The Listening Moon

Fasting and the Season of Holy Pause

Wading into a cool lake, its waters unfamiliar and yet not. Being unsure of the depths or who exactly may be living in them, yet feeling a sense of welcome— of welcome back.

That is how I would describe my experience of deepening into Hindu practice in recent months.

(With my fifth decade around the corner, I should know myself well enough by now to predict that this is not my final immersion into the waters of a fresh cosmology or religion. The learning habit is hard to shake, though, and the only real way to learn about these things is from the inside. Plus, life with deities [other than the New Gods] is more interesting.)

Keeping with the wading metaphor for the moment, I think it’s fair to say I’ve stepped off a ledge in recent weeks and now find myself in deeper waters, beginning to splash around. The gods are probably pretty amused at my swimming attempts.

In a sense—at the risk of mixing metaphors—the waters I’m moving through are temporal ones. This is an immersion into sacred time, time as it’s divided via the Indian soli-lunar calendar (or rather the many regional variations thereof).

Permit me now a modest fact dump. Such calendars feature 29.5-day lunar months and without getting technical, one can appreciate that the roughly 365.25 day solar year that we use in the West doesn’t divide neatly by 29.5. There’s always a remainder, which means the lunar year is never the same length as the solar year. To keep the solar and lunar cycles synced up, India’s time specialists—Jyotishis—hit upon the solution of adding an extra month every 32 or 33 months. The added month always shares a name with the month it’s squeezed in front of. This year there were two Srāvans (the second of which we’re still in, depending on which exact calendric system one follows).

It caught my attention, this idea of an extra (adhika) month, partly because the added month has a kind of special status. It’s considered inauspicious for worldly affairs (one would not plan on starting a business venture during an intercalary month) but especially good for spiritual practice (especially those pertaining to lord Vishnu). But also partly because of Srāvan itself. A beautiful and rather special month, as I’m learning.

Falling during the Southwest monsoon with its torrential downpours, Śrāvan (whether regular or added) isn’t a good time for traveling or for many kinds of outdoor work, at least not in Southasia. Perhaps this is why it’s a holy month full of festivals. It’s certainly a time for the living stories of Indian mythology to be told, stories like one of my favorites, Samudra Manthan, the churning of the ocean—an event that happened in Srāvan, they say, all those eons ago. And then there’s Śrāvan’s etymological meaning: literally, ‘hearing’ or ‘listening.’ It’s a time to hit pause on the hurly burly of life and tap into what’s timeless. A time to dial up the gods.

Drawn to Śrāvan vibe, I did what any book-lover would do: I stocked up on stories, mainly the epic Rāmāyana. (Audiobook, check. Hard copy, check. Podcast, check.) But I wanted to go deeper than just taking in something new (even if it is very old). To get into the spirit of the time, to truly sync up with Śrāvan, I felt I needed to give something up as well.

I decided to undertake a vrat.

A vrat is a ritual fast, typically performed weekly in honor of a specific deity or planet. It’s a personal practice of devotion, undertaken especially by women (often with a specific intent, such as finding a good husband) but also by men. Śrāvan is a major vrat season, whether one picks Mondays (for Shiva or the Moon), Tuesdays (for Parvati, Mars or Hanumān), or some other day. Practically every other day is a festival day during this month, so there’s no shortage of options for the devout.

Without boring you with the nitty gritty of my fasting experiments, I’ll say that there’s been a learning curve. This is partly because I’m flying solo, without benefit of much communal support, learning from the internet something that should be soaked up organically.

An example: sources list the foods that can be eaten on vrat days are not consistent or detailed. And when it comes to ritual worship the day of, some sources give fairly elaborate instructions. Others emphasize one’s inner state and attitude as more important. And so on. There is of course no one way to do these things, but the novice can’t help but seek the handrails his first time up the stairs.

It’s a bit like celebrating Christmas for the first time: ‘okay, looks like we need a tree, some presents, a big meal…I’m starting to get it…but where do the reindeer fit in it, exactly?’

Suffice it to say, I didn’t get what to do with the reindeer on my first Monday vrat. And I learned the hard way that it’s better not to start a religious fast than to start one and mess it up. The gods really don’t like that. I get the sense they cut me some slack for being the new kid in class, but breaking the fast too soon and with very inappropriate food items did not prove to be a rewarding or comfortable experience.

On the positive side, I did learn something, and I don’t just mean what not to do. I learned (or was reminded) that when you make a sacrifice p and empty yourself, you gain something. You gain a space for spirit to fill, and fill it may.

Story. Prayer. Song. Mantra. These things bubble up easily in the calm, clear, sensitized space that fasting can induce. Devotion just happens more easily under these circumstances, and with it comes a lighthearted joy that’s not always easy to come by in this world. These last couple of days I’ve found myself born up on synchronous currents, caught up in a devotion-tinged flow that sets the heart at ease. Good things are happening, one feels. It’s working.

Probably tomorrow I’ll get manage to breathe some water or something; one way or another, the window of epiphany will close. Soon Srāvana will be over, time’s current moving on. Then again, in this tradition there’s always another festival around the corner (Ganesh is next!) and with it another chance to tap into an old, collective wisdom about aligning oneself with the auspicious.

Om Namah Śivāya

Aim Klīm Sauh