Life's Little Lessons

Well… I have finally left India. What?!? How did this happen so soon? I don’t know. But I am heartbroken.

I have a few upcoming posts about my last little while in India and the things that I’ve learned… so here is part 1 of 3.  Buckle up, it’s a long one!

Today I want to write about something that I have become much more aware of since I’ve been here.  In India, everything is symbolic.  In all of the religious rituals, and just in life in general, there are symbols everywhere and everything has a significance.  Everything is either auspicious or inauspicious for one reason or another.  This has made me pay much more attention and recognize how much we can learn from the details of life… all of life’s little lessons in nature and symbolic rituals. 

There are three symbols I have thought a lot about since I’ve been here, and I want to write about each one.  They are fire, the lotus flower, and peace.

Fire:

In my last blogpost I mentioned that the fires in these photos are very special… let me tell you why!

Legend (and most people in Varanasi + outside of Varanasi) will tell you that these fires have been burning for hundreds or thousands of years.  Meaning, they never. go. out.  When I first heard this I thought ‘yeahhhhhh riiiiiiight……….’ How is it possible that a fire can continuously burn for that long without ever going out? 

Well, actually, it’s possible.  All it needs is dedicated people to continue to fuel it and shelter from harm such as rains or winds.  And I believe it!  When we were there, there were people lined up to put in the bodies of their loved ones who had recently deceased.  In India, families cremate their loved ones after they pass and then send their ashes into the River Ganges.  Varanasi is the perfect place to do it because it is one of the holiest cities and Hindus believe that if one dies in Varanasi they will have resurrection.

ANYWAY, back to fire.  So this got me thinking about the symbolism of fire and what I could learn from this situation.  Fire is really symbolic in a lot of cultures.  It has been worshipped for centuries.  In Chinese and Shinto traditions is has similar traits as a yin-yang which symbolizes balance and unity.  It also symbolizes unification of polarities in Celtic tradition.  In Christianity (and many other faiths) it can both be a symbol of destruction and hell and also purification. 

Fire brings warmth and light.  Light is usually a symbol of knowledge and truth.  It helps us to see clearly and understand reality. 

Two symbols of fire that I found especially interesting were fire found in the scriptures as a symbol of the presence of God, and then as a symbol of light and positivity within ourselves and the world.

If we apply this situation to our lives using these two symbols, it’s really interesting.  The fires in Varanasi are never burnt out, they are always present because people take care of them.  Just as the presence of God can be in our lives.  As long as we continue to put in our efforts to keep it burning and we shelter it from harm, we can always have His presence in our lives to give us warmth, light, clarity, knowledge, and understanding.  Sometimes the fire feels too hot and we want to escape or give ourselves space, but we forget that fire is a purifier and a refiner.  It may take a lot of work to keep it burning and it may be painful at times, but it is necessary in order for a pot of unclean water to become purified, or for a coal to turn into a diamond.

Just like in the Old Testament on the altar in the temple, we must continue to put in our sacrifices in order to keep the fire burning.  But the warmth and light that we receive from God’s presence is worth every wordly sacrifice that we put in.  At times we may want to leave it or let it burn out.  Sometimes we feel like we don’t have anything more we can offer, but all it takes is something small and the fire will continue to give at least a little bit of light and warmth.  The less we put in, the more dim the fire will be, and the greater we put in, the greater it will be.  Sometimes we may just want a change and we may want to leave the fire and let it die… but when we do that we are putting ourselves out in the dark to be lost and also losing the opportunity for purification and refinement.

And then we as humans are like oil lamps or candles, adding to the perpetual fire of the world.  Something interesting about the fire of a candle is that it can light thousands of other candles without losing any of it’s brilliance or light.  We, too, can share our light, our knowledge, and the truth that we know (perhaps understood also as the Light of Christ) with thousands of other people without losing anything ourselves.  We can’t keep the light that we have hidden, we must set it on a hill for all to see so that we can help others also have light and warmth and clarity.

Something interesting about this particular situation… (and this may be a little bit morbid) the people use the bodies of their deceased loved ones to keep the fire burning.  At some point, our oil is going to go out and we can no longer put off fire into the world.  At that point, whatever is left of us (our bodies, or our lamps… the vehicle for carrying the fire) is burned as a final offering.  So even after we pass away, the remains of us on the earth—perhaps our legacy or the positivity we leave behind—can also keep the fire burning for others to use as warmth and light, as long as our loved ones use it and apply it to the fire.

The fire is perpetual and eternal… it’s like the Billy Joel song!  “We didn't start the fire, It was always burning since the world's been turning. We didn't start the fire, but when we are gone will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on.”  We didn’t start it, it’s been going on forever, but we can add to it while we’re here and whatever we leave behind can continue to add to it as long as those who come after us apply it.

These 2 analogies kind of mesh… having our own personal fire (our own fire of ourselves and the fire of having the presence of God in our lives) is what adds to the large perpetual fire.  We need to add to the fire!  We must put in our sacrifices to keep it burning, and we will receive warmth and light, truth and understanding, we will be purified and refined and better, and we will help others to do the same. 

