In this manifestation, the multi-armed deity who battles and conquers the mighty buffalo demon Mahisasura, is one of the most spectacular of all personifications of cosmic energy. With three-eyes and adorned with the crescent moon, her multiple arms holding various weapons, emblems, jewels, utensils, garlands and rosaries of beads, and seated on her lion or tiger vehicle, she seemingly has overwhelming omnipotence. Also known as the Divine Mother, she embodies all the other goddess incarnations including Kali (goddess of death and transformation), Lakshmi (goddess of spiritual and material abundance) and Sarasvati (goddess of wisdom and creativity).
According to the myth, demonic forces threatening to conquer the world and take down all who did not agree with their agenda, appeared in the form of Mahisasura, the mighty buffalo demon. When all the male divinities had tried everything they could to put an end to this threat, and after realising that their methods were only perpetuating the violence and with nothing left to do, they fused their energy together allowing Durga to emerge.
Although invoked by the merging of all the male god energies, Durga’s birth was not the result of the will of the gods, but, as with all her incarnations, was the result of her will to be in the world for the benefit of mankind. She chooses when and how to become active in the play of the goddess in the world.
Mahisasura symbolises, among other things, the elemental powers of brutish ignorance and an exaggerated ego-sense whose sole purpose is to dominate and control, destroying the balance of the universe. Durga, her tremendous power poised and ready for this ferocious battle, changes her form time and again, matching his changing forms, until finally she wins the battle by decapitating him.
Then, having completed what she set out to do, she disappears from the battlefield completely, but not before promising to nourish the world in times of need and to fearlessly annihilate all that is not truth, delivering all who call upon her from their enemies, and blessing them.
This disappearance of Durga after her victory expresses one of the deepest truths of the divine feminine: her action in the cosmic drama is without retentive, ego-seeking ambition. She did not remain to be hallowed and subjected to praise and adoration for her deed.
If Durga is understood as the wisdom of the heart, the buffalo demon is the symbol of ignorance, reactions and ego attachments. His constant changing form is symbolic of the ignorant mind continuously jumping from desire to desire, relating directly to our irrational behavior. The demon's uncontrollable rage, destroying everything in its path without regard for the consequences, is a fitting analogy for all the levels of destruction that we face today. This battle is symbolic of the universal war between knowledge and ignorance, truth and falsehood, the oppressor and the oppressed.
This myth asks us to consider how we choose to express our anger. Will we poison our environment by being divisive, fearful, defensive and blaming? Or we will use our rage against the injustice and the polarities of separation in constructive ways? Will be contain the destructive force of our negative emotions: anger, jealousy, pride, greed and delusion over and over again, until such time as they are melted away and no longer exist?
Durga's story is a metaphor about the eternal cyclical repetition of the entire life process. The paradise which she restores on earth is temporary, and the battle between the order and chaos has to recur endlessly. On this battlefield, protagonist and antagonist take on the looks and qualities of the other over and over again, until the disguise of each is penetrated. When demon and goddess are reduced to their true nature, they are, in the last analysis, alike. Without the one we cannot perceive the other.
Symbolising our constant struggle with all the perceived polarities of human life (male and female, right and wrong, good and bad, light and dark, pain and joy, love and hate etc), Durga’s story also represents constantly restoring paradise or bliss, until finally we are able to perceive and experience the ‘Oneness of All’ that is inherent in our spiritual nature.
When we reach the state in which all dualism has melted away, we understand that without the other we are not ourselves; when we exist together as one, I am in you and you are in me, only then are there no oppositions and no polarities, leaving only a ‘oneness in an eternal cycle of cosmic activity’.
Durga is a metaphor for the fiercely compassionate divine feminine aspect of our nature. It is our Durga nature that can and will finally free us from an afflicted ego and return us to the penetrating wisdom of divine love. She is the impenetrable place of calm within our hearts from which we are able to choose actions that promote harmony and unity over selfish, harmful acts. Formed out of the sum of all the divine masculine power, she is the ferocious feminine power that paves the way to understanding true oneness, free of all polarities. For men and women alike, it is the Durga within ourselves that paves the way to bliss.
Published in Odyssey Magazine August/September 2011
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