Chidagnikundasambhuta

I was listening to Lalitha Sahasranama, the thousand names of the mother goddess this morning, which I often do and started thinking about names, their significance and a word from the prayer, Chidagnikundasambhuta. Like so many things in my tradition, your name is your Karma, it is just not a name to differentiate you from other people, but it is a reflection of your personality. Considering the name is given to a new born, this might sound a little farfetched, but then the whole tradition understands everything as a divine plan where you are just acting your role. I know how discomforting this idea of pre-determined is, it takes our personal will away and our choices. But what if our will and choices are also part of that will? It is both empowering and disempowering, as you might feel it was determined already, I might as well not participate and be inactive! The scholars will argue then your inaction becomes the plan, so damn unfair!

If I come to my name, sambuddha, it has a wonderful story, or so I like to think. After I was born my mother and my grandmothers from my mother’s and father’s side independently came up with this same name. And the surprising thing is this name is not at all common in the Subcontinent.  And so was I named, sambuddha, the one who is truly awakened! It was indeed a lot of pressure on a new born, but I so much think my name has formed me as I have redefined my name. There was a time someone told me even if he did not know how I look in a room full of people, he would take no time to find me, find sambuddha (and it was when I was in India where the name is still uncommon but anyone could have had it). That was one of the best compliments and at the same time the scary thing to happen to me. I cannot even hide and be anonymous. My spirituality has been beyond my understanding of my creation and creation in general, it has been my everyday mundane life. My politics, my sexuality, my science, my hookups, my falling in love and falling out of love.  To get to where I am right now I had to walk through several infernos, where I and my ideas have burnt and burnt again. The pain and at the same time bliss of waking up from my slumber to go into another has prepared me and is still making me worth my name, sambuddha, the one who has woken up! I wonder if this journey will ever end, or to be honest if I want it to end ever. You can think of this essay as some narcissistic effort to proclaim the greatness in me, may be it is (and an effort to get likes on Facebook as soon this will end up there), may be it is another inferno I am walking through where my desire to express and connect to others is burning and turning to ashes. Or maybe it is just a way I was supposed to react, my signature way to react to words and thoughts. I wonder if we will ever get annoyed or even find it boring when a solution of copper vibrates, rotates, jumps from one state to another and glows with its colour with the exact amount of energy each action requires, everything predetermined! But then there remains the quantum mechanical uncertainty where it can do things that we cannot predict, but still there is a pattern in those uncertainties and hence still remain predetermined.

And that brings to my recent most favourite word this morning, Chidagnikundasambhuta, one who is born from the fire of pure consciousness. I feel the fire around my consciousness, I feel the heat and see my consciousness burning every moment to get to another conscious state and then that burning again. So to me this morning sambuddha is the same as chidagnikundasambhuta!