Wisdom Through Tragedy

Yuga Bhava and Our Crack in Time

Yuga Bhava

Bhava means feeling orientation. Yugas are cycles of many thousands of years, each period characterized by how easy or difficult it is to come into wisdom and how much conditioning a.k.a. ignorance must be destroyed. Yuga bhava means the feeling orientation of a particular era.

In the Hindu worldview, there are four great eras or yugas that cycle and repeat.

During the Satya Yuga, humans, Gods, and other beings live more or less in harmony together. Humans are able to engage in difficult sadhanas in order to be relieved of ever more subtle karmas. Sincerity, compassion, and virtue come easily. Ordinary life is imbued with natural worshipfulness and devotion. 

The Tretā, Dvāpara, and Kali Yugas represent the increasing prevalence of karmas that obscure wisdom and virtue. 

Our current Kali Yuga brings confusion, argument, distraction, lack of truthfulness, rejection of wisdom, and general strife. It's a kind of bottoming out. 

But at the bottom of the Kali Yuga, destruction reveals the reality of our situation, much like a house fire confronts us with the reality of impermanence and our attachments. This ushers in a new cycle of wisdom, devotion, and skill. a.k.a. the Satya Yuga.

How does the Kali Yuga give birth to the Satya Yuga? 

We can always find corollaries to larger cosmic phenomena in the details of our everyday lives. 

So, for instance, most people have had the experience that difficulty brings about unexpected personal growth. 

If we become ill or a tragedy befalls us, and if we have some self-reflective capacity, we use that to learn about our limitations and overcome or release some of them. Our understanding, compassion, and skill can blossom as we stretch ourselves to meet difficulties.

Many people look back on difficulties with a sense of gratitude and a recognition of the value and necessity of hard times.

Even people who go through extraordinary hardships can have this experience.

The Tibetan teacher Garchen Rinpoche was in a Chinese labor camp for 20 years. He suffered incarceration, starvation, and torture. Yet he emerged feeling gratitude because of the spiritual growth that this experience afforded him. 

The real Lama, the real teacher who gave me the most invaluable instructions was actually suffering. Suffering was my greatest teacher...The hatred and anger toward my enemies ended up being completely transformed.¹ ~Garchen Rinpoche

We also see this process in nature. The rhythm of destruction and growth sustains forests where plant life uses decaying or burned trees as nourishment. Trees that have decayed and fallen become incubators for new trees and are, in fact, called “nurse trees.”

The end of the Kali Yuga

Analyzing the length of the four yugas and theorizing about their patterns of succession is a global cottage industry. There are two dominant theories about the length of the yugas and two about the order of the yugas.

Some astrologers and Vedic scholars say that the Kali Yuga ended in 1999 and that we are now in the beginning of the Dvāpara Yuga. Others say we have hundreds of thousands more years to go before the Kali Yuga ends.

The two main theories about the succession of the yugas are:

• When the Kali Yuga ends, the cycle goes in reverse through the Dvāpara, Tretā, and Satya Yugas.

• When the Kali Yuga ends, the cycle flips us directly into the Satya Yuga.

My teacher Anandamayi Ma, mentioned the second idea about succession. However, she said that the yugas are all happening simultaneously.

Certain sadhus have remarked that Satya Yuga has already arrived. Again some say that - "This is the evening of Kali Yuga." The real thing is - One Kāla (period of time) may seem to be different to different persons. To someone this is Kali Yuga, again to another this is Satya Yuga. ~Anandamayi Ma²

Crack in time

I feel that humans undergo larger as well as more local shifts in our orientation to wisdom. And these are related.

As one larger cycle is turning into another, we enter into a period which in Sanskrit is called a sandhi. Sandhi means a juncture or gap when one thing is ending, but the new has not fully arrived.

Sandhis of varying kinds figure centrally in the practice of Trika and Dzogchen because they offer us moments of greater openness to wisdom.

A sandhi between two yugas is a crack in time: a zone during which bigger shifts in orientation are possible.

Not to add to the number of theories, but as a report from my lived experience, I would say that greater numbers of people becoming more openhearted and in contact with wisdom, including coming into more clarity of view, create the momentum that pulls us through these gaps or cracks in time.

In other words, as more individual people leave the Kali Yuga behind, the larger cycle moves toward the next era on the wheel of yugas.

Extinction

Right now, the beings and lands of Earth are experiencing extinction events. Good governance has been superseded by mindless greed and power-mongering and lies.

There are some indicators that counterflows to these destructive processes are building as our difficulties intensify.

As technologies are developed in ways that contribute to climate catastrophe, more people globally are communicating in real time, learning about each others’ lives, and forming real intimacies whose networks might actually sustain us.

As the brutality and threat of supremacist cultures have been more virulent and nakedly revealed, more people have gained clarity and freedom from the mytho-propagandistic stories of those cultures.

As false techno-science-savior narratives abound, and people are encouraged to give up their agency and connection to their own wisdom, swathes of people are learning about real nutrition, independent farming, Native cultures and stewardship of land, natural modes of health care, and community-building through networks of mutual aid and care.

As late iterations of supremacist brutalities threaten and destroy cultures and lands and people, those people refuse domination. Their views, and their cultural and spiritual practices have been spreading like seeds all over the globe.

Mahabharata math

I don’t know if these counterflows and others will be enough to turn Earth’s cultures toward something more heart-based and respectful of each other and our world.

But if the Indian teaching epic, The Mahabharata, has any truth for us, it’s this. In that story, the Pandava army of 1,530,900 warriors led by six representatives of wisdom squares off against the Kaurava army of 2,405,700 warriors led by 100 representatives of ignorance.

The central Pandava protagonist, the archer Arjuna, is full of doubt about the capacity of himself and his family to be victorious.

With teachings and aid from the Avatar Lord Krishna, Arjuna ultimately decides that a world ruled more by wisdom than ignorance is worth fighting for.

In that story, the road is long and rough, but eventually, wisdom prevails.

So, my friends, even though our numbers may be smaller, let’s keep on with open-hearts and all the clarity we can muster. Let’s cleave to wisdom in whatever form it meets us and supports us. Let’s band together to leave the Kali Yuga behind.

Do the math. Wisdom is on our side.

with infinite love,
Shambhavi

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter on Substack to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

1. The Lama of Many Lifetimes: Touching the Living Heart of Garchen Rinpoche, Book two, Perfection of Liberation (1958 - 1980)” By Sue-Sue - Tâm Bào Dàn.

2. Amrit Varta, “Pages from "Ma Anandamayee Prasang", Transl: A.K. Dutta Gupta ( Vol XII No. 3.) July 2008: 6-7.