Ganesha’s Tusk

As many as are the aeons, so are the ways in which Ganesha's story is told.

      - Shiva Purana

How do you get a god to write down your stories?

   It is said, Lord Ganesha, that you agreed to take dictation from the sage Vyasa after he set his mind on you in deep meditation.
   Did you agree because you knew that what was coming was a thing of epic proportions? Or did you suppose it would be something short, a poem to pleasure a goddess floating in a lotus pool?
   Were you persuaded because the declared aim of the Mahabharata is to turn human minds away from war, to demoralize demons and soothe angry nagas? Or were you eager to binge on action movies, with the clash of armor, the delight of rounded dancing bodies, the tricks of war magicians?
    When we think of inspired writing, we picture the human with pen or laptop as the one with the tiring fingers and aching buttocks, and the god – or muse – as a refined being fluttering overhead, whispering lines.
    Here the situation is reversed. The human inspires, the god takes it down.
    There was a deal, and a deception.
    You made it your condition that Vyasa must never pause in his recitation. He must deliver the whole epic, verse by verse, all the way to the end. No room for hesitation or contemplation or even a snack or a pit stop.
    He agreed, but then he tricked you. He requested that you should only record his lines when you had grasped their meaning. Being a god, you thought this was a meaningless condition; how could you fail to understand the mouthings of a mortal?
     Vyasa was subtle. When he needed a break, he gave you verses so exquisitely complex and opaque that you had to stay your hand until you figured them out. Sometimes this required you to survey a hundred worlds in the knots of Indra’s net.
     So Vyasa never lost his thread.
     He went on so long that your tools were exhausted.. When the last feather pen snapped in your fist, he was still singing the doings of gods and demons, ascetic kings and lascivious maidens. You kept your side of the deal. You broke off a tusk to write down the last lines.
     So tell me, Ganesha. How do I call a god to write my story? Must I allow my hand to be your hand? Must I sacrifice something as precious as your ivory tusk to complete the work?
     I bring you sweet cakes and ripe fruits. They say your mother Parvati molded your body from sandalwood paste. I am dabbing sandalwood oil over my collarbones, and at my third eye. If I become you, Divine Scribe, then whose mind will dictate what I record with my hand?

Image: Bronze Ganesha holding his tusk in RM private collection

Dreaming in India ink

“Action is better than inaction” – Krishna to Arjuna.

I continue to be impressed by how dreams can call us to traditions and cultures of which we may have had little or no previous knowledge, from any obvious sources, yet may now prove to be part of our authentic path. One of my students, Maureen, described how she was guided deep into Indian philosophy by a fascinating series of dreams. The sequence began with a dream encounter with a charming Indian man who wanted to escort her on a trip.
     When Maureen asked for specific guidance on her spiritual path, she dreamed she was given two books, one a book for children, the other the Bhagavad Gita. She then joined her sisters – they all used to be champion gymnasts – and they performed in something as important as the Olympics. In company with her sisters, she discovered a “book” composed of five panels. Examined a certain way, the five panels revealed an unusual and highly significant map, drawn in “India ink”, that only she could see. She communicated the map to her sisters by singing its meaning.
      Now: the dreamer had never previously read the Gita. She did not know that it is a “song” (the title means “Song of the Lord” and it is traditionally sung in recitation). She knew next to nothing about Indian philosophy. She certainly did not know that the Greeks in the army of Alexander the Great who encountered yogis called them “gymnosophists” (a word related to “gymnasts” that means “naked philosophers") because these ascetics wore rather little clothing.
     Inspired by her dream, Maureen proceeded to read the Bhagavad Gita. She reported: “I feel as if I am holding a jewel in my hands with this book. I have never been to India, and have no close associations with it - but now it has really grabbed my attention. I feel I am being guided on a question I always wrestle with - how do we live a truly spiritual life in our earthly existence?”
      She felt the gymnasts in her dream had a dual meaning, related to that question. “The lesson I learned from my father about embracing gymnastics not to compete, but to give myself to the sport, to let it be an expression of me, was very liberating for me at the time, and life altering.” As she studied the Gita, she realized that the “five panels” that composed her dream map may relate to the five “immutable truths” and five “causes of action” that Krishna explains to Arjuna.

