Devotion and Desire

I like that so much of being human is the tension between knowing ourselves to be biological entities and feeling ourselves to be something more--so many of our arguments and pursuits boil down to a debate over the extent to which we are meat machines versus star dust or force spirits or light from a larger light, to borrow the terminology of others.  Wait, don't go!  I know, it's too early for this much thinkiness.  Have a coffee and stay for some pictures of neat stuff, and skip my rambling if you must.

Today was Thaipusam--the celebration of the full moon during the month of Thai in the Tamil calendar.   It's my understanding that Thaipusam isn't really celebrated in India anymore, but until not too long ago it was public holiday in Singapore, and it's still a big deal here and in Malaysia.  On the holiday, devotees celebrate the festival by making offerings of milk in thanksgiving, and to truly show their gratitude, they offer themselves as well, sacrificing their physical wants and comforts to purify themselves spiritually.  In preparation for the festival, a devotee will fast from rich foods and abstain from worldly distractions (like sex and tv--I know!) for 48 days, and then on the day of the festival, he or she will carry the milk offering four kilometers from one temple to another.

And here's the part I was willing to get on a bus at 6am to see: devotees carry the milk in pots: sometimes alone, but often in structures called kavadis on their shoulders, and often these kavadis are large, beautiful, and elaborate structures with gold and silver and peacock feathers.  Often the devotees also pierce their skin, once or twice or hundreds of times, attaching themselves physically to the kavadi.  Long silver and gold pins pierce the forehead, cheeks, and tongue, small hooks connect the kavadi to the torso by long chains of metal or holy beads or flowers, and sometimes large hooks suspend milk pots or mangos or religious symbols from the thicker skin of the back.

I think a lot of us would look at dudes skewering their skin and have a moment of ew, that's weird.  Have that moment, for sure, if you want to, but then come on a thinky journey with me.  The piercing is thought to be a way of gaining control over one's flesh and demonstrating, as part of a spiritual journey, control over pain and weariness and the sensory experience.  That's not that weird.  Western culture has our own long history of the mortification of the flesh, and the search for mastery of one's physical desires is definitely a mainstream thing.  Even today, piercings and tattoos (you know, getting poked with a needle a bunch of times) are becoming more common and are a way of making one's physical body more clearly reflect who an individual feels herself to be.  The pain involved in a tattoo is not immaterial; either it's specifically part of the appeal, or it's something to be overcome for the end goal.

I've practiced Lent my entire life, giving up some joy of my physical body in hopes of improving my spiritual one.  Like a good, always-guilty Catholic, I've been enthusiastic about mortification of the flesh, but the things I've spent 40 days doing sound very much like what the devotees of Thaipusam spend 48 days doing.  Not eating while the sun is up?  Giving up sugar AND meat AND caffeine?  Spending long periods of time in prayer or meditation?  Resisting the siren song of your Facebook feed?  Purifying yourself from physical or spiritual toxins seem to take a similar path whether you're following the path of Christ or Murugan or Gwyneth Paltrow, and I really don't mean that in a flippant way.  I think it's neat that the paths to care for the body and the soul seem universal.

And how many people do you know who have trained for a marathon, or even a longer race?  You often modify your diet, devote your time to your pursuit, then undergo a physical trial that sounds unthinkable to many people (let's not forget that the name and distance of a "Marathon" are a thing because the guy who ran to Athens to announce the outcome of the Battle of Marathon DIED on the spot). For most, it seems, the running of the race is less about the training of your actual body than the improvement of that more-difficult-to-define spiritual "self" and the achievement of mastery beyond the pain and discomfort and the softer desires of the squishy and too-falliable body.  And when you work so hard to achieve something, it's a community effort.  Today, the crowd wasn't solely white ladies looking to fill up their Instagram (though there were a lot of us white ladies with cameras in the crowd, y'all--the welcoming kindness of the devotees was part of their beauty), instead it was mostly family and friends of devotees, there to find a place on the route to cheer on their friends when they were tired, and to film them crossing the finish line, triumphant, and to get them a snack and take them and their gear home after.

The guide said today that it's a misconception that Hinduism involves the worship of many gods: that in fact Hindus are monotheists, but their god has many stories.  I heard on another tour that they believe every living thing contains the spark of the divine.  I think some of my friends might be uncomfortable with this, but I felt today that I was in the presence of whatever constitutes holiness.  I saw friends reading scripture to each other, and friends and family singing songs of praise together.  I saw people blessing each other, both implicitly and with the the blessing of their presence.  I saw a father finding the strength to make it a few more steps because he was holding the hands of his little girls, and I saw a son emulating the the steadfastness of his father.  The expressions of each face felt familiar, and every story felt sacred.