Ananda Ma Durga Devi

Anand Durga Devi Jagatambe Jai Ma, Jai Jai Ma, Kali Kali Ma, Jai Jai Ma.

Blissful Goddess Durga, Birther of all that Changes, Victory to you. Victory to Kali, the fiercest of all your forms, Victory to the divine mother.

***Trigger warning: there is brief reference to the many forms of suffering humans inflict upon each other and the world in this text and the recording. If you are feeling sensitive and don’t want to delve into what’s under the darkness of humanity, this one may not be for you***

You can listen to musings which this writing is based on here:

Kali is the crone aspect of the goddess. The crone archetype in my understanding is quite uncompromising. fierce, transformational, devouring. powerful beyond measure. The aspect of the divine that does not give a single f**k about my attachments to anything.

Kali is an incarnation of Durga. And Durga is there. kind of top of the goddess tree and conventional Hindu mythology. And she incarnates herself into many beings. The main three being Saraswati, the goddess of literature and inspiration. Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, of all kinds, not just monetary wealth. Kali. And the story is that a demon, an extremely powerful, demon (Raktabija – lit. blood seed) is just wreaking havoc with the creation.

Ananda means blissful, and ma means mother, so mother of bliss. Sanskrit has many layers of meaning. Jagat is a name for the universe for creation. It literally means that which changes, in the studies that I’ve done. So anything which changes; jagat, and ambe; birther, or mother of. So this blissful mother, this mother of bliss, goddess Durga, who has birthed everything that changes: the wren and the jay and the tree and the huma, everything: Jai ma, victory to you, blissful mother.

So, this blissful mother is looking down on her creation, or I don’t that’s quite right: I don’t think she is looking down. She’s feeling her creation. She is her creation. And there’s this demon creature, this demon being who is just full of hate. He is full of hate. He is desire and greed and jealousy: all attachments embodied. And he just wants to destroy everything and is very good at it. The devouring power of addictive desires and attachments unhindered leaves a great wreckage before it. Shri Shri Anandamuri, said ‘There is in the living being a thirst for limitlessness”, and Raktabija – this demon – is seeking to fulfil this limitless hunger by devouring the creation. A very destructive way to get needs met.

We see examples of this story alive and well in the play of humanity today. When a school or hospital is bombed, or when rape is used as a weapon of war, this is the demon of destructive hatred, the demon of attachment to ideas of power, endless growth and immortality. And she feels, she feels this going on in her own body. She has birthed this changing universe. And it is a  nice mystery a nice paradox. And all of the divine beings have gone out to fight hatred and desire, to slay raktabija, to kill hatred. There’s this huge divine battle going on, as some of you may have experienced happening within your own inner world.

Now, some of these devas and devis (gods and goddesses) manage to cut hatred’s head off. But the problem with this demon of hatred is there’s a particular magic, dark magic connected with this asura, which is every time a drop of his blood touches the earth, it springs up again into another form. into another version of itself. And so the demon of attachment reproduces itself through this violence. We see that as well, right? The endless cycle of atrocity and grief and hatred and revenge. where grief has not been fully grieved. So what to do?

Goddess Durga is looking down on the battlefield, which is littered with a slain corpses of divine warriors, people who have fallen at the hands of this demon. Divine entities that have given their lives to try and push back to slay hatred, and they have failed. The attachments have sprung up again all around them and destroyed them. So Durga has to dig deep within her being and incarnate herself as the great Crone Kali.

Kali is terrifying to behold. Around her neck she wears a necklace of skulls in artworks of her, and they are the skulls of all of the demons she has slain. And she has this solution to this problem of the blood touching the ground, and turning into a new version of this demon, which is that she drinks its blood. She drinks the blood of hatred, so fierce is this form of love. That she can devour the life force of hatred and attachment and remain unchanged. She is unrelenting love that will not take no for an answer.

 This aspect of the divine, for me, when we’re singing this song, especially when the place we are singing with is full of people with open voices it just feels to me like there’s a portal. There’s like an open portal into the black, dark, pitch mouth of the goddess into which I can pour anything. The shame and the longing and the hatred and the confusion, all my attachments, the lostness and all of the painful emotions that come with being in a human body, all of it. I can pour into her mouth and she will devour it, it will be her food. That for me is what this mantra is about, about letting attachments be devoured by the divine. It’s about opening up and allowing the bliss of the divine live freely through this form, and marvel at the miracle of each moment.

Worth saying, this isn’t the end of the story (is it ever?). Kali becomes so fierce on the battlefield she herself becomes a problem: destroying even that which is not attachment and hatred, destroying things that aren’t demonic. And it is Shiva who stops her by surrendering at her feet. She tramples him, who is her consort, and it is her grief at trampling him that brings her, and the whole cosmos, to peace.

Such wisdom in the ancient tales!

Love, n nothing but,

Deva