Ganesha gets a new not-so-little rat
Visiting Twycross Zoo, in Warwickshire (England), yesterday we enjoyed walking around the relatively new Uda Walawe Elephant Walkway which, perhaps unsurprisingly, surrounds the Elephant enclosure. From this new themed area of the zoo you get some beautiful views over the enclosure and can see all four of the majestic animals without the fence lines obstructing your view.
I love Elephants (or “Heffalumps”, as I prefer to call them). They are massive and yet generally so gentle. You get an impression of grace and intelligence when you watch Elephants interact. They are beautiful.
Walking around Uda Walawe, however, I was surprised to come face-to-face with two statues of Ganesha, the Hindu deity who is usually depicted with the head of an Elephant on the body of a human with four arms. Interestingly, the sign up next to the first one described with fair accuracy the symbolic meaning of the elements in the statue too. Neither, however, is being used as a shrine and so one suspects that they are simply statues and not Hindu Murti.
Ganesha
Ganesha (also spelt Ganesh, as at the zoo) is perhaps one of the best-known Hindu deities worshipped from the so-called “pantheon”. Worship of Ganesha extends beyond India into Nepal and even across faiths, with some Jains and Buddhists making offerings to him too.
Ganesha is generally revered as being ‘The Remover of Obstacles’, a title which whilst slightly enigmatic is also amazingly pragmatic. As with all Hindu deities, his non-human appearance with an Elephant head and his four arms mark him as a spiritual being with significance beyond the mundane. He has one broken tusk in most depictions, signifying his readiness to complete any task (that’s a long story!), and a pot belly, suggesting that all of the universes past, present and future lie within him.
Ganesha uses the tools in his hands to, on the one hand, direct worshippers on the right path and, on the other, cut away obstacles that get in their way. He is often depicted with the Aum symbol on one of his hands, revealing his personification of the primal sound.
Worshippers often visit Ganesha at the beginning of any important venture, such as setting up a business, to seek his blessing, guidance and protection.
My favourite little extra symbolic detail is that Ganesha is also often depicted with a little rat at his feet. I always imagine that rat gnawing away at any problems or obstacles that get in the way.
Murti
The statues at Twycross Zoo are just that – statues. They are not in use as shrines dedicated to Ganesh. This is evidenced by the lack of a temple or shrine structure in which to house him and, as yet at least, the lack of flowers and other offerings around or before him. That’s why I didn’t feel too bad sitting at his feet for a photo.
Hindu deities are most often depicted with 3-D images which look a lot like statues but which are really known as Murti.
A Murti refers to an image which expresses a Divine Spirit (“murta”) and which literally embodies that Divine Spirit into a physical form. Once dedicated through ritual and placed within a shrine, the murti is very much the deity living within the shrine or temple. Essentially, the murti is a limited form of the living Divine Spirit.
It’s important to overcome the accusation that the Hindu murti is an ‘idol’ in the Christian or Jewish sense. This is a misunderstanding. The murti does not represent the deity; it is the living embodiment of the deity. Perhaps a subtlety lost on many, but an important one.
Murti are made according to strict ritual rules and by expert artisans who use practices, such as yoga, to ensure that they fashion images not from their own imagination but from scriptural canon.
A Nice Reminder
For me, the statues at Twycross Zoo remind us about how the spiritual can intersect with the mundane.
First of all, the not-Murti reminded me about the real Murti of Ganesha. Further, the Murti reminds me that our own physical being is a Murti too. We are literally a Divine Spirit dedicated to our own moving and talking Murti, a limitation of our spiritual reality.
Secondly, I was reminded of the practicality of Hindu belief and worship. Ganesha is a really helpful and powerful being who can propel the faithful worshipper to success by the simple expedient of removing obstacles.
Lastly, I was inspired by the otherness of Ganesha to remember that spiritual reality is something other and greater than we generally tend to understand in Western European culture. Otherness, difference and wonder – depicted through strange yet symbolically rich art – are often removed or reduced in our world. It’s nice to bring it forward once in a while.
Taking An Idea With You
What would it be like to take the idea of yourself as a spiritual being living within a limited and well-defined physical body out into the world today? Would it change anything?
Whilst I resist the Neo-Platonic overtones of such a belief, suggesting a hierarchy between the spiritual and the physical, in our modern reductionist, and spiritually-denying world, I feel that there is some value in pondering this idea.
Are Human beings merely flesh, bone, blood and electrical impulses? Or are we more?
Is there a spiritual reality lying hidden within you?
That’s a question you have to answer for yourself.
Namaste.