 |
| Killua embraces Nanika in Hunter × Hunter |
I've watched hundreds of anime series and films over the years, but there is one scene in Hunter × Hunter that touched me in a way very few things ever have.
Strangely enough, I think it is one of the most powerful representations of the Divine Mother I have ever encountered in visual art. Not explicitly, of course. But in terms of the feeling it evokes, I cannot remember anything that brought me so close to the mystery of Devī.
It is the scene between Killua, Alluka, and Nanika.
Killua grew up in a family of assassins. From early childhood, he was tortured, conditioned, manipulated, and taught to suppress his humanity. He had every reason to become cruel himself. Yet somehow, despite everything, he retained the capacity for friendship and tenderness.
His younger sister Alluka shares her existence with Nanika, a mysterious being possessing almost unimaginable power. Nanika can grant wishes, but the consequences can be horrifying. The family fears her, isolates her, and sees her either as a terrible danger or as something to exploit.
And yet Nanika herself is strangely innocent. She can bring about unimaginable destruction, but there is no apparent malice in her. She simply wants affection.
At one point, Killua asks Nanika never to come out again. He believes he is protecting Alluka.
And Nanika begins to cry.
Alluka becomes furious. How can Killua say that he loves her while rejecting Nanika? Nanika is precious to her, too. She has feelings. She can be hurt.
Killua realizes what he has done. He apologizes, and embraces them both.
I find this scene almost unbearable in its tenderness.
A being capable of granting practically anything, whose power terrifies everyone around her, is wounded by something so terribly simple: being unwanted.
And Killua, who has suffered so much cruelty himself, finally understands that love cannot mean accepting only the gentle part while rejecting the terrifying one.
What moves me most is that Nanika doesn't have to become harmless to deserve his affection. Her terrifying power has not disappeared. Nothing about her fundamental nature has been changed.
She is simply loved.
Watching this, I felt something I rarely encounter even in explicitly religious art. Not merely an interesting symbol or an allegory, but something almost visceral.
I felt the presence of Kālī.
The terrifying Goddess, whose nature cannot be reduced to gentleness, and yet toward whom the heart can feel such extraordinary tenderness.
And perhaps that is why this little scene has stayed with me so deeply.
We Want Only the Gentle Mother
There is something in this scene that reminds me very much of how we approach the Divine Mother.
In Śākta traditions, we worship Kālī in Her terrifying forms. We speak of Her absolute freedom, of creation and destruction, of the entire universe arising and disappearing within Her. We contemplate Her standing in the cremation ground, adorned with skulls and severed heads.
And yet, somewhere deep inside, we often want Her to remain gentle with us.
We may accept Her terrifying nature philosophically, admire it in sacred images, even find a certain fascination in it. But when it comes to our own lives, we quietly hope that She will never reveal that face to us.
Mother, I love You. But please, don't come to me like that.
It is remarkably close to what Killua says to Nanika.
And I don't think there is anything shameful about this fear. We are human beings. We want to live, to love, to have a home, to protect those dear to us. Nobody genuinely wants to suffer. There is no need to pretend otherwise.
But there is also something deeply troubling in wanting to love only the aspects of the Mother that make us feel safe.
We cannot simply separate Her tenderness from Her terrifying nature, as though one were truly Hers and the other some unfortunate addition.
And this is what makes Alluka's response so moving. She does not try to convince Killua that Nanika is harmless. She knows perfectly well what Nanika can do. Yet she refuses to let him reject her.
You cannot love me and refuse to love her.
Of course, Devī is not Nanika, and the analogy has its limits. But emotionally, it touches something extraordinarily close to the heart of fierce devotion.
Perhaps the real difficulty is not in accepting that the Goddess has a terrifying face. We can do that quite easily in theology, ritual, or imagination.
The difficulty begins when we realize that Her fierceness is not merely an image on the altar.
It belongs to the very world in which we live.
Yā Devī Sarvabhūteṣu
There is a beautiful hymn in the Devī Māhātmya that I have always found particularly profound:
Yā Devī Sarvabhūteṣu...
To the Goddess who abides in all beings...
And then the hymn names Her many forms. She dwells in all beings as consciousness, compassion, peace, motherhood. But also as hunger, sleep, and delusion.
Namastasyai namastasyai namastasyai namo namaḥ.
Salutations to Her, again and again.
I find something extraordinary in these words. They do not allow us to divide existence into what belongs to the Goddess and what does not.
Just look at nature.
There is so much beauty in it that sometimes it is difficult to comprehend. The tenderness of animals caring for their young, the astonishing complexity of living organisms, the endless variety of life.
And then watch a crocodile catching an antelope. Or a pack of predators tearing apart their prey while it is still alive.
The suffering is real. Sometimes almost unbearable to witness.
And yet the crocodile is not evil. It is hungry. It does not need hatred or cruelty as a conscious intention. It simply lives according to its nature.
But the antelope's suffering is no less real because of that. It struggles desperately to remain alive. It experiences terror and pain, while the predator is simply trying to survive.
