Randoms

The people who resist spirituality the most are the ones who are the most moral, the most religious. For that entails a harder dissolution process...

The preoccupation continues

Mind.. This mind of mine.. Is it a subject or object in the process of perception of world? Vedanta deems it as an object. As the real subject who perceives is the Atman.. But without getting into contemplation on how laws of perception at such higher levels, what I plan to get into is the dynamics of perception of the lower order.. where the mind is the subject and the world is the object perceived..
Providence had brought me across people and books that lured me into the terrain and I thought its time I consolidated it all..
Hegel, an idealist, like all other idealists believed that the 'object' world that we perceive is the creation of the 'subject' mind. Outer world as we see, know, realise it is but a projection of mind..

Mill and Baine would argue, they being the realists. According to them, the world outside exists as a objective reality, be there a mind that perceives it or not. The object world for them is independent of the subject mind.

Vedanta's treatises on Perception brings about a dialectic of the two contradicting theses. Sometimes i really think all truth is at the mid point of a dialectic. Be it a physical truth or philosophical truth. Anyways, before I let myself digress- Vedanta holds that world as we perceive is so perceived because of the creative function of mind and the existing nature of the objects perceived.

For example, imagine there is a pebble. The pebble has certain inherent qualities. And the mind had a conception of a pebble. It's when the mind's conception of pebble and the pebble's existence of being a pebble, converge that perception take place.

In that sense, what we perceive is the overlapping area of what we know and what exists out there..
And as what we know expands, the things we perceive also expand.. I remember.. just an year ago, I'll see a bird and it'd be just a bird, a flower would just be a flower, a colour would just be a colour.. Now it's different. When I see a bird, if it's the crow, I see something in it that I also peceive in lead.. when I see yellow.. i see in it something that I perceive in an elephant.. Something intangible.. Something till now unperceived.. but now as my conception of an object has changed, expanded, there is more of an overlap of what it is and what i know, and i perceive it different..

The enlightened seers say, while a quality of a particular object is it's structure, there is an an underlying Absolute Reality which is the substratum..
Like wise, while the discrimating nature is the mind's function it too has an underlying substratum which is the underlying Absolute Reality..
Parthasarathy has beautifully simplified it into an equation.
A flower = The Qualities of flower + Absolute Reality
Mind that sees it = Constructs of flower+ Absolute Reality
But since we have not identified or touched that Absolute Reality in us, we cannot perceive the Absolute Reality that underlies the flower. We just see in the flower what the mind has learned to discriminate.
No wonder, they say, when a person becomes truly enlightened, the world for her/him truly dissolves away..
I guess then it'd be just the Absolute reality perceiving the absolute reality.. or rather, seeing it's own self extended..
Sweet! :-)

Rasas in the Onam Sadhya

My love for festivals are on a perpetual wax and wane cycle. This year, its waxing. Onam has been quietly, meaningfully beatuiful. Actually, this time, thanks to Tim, I unjaded myself as I looked at the sadhya leaf and found a whole lot of sense in the array of curries colourlfully arranged on the plantain leaf. He posed the question, why that particular order? And surely there must be some significance in the signature tastes predominating each course of the mea l...
Really set me thinking..

Human body is said to be made of 5 elements. Earth, Fire, Water, Air, Ether. The 5 elements combine among themselves to form the 3 doshas.
Earth + Water = Kapha
Fire - Pitta
Air+ Ether = Vata

Kapha is the anabolic force. Builds the body. Nourishes the body.
Pitta manifests as sight, intelligence, memory, the blood and digestive fluids
Vata is the movement. It is the power behind all actions of mind and body. Kapha and Pitta needs Vata for their action.

And the balance of the three is the health of an individual. Food is the primary link we have to our earth. And just like our own selves, each entity in this earth has it's own characteristic composition of the tridoshas. And by consuming them, we intake the tridoshas.

Now a perfect food would be one that balances the doshas.
Now coming to food, a food has three qualities - rasa (initial taste), virya (thermal potency) and vipaka (post digestive impact). And these have a direct impact on our well being. There are 6 tastes. Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, astingent, pungent. Each of these tastes has a specific impact on our doshic balance because of the basic elements and the qualities it possess.

Now applying this to the sumptuous sadhya,
Rice and parippu and ghee are one of the first things to come. Sweet and salt are the predominant tastes. Sweet= Earth+Water , Salt = Water+ Fire. Both are basicaly Kapha, Oily and heavy. Nourishes the body.
Then comes Sambar. Pungent. Sweet. Salty. Kapha dosha , but this time, along with considerable Pitta and vata too. For, Pungent = Air+Fire.
Then comes agian Sweet in the form of Paayasam.
Which is then followed again by Pungent, Sour and Astringent in the form of Rasam, Moru, Puliseery.
Here, Sour= Earth+Fire and Astringent = Air+Earth. While the former is digestive and carminative, the latter is absorbant and purifying.

Ofcourse other than the main dishes, all the side dishes kept along also has their own role. Though I really am not able to break them down to basic tastes... Injikkary (ginger curry) is definitely there, kept first for it's post digestive effect (vipaka). It is both sweet and pungent. Hot in potency(Virya). It will rev up the digestive juice secretion so that proper digestion is in place as one keeps eating..

I know this is just a naive musing. And that there is more to it.. But had to put it down or I would even forget, I had such a concern..

Ishi Mom

Ishi gave birth to a baby boy.

He is as big as those two new bipin chandra books i bought yesterday, put together.

She carried him for 10 months! It took one hour for her to push him out. They slit her with a blade and then stitched her back.

She sits, cooing to her baby, joking at how she feels ticklish when he sucks her nipples.

Ishi, my funny funky friend who made the college of the Maharja bearable. She is all Mom now. There were not many instances where we didnt see eye to eye. It's just not that I dont understand her now.

Its just this new person that has walked out of the skin shedded. The skin that burst first where her son poked his head out, the crack then travelling up her belly, her breasts then upto her head. The skin falls off and Voila! there is a Mom to the world.

I know there must be a being like that in me too. But moulting, I reiterate, is not for the fishy ones. We are happy to swim around in our slippery first skins all life long. And nurturing though we might be, narcissism doesn't peak enough to wish the object of nurturance holds one's own gene map.

But Gosh, Ishi, respect I do. so much...chakkare.

Kinds; Of loving

Neruda was right.
There are two types of love.
One in which you love like certain dark things are to be loved. To see the other as the plant that doesn't bloom but carries within itself the light of those flowers.
One in which you love like certain simple integral things are to be loved. The other, the evening breeze which doesn't hide anything but plays on your hair all that it is.