Imagine this scenario: a lone woman in a small tent in the
wilderness of Tanzania on a river’s edge with ‘twittering sounds of nightjars,
owls, baboons, and water’. Then she
hears the roaring of lions and smells one very near her tent. The lion
stretched his body against the tent pushing her into a tiny spot inside; the woman’s
left hand under his bulk! Trying to keep panic away, she falls asleep with her
unmoving hand in strange communion with the lion. She awakens to a bright sunlit day; wondering
if she dreamt it all, she walks outside and sees a lion’s tracks on the sand!
No, this is not a tale told by old folks while children
basked in the warmth of a hearth fire. My
eighty eight year old mother, who is an avid reader of world news, pointed out
this piece in the latest issue of the National
Geographic. You can read Amy
Dickman, a wildlife biologist’s account of her encounter there or hear her
speak at their website. As I imagined Amy and the lion in the darkening night,
I thought of the expression ‘witching hour.’ There was a time in Europe when
women seen alone after midnight could be accused of witchcraft and hence the term.
These days witching hour also refers to all kinds of stuff, including some Stock
market events, nefarious or not.
I visualize Amy and the lion asleep in that bewitching space
beyond time, and I marvel about a new generation of women that have come to
redefine some of our notions about gender.
European and American women have also come a long way since the days of
witch burnings, thanks to courageous women who refused to be defined one way or
the other by their culture. Or have such
women always existed, just not in the public space within the purview of the
media or curious onlookers? Courage is usually defined as a masculine virtue; I
wonder what name we can give to this woman’s strength and her meditative sleep
beyond the fear of horrific death. I also evoke another pioneering primatologist
in Tanzania, Jane Goodall and her meditative observation of our closest ancestors
that changed forever some of our notions regarding animals. Such calm, such
fearlessness, and such acute powers of the mind -Is that a manifestation of that
force, energy, and power, lovers of the Mother Principle call Shakti? A power
that does not dominate others; it helps gain power over oneself. My mother
thought of Amy as a lion riding Durga.
While gods and goddesses may manifest aspects of our human
and non-human propensities, in India we also have a long tradition of yogis and
yoginis who defy conventional wisdom and break the borders of normalcy to find
the mystery of interiority that aligns their inner and outer worlds. We have innumerable stories about such practitioners
of yoga communing with animals and nature, recognizing harmony and unity
consciousness. While our wildlife biologist may or may not like to be equated
with such a nomenclature as a yogini, the figure of such a fearless woman reminds
me of the monumental Chola yogini goddess sculptures I recently saw at Arthur Sackler
museum in DC in an exhibition called “Yoga: The Art of Transformation.” See
video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gM8z8yNofw&feature=youtu.be.
The exhibition was a visual feast as we could see an
extraordinary array of yogis and yoginis with all the fanfare and artistic
presentation a powerful museum can muster. Although most of the exhibit was dedicated to
male adepts and their exotic tales, there was enough information about women
and their yogic practices. The show also refers to India’s now mostly extinct temples
dedicated to 64 yoginis and their legendary prowess. Given that yoga as a discipline is wildly
multidimensional that includes physical, mental and spiritual exercises leading
to possible transformation of the human self, it is good to remember that
yoginis and dakinis, or sky dancers as they are known within Vajrayana Buddhist
circles, were real women. They wielded extraordinary powers to heal, to
enlighten and perhaps in some cases to harm.
Khepababa, an Indian Vajrayana master and my guru, poetically calls potential
dakinis, ‘Kalpita or she the dream!’ Such women with tremendous psycho-spiritual
power are capable of “attaining the immovability of mind.”
Although recent events in India could lead to despair, women
and their spiritual power have always been acknowledged in old India. There is
no known history of a large scale witch
hunt there and yet enough tales about ‘dainis’
(perhaps a distortion of the word dakini) are there in the folk mind to create a
fearful figure of a witch. Fortunately yoginis and women saints abound whether
in the public space or not. In this
connection I want to point to another museum event, this time in New Delhi. A
recent return of a stolen yogini statue led to an interesting symposium there. While benighted men and their exploits remain
on the spotlight in the Indian media, a quiet revolution has been taking place
as relative prosperity is allowing women to reclaim their Shakta heritage. You
can see this short video where my friend Madhu Khanna and others speak of the
yoginis - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCt6KKB3-nU
Since we are invoking powerful women and the witching hour,
I must speak of the barrage of new movies that focus on witches. Thanks to a
young 8 year old niece of mine, I have been watching kids’ movies and have been
struck by the implications of these films about wizardry and witches! I just
saw one called Frozen. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the visual
extravaganza in the film, I could not help noticing once again the trouble with
women and power. It seems the unconscious
American public mind cannot equate women and power in any good way. If the woman has power, she is too weak to
control it or she is evil! Something about women and power scares people,
including some women because the transformation inherent in the way of the yogini
undermines societal expectations.
It is perhaps no accident that so many recent films evoke
the power mongering witch. I remember seeing Oz the Powerful where women characters are split into good and
powerless and powerful and wicked, a classic depiction! These women always need the man to rescue them
from themselves. Traditional fairy tale’s imprisoned princess in the castle that
the hero must free represented psychological growth in the adolescent male. The
young man must unlock the mystery of interiority within him and integrate the feminine
into his psyche to be fully human, and be able to commune with an adult
woman. That meaning is often obscured in
public representations. Similar
psychological events take place in the meditative yogic mind.
Today we are at a crossroad of new representations where
return of the yogini is accompanied with the fear of the powerful witch! Yet
there are new messages and feminist twists in these films. Frozen does focus on women and it is a sister’s love that
eventually melts the ice maiden’s heart; the film also cautions against hasty
delusory infatuation with a charmer.
There is a play with ‘ice–olation’ and a critique of cold hearted power
that isolates. The film ends in the happy Disney way, with kids and parents
clapping in the movie theater.
To return to our wildlife biologist and her saga with the
lion, I can surely say, she gives a whole new meaning to the word ‘Sleeping Beauty.’
It is also heartening to imagine that the new generations of young girls have
innumerable role models. Witching hour
or not, hopefully some of them will aspire to be yoginis by quietening their
minds in perfect yogic repose beyond all fear and trembling.
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