Last week i was in Chandigarh, where my parents live. I was there to read from my book in Ambala, at the cantonment, where the army had invited me (written about in the previous post). But a good friend was also undergoing a major heart surgery in Mumbai on the day of my book reading and i had been very torn about leaving town. I did go finally, promising to myself that the morning of his op, when he was likely being wheeled into the OT, i would visit a temple in Chandigarh that i have immense faith in and that i would pray for Ravi. Hence 8 am on Saturday morning saw me in the temple. Once i had performed my ablutions and gone around the temple, folding my hands and bowing my head before the various idols and mumbling prayers for Ravi, i prepared to leave the temple.
However a pristine white sheet spread in a corner of the temple attracted my attention. It was laid there obviously for some purpose. It had been Janamashtami the previous day and probably the sheet with a thin dhurrie below it had been spread for devotees to sit on. Upon closer examination it was not as clean as it looked from a distance, but remembering my earlier resolve to meditate every day (in a previous post), i decided i would sit there and meditate for a while. i have never done this in a temple before as temples are usually noisy. However the main thing going for the temple was that it was a place where there was obviously an enormous energy field created by all the people who came and went carrying their thoughts of the Divine in and out. I settled down with hope but no expectation.
Crossing my legs i sat still closed my eyes and waited. The clanging of the bells was jarring to begin with. However the scent of the incense that hung in the air was soothing. I began to concentrate only on the disturbing sound of the bells. I shut out all the other thoughts and ideas that were roaming in my mind. Sound became the only other occupant of the space i was in. I began by identifying the bells. The deep hollow sounding bell was the main temple bell close to the entrance. The shrill ones were the bells before Hanuman or Shiva. The one in front of Krishna sounded musical. The one hung for Rama was sombre. And Durga Mata's had a sharp, metallic sound to it, like clashing cymbals. All these sounds i identified with my eyes closed, hence only using the distance of the bell's sound from where i sat to judge which deities bell was being rung. However in my mind a clear identification had been done and i began to relax.
I also found myself thinking of the kind of person who was ringing the bell from the sounds they created. A solitary sound told me an already calmed person had entered. A serial clanging sound conveyed agitation in the ringer to me and so on. I found, as a result of concentrating on only one stimulus, other thoughts left my mind and i was relatively relaxed and empty of trivial thoughts, much more than i would have been, had i just been sitting still in a quiet place, as random thoughts would then have plagued my mind relentlessly.
After the deep concentration on sounds that calmed my mind, all sounds receded. And soon there was silence. I had managed to withdraw from the noisy temple to a quiet place that was my inner silence. I was in touch with that for at least some time, though i cannot say how long, for when i felt myself coming back to the temple, the bells sounded like they were somewhere far away. Paradoxically it was noise or sound that led me to silence. But the trick had been pure concentration on that one stimulus.
And then a beautiful thought crossed my mind. Sound is a vibration and we, too, are basically matter with low level vibrations. Sound vibrations were a perfect way of raising the vibration levels of my body to somewhere closer to the Divine vibrations. And probably i had made a connection for those moments. And, i realized, too, that the ritual of ringing temple bells is about creating these beneficial vibrations, not about 'announcing us' or 'waking up the lord', as we are apt to believe. The ritual after all has a deep and meaningful significance.
Walking back from the temple, i contemplated on religion and spirituality. The common thinking is that religion is religion and spirituality is spirituality and ne'er the twain shall meet. However sitting in the temple and meditating , i did feel the two had criss-crossed somewhere inside me. Religion properly practiced is about deep love for the Divine. Spirituality on the other hand is about a deep love for the self. You come to the temple looking for the Divine, you go deep in your body looking for your Self. At the end both are one and the same thing. The God within is the God without.
