Maha Shivaratri at the Hindu Temple of Rochester

Namaste readers - I figure you would all like to know I have successfully attended the Maha Shivaratri puja at the Hindu Temple of Rochester on Saturday. I even got to be one of the folks who poured milk on the Shivalingam! Unfortunately, even though the event lasted all night I couldn't stay all night...my blood sugar got in the way. Oh well...maybe next year I can pull an all-nighter for this holy day.

Somehow I feel as if I've both deepened my Hindu practice (by pouring milk on the Shivalingam) and missed an opportunity (by not staying all night)...weird, I know. At least I feel I have accomplished something!

Here's a photo of the event that has me in it...there's a lot of people in the photo, but I'm one of the ones in line. (I didn't take the photo, obviously.)

I hope your Maha Shivaratri was just as blessed. :-)

From the Meditation File: Vision of a Shivalingam

Namaste readers! I don't know if describing my meditation experiences is of interest to you all or not, but since no one has objected yet...I figure I'll share another one. This one's interesting...although when have I not shared interesting meditation experiences? ;-)

This particular experience happened yesterday. I did my usual Ganesha mantra chanting and Sahaj Samadhi meditation as taught to me by the Art of Living. I forget exactly when this happened, but during this session, I saw a Shivalingam very vividly! It was very clear to me, at least as clear as one can see the backs of their eyelids while meditating, meaning in this case it was like a black-and-white photograph of it, sort of...yeah, I'm not being very clear in my description here. But the point is I saw a Shivalingam that was very clear to me.

(For those readers who don't know, a picture of a Shivalingam is in this post.)

After the meditation session, I did remember that Maha Shivaratri, a very important Hindu holiday, is coming up this weekend. I was planning on attending puja at the temple in my area anyway, so maybe this is my mind giving me a reminder. Or maybe it means something more significant than that...I honestly don't know what to think of it. I'm still thinking of it even today, although for today's meditation session, I did not see it again.

I know I have a tendency to assign more meaning to events, even meditation images, than I should. Even if this vision is nothing significant, my mind still wants it to be...maybe I'm being conceited in this case. It's just...well, I was dearly hoping that maybe Lord Shiva had taken an interest in me...

I have this very dear desire to see the God(s) of Hinduism up close and personal. Call it wanting to be...acknowledged by them. That I want them to directly tell me that I have a positive role and place in this universe. I must sound crazy right now. Maybe I am...but...well, we all have flaws, right? Is this such a deep flaw?

Pardon my self-centered ramblings in this post. I've been trying to shake these selfish notions for a long time...

Beauty in Unexpected Places

Sometimes beauty can be found in places you least expect it.

I know the vast majority of my readers don't like metal, and I'm not asking you to. But that doesn't mean that the music I listen to can never be beautiful.

For evidence, I submit this picture from the official Deftones website (I obviously didn't snap this photo, I don't know who did, but I'm just linking to it here, I'm not claiming anything), of the concert the band had here two nights ago at the Rochester, NY Main Street Armory:

I like to think of this photo as evidence that beauty can be found anywhere. Indeed, it can be found everywhere.

Authenticity, Sincerity, and Other Buzzwords

Namaste readers. For those of you who are Hindus, I have a very important question to ask: most of you readers probably don't know me in real life, but regardless, would you readers consider me a real Hindu?

I'm asking because in one other online discussion forum (that shall not be named), my authenticity and sincerity of being a Hindu was called into question...not directly, but it was certainly implied.

To be honest, I don't know how to respond to such implicit accusations. I certainly want to be a Hindu, in both my heart and my mind. But oftentimes my mental maladies keep me from going any deeper than I am now. Thanks to my depression and lack of energy resulting from it, I sometimes find it hard to do things like read scriptures, learn how to do puja at home, or even meditate and do its associated pranayama. I try to go to my local temple as often as possible, but my lack of a car prevents me from going there as often as I should. And as for all the knowledge associated with Sanatana Dharma? I've barely scratched the surface of it, thanks to the two previous facts I've mentioned.

And as others have pointed out, I've made blunders in thinking some of my cultural tastes and preferences were spiritual, and that it was not only futile, but offensive, to try to link those to Hinduism. That certainly doesn't do my reputation any good, and certain online people have added "poser" and "racist" to my list of descriptions as a result. (Again, I don't want to say who. I don't want to pay any more attention to them.)

Of course, there are those who will say I shouldn't pay any attention to such people. They say Hinduism is all about diversity and individuality (in terms of how people worship) after all. But still, the last thing I want to do is defile another culture with my stupidity. What I have seen of India's culture so far, I've fallen in love with. I want to belong to it...but old cultural habits die hard.

I want to believe...but am I too indoctrinated in Western ways to be able to join the culture and faith I truly want to believe in? Am I too far gone?

Where Have You Gone, Lord Ganesha?

I know the God(s) of Hinduism don't really abandon their followers, at least to my knowledge...with divinity being in everything, how could God(s) do so anyway? However, lately I've been wondering...if Lord Ganesha even cares about me at all...

