Random Meditations Through Her 1000 Names: IX

Read part eight here.

Krodhakarankushojjvala – She who shines with the elephant hook that is both wrath and knowledge of entities.

Krodha is wrath. When an object provides one with pain instead of pleasure, then frustration develops. This leads to both anger and aversion about that object, which is dvesaḥ. Krodha is thus intimately associated with dvesaḥ. Patanjali points out that dvesah stems from the memory of pain. Both dvesaḥ and ragah are thus grounded in memory, including karmic memories. These memories are like pebbles in the lake of chitta.

The most beautiful part of this name comes from the word akara. The literal meaning of the word akara means the ‘shape of’ or ‘form’. Here, akara means the knowledge of the entities perceived as external to the self or 'the other'. It does not matter whether, as the Vijnanavada Buddhists claim, the akara-knowledge is not in the external object but in the consciousness, or, as the nyaya-mimamsa school claims, that it is the property of the external object. Regardless of that debate, the knowledge of the object perceived as external to the self always helps in controlling, reducing and eliminating the anger and aversion towards an object.

For example, snakes and spiders are considered as creatures of aversion in some cultures. Their nursery rhymes speak of spiders scaring little children or snakes as agents of evil. However, when we understand the same animals in their ecological context then they we start understanding their value. It helps us to both, keep safe from any adverse interaction with the animals while harboring no hatred for them, and also for having respect for them as living beings. Often aversion and anger towards other forms of living beings evolve into xenophobic tendencies of aversion and anger towards human beings who do not belong to our own race or culture or belief. That Hindus have been fairly free of this negative tendency can be attributed to the civilisational internalising of this insight that the akara-knowledge controls and subdues the wrath against that entity.

An important observation that many academic and media observers of Hindutva miss is the way the so-called ‘other’ is constructed or deconstructed in the Hindutva discourse. For example, great Muslims like Ibrahim Ras Khan, Dara Shukoh, Ashfaquallah Khan, Hamid Dalwai, Bismillah Khan and Dr APJ Abdul Kalam are venerated in Hindutva circles. They are projected not as just role models of Muslims but all Indians. While the expansionism and violent proselytising of the Islamist forces creates anger, the Hindutva movement simultaneously comes up with a description of the way Indic-Islam has evolved, providing a holistic picture, which in turn removes the generic wrath that is the cause of human misery.

One can contrast this with the tendencies of political movements like Nazism, evangelical crusades, Islamism, Marxism (through Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Che etc.), homophobia, anti-Semitism, Dravidian racism etc. These movement and ideologies have created immense human tragedies in history and continue to ferment hatred by creating anger against the enemy and dehumanising the enemy. All these movements of hate and wrath arise from the lack of knowledge about the entities they hate. In fact, they capitalise on the lack of knowledge about the people they hate.

So the ankusha of the Goddess is the combination of both krodha and akara. Ankusha is the elephant hook. It is used to control the elephant. India is perhaps the only civilisation in the world that has domesticated a huge animal like the elephant. During the colonial spread of Christendom, almost every huge animal that the colonialists encountered became either extinct or endangered. The greed for ivory and the international market created for it made the elephants also an endangered species. Though Hindu civilisation has used elephants as animals of labour, proud-procession animals carrying their deities and also in war, they never became endangered or extinct. In fact, Hindu culture has evolved a unique mahout-elephant ecosystem which enshrines in it beautiful anecdotes of loving relationship between the elephant and the mahout. That both, improper temple management and shallow animal welfare activists like that of PETA are endangering this system is a sad story. Ankusha plays an important role in this elephant-human ecosystem that Hindu culture evolved.

Dharmic religions have long likened the movements of the mind to that of an elephant. In Vedantic texts as well as in Buddhist scriptures, the mind has been likened to elephant. Nadabindu Upanishad says that nada serves as ankusha ‘to control the maddened elephant – chitta roving in the pleasure-garden of the sensual objects.’ Mukṭikopanishaḍ warns against attempts to conquer the elephant of the mind through force or idleness. Written as a conversation between Hanuman and Shri Rama, this minor Upanishad explains the elephant-mahout metaphor of the mind with an extraordinary clarity:

Adi Shankara (7th century CE) in Shivananda Lahari likens the mind to an elephant. The Sikh holy book Shri Guru Granth Sahib likens the mind to the elephant, the Guru to the mahout, and prana, the life force, to ankusha . Guru through prana controls the elephant-movement of the mind.

The elephant and the mahout for the mind and its control is now emerging as a metaphor in the Western psychology as well. Social psychologist compares the metaphor with the recent neurological findings. He explains:

One can note that both in the spiritual literature of India and in the works of the social psychologist suggested above, elephant taming is through the use of conscious activities - language centre or nada principle or the conscious handling of prana etc.

So, when the constrained deluded self becomes a rogue elephant with its negativities, the ankusha of the Goddess controls and subdues it. At another level, when the mind develops anger and aversion towards those perceived as ‘others’, then through the light of knowledge, the aversion and anger are controlled and transformed. The ninth name shortens all these concepts in a nutshell, allowing us to meditate over it and explore its vastness.

From Her ankusha comes the chieftain-goddess of the elephants, Sampatkari. Varadaraja (15th century CE) in his commentary on Shiva Sutras (1-19), states that turiya - the fourth dimension or state of consciousness comes to one who realises that the 'objects of sense are one's own mental ideas'. This state of union is called Sampatkari. She is considered as the blissful state of mind free of ignorance (R. Ananthakrishna Sastry).

When one looks at the shape of the ankusha, one cannot but associate it with another symbol of Goddess spiritual traditions from around the world. It is the ankh. The ankh and sacred knot seem related in ancient Goddess religions. Ankh is held by Egyptian Goddess Ma'at. In ancient religion, Ma'at the Goddess was actually harmony, order, truth and law. In this, She is similar to the Vedic Rta. Goddess Isis also holds ankh and an ankh-like knot. The double-axe, another Goddess symbol of the ancient Western world had also merged with the ankh. In the popular representations of Sri Lalitha with four hands, one can see the axe being integrated with the ankusha. Is this suggestive of an ancient connection? Of course, in the case of Ankh it is double axe while it is single axe - parasu, in the case of Indian iconography. Once again, one needs to point out that a sacred image of the Goddess which has been lost in civilisations around the world, still exists only in India. Again we need to remember that India has not only preserved but also has evolved the symbol into a great tool of practical importance for inner science.

And such are the random meditations that emerge with the name Krodhakarankushojjvala – She who shines with the elephant hook that is both wrath and knowledge of entities.