Kavaca

Kavaca means rakśákavaca [safeguard, or an amulet used as a safeguard]; everyone knows this. For the people of the Burdwan river-basin, the Damodar Dam is also a kavaca.

It was the month of Jyaeśt́ha. At that time Burdwan District was as hot a district as it is now. The lu(3) winds were blowing from the west were blocked to some extent by the Durgápur jungle. Still, it must be said that Burdwan, this crown jewel of Rarh, is hotter than other places in Bengal.

Midnight was upon me. It was as if the Mahákaola [the great spiritual master] was saying: “The midnight of your life has come. Throw off the earthly bondages and come out. It is not the new moon night but the full moon night. The darkest, subtlest particles of the new moon night can be transformed into particles of moonlight. Cannot the new moon night of one’s life take the form of the full moon? That terrible shadow of time that has trampled the human soul for so long, sometimes frowning outwardly, sometimes merged deep in the third eye of ignorance, making the human being stumble on their path – is it eternal?” Truly, the Mahákaola was calling me.

I went out alone and found myself in the middle of the forest. To the south was the Damodar River and to the east was the Deviidaha. At that time this part of Burdwan District was vast marshland. Whatever it be – pond, lake, marsh – the Deviidaha doesn’t have any comparison. The prehistoric Gáunguŕa or Behula River was a lost tributary of the Damodar River. The Behula of legend took the dead body of the imaginary Lakhindar on her lap, climbed on a raft and floated down this Gáunguŕa towards heaven. This Behula River has turned into the Deviidaha of today.

I walked slowly and came to the edge of the Deviidaha. The Deviidaha that we are talking about was partially destroyed in the Damodar flood of 1913. It was swallowed anew by the Damodar during the time of the Second World War. The time that I am talking about was shortly before the Second World War.

………..

I went and sat under a huge silk-cotton tree on the western bank of the Deviidaha. Behind me stretched a vast, dense jungle. This jungle stretched up to my village in one direction, and to the Damodar River in the other. It would not do it justice to simply call it a jungle – it was a dense jungle. There were large snakes in this jungle, not large but medium-sized tigers, wild boars and the niilgái and krśńasár varieties of antelope. The roaring of tigers could be heard at night from the courtyard of my house.

I was sitting on the western bank of the Deviidaha, a short ways from the village of Pátun, the village of Maharshi Patanjali, the propounder of Seshvara Sáḿkhya philosophy. Patanjali had not been satisfied with the Sáḿkhya philosophy of Kapil. Kapil didn’t say anything clearly one way or the other about Parama Puruśa though he accepted His existence. Patanjali openly acknowledged His existence.

I sat and thought for a while about Patanjali. On the other side of the Deviidaha I saw six or seven wild boars drinking water. A short distance from me there was a large crocodile, half in and half out of the water; he seemed to be staring in some direction.

I was alone and solitary. I didn’t see any other living creatures in the vicinity, nor did I hear any tiger roars. A short distance away ran the ruined remains of the Badshahi road, the same road that Pathan Badshah Shershah made at the beginning of the Mughal era, with only a few skeletal traces left to identify it. Burdwan was then the capital of the province of Bengal. This Badshahi road used to connect Burdwan to Dehli in one direction, and in the other direction it connected to the principal port of the time, Saptagrám or Sátgáon, to which the Portuguese gave the name Port-de-Grandee – it extended south along the Bhagirathi till Shyampur and on the other bank it used to go via Jessore to Dhaka District’s Suvarnagram (Sońárgáno). At that time Hooghly was part of Burdwan District.

How busy this Badshahi road used to be! Gazing in the direction of the road, I thought back to how many horse-carts used to travel along it at one time, how many marriage processions, how many richly ornamented newly-married brides, how many funeral bearers – the finality of the human being’s existence is reduced to ashes and those ashes used to be left to float in the waters of the Bhagarathi. Today that Badshahi road is abandoned; some can recognize it if they see it, and some cannot.

This is the Burdwan District about which Maharaj Vikramaditya had said: “Burdwan District is my desire, without which the learned society will never be established in my kingdom.”

I was sitting alone on the western bank of the Deviidaha. Silently I started reciting to myself:

Kál-sáyarer váluká-beláy base base pal guńi

mane bhávi yadi cetaná-viińáy tava kathá kichu shuni.

