Happy Diwali

While wishing you all a Happy Diwali, I want to share with you a story I wrote last year to explain the holiday to my non-Indian friends …

Once upon a time, there was a great battle between the Gods and the Demons. The king of the demons had a boon that no man or god could kill him. So, Lord Shiva’s wife, Uma was bestowed with divine energy by the supreme trinity, and from this the Goddess Durga was born. Armed with weapons given to her by all the Gods, she went to war against the demons.

On the 9th day of the battle, Chanda and Munda came to fight the goddess. She turned blue with anger and goddess Kali leaped out of her third eye. Her form depicted the anger of Durga, with 3 red eyes, blood-filled tongue and dark blue skin. She was naked, except for a girdle of skulls around her waist.

Goddess Kali proceeded to tear the demons apart with her hands.

In battle, Kali assisted Durga in defeating Raktaija, a demon whose drops of blood produced new demons upon touching the ground. Kali sucked the blood from the demon’s body and threw the countless duplicate demons into her gaping mouth.

Finally, on the tenth day, goddess Durga killed the king of demons with her trident.

And intoxicated with all the blood she had drunk, Kali started dancing a savage dance that threatened to end the world. She danced through the mass of corpses, laughing hysterically.

Lord Shiva then lay down on Kali’s path to absorb the tremendous energy of her dance, and Kali, inadvertently stepped on her husband’s chest. She held out her tongue, looked down at the smiling Shiva, and stopped, ashamed.

In Bengal, where I come from, the worship of the goddess is a very important tradition. Both Durga and Kali are worshiped in the autumn. Diwali is in special praise of Kali.

So why do we worship this crazy woman?

Well, in the story, Kali fights and destroys the demons that are within us, the foremost of those being ego, pride, attachment. The reason she is naked is because in Hinduism, the body is considered an illusion, and our attachment to the body a hindrance on the path of spiritual progress. Our attachment to the concept of “I” “I am” “I do” is considered an illusion. The truth is that we are all part of the supreme spirit. Even the Gods are manifestations of this supreme spirit.

Therefore, I am God. You are God. This is the fundamental teaching of the Upanishads.