Thursday, March 17, 2016

Kirti Mukha....Understanding Life and its Paradoxes.

Paradox—example; One loves being in the public eye but also deeply values and protects one's privacy.

Since childhood, I have been visiting temples and offering my prayers to the deity. With some effort, one reaches sanctum santorum eager to have darshan of the presiding deity. As we close in we focus to our maximum on the deity offering prayers and sharing our 'requests' for a boon from the deity as we are 'limited' by our powers and capabilities in facing the challenge. We are seeking additional multiplying 'forces' as we are humans with limited capabilities. Imagine, that it took so much effort to just land on a small satellite 'moon' which is the only other place in this it is vast universe that a human could land. So difficult to understand existence of universe and our place/role in it. Getting back to sanctum sanctorum/garbha gudi - every god/goddess is covered with a 'thoranam'/ arch in every temple and in the middle of it right above the deity one will find a demonic face. I used to be taken back and worried looking at it and did not/could not understand why this evil looking face/object/guy is looking at you 'hungrily' when you are trying to focus on the God/Goddess to seek blessings for a better than yesterday life..!! Now after so many years I had the time and little understanding why this face Kirti Mukha' a nice name denoting Glory Face or face of glory is kept as arch/thoranam in every temple above deity but with frightening look. This is kept as a 'reflection'/mirror of human thought and reminds every devotee for a moment 'Every human desire feeds on the desiring human, relentlessly, continuously, forever'. The story of Kirti Mukha is - he is created by Lord Shiva to kill another demon/yaksha. After killing the demon, Kirti Mukha who was not called such till then turned to Shiva and asked him that his hunger is not satisfied and who next to kill and eat? Lord Shiva had no other in mind so he asked the created demon to eat himself. So the demon started eating himself until he is left with nothing else than his face(desire). Shiva was pleased that he carried out instructions to the hilt named him Kirti Mukha or face of glory and granted him the wish to be on arch of every God/Goddess as a reminder of the human desire eating life itself but sustaining..