This article is fruit of a specific inspiration by one of my teachers, Hart de Fouw.
Living and growing up in a society where ritual is not at the forefront of our experience, how can we relate to fire ritual in an embodied sense? The external act of offering items into the ritual fire, the yajna, sometimes seems almost magical and mysterious to someone who has not developed the correct relationship to it. One way we can view yajna is to relate it to the primacy of the body, a basic tantric teaching. How does fire ritual inform this notion that the body is the yantra of consciousness?
The body is the yantra.
The body is the havan, the ground and vessel of the sacred fire.
The body is vessel for our consciousness.
Through the body, karmas are burned.
So many things go into and come out of this body. How much awareness do we bring to this process?
In the preparations for the fire ritual, no drop of ghee, no twig is left unattended before it goes in the sacred fire. So many ‘pure’ elements go into the fire. We purify the ritual items by bringing attention to them through gestures and mantras. Consciousness is what enlivens. We nurture the hope that, because of the pure things that we offer into the fire, as they get transformed they shall produce results. They will be of benefit to someone or to all, in some time and space.
Until we realize our own body is the yantra, we will be disconnected from what is going on in the external ritual. We won’t get it. The body is the yantra. There is a yajna going on inside of us right at this moment and every moment we are alive. We want to sanctify what goes into the sacred fire of our body, just as we sanctify what goes into the yajna. For example, just as we recite preliminary mantras before the yajna, it is important to say a prayer before our meals, to acknowledge the sacred connection between what we take in and what we become. Consciousness also needs to be applied to what comes out of the body through our actions, our karmendriyas, our organs of action. That is how we manifest into the world.
Let the next fire ritual you attend remind you that what you are reproducing in the ritual is what happens all day long in the rest of your life. You are the fire. You are the ritual in your every choice of action and in what you bring into your body and your life.
Enjoy and be that transformation!