Inconceivable, right? I know in my mind it is. But my heart is telling me something different. Which is the opposite way of how it works for most people - their hearts give them hope while their minds are the pessimistic organs. For some reason it's reversed with me...I have to keep thinking myself out of depressive states, keep my mind occupied, so my heart doesn't go to horrible emotions and depression.

Anyway, the point is that lately my emotions have been labile - I know I said that in previous blog posts but for some reason it's intensified. I have happy periods in my day, and I know I have little to be sad about right now. Still, my crying episodes have become more frequent, my energy has decreased further, and I feel like I just don't want to do much of anything.

What's sort of scary about this is that thinking of or meditating on Lord Ganesha either doesn't help, or only helps for a short burst during my sad, depressed periods. That is what is causing these feelings of abandonment. Lord Ganesha probably hasn't abandoned me...it just doesn't seem like His style to suddenly up and leave a follower of his. Still, I can't seem to shake these feelings that something is amiss...

I still need Lord Ganesha to get me through the problems in life...I'm not ready to do everything on my own.

Metal/Hardcore Music as a Universal Language, Part 2: the Mosh Pit

Today for my meditation session I listened to a 44 minute bhajan to Lord Ganesha. I feel it's certainly helped me spiritually for this evening, but today I also found something even more interesting concerning my favorite genre of music, heavy metal. As it turns out, heavy metal can help save lives...that might be an exaggeration, but the point is that National Geographic has covered a study that has discovered that a popular form of dancing at heavy metal concerts, known as the mosh pit, mimics the movements of excited particles of gases, much like what is studied in particle physics.

As for how that can save lives, well, the study says that the research could be applied to people reacting under much different circumstances - namely riots, fires, and the like. But I feel this can also save lives in a spiritual sense...not moshing in a mosh pit, exactly, but rather demonstrating the oneness of the universe. Spiritual people, especially in the Hindu faith, have often said that oneness refers to everything in the universe being made of the same thing - divinity. If everything in the universe can be said to be made of the same thing, then divinity is in everything.

This can be seen as further proof of that concept. For just as matter in the universe reacts in a certain way under certain circumstances, so too do people under certain influences. We are indeed already one with this universe...we just have to realize it, and when great music like heavy metal blares through the ether, our oneness is realized.

It doesn't have to just be heavy metal music, of course, but if heavy metal can prove something like this, surely it shows that the path to the divine is manyfold. Just like how the God(s) of Hinduism are many to show that the many can lead to the One. They are not separate from each other, but parts of a whole, and worshipping a part will grant us the whole.

Temet Nosce

Namaste, readers! I'm doing better than my last post, but still, recent events and my responses to those events have given me a lot to think about. As you can probably figure out from the quote from the movie The Matrix that I've used in the title, this post has to do with knowing myself ("temet nosce" means "know thyself" in Latin) and my relationship with reality.

This concept of my relationship with reality got a mild jolt recently, when a couple of my friends, one in real life and one online, suggested I look into Vedic astrology. Not the traditional Western stuff, but actual Vedic/Hindu/Indian (or whatever you want to call it) study of how the stars effect our lives. My real life friend who talked about it convinced me it might be worthwhile to check it out at least, but my online friend actually figured out my Vedic astrology chart, even though he said he was somewhat new to the practice. I know doing so involves giving him some personal information, but I've known him long enough to realize he probably doesn't even have the means to use said info maliciously. And it's not like I gave him my credit card number. ;-)

What he discerned through study of my Vedic astrological chart, or what he told me of it, anyway, really blew me away - it seemed to describe my life so far and my personality in a nutshell. I know a lot of astrology relies on generalizations, but there were some specifics he told me that lined up surprisingly well. It wasn't all 100% accurate, of course; one or two statements were way off the mark. But enough of it was accurate that I was astonished.

Of course, I'm someone who believes in free will. I like to think we all have some control over our lives. But at the same time, I have to admit that one potential moral weakness of mine is that when it comes to making mistakes, I'm not one to readily accept them as a product of my free will. (I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has this weakness, but I digress.) So it's tempting to dismiss astrology by saying it's a way of avoiding responsibility - the stars influence our lives, so why claim responsibility for our bad actions?

This, however, goes into why astrology makes generalizations and avoids going ultra-specific, in my opinion. Sure, the stars may influence our lives, but they do not dictate them. It can influence our general course, but definitely not the specifics. The specifics of how the stars influence our lives are still up to us.

Think of it this way: if you consume too much alcohol and get drunk, you can commit actions you later had no idea you committed because you were drunk. However, even though you might have been out of your mind when you committed your drunken actions, you still consciously chose to drink too much - that much you can be held responsible for, and it's a very serious action which definitely has consequences!

This means we should strike a balance in our lives between choosing our fate and leaving it all up to God(s). Where that balance lies is different for each of us. I still have yet to find mine, I think...but maybe Vedic astrology can help me find it.