Once upon a time, two young sisters were keenly observing
a bug in Sunamganj, a small town in Sylhet. That critter was called kumari
poka, virgin bug! They both watch the bug build a mud house. They see her fly
away over and over again and come back with tiny bits of soft clay. The older
sister, more adventurous and curious, prompts the younger and they follow the
critter. They see her collect the clay
from the small moist pile emitted by an earth worm. They witness the recycling
world of Nature. Both girls pleased to solve the mystery run away to play. India
was undivided then, and what is now Bangladesh, was still my mother’s home; older
sister of this drama, my mashi, and the younger, my mom, who recalls the event
with great delight.
In my backyard as I followed our aged and ailing cat
Kivi’s rhythms, of going inside and outside, of life to death, I witnessed an
entire universe of critters creating the most magnificent sensuous drama. I saw a little black snake with golden
stripes look at me with great intensity. It shows itself suddenly as I walk bare
feet on soft green grass, ruminating. I see it entwined near the water spout
for the garden hose or slithering away alongside my flower patch or basking on
a stone, reminding me of James Hillman’s black serpent. My son assures me, it
is harmless, garter or gardener’s snake, although Wiki says it does have some
venom. Thinking about serpent energy, I would sit on my stone seat, and Kivi
would come, smell and caress the grass, touch the cool earth with her paws. She
would then find a hiding spot in the woods and vanish for hours.
Suddenly a woodchuck passes as I watch from my
kitchen. I see a bird pick a bug and feed another bird, same size as her, not
her baby. Yellow, brown, blue, black,
red birds with magnificent designer feathers chirp away as they pick seeds from
our feeder. Hawks, eagles circle above as I lie looking at the blue dappled sky.
Our resident rabbit is happy hopping near our backyard hut. I recall a set of
massive turkey vultures show up once, making a lot of noise that attracted my
attention to their feathery display. Even a fox like creature had visited that
patch of land.
Our cottonwood tree fills the yard with white soft
materials, waiting to be woven into the beauty of existence. I marvel how little
I, a bookworm since childhood, know of the world of animals, birds, bugs, their
profound bond with each other and the most delightful cosmos. They know in
their bones the beauty, grace and rhythm of the Great Mother’s universe. Nature,
a PBS TV program, can produce both delight and despair as you see the vanishing
world of our magnificent animal species. But recently I saw a show called "India’s
Wandering Lions" that provided comfort. How amazing to see people and lions in
Gujrat hang around each other without any animosity and in apparent cooperation
to survive!
Lions remind me of Sekhmet, a deity similar to and
coextensive with Bastet. I have seen magnificent sculptures of Sekhmet in
museums but Bastet has been very real in our cats. A Durga and Kali loving woman like me finds
fierce animals most enchanting. Old
cultures have a deeply sacred connection with the animal world, but Bastet with
her relationship with fragrant alabaster jars intrigues me. I smooth the grey
fur of Kivi as she licks her muddy paws from wandering into the stream between
the trees, and I wonder about ancient Egypt and their feline goddesses.
Worshipped at least since the 3rd
millennium BCE, Bastet has many names and forms. A protector goddess, she is the milder form of
Sekhmet. One form, of course, is that of a woman with a cat’s head, the goddess of joy, dance, family and love. Herodotus gives a
detailed description of the festivals held in the city of her other name,
Bubastis whom the Greek historian connects with his own Artemis, the goddess of animals and vegetation.
But why is this cat goddess associated with an ointment/alabaster
jar? I thought that image appears in a Biblical tale and is connected with the
figure of, until recently rather maligned, Mary, the Magdalene. Most deities
have an external manifestation as well as an internal meaning only available to
the initiate. I suspect a continuum of the Egyptian mysteries with mystical
Judaism and esoteric Christianity where Magdalene is a supreme figure. The
cosmic form of Sekhmet-Bas-Ra represents an all-encompassing divinity within
the Anunian Theurgy according to Mutata Ashby, the author of The Kemetic Tree of Life: Ancient Egyptian Metaphysics
and Cosmology for Higher Consciousness.
The serpent on Sekhmet’s head is a reminder of
transformation of consciousness. Human, animal, divine synergy is present in
all cultures that teach that transformation. Legend has it that Kanthak, the
horse that led Siddhartha into the starkness of reality away from the pleasure
dome of his father’s palace, died of a broken heart when Gautama left to seek
the roots of suffering. Epona is a horse
goddess in the Celtic world who leads the souls in their afterlife. Our Kivi revealed the mystery of life and
death in ways that no book ever could. Her green eyes had sparkled with
profound tenderness as she would curl up against me and would remind me of the
gentleness of Green Tara.
When we had to put Kivi to rest, a howling emptiness
filled our hearts and those woods. Her sister Kimmy bid her farewell; our
heartbreaking silence might have communicated the end time. Her green eyes had
turned to stone in death; her body like soft clay. Her ashes will return to the
stream and be recycled by the Virgin Mother. The Buddha who knew the starkness
of reality tells Subhuti in the Diamond Sutra that what is known as the highest
teachings are not the highest. “All composed things are like a dream, a
phantom, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.” What does this diamond truth,
the Vajra realization mean? One must drop all intellectual posturing for the
emptiness of the Vajra to work its way into the hardened skull that is under
its intellectual ego.
Mud houses of our lives are just a flash of lightening,
an ephemeral, fragile and most gorgeous show. It is the Great Mother’s Maya,
the lila that fills us with the intensity of joys and sorrows. Kivi showed us that
one can’t be a detached witness but participate in the pulsating rhythm that is
life that includes birth and death. Moisture descended upon us like the tears
of Kuan Yin after weeks of dryness. Soft rain falls soundlessly, a delicate
aroma permeates the air, and wind is chiming its song across the newly leafy
trees of young East Coast summer. Mystery of death unfolded in great intensity
and Kali, my pregnant nothingness, had received our Kivi back in her womb.
