Mother Loves a Maverick!

[Guest guest]

Mother Loves a Maverick!

Goddess devotion is well rooted in rural New York

Hinduism Today

March/April 2000

By Corinne Dempsey, Syracuse, New York

 

[ This article is rather old, but

Haran/Aiya/Chaithanyananda came up recently in a

reply Kochu made to a query about practice. I thought

some background information might be useful. For

more on the peetham and the guru, see

 

The Goddess Lives in Upstate New York:

Breaking Convention and Making Home at a North

American Hindu Temple

by Corinne G. Dempsey

Paperback: 288 pages

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (December 15,

2005)

ISBN-10: 019518730X

ISBN-13: 978-0195187304 ]

 

Nestled in a nondescript renovated barn in rural western

New York State, the Hindu Goddess Rajarajeshwari is

renewing the kind of religious fervor that this area was

once famous for. Set into the hills of Rush, a village just

south of Rochester, is the Sri Rajarajeshwari Peetham.

Surrounded by farm silos and church steeples, the

Peetham is headed by Sri Chaithanyananda and his wife,

Sri Gnanamba, both Sri Lankan Tamils. In the early

1800s, the region was so consumed with the fire of the

Spirit that it was dubbed the " Burned-over District. " But

whereas then the Spirit was Christian, today the fire

burns among Hindus.

 

Fueling the Spirit's flames at the Peetham are the

philosophies and traditions espoused by

Chaithanyananda. He brings with him to Rush the

ancient practice of Sri Vidya, a tradition of Devi

worship [....]. In Zambia, where he worked as an

architect, he found his iconoclast guru, nuclear physicist

Sri Amrithananda, who not only agreed to initiate him

and his wife but gave him orders, by way of guru diksa,

to teach Sri Vidya to anyone desiring to learn.

 

The Sri Rajarajeshwari temple is an outgrowth of

several home temples run by Chaithanyananda and

Gnanamba, first in Zambia, and later in the US. While

worshipping at their most recent home temple--a one-car

garage in a suburb outside Rochester--they knew it was

time to expand when approximately 150 cars lined the

neighborhood streets during Navaratri. Even on ordinary

days the temple was becoming crowded, and not just

with humans. Chaithanyananda periodically introduced

new Deities into the tiny temple, so people used to joke

that if he kept this up, there would be no more room for

the devotees.

 

Chaithanyananda conducts elaborate pujas, once in the

morning and again in the afternoon and evening. Yet it

is not unusual on any given day for an initiated (by

Chaithanyananda) male or female to perform the rite

instead. During all ritual events, initiates chant along in

Sanskrit--with various levels of proficiency--and

perform intricate mudras (hand and body gestures),

making the event seem more like a choreographed

worship-dance than the conventional solo priestly

performance. During larger gatherings, all assembled are

encouraged to chant the simpler, more repetitive chants.

Commonly, Chaithanyananda's voice is heard rising

above the rest, admonishing meeker devotees, " Chant

louder! Are you ashamed to chant the Mother's name?!! "

 

Hoping to raise appreciation for religious rituals,

Chaithanyananda regularly intersperses brief

explanations of the rites or gives lecture-style instruction

on a range of subjects. He endeavors especially to

address Indian and Sri Lankan youth. " They must know

what the tradition is. They must not think it is some

Third World mumbo-jumbo, hocus-pocus, voodoo type

thing. They must know that there is a solid foundation

behind it, " he stresses.

 

Another unique aspect of the Peetham is the unusual

layout of the building. Here the Deities are out in the

open and accessible to all, eliminating the spatial divide

that normally exists between the person conducting the

puja and the other participants. In this environment, the

congregational chanting so enthusiastically promoted by

Chaithanyananda flows more freely. Charulata, an

initiated woman, told me that, in other temples, " Most of

the time you don't know what is going on. You don't

understand what the pujari is saying. So you just stand

there and pray and then come out. But here we are all

together. He makes you say the mantra, makes you listen

to what he's saying. The Devi, Chaithanyananda and the

devotees are all standing in one room. "

 

Commenting on the number of young and elderly

devotees who are increasingly attracted to the Peetham's

open style, Chaithanyananda remarks in his irrepressible

way, " Why do you think the Mother is using me?

Because She likes a maverick! "

 

SRI RAJARAJESWARI PEETAM

http://www.srividya.org

 

http://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/2000/3-4/2000-3-13.shtml