Varaha: uprooting and unearthing Truth

By © Asitjain / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21676028

The boar (Varaha, Sukara) is an ancient invocation in many cultures. We find the boar in the 12,000 year old pillars at Gobekli Tepe and amongst the ancient temples and sites in India. The boar invocation is a central practice in Chatushpada or the four-footed or four dimensions of consciousness in body-led spirituality.

The most famous myth of the boar draws on what is considered as the “swabhava” or the nature of this animal. In the myth, Vishnu, the deity of manifest reality, takes the form of the boar to retrieve Earth from the ocean floor. Earth was hidden under the ocean by an Asura (demonic nature). As Varaha, Vishnu bores his way to unearth Earth and to seize Her from the Asura. He then restores Earth as an offering.

Varaha is the invitation to uproot that which hides Earth. Here the practice is about our intimate consciousness. It is about our Earth, which is our Kshetra/Body as Earth. Our Earth is hidden when the mind-led consciousness dominates with duality and its resulting brutality of hierarchy and conquest. We invoke our Varaha consciousness to unearth, seize and offer the wholeness of our presence. There is no negotiating with the Asura, it requires Varaha’s strength to bore into the depths, to follow the scent of Earth (this is often stated in some of the versions of the myth) and to restore Her in our bodies. Earth is a scent because She is subtle and invisible to the mind which can only objectify her as separate from us. Like the boar, we follow the scent of Earth to the darkest depths if need be. And when our uprooting is a movement of offering then She is restored within and without.

Over centuries we have developed spiritualities that have lost the scent of dirt and the need to get our snouts dirty. This does not mean the opposite which is the story of suffering. Varaha is an innate possibility, a teaching, a potential if you will. Varaha locates inquiry in the body and its strength which is free of narratives of competence and mastery. As I said in the class today, we do need to break sweat in spiritual inquiry and not always consider it a relaxing or interesting intellectual exercise!