron can rumbled down the road, the diesel fumes sneaking through its broken window frames as proof of its diabolical origin. Somewhere in Elysium, a suddenly roused Plato raises his finger and proclaims to the unhearing world above "Aha, verily the Idea of the noisome shit-wagon has been at last realized in physical form!"....
Oct 14, 2009
Buffalo Herding: the Way of the Samurai
One can learn a great many things in India. I've been spending much of my time listening to people discuss the history of Varanasi, and the various metaphysical beliefs of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. While this is all much appreciated, I strive also for practical knowledge and I have been blessed enough to speak to great masters in the arts of how to burn a corpse and how to herd buffalo. Corpse-burning is pretty much straightforward (get a crapload of wood, set it on fire) so I now present...
Sun Tzu wrote that in battle, one must know his enemy, and one must know himself. With this, victory is assured.
To know thyself, understand that you are human. You are small and fragile, but you are intelligent and you possess the power of tools, separating you from the animals.
To know thy enemy, know what a buffalo is and is not. A buffalo is not a cow. The cows of India are independent, aloof bastards content to sit by themselves or stand lengthwise in the most inconvenient spot possible. Buffalo, on the other hand, move in packs. This truth you must know. A buffalo, though like a cow, is not so holy as a cow, and may be treated with a corresponding diminishment of respect. The cow is shogun; the buffalo, wayward samurai.
A buffalo is strong, but it is dull. It is lethargic, and its bulk cannot be moved by the meager might of man. However, "Give me where to stand" Aristotle proclaimed "and I shall move the world." So too it is with buffalo. Stand then in the Field of Enlightenment, for it is from here that you shall draw your strength.
After knowledge of self and foe, one must possess knowledge of purpose, and knowledge of the field of battle.
One may have two purposes in herding buffalo:
Buffalo Herding: the Way of the Samurai
Sun Tzu wrote that in battle, one must know his enemy, and one must know himself. With this, victory is assured.
To know thyself, understand that you are human. You are small and fragile, but you are intelligent and you possess the power of tools, separating you from the animals.
To know thy enemy, know what a buffalo is and is not. A buffalo is not a cow. The cows of India are independent, aloof bastards content to sit by themselves or stand lengthwise in the most inconvenient spot possible. Buffalo, on the other hand, move in packs. This truth you must know. A buffalo, though like a cow, is not so holy as a cow, and may be treated with a corresponding diminishment of respect. The cow is shogun; the buffalo, wayward samurai.
A buffalo is strong, but it is dull. It is lethargic, and its bulk cannot be moved by the meager might of man. However, "Give me where to stand" Aristotle proclaimed "and I shall move the world." So too it is with buffalo. Stand then in the Field of Enlightenment, for it is from here that you shall draw your strength.
After knowledge of self and foe, one must possess knowledge of purpose, and knowledge of the field of battle.
One may have two purposes in herding buffalo:
- To productively herd one's own buffalo from one place towards another
- To defensively herd someone else's buffalo away when it is up in your shit
One must also understand the two fields on which this battle may be fought:
- A battle with buffalo in the water
- A battle with buffalo not in the water
Let us begin with a discussion of productive buffalo herding, for it is the finer art, and with it mastered all other buffalo arts are as but a child's game.
To herd buffalo one will need two items. The first, wisdom, we have already procured -- or all is lost. The second, a large pole can be found wheresover poles are sold. While the buffalo are in water, first shout at them and wave. The profound indifference of a buffalo extends to his own immobility, and he may move for lack of an inclination not to. When this fails, do as the master told this pupil and "take stick, make big splash". This will move most buffalo. If it does not, resort then to the Grand Master's Stroke. Shout mightily, as though charging the ranks of an army and hit the buffalo with the pole. The sound, graceful as a flute-wind passing over the thawing mountain snow, should be thus: HAAAIIIIIII*thwonk*. This will move even the stoutest and most stubborn of buffalo, unless it hath fatefully dared the Gorgon and been turned to stone.
When the buffalo is on land, clearly a splash will not do. First scream as one would when the buffalo is in water. Then, if reluctance is found, slap the buffalo heartily upon the flank with an open palm, as one would to a prostitute. Remember, though a noble foe, the buffalo has the failings of the common whore, its dalliances and indolence great nuisances to the master it serves, earning it this needed slapping. Should the buffalo muster such insouciance to refuse to obey even these violent ministrations, threaten it with the pole, and if need be, thwack it. Sometimes one ought beat even a seemingly cooperative buffalo, lest it lose its fear of the pole and forget the name of its daddy.
Live by these words, and your buffalo's will shall be aligned to your own.
Remembering that at times one must also confront buffalo that are not one's own, we turn now to that subject. Here we do not distinguish between the buffalo wet and dry, for we must know only that the enemy knocketh upon our castle gates.
If the buffalo approaches one's noble works, and the defense of one's livelihood from the trample of hooves, the vagaries of grazing, and the torrents of buffalo excretions becomes imminent, find thee also a large pole. As one does not care whence the buffalo flees other than that it is away from one's own business, the use of more graceful techniques of direction are superfluous. Wield your pole with honor, and charge headlong towards the beast, screaming as you go, pole brandished high over the head. This will turn all buffalo to flight.
By this path let the buffalo be herded. Go in peace.
edit: it might have been Archimedes who said that.
edit: retroactively making this a Ghostface Buddha Guide
edit: retroactively making this a Ghostface Buddha Guide
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