Aum Durgayai Namaha!

10

Durga

Ya Devi sarvabhuteshu, jati rupena samsthita,

Namasthasyai, namasthasyai, namasthasyai namo namaha!

O Goddess who resides in all creatures in the form of birth,

Hail to thee, hail to thee, all hail to thee!

Durga is one of the most impressive and formidable goddesses in Hindu mythology. She is a warrior queen with eighteen arms, each wielding a particular weapon. Her primary function is to combat the demons that threaten the stability of the cosmos. Despite this, she maintains a benign look on her face. This reflects the fact that she attacks not in order to kill but only when we invite her to come and deliver us from the devilish ego that threatens our spiritual life.

There are many accounts of Durga’s origin, but the most well known is told in the Devi Mahatmyam (“text of the wondrous essence of the goddess”), which describes her as an unconquerable, sublime warrior maid who was birthed from the combined powers of all the gods gathered in council. She was created to combat the buffalo demon Mahisha, who could be killed only by a female power (see chapter 12).

Another story of Durga’s origin is found in the Devi Bhagavatam: Once there was a great asura known as Durgama. He realized that the Vedas were the main source of the strength of the devas (gods) and decided that the best way to weaken the gods would be to steal the Vedas. With this in mind, he started to do rigorous tapas to the creator Brahma. When Brahma appeared, Durgama asked for the gift of the Vedas, which Brahma promptly gave over to him.

With the disappearance of the Vedas from the world, the Brahmins forgot their chanting and mantras. No longer did the gods receive the fire sacrifices by which they had been nourished, and they became weaker and weaker. Unrighteousness reared its ugly head in the world. There was a severe drought; the earth refused to yield any grain and famine swept the land. Countless numbers of people, cattle, and plants died for want of food.

The Brahmins went to the Himalayas and did great penance to invoke Adi Shakti, the supreme power. They begged her to restore the Vedic mantras to them so that they could again perform their daily rituals.

At the end of their penance, Maheswari, the great mother of the universe, appeared before them in all her glory. Her color was dark blue, the color of eternal space. She had a hundred eyes, large and lustrous like blue lotuses, and her breasts were round and elevated. She had four hands. On the right, one hand held arrows and the other a lotus. On the left, one hand held a great bow and the other vegetables, fruits, flowers, and roots. She was the essence of beauty, luminous like a thousand suns, the ocean of mercy. When she heard the sad tale of the Brahmins and saw the pitiful condition of the earth she began to shed waters from her lovely eyes. For nine days and nights tears poured down from her eyes until all the rivers and ponds and lakes began to fill up. This incarnation of the goddess was known as Satakshi (the hundred-eyed). The gods who had been hiding in caves and mountains now started to come out and began to sing her praises. The goddess now showered the earth with plenty. Grains, vegetables, fruits, and roots were made available for all. Grass started to sprout so that the cattle could feed. From that day she came to be known as Shakambari (the giver of edible vegetation).

When the demon Durgama heard of this he was furious and set out to fight with the goddess. Seeing this, Shakambari produced from her own body countless shaktis who started annihilating the army of the asura. But Durgama vanquished the shaktis and eventually came before the goddess. She shot fifteen arrows at him. The first fourteen arrows killed his horses and charioteer, pierced his two eyes, and cut off his arms and flag, and finally the fifteenth arrow pierced his heart and killed him.

The world became a peaceful place once more, and the devas extolled the goddess. She blessed them and said, “The Vedas are parts of my own body, so cherish them well. If you lose them, great calamities will fall on you, as you have seen. Henceforth I will be known as Durga, since I have killed the demon Durgama.”

Sometime around the fourth century, images of Durga slaying a buffalo began to be common throughout the subcontinent. By the sixth century Durga had become a household word and was worshipped everywhere. Lalitha is always depicted as a shanta murti or one with all peaceful qualities, despite the fact that she killed the demon Bhanda, but Durga is ever the warrior goddess, often seen astride her fierce vehicle, the lion.

Durga’s enormous appeal seems rather strange when you consider the fact that she violates the norm of the model Hindu woman. She is not submissive, nor is she subordinate to any male deity. She does not fulfill household duties and excels mainly in battle. She doesn’t lend her power to any male deities but takes from them in order to perform her own heroic exploits. On the other hand, the male deities are said to willingly surrender their potencies to her! She is not the shakti (power) of any male god but is pure shakti unattached to anything else. She herself is shown to contain various shaktis that she can call forth any time she wills. She is not the consort of any male. Some of the demons become enamored of her beauty, but she will have nothing to do with them and refuses to marry any of them.

