not native fruit

kerala temples

When I studied theology, I learned that the architecture, iconography, etcetera of a religious tradition tells us a lot about the way its people view reality and the human relationship with the 'divine.'  The 'axis of the world tree,' etcetera, from Mircea Eliade, on vertical religious architecture:  soaring cathedrals, bullet-like projectiles around mosques.  Recently I've had a renewal of interest and enthusiasm for my Keralan spiritual connection, and I liked this passage from 'Temples and Legends of Kerala" by K.R. Vaidyanathan.  He quotes Ronald Bernier in "Splendors of Kerala":

"Kerala temples emphasize horizontal movment as symbolic of the path toward truth.  The temple is not a mountain, although it is built around an axis.  It is activated by its enshrined 'engine,' a holy power in the form of a sculpture or symbol from which energy and goodness radiate.  Mighty as it is, a figural image at the centre of the womb may smile in benevolent, friendly acceptance.  Perhaps Kerala's is the most house-like of all the divine dwellings in India.  Its materials are natural and clearly earth-derived.  The monument touches the masses in terms of earthly experience rather than that of of the worldly grandeur and pomp.  At the same time, there is room for preciousness since the temple is after all a heavenly abode.  (Yet) it is not for its precious parts that Kerala temple design is best to be remembered, but for its special accomplishments primarily in the use of wood."

Kerala is coastal territory, beaches and wetlands ringed by coastal mountains and the sea.  I wonder sometimes if my attraction to this spiritual tradition springs from my ancestors having come from coastal territories so much themselves.  It's 'in the blood,' so to speak.  My mtDNA J2 ancestors are associated with sea routes from Turkey to Iceland, my father's people lived on the sea-swept west coast of Jutland, I have Irish ancestors from County Mayo, a poor coastal territory that took in its share of survivors from the Spanish Armada, and then my Delaware Moor ancestors were native to the marshlands of southern New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. We also seem to have a certain element of pirate ancestry, as well, which fits with the high scores I had in East African dna matches.  At any rate, I love that spread-open, airy, flat 'delta' kind of land wherever I find it.

But there's more to it than that, of course.  I love Vedanta and the entire Shankaracarya tradition as it has been lived up to the present day in Kerala.  Shankaracarya was a peace-maker who synthesized many different traditions in Kerala.  I confess I felt a bit weary of the constant fighting of the middle-eastern traditions from which my Jewish, Christian and Moorish forbears sprang - that fighting just seems to go on and on.  Shankaracarya brought resolution to similar fighting among religious factions in his own land, and the peace seems to have lasted pretty much up to the present.  So, there must be something to it.  I think we really ought to be looking at what they're doing.  At any rate, it is one of the most beautiful, lively, colorful, relaxed, joyful, playful, mystical, entrancing religious traditions I've ever come across, and I've come across quite a few.  (Sufism, perhaps, comes closest, imo.)  Wise and insightful, Keralan spirituality has certainly stood the test of time.

Anyway you can see more examples and read more about Kerala's Temples here.  
 


 

panchakarma

i just finished my annual panchakarma cleanse. Panchakarma means 'five cleansing actions.'  it's a rejuvenating and healing process from the ayurvedic tradition of Inida, involving diet, herbs, purgatives, sweating, lymphatic-style massage, sinus cleansing, and more, administered over a time span of about a month.   i've lost ten pounds or more, plus i've lost toxins galore.  I feel great!  Let me tell you, it isn't exactly easy to do, but with persistence it gets easier every time, and has helped me to make some necessary changes in my regulator diet and lifestyle.  my practitioner has a fantastic line of products - without exaggeration the best herbal products I have ever used - Sarada's Ayurvedic Remedies.  Here is her website.

Just before I began the cleanse, I had the flu, so it's been about a month of being caught up in the process of working with my physical health.  I've been making daoist perfumes to handle the spiritual side of things.  They are also very effective, not to mention extremely pleasant.  I learned this technique from my daoist medicine teacher, Jeffrey Yuen, of the Jade Purity School. 

Pica, Lori, Carrie, Peter, Dave, Yemi, Dick, Beth and other supporters of my site, if you think you'd like a personalized daoist perfume (for free of course) please email me.

nature and culture

I was perusing the obits, which I rarely do, and came across one for professor Doug Adams of the Pacific School of Religion at GTU.  His interest was the blending of theology and the arts.  One of his former students wrote: "'I probably would have been still stuck in a darkroom someplace doing documentary photography were it not for Doug Adams (who) taught (me) that a passion for the arts did not exclude (me) from a religious life.'  For his master's degree thesis, (the student) took a series of landscape photographs to examine the question that if the earth is God's body, how do different cultures treat God?  One of the pictures was of a strip mine."

We know which culture that was.

I've been reading about the Moorish culture, which was very much dedicated to horticulture: gardens and orchards, fountains and canals, and which brought agriculture to Spain in the eighth century C.E. So it would seem that older forms of Islamic culture had a loving, relational attitude towards nature, would 'cultivate' and 'care for' and 'husband' nature.

