The Wish-Fulfilling Cow

In the tradition of sanaatana dharma, which most of us refer to as "Hinduism," we find among the pantheon of icons representing the One All-Pervading Reality, the image of kamadhenu ( कामधेनु ), "the Wish-fulfilling Cow."

It is natural to recognize in the history of so many cultures why the cow has come to be seen as a kind of mother: she provides essential sustenance as well as fertilization of our soils and fuel for cooking our food. (During my last visit to India, I noted that a single cow is at the center of a cup of chai: she provides the milk, the fertilizer to grow the tea leaves and her own grass food, and the dung that makes the fire that heats the tea!)

Kamadhenu is a manifest form of Divine Mother, and at the same time She represents actual cows, individually and collectively regarded within Her culture as Mother-in-the-flesh. More than that, She represents all animals, the entire Queendom of living beings.

Here we have a potent image that can and should serve both as comfort and as warning to us living in these times of dramatic changes on Earth, because this manifestation of Divine Mother is not eternal in the sense that the other divinities are.

We see the other goddesses and gods depicted within Her body, so we can see that the manner in which we regard this Sacred Cow may reveal our actual attitude toward the Divine. If we revere Her, we feel proper reverence for all that has been born from Her womb, all of Life.

At the same time, we also see in Her reflection how we treat the goddesses' manifestations - our actual, physical cows -, and this reveals a disconnect: though we may wish to think of Nature as "divine," how we treat the natural world so often does not reflect how we treat whatever else we regard as sacred, as holy. Sadly, much to the contrary. And, it seems that the more we have allowed ourselves to lose our felt connection with our own nature-bodies, the more latitude we have taken for violence against Nature and Her animals.

Similarly, when viewed in this way we can readily see that the mistreatment of women is not unlike the mistreatment of cows.

Our relationship with the Holy Cow is not guaranteed; our hopes for the granting of wishes sought from Kamadhenu depend reciprocally upon how we treat Her. As much a part of Nature as of the Divine, She is de facto not an inexhaustible resource. We cannot expect to receive what is best for us from what we treat so poorly. We can also see in the ever-arising, human-caused Earth changes that this is true of our relationship with all of Nature.

Those who understand Khamadenu, the Sacred Cow, understand that every living being is sacred and worthy of our reverence and care, and that our own happiness is directly dependent upon theirs.

May all beings be happy and well.