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| Matangi |
"When Love seizes the soul, she takes leave of virtues just as she did of vice." — Marguerite Porete
"If freedom were gained by coupling alone, every creature that mates would be free." — Kularnava‑tantra 5.11
Vira Chandra: Longing is a wild animal. We meet her at the edge of the forest and, frightened by her hunger, we slip a collar around her neck. Some forge the collar from silver—chastity, meekness, spotless prayer. Others hammer theirs from iron—wine, skin, midnight laughter. Either way the creature is tethered, and we christen the leash spirituality.
Picture a Carmelite grate at dawn: a young nun spreads her vows on the altar like freshly laundered linen. Her face glows with an innocence so bright it aches to behold. Yet beneath that radiance trembles a question no rulebook can still: Who am I when no one is watching? The convent supplies a ready answer—You are the Bride of Christ, forever pure. Beauty answers, and beauty can be a lullaby.
Shift the scene. Imagine a circle of neo‑tantrikas draped in crimson scarves, voices weaving that the body is shrine and orgasm sacrament. The room thrums with sincerity, yet another question pulses beneath the drumbeat: Who am I when the music stops? Their doctrine replies, You are the free lover, beyond taboo. Another soothing lullaby.
Between these tableaux stretches a single road paved with badges. Saint, sinner, virgin, libertine, renunciate, tantrika—each a shining token pressed to the chest as proof of belonging.
The old Kaula wanderers, half‑mad and wholly awake, stroll this road collecting badges only to fling them into the cooking fire. “Wine, meat, sex—excellent fuel,” they grin, “but useless souvenirs.”. They mock neither purity nor passion; they mock our need to be defined by them. Their teaching is as stark as winter bark: Nothing clutched can save you, yet everything touched can set you free—if you meet it naked.
Marguerite Porete walked naked into the flames of Paris in 1310. She had tasted a Love so total that even virtue distracted her. In her 'Mirror' the soul floats like a feather in wind—no merit to claim, no sin to confess, only the breath of God turning her wherever it pleases. The Church named that wind heresy; the stake answered with sparks. Sparks cannot burn what is already ash.
What does this mean for us, here, now? Celibacy is holy until it becomes a pedestal; eros is holy until it becomes a billboard. Every practice—silence, chant, kiss, fast—must one day hand us back to the mystery that breathed practice into being. The Kularnava laughs because dogs copulate daily and remain dogs; the Gospel sighs because Pharisees tithe mint and cumin yet miss the kingdom within. The joke and the sigh share a single lesson: Act if you must, but do not sleep inside the costume.
Honor the nun’s discipline, but do not mistake it for the sky. Honor the lover’s fire, but do not mistake it for the sun. And when a new label—pure, wild, awakened, broken—starts to fit too comfortably, feel the collar tighten and remember the animal waiting to run. Whenever a new identity (for example, “I’m so pure” or “I’m so rebellious”) starts to feel cozy, notice it’s becoming a restraint—like a dog collar. Then recall your deeper, untamed self that longs to be free, and don’t let the new label trap you.
If tomorrow finds you kneeling before an icon, kneel with your whole animal body. If tomorrow finds you tangled in a lover’s hair, enter with your whole animal breath. And if tomorrow finds you standing alone beneath indifferent stars, stand so still that the night hears its own heartbeat in your ribs.
When the last badge slips from your fingers and the collar falls with a soft clink on the stones, you will not be virtuous or transgressive or even spiritual. You will be a mouthful of dawn, a pocket of wind, a creature whose very pulse is praise. When you drop every label and role, you feel fresh and spacious—like the first light of morning or air moving freely. Your very existence feels like gratitude; you don’t have to “do” praise—you are praise
Then you will know why Porete smiled at the stake, why the Kaula wanderers laugh at saints and sinners alike, and why longing—once unchained—needs no name at all...Imagine you’ve shed every title, role, and story you tell about yourself. Nothing “sticks” to you anymore—no perfume, no badge, no mask. At that point, even the wind—which touches everything—can “recognize” you only by your bare, natural scent: the simple, unadorned presence of your being....
Oh Dark‑Blue Mother of Speech,
Thread these words on a burning needle.
Stitch shut the mouth that boasts holiness;
stitch shut the mouth that boasts freedom.
Rip every label from my skin
until the wind knows me by scent alone—
raw, unnumbered, Yours.
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