Orchards are important to many peoples.  It is said that abandoned Susquehanna Indian camps could always be identified by the old wild apple orchards in their vicinities in Pennsylvania, by the early explorers and settlers.  Also, my Danish relatives prized their gardens with fruit trees, where they would eat all their meals during the summer months.

I've visited India, where it would seem that the older versions of Hinduism still worship nature.  Rivers and trees, and sometimes even stones are seen as sacred at the least, and as embodiments of God at most.  Cows, too, are viewed as sacred, as are a wide variety of plants, including Bilwa and Tulsi.  They are adorned by flower garlands, daubed with sandal paste, and honored.

My whimsy tells me that the older forms of European Christianity 'sanctified' nature - as if she needed it - by dedicating the old sacred wells and fountains to various Christian saints. Kind of sweet, including nature in its otherworldly vision of salvation.   Fact tells us, however, that it also cut down the old sacred trees, which must have been very large and ancient.  Of course, by now they would have probably died of natural causes anyway, but it does seem sad to think of them being cut down because of raw ideology.

I think this photographer had a very good idea.  To judge a culture's view of God, by observing how it interacts with Nature.  Food for thought. 

earth as wholeness

Years ago I toyed with the idea of adapting my thesis and publishing it as a book.  But, being naturally lazy, I've never gotten around to it.  Blogging suits me better - just publishing whatever I'm in the mood to publish on any given day.

But lately, I've been revisiting my thesis, titled "Nature Symbols - Wisdom and Healing."  I'm thinking of publishing it on-line, with a link from this page.  In today's climate of renewed Christian zeitgeist, I think it may be a contribution.  What happened to me is, I had a very Christo-centric spirituality based essentially on personal mystical experiences, and re-inforced by bible-based interpretations, as well as Christian cultural heritage.  Over time, in my in-scape, I began to experience Christ as a flower, Christ as a fountain, Christ as a serpent, Christ as the sun, and I realized that nature is deeply embedded in our psyches.  I was also dealing with my husband's and my infertility problem, and was very much aware of the depth, tenacity and power of biological drives. Nature deeply embedded in our bodies.   So I wrote my theological thesis about this, and my school, the Franciscan School of Theology, accepted it.  (I would have loved to continue on for a ph.d. on the subject of interweaving of nature-symbols into European Christian iconography, but funds, and prior education did not allow.)

Anyway, here is a passage from the intro to my thesis, that I particularly love:

"The poetic evocation of the  four basic elements: water, fire, air and earth, is typical of the (psyche's) quest for its own unity.  Mother Earth is only a symbol of an inner totality, the totality of those origins and unconscious roots that sustain and nourish us in the form of basic psychic energies and structures.  Mother Earth is an archetypal image of the unconscious and symbolizes the whole obscure life of the soul.  A fraternal communion with all creatures, represents a unitive grasp of reality.  The spiritual life cannot be built above, and in abstraction from nature: neither can it be built in independence of the obscure region  of our being and in contempt for our cosmic and psychic roots." (from Eloi Le Clerc, "The Canticle of Creatures, Symbols of Union," Francsican Herald Press, 1977)

Later I studied chinese medicine, indian spirituality and some native american spirituality, and the four (or sometimes five) elements are incorporated into ritual activity, for example.  But, personally, I see the Earth as a symbol of psychic totality in several ways: it contains all the potentials for our experience (including transcendent or 'spiritual' experience, as the buddhists and hindus aver when they say 'the precious human body' because of its capacity for conscious experience of transcendence, for kundalini awakening and completion), and because it provides a language for artists and spiritual teachers.

I feel a tremendous love for the earth as an icon of wisdom, a field of experience, and I certainly don't view it as 'fallen.'  Nor do I view humanity as 'fallen.'  I feel that the earth has its own wisdom, and it's a wisdom for humanity as well.  Like the Ayurveds of India, or the early Stoics of the West (Greece, how 'west' is that?), or Leo Tolstoy in 'War and Peace,' I propose a life of wisdom as the way to go.

The Stoics felt that wisdom is something we 'come to' at some point in our lives, and until then we can't expect people to be guided by wisdom, or to value wisdom.  Maybe up until that point some other 'method' is needed: like religion.  India has a good system for understanding the disparity in human pursuits/lifestyles, that is less pejorative than the sin/righteousness model of the west, at least in theory.  Kama, artha, dharma and moksha, are the four legitimate goals of life: kama (pleasure), artha (accumulation of wealth, which is to be used, I might add, to support huge numbers of people), dharma (focus on duty, right-action), and moksha (liberation from all of these, contentment found through spiritual realization). 

I love LeClerc's language and expressions: "the whole obscure life of the soul," and "a fraternal communion with all creatures, represents a unitive grasp of reality."  Very Franciscan.

fire ceremony

like fireflies
the flakes of flame
light up
your dusk
visage
like purple cloud
(amassed)
suggesting
blue
krishna
in repose
at twilight
in
the moonlit
glen.