Diwali: Atman (The Light Within)

My friend and I separated on a drizzly, windy corner of Howard St. in Baltimore. She boarded a bus back toward her house in Hampden, and I considered running back to Mariner Arena to find out what the printed program had meant by substituting the traditional Diwali fireworks with what the program called "virtual fireworks." They were scheduled to start at 9PM, but I was a long way from DC and dependent upon public transportation, so I bought my light-rail ticket and waited in the light rain.

The headlights of three different light-rail trains illuminated the mist and passed me by before the train I was waiting for squeaked to a halt and opened its doors for me.

Inside, I pulled the printed program out of my backpack and leafed through its pages, sounding out the names of the Indian oncologists, dentists, and real estate agents, whose business-card-sized ads sat stacked inside text reminding celebrants of the meaning of Diwali.

The days leading up to Diwali all have a special meaning. Five days before Diwali, it is a good day to go shopping. Four days before marks Krishna's slaying of Narakasura. Three days before is the day of Lakshmi Puja, and two days before is Govardhan Puja. Puja simply means "worship," roughly, and Govardhan is not a god or goddess, but a holy mountain. The day before Diwali is a holiday for celebrating the relationship between brothers and sisters.

Overall, the celebration of Diwali is meant as a celebration of good over evil, as symbolized by the lights.

Paging through the program, I lingered over a full-page ad for the temple I'd attended for Navaratri. Here I learned that all of the Deities in the temple are modeled after other existing Deities, so that, the temple claims, a walk through the worship space is "equivalent to visiting several temples in India."

Turning the page, I happened upon an essay about Vedanta written by Vijay Kumar, a self-described "disciple of Swami Chinmayananda," which was printed opposite an ad offering best wishes for the contestants of the 14th Annual Miss India-DC Pageant.

Swami Chinmayananda? That was the name printed on the banner at the Vedanta table. I skimmed the rest of Kumar's biography: organizer of Vedanta discussion groups, member of the Washington Interfaith Association, IT Engineer for the Pentagon.

Interesting. I began to read his essay.

Kumar: Vedanta affirms the oneness of existence, the divinity of the soul, and the harmony of religions.

The lights flickered inside the train car whenever the driver blew her horn for us to cross an intersection.

A few seats behind me, a group of young women gossiped loudly about another woman who was not present, mocking her weight and appearance. They used coarse language to speculate that the woman – who rarely dates men – is probably a lesbian, and a really slutty one too.

The noisy women carved up the missing woman's body and described each part to each other – her bad teeth, her damaged hair, her stretch marks, her skin.

Kumar: Vedanta asserts that you are essentially divine. God dwells within our own hearts as the Supreme Self.

In front of me, a man boasted on his cell phone about cheating on his girlfriend.

He laughed that the girlfriend has no idea what he's up to. He called her ugly names, pridefully describing how he fulfills her highest (and only) worth by using her body for sex.

He talked loudly about how much that sex might hurt, because of how aggressively he pursues what he wants. After he paused for a moment for other end of the line to speak, he said, "She better not cheat on me. I'd kill that fucking bitch."

Kumar: The Atman is never born, nor will it ever die. Pure, perfect, free from limitations, the Atman is the Brahman.

And what is the Brahman? Kumar describes it this way: "According to Vedanta, God is infinite existence, infinite consciousness, and infinite bliss. The term for this impersonal, transcendent reality is Brahman. … Who is God? Consciousness. What is Consciousness? You can go on and on."

The conductor blew the horn and the lights dimmed. We had arrived at the end of the line, and I boarded my bus for the next leg of my journey. I had thought I would pass the time by reading an article on "untouchables" in the 21st century that was featured in a copy of the Indian American that I had picked up, but my bus had no overhead lighting. It also had no cruel and noisy passengers, so I sank into my seat in the silence, as if at a Quaker meeting, and reflected on the day.

Diwali celebrates the Atman as the inner light. The victory of good over evil is the victory of Krishna over Narakasura, is the victory of light over darkness, is the victory of the Atman over… what? I do not know a Hindu term for inner darkness.

I do know this: I know that while English-speakers may tend to translate Atman as Self or Soul or Inner Light, the root meaning of Atman in Sanskrit is actually "breath."

And I know that in Sanskrit, Atman is not the only kind of breath. There is also prana, as every student of yoga learns. ("Breathe in, breathe out.") Atman is spiritual, prana is physical.

I thought about how the word for "breath" in Koheleth (“hebel”) has come to mean something hopeless, while the breath of the Atman is deeply hopeful.

I thought about the difference between "breath" and "a breath." I wondered how true scholars of Sanskrit and Hebrew might negotiate the difference between hebel and Atman.

A breath...
a gasp...
a moment…
an eyeblink...
a flash before darkness.

Breath...
inspiration...
animation...
illumination…
light.

Add a character to the short play: The guru says that life is Atman. Now add a character locked in struggle with the new addition. The guru says that life is prana.

Now ask each of the characters: What happens to us when we die?

In my reading, Koheleth says we are finished. My sense is that the teacher, the philosopher, the quester, and especially the preacher would hedge about this, though. They would insist that by viewing the text of Ecclesiastes through the lens of the other 65 books of the Bible, we can find hope for eternal life. The preacher (and others?) would insist that we can only find this hope if we allow ourselves to be born again through Jesus Christ.

The gurus, of course, would say we are born again and again and again.

The Atman never dies. We struggle to break the cycle.

And Jesus has nothing to do with it.