Don’t let your fire go out.  Don’t abandon it.  It takes a lot more energy to start and build up a new fire than it does to throw in a piece of wood here and there in order to keep one burning.  But if you have let your fire burn out, you have all the materials to start a new one, and that’s ok if you have to do that.  The opposition of the darkness and cold will help you realize why it’s so important to have a fire.  If you are lost in the dark, find someone else’s fire and use it for warmth until you are able to take from their fire to start your own… and then once again, add to the perpetual fire.

Lotus:

The lotus flower is a really popular symbol in a lot of eastern religions and philosophies.  I never realized why it was so important until I started learning about it.

The blooming of the lotus is symbolic of the mind and heart opening to truth and the soul expanding.  It is a symbol of being grounded in the earth, but aspiring towards something higher and more divine as it grows.  First it is rooted in a dense material—mud.  Then as it grows it moves up to something less dense—water.  And eventually it reaches the least dense of the three—air, which can represent resurrection, enlightenment, or a higher spiritual plane. 

It is a really important symbol in many aspects of indian philosophy, some of which include the chakras, many deities, and yoga.  The position Padmasana is the normal position for meditation and is a symbol of the lotus (legs crossed, back straight, hands rested on knees).  The lotus also interestingly opens up every morning with the sunlight, and then closes and sinks back into the water every night.

My favorite part of the lotus is that it is rooted in the mud, but it grows up and sits above the water, untouched by the swampy muck and water that it lives in.  It’s leaves are known to not absorb any water that touches it, the water just slides right off back into the swamp.  The lotus itself remains white and pure, unaffected by its surroundings.  Just like the lotus, we should live and grow in our surroundings but not be affected by the negative aspects of them.  I noticed this a lot on my mission.  I realized how negatively affected I was by ‘the world’ and wanted to detach myself from it.  Since I have been in India I have also realized how many negative aspects of American culture I am affected by.  I am now noticing that in every culture or group of surroundings we may be in, there are both positive and negative aspects that can affect us.  We should choose to let the positive aspects affect us, but not the negative ones.  Just as American culture has positive and negative aspects, so does Indian culture, and any other culture.  I think the most important thing is to be aware of these… pay attention to them and recognize them, and make a conscious effort to accept or reject them.

The lotus is a symbol of beauty, purity, divinity, enlightenment, and truth.  All of these symbols are due to its nonattachment to its surroundings.

Shanti shanti shanti:

shanti shanti shanti in Hindi

Shanti means ‘peace’.  I’m not talking about the kind of peace like the peace sign that Asians flash in photos, or the symbol that continues to come back in popular fashion on t-shirts and jewelry.  I mean peace as in inner and outer harmony, and contentment.  In Indian shlokas (chants) they always end by saying shanti three times.  I was reading about this the other day and it talked about why it is said three times.  First of all, repeating it 3 times shows the person’s strong desire for it.  Each ‘shanti’ that is repeated correlates with an agitation of the human experience.  The first shanti is chanted the loudest—directed towards outward unseen forces that we have no control over such as natural disasters.  The second is chanted a little bit quieter—directed towards our nearby surroundings and those that we have a little bit more control over such as human errors, accidents, crime, etc.  And the third is chanted the quietest—directed towards one’s self and the agitations of being mortal like diseases, weaknesses, and the natural man (aka ego in indian philosophy).

Peace is considered a natural state of being.  When I was learning Kuchipudi (traditional Indian dance of Andhra Pradesh) we learned that there are 9 different emotions in classical Indian dance that are portrayed through facial expressions and hand gestures.  They include love, comedy, sympathy, anger, bravery, fear, disgust, wonder, and then peace.  Our dance teacher explained that peace is the absence of too much of all the other feelings… so basically a balance between all of them.  Every dance must start and end with the peaceful emotion.  She explained that in life we are only truly in this state twice—while we sleep, and when we die, which is interesting because it comes at the end.  After a long day full of extreme emotions, we end in peace as we balance out our entire day and sleep.  Just as in life we are filled with extreme emotions going up and down in each one, until we finally add them all together to create a feeling of being whole—a feeling of peace, when we die.  We also see this pattern in all kinds of aspects of our culture, such as movies and stories, music, art, etc.  There is a reason we feel discomforted at the end of a movie or book if the story doesn’t pass through multiple emotions and then end with a resolution of peace.  We feel like we leave only half full.  Ending with a balance of all the emotions portrayed throughout the story leaves us feeling full… like we just ate a balanced meal and we are no longer hungry. 

I like noticing this theme when I think about feeling the spirit.  There are many different emotions that come when we feel the spirit, just like it talks about in Galatians—the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.  We have all felt many of these emotions when we feel the spirit.  But I look back on the most satisfying and rewarding spiritual experiences I have had—and there have just been a few that have been extremely significant—and all I can use to describe them would be this idea of peace, harmony, and balance.  It’s like all of your emotions come together and make sense together and you feel whole.  It’s not an ‘I’m so happy God loves me jump for joy and shout from the rooftops’ kind of feeling, although those times are great too.  But instead, it’s a quiet feeling that you can’t quite describe.  It’s deeper than just happiness or joy.  It’s something one can only understand if they experience it because it is so personal to them—joining together all of their emotions and trials and joys and experiences to a point where everything just makes sense and they feel full.  I imagine that that’s what it will be like in Heaven. :)

Sorry for the novel.  More novels to come.  I just had a 4-month life-changing event in a 3^rd world country, can you blame me?? :)