|You cannot split the Earth by drawing
boundaries on it.
1. We live on a planet that supports life and look for
other planets that support life, anywhere in reachable
space, in imaginable terms. We try to imagine another
Earth and another mirror of life. For, supporting our
life, the Earth becomes the very foundation of our awareness,
the source of our being.
2.Our knowledge of ourselves cannot surpass our knowledge
of the Earth, of which we are a mere detail. Richly detailed
by life, the Earth may be conceived as an evolving art
form and this, I suppose, is Tukarams perception.
However interconnected above or beyond the Earth, all
the forms of life that spring from the Earth share it
as their origin and their heritage.
3.James Lovelocks famous and controversial Gaia
Hypothesis has now been around for more than four decades.
Simply stated, it proposes that the Earth is alive. Lovelock
being an atmospheric chemist---and not a poet, an artist,
a mystic, or a philosopher---his hypothesis could not
go unnoticed by his scientist colleagues. As in every
field of human endeavour, in science too there is a powerful
orthodoxy that attempts to control its own domain from
what seems heretical and politically dangerous. Once upon
a time, the Church controlled science. The position was
nearly reversed in a matter of just three centuries. Today,
scientists call their colleagues who challenge the status
quo heretics much in the same way the Church once did.
4.Tukaram was a 17th century Marathi poet and arguably
the greatest poet in the tradition of Marathi Bhakti poetry
founded in the philosophy of the 13th century poet and
thinker Jnandev. As a modern translator of Tukaram and
other Marathi poet-bhaktas, I have come to believe that
their world-view is relevant to our own time as well,
and in large measure this is because their faith is rooted
in the Earth as a spiritual entity.
5.The Varkaris are pilgrims vowed to visiting the sacred
city of Pandharpur on fixed days in the Hindu lunar calendar:
the eleventh day of the bright fortnight in the months
of Ashadh and Kartik are the days on which they visit
the temple of Vitthal or Pandurang, their deity.
It is on this day that Vitthal, leaving his legendary
abode in Vaikuntha (the residence of Lord Vishnu), visited
Pandharpur to meet Pundalik, his devotee; and dazzled
by the devotion of Pundalik to his this-worldly obligations,
decided to stay on in Pandharpur forever. The story is
that when Pandurang came to Pundaliks door, the
latter was engaged in massaging the feet of his aged parents.
He motioned Pandurang to stand on a brick---a
stone slab really---while he finished serving his parents.
The priority Pundalik gave his parents over his deity
impressed Pandurang, the deity.
The devotion or bhakti of Pundalik becomes
the symbol of earthly engagement for the Varkari.
It is the cornerstone of his faith in human life and its
eternal cycle of sowing seeds, raising a crop, harvesting
the crop, and thanking the Lord for governing this entire
process. The Varkari is the farmer worshipping the Earth.
He seeks the blessing of Pandurang in Ashadh, when the
monsoon rains arrive, for a bountiful crop; and in the
autumn month of Kartik he thanks his Lord.This is the
earthly version of the cosmic and cyclic process of creation,
preservation, and dissolution. It is the expression of
faith in life and its meaning in folk terms.
6.The Vari---or the periodic pilgrimage to Pandharpur---is
a living tradition of Maharashtra. About half-a-million
people participate in it. A unique feature of this pilgrimage
is taking the palanquins of sants or great
devotees of Pandurang to Pandharpur. The youngest son
of Tukaram, Narayan, who was born after his father had
passed away, started this practice. Narayan placed the
sandals (paduka) of his father and carried them from Dehu,
his native village, to Pandharpur.Narayan was thoughtful
enough to carry the symbolic sandals of Jnandev from Alandi
in the same palanquin.
As they march on foot to Pandharpur, Varkaris chant
Gyanba-Tukaram or Jnandev-Tukaram all
the way, as though they were physically carrying their
beloved saints to Pandharpur with them. Today, the palanquin
of Jnandev leaving from Alandi and the palanquin leaving
from Dehu are separate. But Gyanba-Tukaram
remains the common and universal Varkari chant.
7.Although all Varkari poet-Bhaktas sing songs that praise
the Lord--- Vitthal/Pandurang ---and visualise Him as
Vishnu or Krishna in their act of poetic remembrance and
verbal expression, their deity dwells only metaphorically
in Vaikunth or heaven. Pandurang, for them,
is the cosmic spirit that is present simultaneously within
all space and time, and also beyond. He is both Vishnu
and Shiva and, according to Jnanadev, the two forms cohere
just as Shiva and Shakti cohere to create a cosmic creative
resonance. In his interpretation of Shaivism, Shiva or
Absolute Being and Shakti, the curiosity, capacity, and
will to create many forms to express oneself are indivisible
or Advaya. The phenomenal world is not unreal just because
it changes; it is not Maya or illusion. It is real. Change
is reality, though temporal. It is the expression of the
creative, dynamic spirit of the Creator.
Since human awareness of existence in relation to the
constant spirit of the Creator reflected in changing forms
to express its creativity, the Creator within every human
bhakta shares the spirit of God. The Bhakta is the Shakti
of God reflected in a finite form, an earth-bound creature
resonating with the cosmic spirit. God may be in heaven,
but His feet are rooted in the Earth at Pandharpur where,
as Vitthal, he dwells waiting for His Bhaktas ever since
the bhakti of Pundalik entranced Him.
8.For the last eight centuries or more, Varkaris have
greeted heavens descent on Earth in the form of
the arrival of the monsoon to renew the life-cycle of
the Earth. At the beginning of the sowing and planting
season, they make a pilgrimage to Pandharpur, the earthly
dwelling-place of the Cosmic Parents---the male-female
spirit of the universe. After reaping their harvest, they
return to Pandharpur to celebrate it.
They find their God in the Earth and its ecology and their
faith in the coherence of the cosmic spirit in its resonant
relationship with life on the Earth.