The Fires Within, Without, and Between: The Limbic Spaces of Vedic Ritual
“Hinduism is, then, both a civilization and a conglomeration of religions, with neither a beginning, a founder, not a central authority, hierarchy, or organization.” (Davis, 1999)
The orally composed Vedic texts, eventually written down in the earliest forms of Sanskrit, describe the worlds and experiences of the Indo-Aryan peoples and their nomadic existence. They describe a world of herders, horse-riders and the beginnings of what would become Hinduism. These texts, organized into the four branches of the Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads, provide both practical guidance and sense-making insight for a nomadic people concentrating their worship through the direct elemental experiences closest to them, and an ultimately divine connection to the very release from the cycle of rebirth. Central to our understanding of these rituals are the three distinct binaries of the relationships of individualized control and mastery between heat and cold, the internal and external, and the microcosm and macrocosm. We will take each in turn and then connect their role to moksha, the Sanskrit term for the liberation from suffering.
First, mastery of heat assumes a central role in Vedic practice. Fire becomes a bridge which spans the limbic space between the cold of the earth and the heat of the divine. Rituals such as the Agnihotra involve the manipulation of fire and the recitation of mantas by a Brahmin, where oblations are given in worship to Agni, representative of fire in its multiple forms. Not just the Sun, but the warmth of the hearth, of sacrifice, the digestive fire in one’s belly, and the fire of creative inspiration (Davis, 1999). As the priest of the gods, Agni serves as the primary intermediary between gods and humans, with the elemental power of fire an important tether between both worlds.
Secondly, the nature of how heat was manipulated both internally and external, and the tensions between the two connect the notion of mastery over one’s internal fires, through ascetic practice, sacrifice or fire ritual. Such practices of heat didn’t just connect the worlds of humans and gods, they also connected the notion of heat as an elemental force which could be mastered and controlled internally and are detailed in the ritual instructions of the Brahmanas. And through sensory manipulation of both chakras, one’s internal glowing wheels of energy, and nadis, rivers of energy flowing through one’s body, heat could serve as a tether cast out towards the heavens for connecting one’s atman, one’s soul, to something far larger than oneself, the ultimate or oversoul, the Brahma.
Tapas, the notion of internalized ascetic heat, and practiced on earth by rishis, motivated a belief that if one could control and manipulate the immediate elemental and physical aspects of the world, such as one’s own temperature, then one could subsequently also control things beyond one’s body, such as the rising of the sun and the nature of the weather. For a nomadic people, their primary experience would have been that of surviving the elements, and their physical and emotional mastery over them a key ingredient of their continued existence. As Davis describes, ‘in the vivid metaphor of one Upanishad, the senses are wild horses hitched to the chariot of the body; the mind is the charioteer who must somehow bring them under control. Yoga is what one uses to do so.’ (Davis, 1999).
If one, through the ritual of internalized fire, could manipulate, and augment one’s tapas through ascetic practice such as yoga, fasting, meditation or physical hardship, it would serve as a thread of connection, a bandhu, between one’s own internal atman, and the Brahma, the ultimate, or oversoul. It’s not just that heat enables and empowers such divine connection, it’s also that through conscious, deliberate, and systemic Brahminic ritual focused on the internal stoking of one’s individualized fires, one can bring about an even deeper, closer relationship to the divine.
Lastly, there is the structuralist binary of the manipulation of the microcosm in order to connect to the external macrocosm. That which is beyond ourselves, elemental, and for a nomadic people, often a means of one’s very continued survival. The casting out of a bandhu, a connection between soul and the gods, served as a spiritual string between the small and the large, the internal and external, and of course, the cold and the hot. And that through this connection between atman and Brahma, one could master the power to control the weather, cure sickness, and thrive as a people.
In conclusion, the manipulation and mastery of heat, both internal and external, and its connection to the microcosm of the individual and the macrocosm of the heavens, enabled and empowered early Vedic people to sustain a sense of belief which led to their nomadic survival. But the Upanishads go further than just being a guide for sustenance and existential equilibrium. They reflect upon the very nature of life itself, and how through such ritual connection to the Brahma, one might seek to liberate oneself from the very wandering cycle of birth and death. That the existential suffering of life, the swirling miasma of the universe, the samsara, could itself be broken. As Davis summarizes, ‘this continuing succession of life, death and rebirth is termed samsara (circling, wandering) in the Upanishads. Samsara comes to denote not just the individual wandering of a person from life to life, but also the entire world process seen as perpetual flux.’ (Davis, 1999).
Moksha, the liberation from the trials of life, through ascetic practice, singing the praise hymns of the Samhitas, performing the rituals of the Brahmanas, and being guided by the forest teachings of the Aranyakas, when compounded over a lifetime, would free oneself from the very cycle of reincarnation. As Davis continues, ‘That is exactly what the renouncer (sannyasin) does. He (or occasionally she) would leave home and family to live in relatively isolated and austere circumstances, sleeping on the ground, restricting the diet, practicing control of the breath, and bringing the senses under control - in short - withdrawing from all that might bind one to the world, with the ultimate goals of escaping from rebirth itself.’ (Davis, 1999)
What began as the elemental, ritual manipulation of heat and fire, when practiced across centuries of nomadic existence, and operating independently of the constraints of a single founder, single doctrinal point of reference, or single ecclesiastical hierarchy, led to the forming of the religious practices of Hinduism, and provided a material path not just for sustenance and survival, but for what we all seek in life, the liberation from suffering.
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