visited *loading* times
Ever since my mother died, I have been grappling even more with issues of faith, about what happens to us after we die. I admire people who believe in something with absolute certainty, whether it’s reincarnation or heaven, or even a belief in unbelief—that this life is all there is. We are like plants, organic. When we die we go back to the earth and wind, and that’s all there is to immortality. I want to believe that there is life after death but I’ve never been able to get out of my mind enough to not analyze and worry a question until its mystery is reduced to an incoherent babble.
Bob believes he’s lived before. Even though he has blond hair and blue eyes, he claims his ancestors once lived in Mongolian territory. At a temple in
Maybe that’s what reincarnation is: the bit of DNA that’s carried through each generation. Who can guarantee that even the fairest person is not descended from a Mongolian warrior or a Mayan priestess. Who knows where the ancients traveled? Warriors. Slaves. The history of the world is the mixing of the gene pool. I’ve felt connected to no where and to everywhere. Maybe I have a bit of Gypsy blood in my veins. I love every place while I live the re, then when I leave, I carry it with me.
The search for faith brought me to .
One of my favorite places in downtown
The Mermaid Pond seems like it would be equally at home in front of a shopping mall in
The Shiva Altar, although flashy in its own right, feels less out of place. In fact, it has a subtle power. In an ornate canopy on top of a carved pillar decorated with bright scarves and garlands of flowers, Durga, with her eighteen arms, brandishing swords, torches and a conch shell, sits cross-legged with a tiger at her feet. Green plants grow prolifically around the base and full vases of flowers are set around the circumference. Large incense burners placed at each of the four directions are always full of burning sticks. Usually offerings of food are arranged around the platform. One time there were hundreds of serving-size bags of potato chips. There is no doubt this is a woman’s altar. Around the circle stand other goddesses. Two European Venus nudes hold aloft a golden globe. Two Hindu goddesses stand next to two regal elephants.
I like to watch the girls from the fabric shops and beauty salons come out and pay homage to this magnificent feminine shrine. There is a quiet grace to them as hey circle the altar and stop at each pot of incense. Bow three times. Pray. Stick the incense in the sand next to a hundred other sticks. Bow three times again. On some days there is also a small offering of incense and food at the base of the tree.
I want to pray at this shrine but I’ve yet to take the first step. If any faith does appeal to me it’s a ritual based on earth and nature, spirituality and creativity. It’s bowing to the elements and listening to wind and water, fire and rock.
Although is technically a communist country, it’s impossible to separate people from their need for the gods. Most people, especially the elders, follow some combination of Tao, Hindu and Buddha. But religion here is more individualized. Many homes have ancestor shrines. Generations of a single family may be buried just a few feet from a person’s front door. When your worship includes someone whose bones may be fertilizing your crops, religion becomes personal. Talking to ghosts doesn’t seem so far-fetched.
I can understand ancestor worship; the call of the ancestors has always been strong inside me. Sinew and cell, blood and bone, I do wonder what traits I’m carrying that might have come down generation after generation. Sometimes I wonder if in the deepest part of me is the memory of a woman who looked like me, who stood on the shores of some distant sea or in the midst of a primeval forest and looked out and the world and paused, for just a moment, at the wonder of it all.
Template by motime.com | header image credit: Markus Gann © www.begann.de