D is for Darshan #AtoZChallenge

Dakshina Chitra, Chennai. August 2017

Darshan is derived from darsana in Sanskrit meaning auspicious sight. Literally and philosophically translated, it means to look or to behold.

If you ask a Hindu who's fond of her rituals, she'll tell you that darshan is the highest point of her routine. Her prayers, her chanting and all of her offerings-- all of it leads to this climax--the darshan: a point in time when the divine embraces her and blesses her with his/her presence.

For her, facing his image in a temple is enough.

I grew up with a very religious set of grandparents. Daily temple visits were just that, daily. The Krishna temple near our house was like most Krishna temples in North India--a palace of a place to house beautifully decorated Krishna and his beloved Radha. Their costumes and jewellery would be changed often and the opulence of their image would keep me occupied for hours as a child.

And that's all I saw when I went for darshan. The costumes, the flowers, the shining mukut (crown) and the sparkling beads hanging from his murli (flute). Krishna and Radha always matched. Darshan was a feast for the eyes. It always made me happy. Also, my conditioning and something else (something I still can't define, perhaps learnt reverence) made me fold my hands in prayer and just stare at their beautiful images.

Time turned my innocence into questions. At eleven or twelve,  everything I had found beautiful and shiny as a child, became gaudy and ritualistic. Rigid, non-progressive and primitive.

I still went to temples but not as an awestruck devotee to partake in darshan. My motives to visit the local temple as a teenager were free food and a chance to catch up with friends.

Dakshina Chitra, Chennai, 2017

A few decades of cynicism and questions and growing up later, I ended up (unplanned and unprepared) in a Sikh temple in the Himalayas, perched at more than 15, 000 feet above sea level. I didn't know it at the time, but what I felt there, in front of Guru Granth Sahib ji, without any opulent idols to feast my eyes on, without any sensory stimulants except for Gurubani (devotional songs) was darshan. I didn't know it at the time because all I did was cried, cried and cried some more while I sat there, but I was experiencing a home-coming, a stillness of sorts, a cleansing of accumulated rubbish, a point of equilibrium. I felt light. I was light--lit up and light.

If you have time, you can read about that day here: Hemkund Sahib ji 

Ever since that day, many such moments of darshan have made me smile, cry, laugh, and just be. Sometimes, it's happened in temples, and sometimes while looking into some one's eyes, or while watering a newly flowered gardenia bud, or while walking on dew drenched grass or while kissing my love--a home-coming, a feeling of being one with what I'm looking at--as if what I'm looking at is also beholding me with love so immense that we become tiny particles in the sea of love while holding this deep, delicious sea within us. (like Rumi said)

My eighteen year old son's cynicism about deities reminds me of my journey. I smile. I wish I could hold his hand and guide him to the light I see, but every soul has to travel its path on its own and in his time he too will get to do the darshan.

For now, I simply point out to a mynah that's hanging upside down from a branch of the mulberry tree in our back yard. So lost in her feast of the jewelled berries is she that she forgets her sky is the earth and the earth her new sky. Meera Bai, I think, banwali -intoxicated and free.

"Look." 

Alwar Bagh, Rajasthan January 2018

"The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart." says Rumi.

May your hearts be full of love and may your days be filled with light.