The basics - of life and of Kali

            There’s no better way to introduce Kali, the Hindu goddess, than by starting directly with the introduction from her story In Myth and Knowing, by Scott Leonard and Michael McClure. The story starts on p. 158, “Kali, the terrible goddess, roams the Indian plains. She can be seen both in the north and in the south, and at the same time in holy places and in the market squares. Women shudder as she passes; the young men, nostrils quivering, come out onto the thresholds, and even the little crying children know her name. Black Kali is beautiful and horrible.” Her introduction is so dark, yet there’s an air of lightness about it. The myth specifically states that she is, in fact, beautiful. This complicated turn, from someone so “terrible” introduces us to the idea that there is something more to Kali. She is not only evil, but there’s something beautiful about her, something we could probably learn from.

            The way she became the goddess “She Who is Black”, the name from Britannica.com, is by becoming the prey of other, jealous gods.  She was, before her darkness, described as the, “lotus flower of perfection, reigned in Indra’s heaven as in the depths of a sapphire; the diamonds of dawn glittered in her eyes, and the universe contracted or expanded in turn with the beatings of her heart.” (Leonard Mcclure 159). Jealous gods followed her, her head became struck off by lightning, and fell into hell. The jealous gods followed her head, and attached it to the body of a prostitute – thus creating Kali, the dark goddess who roams the earth. She is often depicted as having 

                  Subhamoy Das, on his blog on about.com, shares a great description of the symbolism of her dark appearance.  Her black complexion symbolizes her all-embracing and transcendental nature. Says the Mahanirvana Tantra: "Just as all colors disappear in black, so all names and forms disappear in her". Her nudity is primeval, fundamental, and transparent like Nature — the earth, sea, and sky. Kali is free from the illusory covering, for she is beyond the all maya or "false consciousness." Kali's garland of fifty human heads that stands for the fifty letters in the Sanskrit alphabet, symbolizes infinite knowledge.

Her girdle of severed human hands signifies work and liberation from the cycle of karma. Her white teeth show her inner purity, and her red lolling tongue indicates her omnivorous nature — "her indiscriminate enjoyment of all the world's 'flavors'." Her sword is the destroyer of false consciousness and the eight bonds that bind us.

Her three eyes represent past, present, and future, — the three modes of time — an attribute that lies in the very name Kali ('Kala' in Sanskrit means time). The eminent translator of Tantrik texts, Sir John Woodroffe in Garland of Letters, writes, "Kali is so called because 

            One of the variations of Kali’s stories ends with her meeting a wizened old man who tells her, “Desire has taught you the emptiness of desire; regret has shown you the uselessness of regret. Be patient, error of which we are all a part, Imperfect Creature, thanks to whom perfection becomes aware of itself, O lust which is not necessarily immortal…” (Leonard McClure 160-161) The reason why this is so important, to my blog in particular, is that it encompasses the idea that beauty is within us. Originally, Kali was beautiful, but she could not see it, thus making her beauty, in a sense, less so. Where now, she’s ugly, but the wise man can see something else inside her, something beautiful, something that “has no shape”.

            Often times we tend to have desires, we tend to spend a lot of time in regret, all of these things, as stated by the wise man, are useless to us and only provide emptiness. The perfection itself is within the process, the part that causes us to grow into the realization of ourselves – the realization of the perfection of imperfection.

-PLEASE, comment, ideas, further musings, anything!-