Summer Park County Fair Moon
Vishnu is the Hindu god of stability, the preserver and protector. When I look at the Hindu pantheon, my eye has always gone to Shiva, the god of creation and destruction, the whirling vibrant energy of the universe. Were I Hindu, I would be a Shaivite. But as we’ve aged, as we’ve become the members of our family and, for that matter, of our generation, at the edge of extinction, it has become clear to me that Vishnu defines us better.
When we stand, as we do, between life and death, life itself takes on a different color, a different valence. That’s not to say that we don’t always stand between life and death, life is fragile and death, in its entropic way, more natural. But as we veer past the mid-60’s, the path from birth to death has grown long and its terminus closer.
We stand, too, at the end of our ancientrail, able to look back over the days and years with gathered wisdom. At least sometimes. Shiva forces are at work in our children’s lives and especially in the lives of our grandchildren, creating careers, destroying dreams, unfolding the future. Our reach now extends into those lives as a somewhat distant, but sometimes intimate force, offering stability and protection. We have become the avatars of Vishnu.
The role is unnatural for me, having been more of a bomb thrower in my youth and in my middle-age, too. The Vaishnavite forces, always there, for we are a mix of all these fundamental powers, have gradually strengthened, gained more purchase. It’s possible, I suppose, to see Shiva as the radical, willing to take apart received wisdom, to burn institutions to the ground, to start over and over and over, and Vishnu as the conservative, or at least conservator, the solid, steady hand needed when Shiva’s work has gone too far.
The Hindu trinity of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, the God of origins, the creator force who lives now distant from the work of his creation, constitutes, like the Christian trinity, an expression of the one god in three manifestations. Like the Great Wheel it is a poetic, a metaphorical expression of the nature of reality. You may choose to believe that these gods are real and I wouldn’t argue the choice, but in my maturing understanding of religious belief, all the world’s religion are artistic renderings of the subtle and not-so subtle forces set in motion at the big bang. No, they are not all the same, hardly; but they are all attempts to give expression and coherence to the context of this temporary, wonderful miracle we call life.
So, it’s not surprising to me that in this third phase of my life, I find a purpose defined by a Hindu god. We arrive at this moment shaped and pulled by the paths we have chosen. Our ancietrail is now more experience than future. As Vishnu rises in our lives, that experience becomes his form, the vital energy that allows us to serve as anchor for our family, for our community, for the world we’re passing on to our children and grandchildren.
I said above that the Vishnu role is unnatural to me. Perhaps I should say that it was unnatural to the younger me. Now, it seems natural, necessary, good. The maintainer and protector.
Mussar is defined here by Rabbi Ira Stone, of the Mussar Leadership Program: “The most accurate translation of the word mussar into English is “discipline,” defined in all three ways we use the word in English. Mussar defines a discrete area of study, like the discipline of physics. It describes a practice, as in “it takes discipline to practice piano every day.” It also describes the act of correcting behavior, as in “you must discipline the child.””