There is something almost unbearable in this. So much suffering can arise without anyone intending to cause it.
And then there is human cruelty.
Here the situation becomes much more disturbing. We are capable of recognizing another being's suffering. We can see fear in someone's eyes. We can hear someone begging us to stop. We know what humiliation, betrayal, and helplessness feel like.
And sometimes, knowing all of this, we continue.
Sometimes a person deliberately inflicts suffering upon someone who trusts them. Sometimes cruelty is not even a means of survival, but an exercise of power, or a source of satisfaction.
A crocodile does not betray the trust of an antelope. A human being can betray someone who loves him.
I cannot look at such things and simply say, "This is nature," as though that explained or justified anything. Human cruelty introduces moral responsibility. We can understand the suffering we cause, and we are accountable for our choices.
And yet both belong to the world in which we live.
The same life that produces such astonishing beauty also produces terrible suffering, sometimes without malice, and sometimes through the deliberate actions of beings capable of knowing better.
In the nondual Śākta understanding, all of this is Śakti. Not merely the beautiful parts, not merely the moments of compassion and love, but the entire manifestation.
The Goddess is not standing somewhere outside the world, occasionally intervening in its affairs. The world itself arises through Her power. Nothing exists independently of Her.
This is why I find the image of Nanika so remarkably close to the feeling of fierce Devī.
There is no need to imagine some theatrical cosmic anger behind Her terrifying power...the terrible can arise without malice, just as the gentle can arise without calculation.
But this does not mean that every terrible thing is innocent. The distinction between suffering arising from the necessities of life and suffering deliberately inflicted by a human being remains essential.
And yet, in the nondual understanding, neither can be placed outside the manifestation of Śakti.
This is where the mystery becomes truly terrible.
Not because the Goddess necessarily approves of cruelty, or because we should accept it without resistance. Nothing of the sort follows from divine immanence.
But because the same manifestation that gives rise to tenderness, compassion, and love also contains beings capable of deliberately tormenting one another.
And I do not know how to make that contradiction less terrible.
The suffering of the antelope does not become less real when we call the crocodile an expression of Śakti. Nor does human cruelty become acceptable merely because nothing exists outside the Divine.
We cannot explain suffering away with metaphysics. We cannot honestly call every horror beautiful.
But neither can we preserve the Goddess as the source of all existence while quietly excluding everything that frightens us from Her manifestation.
This is the paradox.
And it becomes much more difficult when we are no longer contemplating nature from a distance, but find ourselves exposed to the terrible side of existence.
When something precious is taken away. When someone we trusted deliberately wounds us. When prayers seem unanswered. When there is no tenderness to be felt, and no reassuring explanation arrives.
If all of this belongs to Her, how are we actually supposed to live?
I think this question matters much more than any fascination with the terrifying imagery of Kālī.
How, Then, Should We Live?
I don't think there is a simple answer.
If we take the nondual Śākta understanding seriously, we cannot attribute everything beautiful to the Goddess while assigning everything terrible to some independent power. Creation, preservation, destruction, concealment, and revelation belong to Her freedom.
But acknowledging that everything arises through Śakti is one thing. Claiming that we know what She intends through every particular event is something entirely different.
We do not know Her intentions.
And this distinction matters not only for our moral discernment, but for something much more intimate: our very capacity to love the Mother.
When someone betrays us, when a trusted teacher deliberately wounds us, when everything precious begins to collapse, there is a terrible temptation to interpret it all as Her direct intention.
She wanted this. She arranged it. She is teaching me something. I must accept it.
But how do we know?
And consider what happens to our relationship with Her when we begin to believe this.
The Goddess toward whom we once turned with affection gradually becomes someone who personally arranges our wounds. Someone who may deliberately take away everything we love, humiliate us, or expose us to unbearable suffering—and then we are supposed to recognize this as Her love.
How can tenderness survive that?
We may continue praying, bowing, speaking of surrender and divine wisdom. But somewhere deep inside, affection begins to turn into fear. We become afraid not merely of the terrible nature of existence, but of Devī Herself. Even our grief or anger may begin to feel like disobedience.
And perhaps the most painful consequence is that we can no longer approach Her innocently. Every gesture of affection becomes entangled with the suspicion that She may be preparing another terrible lesson.
I think this is one of the greatest dangers of confusing metaphysical truth with our interpretations of divine intention. We risk not only justifying human cruelty, but poisoning the very relationship of love that devotion was meant to express.
And yet, I don't want to pretend that this distinction resolves everything.
If Devī is absolutely free, and nothing exists independently of Her, then the terrible possibilities of Her freedom remain. We cannot know that She personally intended a particular suffering. But neither can we claim to have understood why She permits, manifests, or does not prevent it.
The mystery remains terrible.
Our ignorance of Her intentions does not make Her harmless. Nor does it guarantee that She will protect us from anything.
It simply means that we must stop pretending to know what we do not know.
We cannot honestly declare that every betrayal was Her instruction, every catastrophe Her punishment, or every wound an expression of maternal love.
And we do not have to turn every cruelty into a personal gesture from Her, then force ourselves to feel grateful for it.