      She found the Karma Yoga (yoga of Action) in this work highly relevant to her need to make a balance between the practical necessities of life and a spiritual awakening. “Action is better than inaction,” Krishna admonishes Arjuna, on the field of battle. (But think not on the fruits of action...)
      Maureen’s experience is a rich example of how dreaming can guide us in keeping body and soul together as we try to marry a spiritual awakening to the requirements of ordinary life.
      Frjtof Capra dreamed that the subatomic world is Lord Śiva's dance.
      Now I recall that I once told reporters in a dream that I am writing a book inspired by the Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata - the immense cycle in which the Bhagavad Gita is the central jewel. That would be quite an assignment!

Photo of Krishna and Arjuna by RM

A mythic view of what drives men to war

Sometimes it so happens in this material world that great personalities, even great devotees, can also be controlled by the asuras.

- Srimad-Bhagavatam 7:4:14


Myth, it's been said, is what never happened but is going on all the time. In he collective dreams of humanity, an ancient myth may cast light on the forces at work behind the surface of events in our world. The great Hindu epic known as the Mahabharata, supposedly dictated by the seer Vyasa to the scribe Ganapati in the time when gods and humans were in daily communication, relates the actions of humans to forces at play in the larger reality. Its account of how a race of Asuras (demonic entities) instigated a war makes compelling and disturbing reading today.

A Danava Plan to Possess Human War Leaders

In Vedic literature, the Danavas are a race of Asuras engaged in constant warfare with the gods, and forever interfering in the affairs of humans. They are sometimes identified with pre-Aryan peoples of the subcontinent. In the Vedas, they defeat the gods and the gods turn to great rishis – celestial seers – to “burn” their armies and consign them to an underworld beneath the oceans.
    In the Mahabharata the account of the abduction of King Duryodhana reveals certain modes of inhuman interference in human conflicts. Duryodhana, mortified that he was freed from captivity (among the Gandharvas) by his mortal enemy Arjuna, has decided to fast until death. This does not suit the agenda of the Danavas, who want to foment war between rival dynasties.
    By chanting magic words (mantras) the Danavas manifest a demonic female, known as a Kriya. She is described as “a wondrous woman with a gaping mouth”. She goes to Duryodhana, enchants him, and then carries him to the netherworld by means of “mystical travel”, for which the Sanskrit terms are mano-java (in which the body is transferred by mental action, moving on “the wind of the mind”) and vihayasa, which involves the ability to move bodies or objects through matter.
    Among the Danavas, the king is informed that his birth and his unusual powers were arranged by them as part of their plan for the world. He can’t take himself out of the game, because it is their game. The Danavas explain that Duryodhana and his clan will triumph in the coming battle with the Pandus because their warriors will be possessed by demons and given demonic strength:

The other Asuras will take possession of Bhishma, Drona, Kripa and the others; and possessed by them they will fight your enemies ruthlessly. When they engage in battle, best of the Kurus, they will give no quarter to either sons or brothers, parents or relatives, students or kinsmen, the young or the old. 
    Pitiless, possessed by the Danavas, their inner souls overwhelmed, they will battle their relations and cast all love far off. Gleefully, their minds darkened, the tiger-like men, befuddled with ignorance by a fate set by the Ordainer, will say to one another that – ‘ you will not escape from me with your life! ‘ Standing firm in their manly might in the unleashing of manifold weapons, best of the Kurus, they will boastfully perpetrate a holocaust.’

- J.A.B. van Buitenen (trans) The Mahabharata Books 2 &3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975) p.692.

Duryodhana is now returned by Kriya to the place from which he was taken. After she leaves, he decides it was all a dream. He is left with the thought: “I shall vanquish the Pandus in battle.” The Danavas have instigated a war.

It would be comforting to dismiss this report as fantasy from demon-haunted primitives, but the transactions here do not seem remote from the recent history of warfare and terror.

Afterword: One people’s gods may be another people’s demons. The Danavas take their name from a feminine entity known as Danu. So do the Tuatha de Danaan, “The People of Danu”, in Ireland. Danu is the mother of demons in India, but in Ireland she is the great goddess

Graphic: Duryodhana ready for war