Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 S E C O N D M O O N 06the ancient Mother Goddess religion of India. He was part of the oldorderthattheAryansoverturned:theybroughtwiththemgodsnotbornfrom Nature but subduing it. Yet the cycle always turns: as the Aryanssettled into the agrarian culture, warrior deities lost their relevance, andtheir images could no longer command. So it was easy for the Buddhato mock and dethrone them all, condemning the sacrifice of animals andworship based on mere superstition. Even more humiliating, he allowedthe Vedic gods a few walk-on parts in minor heavens of his cosmologyof samsara, the realms beings cycle through while ensnared by dukkha.For a determined Buddhist, the heavens—of which there are many—are merely a phase in the cycle and grant no final release. The old godsdied not from persecution but from ignominy. As part of the same movementaway from the gods, the earliest of great spiritual poems called theUpanishads were already being recited in the Buddha’s day. In a similarturning inward that placed the self-sacrifice of austerity above the sacrificeof animals, the Upanishads proclaimed a simple dualism betweena transcendent God (Brahman) and Soul (Atman). Devotion to God wasa primary means of attaining the bliss of transcendent unity; and byleaving the structure of family and caste undisturbed, such devotionwas acceptable to the orthodox. But the cycle turned again: devotionand ritual require gods with forms, and so the formless God acquiredmany. So gods returned, though they were essentially different from theold Vedic deities. Brahma, and more vigorously Shiva and Vishnu, aretranscendent and immanent: they are the creators of the cycle of existenceas well as manifesting in forms that participate in it. As such theyare aligned to that feminine power that gives birth, is sought after byits creations, consumes them, and gives birth again. Virgin, Madonna,and Dark Goddess. Shiva and Vishnu are male, though sinuous, forms,but their activities are characteristic channels for Goddess-energy.Vishnu is the recumbent dreamer from whose navel a lotus buds andopens to reveal Brahma, the creator of the universe. Brahma opens his eyeand a world system is born; he closes it and the world ends. A thousand of1 3 4