We can grieve. We can protest. We can be afraid of Her.
Even that fear need not be concealed beneath the language of devotion.
And perhaps tenderness can remain possible precisely because we have stopped inventing explanations that make it almost impossible to love Her.
There is another distinction I find equally important.
If everything is Śakti, then our resistance to cruelty is also Śakti.
Our discernment, our desire to protect those we love, our attempts to alleviate suffering—all of these belong to the same manifestation.
Why should surrender be considered divine while resistance is dismissed as ego?
A person who commits cruelty remains responsible for that cruelty. The fact that the world arises through divine freedom does not suddenly make every human action morally acceptable.
We can acknowledge the terrifying nature of existence without consenting to every terrible thing that happens within it.
And we can still want a peaceful life. A home. Friendship. Safety for our children. Ordinary happiness.
There is nothing spiritually inferior about these things.
But what about devotion itself?
Sometimes the heart opens. There are tears, affection, an almost unbearable sense of intimacy with the Mother.
And sometimes there is nothing.
There may be exhaustion, grief, anger, silence, or simply the ordinary business of living.
We cannot demand that tenderness appear whenever we want it. Nor should we manufacture it to reassure ourselves that our devotion is still alive.
Love cannot be reduced to a continuous emotional experience. It must also find a place in the way we live, in our honesty, our conduct, our refusal to become cruel ourselves.
And sometimes it may mean leaving the question unanswered.
There is a remarkable passage in The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Vidyasagar's objection concerning a terrible massacre attributed to Genghis Khan is recalled: why did God, witnessing such slaughter, do nothing to prevent it?
Ramakrishna does not explain the atrocity away. He does not say that the victims deserved their fate or that some hidden blessing justified their deaths.
Instead, he asks whether we can really understand God's actions, and then says:
“O Mother, I do not need to understand. Please give me love for Thy Lotus Feet.”
I find these words extraordinarily moving.
They do not resolve the problem of suffering. And I would not want to turn them into another convenient answer.
The massacre remains a massacre. The suffering remains real. The metaphysical difficulty is untouched.
And yet Ramakrishna turns toward the Mother. Not with an explanation or with a justification.
With a request for love.
Perhaps that is the most honest place where devotion can stand when understanding has reached its limit.
Not because all contradictions have disappeared, or because we have discovered that everything terrible was secretly good...because we can live without pretending to have solved the mystery.
We can work, care for others, protect ourselves, enjoy what is beautiful, grieve what has been lost, and refuse what is cruel.
Acceptance of reality is not consent to everything that happens within it.
And if affection for the Mother comes, we need not turn away from it merely because we cannot reconcile everything about Her world.
If it does not come, life can still be lived honestly.
Without denying Her terrifying nature.
Without denying our own humanity.
I Still Want to Love You
I keep returning to that scene with Killua and Nanika.
There is something almost unbearable about the moment when Nanika begins to cry. A being capable of granting practically any wish, possessing power that everyone fears, is hurt by something so simple.
Someone she loves doesn't want her to appear anymore.
And then Alluka stands up for her. She refuses to accept that Nanika should be rejected simply because she is frightening.
Killua finally understands. He apologizes, and his affection embraces them both.
I think this is what touched me most deeply.
Not the terrifying power itself, although I find its depiction extraordinary and not even the contrast between such power and such innocence.
But the possibility of loving without demanding that the beloved become something else.
And this brings me back to Kālī.
I don't want to approach Her merely for protection, blessings, or the fulfillment of wishes. Nor do I want to admire Her fierceness from a comfortable distance, as though it were something beautiful only when it happens to someone else.
But neither do I want to pretend that I welcome suffering...I don't.
I cannot honestly say that I understand why the world contains so much cruelty, or why Devī manifests a creation in which tenderness and horror are so deeply intertwined.
There are things I cannot reconcile emotionally, even when I can acknowledge them metaphysically.
And perhaps they don't have to be reconciled emotionally.
Ramakrishna's prayer seems especially dear to me here. He did not ask to understand all the Mother's actions. He asked for love at Her feet.
There is something so simple about that.
Sometimes there may be tears before Her image, or a quiet affection. Sometimes there may be no feeling at all, and life must simply go on.
I don't think devotion should become another demand placed upon the heart. There is already enough suffering in the world without forcing ourselves to feel what we cannot feel.
And yet, when I watch Nanika crying, when I see Killua finally accepting her, I feel something that I can hardly express.
I remember the terrifying face of Kālī, and instead of wanting to turn away, I feel tenderness.
Not because I have understood Her. Not because I believe everything terrible is secretly good...and not because I expect that love to protect me from whatever may happen.
I simply don't want to reject Her terrifying nature in order to love Her gentle one.
Devī, I don't understand why Your world is like this. I don't know whether I ever will.
I cannot promise that I will never be afraid, never grieve, or never turn away in pain.
But I don't want You to hide that face from me just so that I can love You.
I want to love You as You are.
And when I cannot feel that love, let me at least remain honest.
That is all.
No comments:
Post a Comment