Coconuts and Carnations
Imagine you are in one of India’s most haunted places - the abandoned Fort Bhangarh in Rajasthan. It’s nearing sundown and the time when all visitors must leave, by law. In the fading light, you are determined to climb past the various Hindu temples, up the hill to the top of the fort, when you come upon an old woman lying on the ground. Do you
a) Step past her
b) Help her up
You want to answer (b) don’t you? But this isn’t some Good Samaritan flow chart…
The path into the haunted, deserted Bhangarh Fort
You look around - nobody is helping her. There are locals (mainly young men), a scattering of tourists and belligerent macaque monkeys. People are climbing up the crumbling steps to go into the temples, shoes off first, much to the antibacterial disgust of two Essex born tourists. Everyone is focused on feeling for the bad juju, from the 400 year old curse placed on the maharaja, his daughter and the town (depending on your source). If they can’t feel the malign force, at least they’ll have a selfie. Nobody is bothered about the old woman.
Back down on the path, she’s on her feet but falls to the ground again. You notice she has a coconut.
Are you really just going to leave her there?
The answer is still (a) it seems.
Let me explain.
Hindu temple
Sadhvi, yogi, pilgrim. Someone who is seeking spiritual enlightenment. Our Western notion of a pilgrim is someone on two feet, walking, perhaps sauntering – a word believed to originate from ‘a la sainte-terre’ – to the Holy Land, or in John Muir’s case, into nature. The old woman in the haunted fort was putting in a bit more effort. She was travelling by prostrating herself, and smashing the coconut down on the ground as she went. Why?
In Hinduism, the coconut represents the ego (and other things). To gain any spiritual growth you need to smash your way out of the tiny lunchbox of your life and open yourself up to the love and light of the universe. I say this not through experience, you understand.
Pretending to relax at the top but really hoping the macaque doesn’t want to fight me for the water bottle
While I was worried about getting in my steps for the day and steering of the macaques, she was, exhausted, determined, on the path to being enlightened.
I quite fancy being enlightened too, but it’s not something you can order on Amazon. You can, however, listen to Turning to the Mystics, where you’ll get an amazing exposition of mysticism by the extraordinary gift to the universe that is, Jim Finley, including in the current season, TS Eliot’s Four Quartets. I did a bit of Eliot at university, but was too young, too daft and too self-conscious to even speak up in the tutorials. I was lost in 1980s comparative culture: attractiveness, attire, ability to form a sentence in tutorials, but without, thank God, today’s excruciating scales of likes and hearts. I merely battered myself with a ‘what will people think about me’ coconut. I still do. In my own self-consciousness, I missed the point that Eliot was a mystic, explaining the relationship between experience and eternity.
Finley’s guest on the TS Eliot episodes, the poet, academic and priest, Malcolm Guite, tells us that CS Lewis described poems as ‘little incarnations’ – in other words, as embodiments, acts of creativity that reflect the divine. A poem is not just a description of an experience but an experience itself – the poet gives birth to a new way of perceiving reality. On the Poetry Unbound Substack, we are often prompted to discuss why we go to poetry. Medicine, insight, guidance, survival are frequent themes from commentators. This poem by Rumi, translated by Haley Liza Gafori captures all of this. And strongly suggests that we shatter some coconuts along the way.
“Full of yourself -
a friend’s touch is sharp as a thorn.
A buzzing fly drives you mad.
Forget yourself
and what friend can hurt you?
You mingle with the wild elephants
and enjoy the ride.
Caged in self,
you drown in anguish.
Storm clouds swallow the sun.
Your lover flees the scene.
Outside yourself,
the night is moonlit.
Lover’s drink Love’s wine.
It flows through you.
Self-conscious,
you’re dry as autumn leaves.
You bite like frost.
Melt yourself,
and winter’s frozen meadows
will become spring’s fragrant fields.
Take the cotton
of the mind’s doom ridden chatter
out of your ears.
Hear the booming voice of the heavens,
the roar of fate,
the ruckus the muse makes.”
Over the course of the next few months I’m going to use this space to explore more ways in which we can take the cotton out of our ears to hear the booming voice of the heavens. Through poetry, creativity, faith and love let’s see if we can smash our collective coconuts to make meaning of this one and precious life.