Durga exists outside normal social structures and provides an invigorating view of feminine power, which lies repressed in most societies. The law books of Manu (the great lawgiver whose books are taken as the basis for the different types of behavior of various classes of people in all walks of society) declare that a woman should always be protected by a man: in childhood by her father, in youth by her husband, and in old age by her sons. In other words, a woman was considered to be incapable of looking after herself and was always to be kept under the protection of some male. It is to the credit of the ancient rishis that in Durga they portrayed a goddess who totally violates all the traditional views of women.

Thus Durga portrays the divinity who stands outside the so-called civilized order of established dharma and can be found only by one who has the courage to step out of the orderly world as we know it. The gods themselves refer to her by many dubious names. She is known as Mahamoha, the great deluder; as Mahasuri, the great demoness; as Kalaratri, the black night; as Maharatri, the great darkness; as Moharatri, the night of delusion; and as Tamasi, the delusion. As these names imply, she is full of numbing, deluding, and dark qualities. Continuously she is referred to as Maha Maya, the power that throws people into the bondage of delusion and attachment.

The juxtaposition of auspicious and terrible qualities in Durga is meant to show that she is really a portrait of the macrocosm. The universe is conceived as a living organism in the form of the goddess. In her auspicious forms she depicts the world as unceasingly fruitful, beautiful, and filled with the energy of the divine, which supports and nourishes. As the mother she dotes on her children and spoils them with all her bounties. As food she gives herself to be eaten by her children, and as sexual desire she prompts all creatures to take part in the universal dance of creation and procreation. She gives generously. She is life itself.

The Puranas describe nine different aspects for Durga, known collectively as the Navadurga. First and foremost, she is the goddess of inspiration, who gives us the impetus to start on the spiritual path. Second, she is the goddess who tells us to undertake studies from spiritual books, which will encourage us to continue on the path. Third, she is the goddess of spiritual practice, who motivates us to take up some sort of sadhana (spiritual discipline). Fourth, she is the goddess of inner refinement by which our mind is progressively cultured. Fifth, she is the goddess who takes us closer to the divine within us. Sixth is she who makes us completely pure. Seventh is the goddess who enables us to give up this delusion of duality. Eighth is the goddess who urges us to unite with the inner light, and ninth is the goddess who grants us liberation. The Navadurga are worshipped by all Hindus, though only the yogis know their esoteric significance. They represent the nine psychic forces that will lead us to our spiritual goal. At every moment on the spiritual path, one or the other is guiding us.

Durga’s association with food is one of her distinctive characteristics. She is that mysterious power that transforms apparently lifeless seeds into life-giving food when they are sowed. All types of fertility are apparent in her. She possesses the power to invigorate all beings and give them a new lease on life. All plants and creatures on this planet are identified with her, for she is the manifestation of the fertile power that resides in the earth and brings into life all creatures. She manifests as infinite organisms that in turn feed more complex organisms. She is also the sexual impulse that characterizes all created beings. She is manifest wherever sexual desire appears. Kama, the god of love, is her agent.

The biggest festival connected with this goddess is Durga Puja, sometimes known as Navaratri. It is celebrated during the first nine days of the bright half of the lunar month of Aswin, in what we know as October, which coincides with the autumn harvest in northern India. On the very first day a clay pot containing Ganga (Ganges) water, sheaves from the harvest, and some banana leaves is decorated and placed on the altar. This pot is identified with the pot of the nectar of immortality that the gods churned from the Sea of Nectar. This story of the churning of the Sea of Nectar is mentioned in almost all the Puranas. It took place at a time when the gods had lost their youth and vitality and Vishnu advised them to churn this sea to get the nectar, which would return their youthful vigor.

To one side of the altar some earth is kept in which are sowed the navadhanyas or the nine types of grain. As each type of grain is sowed, the priest chants, “Aum, you are rice [or wheat or barley, etc., for each of the nine grains], you are life, you are the life of the gods, you are our life, you are our internal life, you are long life, you give life. The sun with his rays gives you the milk of life and Varuna nourishes you with water.” This ritual denotes Durga’s power to induce plant fertility. By the tenth day these grains sprout and are distributed as prasada (leftovers from offerings to the gods). In some parts of India, especially Bengal, animal sacrifices are offered during this festival. The buffalo especially is killed to indicate Durga’s killing of the buffalo demon Mahisha.

