The ten houses of Kaama
Photo: Barbie Robinson for Siva In Me book
Kaama- which means desire, pleasure, lust, self-interest- has ten houses, or domains of feeling, according to Natya Sastra:
Kaama is the eternal entry and exiting from the stage of life. Each entry is filled with hope, desire, seeking...we search for fulfilling that hope. We signal in manifold ways to draw that state of our perceived fulfilments to us. We offer it our loving gestures. We are the courtesans signalling our availability to our desires.
Kaama is the eternal thinking about our aspired states of being, our hopes, our dreams, those destinations that hold our perceptions of pleasure. With half-closed eyes we are lost in them. What is remote becomes near, we clothe ourselves in the robes of the distance. We reveal the secrets of our bodies, our souls and our hearts.
Kaama is the eternal reliving of our pleasure. The memory of ecstasy is eternally held in the body and tasted endlessly. We turn away from all else but this exquisite arousal that we cling to, like a creeper clings to a tree.
Kaama is the swooning song of glory to that which is our pleasure. We look for ears and eyes and communities to listen to our song. Kaama is the song that moves us to tears, that exerts us into rivers of perspiration. The song becomes the destination as it is shared by the choir of singers of desire. Finally we belong because we are in community of Kaama seekers.
Kaama is the restless heartburn of doubt and anxiety. It seeps into the crevices of assumed fortress-like certainty like smoke through the walls of a burning wall. Like smoke, we drift around unable to rest awhile, even as we cling to the thought of a destination attained and celebrated.
Kaama is the lament of the searing pain of geographies transformed by loss. It is the storying of the body and the world by what once was. The body is sculpted by remembered touch and the world is painted in the colours of remembered events. It is the mournful funeral wailing of those left behind the dead.
Kaama is when movement morphs into paralysis. It is when we are weeping pillars. It is when the depth of our sighs plumb the deepest ocean. In our tears and in our breaths we arrive at simplicity beyond words, form, dreams and hopes.
Kaama is when community cannot cajole us back into the choir. It is when we hold our heads and sit in the quietude of all that has gone. It is when the glitter of belonging, of arriving, of destinations and dreams are like festive decorations in dustbins the day after the celebrations.
Kaama is the stupor of surrender. It is the meaninglessness of sounds with no language, movements with no intent, of a dance without choreography.
Kaama is the eternal pyres of death. It is the fire that sustains, the fire that destroys, the fire that transforms. It turns into fine ash all the thoughts, forms, movements, songs and dances of pleasure. It scatters the ash of our beings into the formless truth of life.
We can choose to sweep the ash away, wipe the floor and enter the stage again, looking for the same song to sing, the same choir to join.
OR
We can choose to adorn ourselves with the ash and never ‘know’ again.