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ROLE OF SRICHAKRA

In Hindu devotional practice, three kinds of external symbols are used for worship of the Supreme Being, who is actually formless and nameless. The most external is that of divine images cast in human form,with paraphernalia symbolizing supra-human divinity. The subtlest is that of the mantras or divine names with certain sounds. A mantra is divine power clothed in sound. Between these two come the yantras or chakras, representing the deity in geometrical diagrams. Worshippers of “Shakti” consider the Srichakra the holiest and most significant of divine symbols.

The Srichakra is conceived as Shiva-Shakti in the macrocosmic as well as microcosmic aspects, as the cosmos and as the individual. The diagram consists of a series of nine triangles superimposed around a small central circle, Bindu, forming 43 konas or triangular projections. In the center is the Bindu, representing the Shiva-Shakti in union from which all other parts of the diagram representing the cosmos are evolved.

The Bindu is surrounded by four Shiva triangles and five Shakti triangles. Two circles of lotuses, one with eight petals and the other with 16 surround these. Outside these, there are three circles around and a rectangular enclosure of three lines for the whole figure, with four entrances on the four sides.

In the Bindu Shakti is represented as MahaTripura Sundari, the great mother. The Bindu contains the potentiality of the universe within itself. It is spoken of as three to indicate the three stresses when the unified non-dual Shiva Shakti becomes separated into the two aspects; parakasa, the aham or I-concious, and the vimarsa, the idam or this-conciousness. These three stresses are called Nada, Kala and Bindu.

Just as Tripura-sundari the Divine Mother is Shakti, depicted as the consort of Shiva, the Supreme Being, the Kundalini is the segment of that cosmic power as the Shakti of the Jiva, which is an amsa or particle of the Supreme Shiva embodied as the individual. It is this Shakti that evolves in the individual the counterparts of all the cosmic categories…

Source: ‘Sandarya Lahiri of Srichakra’

MAHISASHURA MARDINI

The re-enactment of the story of Mahisasura- Mardini every autumn during the Durga Puja embodies hope for survival against all odds and comes as gesture of reassurance in different times.

The mood of joyful expectancy is pervasive amidst the talk of the homecoming of the Mother Goddess. Her return to her spouse, Shiva, in the Himalayas, after the sojourn marked by the immersion of the image on Vijaya Dashami, is a sad but inevitable occasion, typical of the human situation. Tagore remarked, “God with us is not a distant God: He belongs to our homes as well as to our temples.”

Our concept of Durga is a harmonious blend of the different images of her as Shakti and as benign Mother Goddess of the fertility cult, as the war-goddess who is not only a source of inspiration but who also intervenes on behalf of the helpless to restore a tranquil order: as militant manifestation of Uma and Parvati.

The theology underlying Devi Durga’s Cosmic intervention runs parallel to the central Vaishnavite theory of a deity’s advent in the world from time to time in a various cosmic order to weed out the oppressive elements. In fact, as some scholars believe, the female principle becomes the consort of Vishnu in Vaishnavism and that of Shiva in Shivism. But, as per the Sakta conception, from which the Shakti cult is derived, the Mother Goddess is the supreme manifestation of power, all the other gods being subordinate to her.