But Durga is paradoxical. If she is life, she is also death, which is necessary to sustain life. If she gives life, she must also be nourished by life in the form of death. A gain in any part has to be compensated by a loss somewhere else. Just as there is no life without death, so also there is no gain without loss. Hence Durga is also shown to have many terrible manifestations. She reveals the inescapable truth of this world: that if life and nourishment are to continue, continuous slaughter and death must also continue. Food that sustains life can be procured only through death and carnage. Life and death constitute a continuous process of giving and getting, a process in which the energy of the goddess is continuously recycled.

Both beautiful and grotesque, maternal and martial, Durga can take terrifying forms that demand blood for nourishment and finally the very lives of all creatures. Her thirst for blood is established in various texts. The Mahanirvana Tantra, for example, describes her as drenched in blood, grinding up the world at the time of dissolution.

In the Devi Bhagavatam the gods ask Durga to show them her vishwarupa or universal form, just as Arjuna asked Krishna to show his universal form in the Bhagavad Gita. She agrees, and the gods are stunned to see her. She has thousands of heads, eyes, and feet; her entire body blazes with fierce, destructive flames and her teeth make horrible, grinding noises. Her eyes burn with flames brighter than a million suns, and the gods tremble as they see her consume the universe. They plead with her to resume her gentle aspect.

In the Devi Mahatmyam, she is said to quaff wine at intervals and roar and behave in a most atrocious manner. At the end of the episode she asks her devotees to worship her with their own flesh and blood.

All the negative qualities found in the world are found in Durga. Her greatness lies in the fact that she alone is qualified to destroy these qualities in us, because she possesses all these qualities within herself. She exemplifies the homeopathic principle of like destroying like, and for these reasons her worship has a great hold on society, even today. During the process of yoga, the human consciousness is lifted up from chakra to chakra, starting from the muladhara chakra at the base of the spine to the sahasrara chakra at the top of the skull. During this time it encounters inner demons ranging from immature emotions like jealousy, fear, greed, and lust up to more serious forms of derangement including paranoia and megalomania. Each weapon in Durga’s hands is meant to eradicate these negative emotions. The devotee can meditate on any of Durga’s weapons in order to clear these negative emotions. Her weapons in fact serve two purposes: they can combat negativity as well as instill positive traits of thought, like self-discipline, introspection, selfless service, prayer, devotion, clarity of vision, and a cheerful outlook.

Durga’s fierce aspects are meant to portray those dark qualities in the human being that thirst for violence and warfare. She is the personified wrath of the whole of humanity. When she apparently loses control over herself, she personifies the mob mentality, the thirst for violence, that ever lurks in the human heart: the prod that drives the rabble to kill, ravage, rampage, pillage, and destroy, that causes even the mildest of men to slaughter and kill and undertake bloodcurdling deeds. Durga depicts this part of the dark nature of the human being when she dances on corpses and drinks human blood. In these aspects she portrays the distilled, furious, savage power and lust of the frenzied warrior. Thus she shows how such a power, when left to itself, can prove to be a terrible threat to the world.

Durga is indeed the victorious force of the divine, and it is by her grace, passion, and speed that great achievements can be made. She is the warrior maiden who never shrinks from battle. In ancient India all kings invoked Durga for victory in battle. The Mahabharata states that when King Yudhistira set out to battle with the Kauravas, he remembered the promise made by the Divine Mother in the Devi Mahatmyam and praised her with the famous Durga Stotram (hymn to Durga) before proceeding for battle:

Twilight, night, light, sleep, moonlight, loveliness, patience, compassion.

When honored, you cause to perish the bondage of men,

Their delusion, death of sons, loss of wealth, sickness, death, and fear.

Fallen from my kingdom, I submissively take refuge in you,

Just as I have bowed my head to you, O Goddess! Queen of the gods!

Protect me, one of lotus-petal eyes! Truth! Be true to us,

Be a refuge for me, O Durga!

O refuge! O One who is fond of her devotees!

Durga answers,

Victory in battle will soon be yours,

Having by my grace conquered and slain the Kaurava army,

Having made your kingdom free from troubles,

You will again enjoy the earth,

Together with your brothers, O King,

You will obtain abundant favor,

And by my grace, happiness and health will be yours.

—MAHABHARATA

Thus ends the tenth chapter of Shakti, known as “Durga,” describing the form and function of the warrior goddess.

Aum Aim Hreem Kleem