Dúr theke ese dúre bhese jáy se viińár tár ańuke nácáy

se maháchande paramánande kalpaná-jál buni.

Kivá áse jáy yadi ekvár palake dánŕáo sumukhe ámár

máni náhi kona sádhaná ámár d́aki bháve anurańi.

[In the childhood of the sea of time I am sitting counting the moments/I wonder if I might hear something of you on the lyre of consciousness/From the distance it comes, into the distance it floats, that lyre making the particles dance/ in that universal rhythm, in that supreme bliss I weave the net of imagination/ what would happen if once you would stand in front of me for a moment/I know I haven’t accomplished anything, but I call anyhow hoping the echoes bring you]

I looked up. It was a moonlit night. I couldn’t see the stars. They had become lost in the light of the moon. The lesser light becomes lost in the greater light. The light of the firefly becomes lost in the light of the hurricane lantern. The light of the hurricane lantern becomes lost in the light of the hyáják; the light of the hyáják becomes lost in the light of the sun.

Na tatra súryo bháti na chandratárakamaḿ

Nemá vidyuto bhánti kuto’ayamagnih

Tameva bhántamanubháti sarvaḿ

Tasya bhásá sarvamidaḿ vibháti

The awareness of Burdwan becomes lost in Rarh-awareness, Rarh-awareness becomes lost in Bengal-awareness, Bengal-awareness becomes lost in universal awareness, universal awareness becomes lost in your footsteps, the unknown eternal traveller.

Who was this person who had come and was standing before me? I looked at him and he looked at me. He said: “What is this, you haven’t asked me to sit down?”

“Tell me, how could I know that you had come here to see me?” I replied.

“Because you called me.”

“What! I didn’t call you.”

“You called. You’ve just forgotten.”

“It may be,” I replied, “that you called me and the force of your own call has made you rush here. You haven’t understood that I am not replying to your call; you are replying to my call.”

“You are right. That may very well be.”

“Who are you?” I asked. “Where do you live?”

“If my name is tvaḿ [‘you’ in Sanskrit] to me,” he said, “then to you my name is ahaḿ (‘I’), and in the same way if your name is tvaḿ for you, then for me your name is ahaḿ.”

“But you didn’t tell me where you live.”

“Just think about it for a moment,” he replied, “and see whether or not I live in a corner of your mind.”

“You are quite right. Your home is inside my mind. But then tell me where my home is,” I asked.

He smiled softly and said: “In every part of my mind.”

I looked at him and saw that he was exactly the same age as me. Not one bit less nor one bit more – the same clothes, the same inner vibration.

“I don’t know much mathematics,” I said. “Could you tell me how far away I am from you?”

“It will have to be measured,” he replied.

“But I don’t know math,” I said, “so I have no way to measure.”

Then I said: “When I forget you then the distance between us is so great that it cannot be measured how many miles it is, and when I remember then the distance becomes so small that it cannot be conceived of. Then you and I merge and become one. ‘I’-‘you’ become one, and these two are one, one and indivisible.”

There were small, gentle waves in the water of the Deviidaha. The pandits call these waves kamala. The lotus flowers [kamala] that bloom so beautifully on the surface of the Deviidaha float on these waves.

Burdwan’s safeguard [rakśákavaca] is not the Damodar’s Ring Dam. It is not humanity’s safeguard. Humanity’s safeguard is its inner firmness. This firmness has saved it from all the storms and will continue to do so as long as the fountain of time remains.

Suddenly he became invisible. Where did he go?

This lotus bower in the Deviidaha, this vast, tiger-ruled forest, those crystal-clear waters of the Damodar, that big field of watermelon and gomukha – where had he disappeared to, behind what screen was he hiding? Was he hiding inside me? Was he hiding within my mind, wishing to play hide-and-seek with me?

I looked inside my mind and said: “Where and when will you come again?”

“I am always with you,” he replied. “I don’t come or go. I am not invited or abandoned. I do not spin on the potter’s wheel, nor am I broken beneath the blacksmith’s hammer. I was, am, and always will be.”

The moon slowly passed behind a sliver of cloud. A kind of soft shadow fell over the moonlight. The water of the Deviidaha became a little blackish.

The summer nights are not long. I guessed that shortly after the silvery moon came out from behind the black cloud the ruddy glow of dawn would begin to bloom east of the Deviidaha… it would begin to bloom.

from Shabda Cayaniká Part 3