My visit to Jagannath Puri

Jagannath Puri is the only place in the universe that survives total universal devastation. It is a beautiful island, shaped like a conch.

It is a small city, and one is bewildered as to how this same city houses lakhs of people during rath yatra. Most locals are dependent on tourists for business. The remaining seem to be in the fishing business.

The cooking never stops at the Temple of Lord Jagannath. And the eating never stops either - even at night. On ekadashi the Lord is dressed in the Bada Singar vesha. I had the privilege of being in the temple at night when this Bada Sringar vesha was going on.

The deity of Lord Jagannath - the archa vigraha - is the most strangely carved one. Balabhadra and Shubhadra have narrower eyes, and smaller forms. Jagannath captures all the presence by His large form and big rotund eyes. He is Kaliya. His attendants are all liberated souls. The pandas who serve here all have four handed vishnu rupas as their etheric bodies even while they have the outer gross material body. They move about doing their business. The temple garbha is cleaned with water regularly. The bhoga offerings are so many and so heavy that one is boggled. One thin man dressed in a small read and pale yellow checkered dhoti moves out of the garbha. On his shoulder is a log stick. The ends of the stick support a stack of five large earthen pots each. This means at least 20 kgs of weight. The thin mans walks awkwardly due to the heavy weight. Only his legs move quickly, the rest of his body simply tolerates the strain put on it. He does not even move his head while walking.

Is he retarded? Why is he carrying such a heavy load, five to six time a day almost, for all the years of his life? He is a servant of Jagannath. He knows his duty and he is performing it. He is not free to do as he likes with his life. His mind, body and soul belong to Krishna. That is true for all of us, but he is living that truth, while we are not.

All the pandas in that temple are aware of who Jagannath is. They can understand how the Lord has His own pastimes and how He accepts all the foodstuff prepared for Him. Unless the head panda sees the image of Jagannath in the achaman water during bhoga offering, He cannot offer the bhoga to the deity, because it means Jagannath is not present.

Why does the Lord interact in this way? We seem to deserve no better for wanting to forget God and live our lives separate from Him. But it is a very high form of interaction with God. Faith is needed. And more the faith, more is the reciprocation from God towards such a relationship. Everyone then can have his own personal dealings with God. Other than faith nothing else is needed.

So coming back to Puri. It is covered by a thin layer of material dust to cover the glories of the dhaam from materialistic people. But in truth the whole city is just transcendental. It is full of everlasting knowledge and bliss - sat cit ananda.

Every night as Jagannath prepares to nod off, some of His dear associates come and sing Geet Govind to Him. This long poem was written by Jayadev Goswami. The point to ponder on is - how did Jayadev managed to write if he was completely illiterate and did not know how to write!? It seems he simply took a pen in his hands and the writing came naturally.

This is not even a farthing of all the glories of Puri and its residents. But I will have to end here.