8/21/22
This morning I introduce you to Saraswati, the Vedic goddess of knowledge, music, art, wisdom, and nature. She represents the free flow of wisdom and consciousness that holds creative ideas and sparks innovation.
A framed image of Saraswati hangs above the dinner table in the great room at Merry Mount. The image captures the light in the room and reflects it back to the viewer. It is omnipresent, but changes with the shifting light. Perhaps Saraswati empowers the strong women that regularly inhabit this space at Merry Mount: Rett, Caroline, Jess, Kris, Joy, Eva, and Asa. And perhaps, the mortal males who catch a glimpse of her will also receive some wisdom and/or creativity.
I remember when I first encountered this piece of art that represents Saraswati at a frame store in Upper Arlington. It captured my attention, but I walked out of the store without purchasing it. A couple of weeks later, when I returned to the store, it was still for sale and was still calling to me like a siren to a sailor. This time I couldn’t resist and I purchased it.
I feel that it is similar to Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The following description of Mona Lisa’s smile is apropos.
If any one gets a glimpse of the picture, the first thing that strikes him is the amazing degree to which Lisa looks alive. She really seems to look at us and to have a mind of her own. Like a living being, she seems to change before our eyes and looks a little different every time we come back to her. First she is smiling. Then the smile fades. A moment later the smile returns only to disappear again. Even in photographs of the picture we experience this strange effect. Sometimes she seems to mock at us, and then again we seem to catch something like sadness in her smile.
It is believed that the goddess Saraswati endows human beings with the powers of speech, wisdom, and learning. Her image often has four hands representing four aspects of human personality in learning: mind, intellect, alertness, and ego. In visual representations, she has sacred scriptures in one hand and a lotus, the symbol of true knowledge, in the opposite hand.
I, Saraswati, imbue infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beam of light. In every atom, all three worlds appear to be, with all their components like space, time, action, substance, day and night. I offer you the powers of thought, speech, wisdom, and learning.
In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you.
but sometimes I do, and that
sight becomes this art.
-Rumi
CPW
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