Sita is the Goddess of Devotion and Mystical Submission
Sita exists only for love. She personifies loyalty. She incarnates devotion. She stands for the feminine principle of loving devotion.
Sita is Rama's wife and she is most often pictured sitting with him on a single throne. If you practice chanting or listen to chants, you hear Sita's name chanted right along side of Rama's: Sitaram.
She is the heroine of the Ramayana, the core mythological text of Hinduism. She is the icon of traditional Indian womanhood.
"Such a woman is called a pativrata ("husband-vowed"), one who is committed in unselfish loyalty to her husband, who is essentially her deity. Her vow has all the power of yoga; through her intense selflessness, a pativrata generates yogic fire, and this gives her immense siddhis, or yogic powers." Kempton, p. 204
She is an archetype of the "static feminine"-- completely yin, unconditionally faithful, utterly supportive. Sita is not a favorite Goddess of feminists in India.
Sita has pale skin and dark hair. She wears a white sari, a flower garland around her neck, and a necklace of small black beads. She wears colored and gold bangles on her wrists. At her third eye point there is a vermillion dot. Her eyes are closed.
Rama accuses Sita of being unfaithful. The first time he does this, she proves her fidelity by standing in flames, untouched. The second time, she descends back into the earth, from which she came. Rama never remarries and mourns her forever. He keeps a golden figure of Sita by his side.
"The yin aspect of the feminine, like the fertile Earth, doesn't fight to protect itself. Fierice goddesses-- like Durga and Kali-- fight to protect the world, to protect the gods, to protect life. They "punish" pride and disrespect with weapons. The gentle goddesses simply withdraw." Kempton, p.211
"Committed to the path of submission, it is only through passive resistance, especially self-immolation, that they can force the masculine to look at his own cruelty or impel him to turn back to values of love and justice." Kempton, p. 211 For example, Ghandi, the Civil Rights Movement and MLK, Argentinian Mothers of the Disappeared.
Sita "represents the sacred Earth which continues to bring forth crops and support life even as her pastures are paved with concrete and her life-sustaining rainforests are cut down. She is the symbol of every woman still deprived of voice by clueless patriarchy, yet who manages in her suffering to keep love and forbearance alive." Kempton, p.212
Sita "embodies the feminine insistence on the primacy of relationship." The need to take care of another person trumps the rule of law.
"In the West, we've transformed the Sita archetype into Cinderella, where the passive, beautiful woman is carried away by the handsome prince."
"Sita is the exact opposite of Kali and the other fierce goddesses. She is that in the feminine that most needs protection, because kit is most open to violence and betrayal. She is the submissive daughter-in-law of Hindu and Islamic tradition, the fifty-year-old wife divorced by her husband for the sake of a younger woman. She is the generations of women who believed that by being good wives, good daughters, and good mothers they would be protected, that their connections to others defined them. Contemplating Sita can bring up all the grief of the collective feminine and a deep rage at the masculine..." Kempton, p.213
Sita is the holding quality of love. "Kali's dynamic force pushes the child out of the womb. Sita is the womb itself. Her Shakti flows as the mother's vital fluids as they nurture the embryo. It appears as the maternal bliss that, for many women, makes the act of caring for a child so ecstatic." Kempton, p. 213
This loves asks for nothing in return.
Ideas from Awakeing Shakti, by Sally Kempton
