Quotes Of The Day

“In a theater, it happened that a fire started offstage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed-amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.”

― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

"The mass media first convinced us that the imaginary was real, and now they are convincing us that the real is imaginary; and the more reality the TV screen shows us, the more cinematic our everyday world becomes. Until as certain philosophers have insisted, we will think that we are alone in the world, and everything else is the film that God or some evil spirit is projecting before our eyes."

― Umberto Eco,  How to React to Familiar Faces

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.”

― Albert Einstein, Living Philosophies

Samuel Beckett - Endgame (Summary)

This has been probably the most eccentric and illogical play that I have ever read. I mean where to start with this. The settings, the characters, the story line everything is so unconventional, I wonder what really was going on in the writer's head. I am not privy to it and I don't claim to deduce any intelligent undertones from it all.

In a sparse setting in a room with couple of windows, this one act play has four characters that all live in this room. Hamm is blind and on a wheelchair. Clov his servant is his only eyes and help and who can not sit. Hagg and Nell as Hamm's parents and they have no legs and they live in the dustbins in the room itself. The drama drags itself over obsessively hopeless situations and dialogues. As with Beckett's any other work, repetition is the key aspect. Hamm and Clov increasingly engage in a despairing banter that is difficult to make sense of. Outside the room, through the windows the scene is of desolateness, the reason to which are unknown. Nature has abandoned them and all and the only view outside would be of uncompromising invariability.  Though there is an passage of time as in day and night, but in the large scheme of things, time is meaningless. We are not told of their ages or of the times in which they lived. Any attempt to make meaning (of life) is doomed to fail. There is no wholesome life or living, any grandstanding or intellectual discourses on how to live it. Instead what we have are small absurd moments, repetitive actions, banal talk, overhanging gloom and an eventual death. Life has been broken into inconsequential moments that are to be lived and lived in doing that amounts to nothing more. The absurdity of these moments (and life itself) is not in living it, but in trying to make a sense or any sense of it.

Hamm: Clov! 
Clov: [impatiently] What is it? 
Hamm: We're not beginning to ... to ... mean something? 
Clov: Mean something! You and I, mean something! [Brief laugh.] Ah that's a good one! 
Hamm: I wonder. [Pause.]” 

In making it absolute of time, the writer has negated a possibility of linear progress, of betterment. Instead, the continual repetition of banal acts reinforces that the only end if of nothingness. Even the idea of change, of meaning, of nature is frowned upon, because something like this has previously happened and it will happen again with the same outcome. But beyond death, what is that outcome is not certain. Death is an inevitable conclusion to this charade of an existence, but isn't it for all existences. In showing the torment is eternal and cyclical where each day unfolds the same farce of 'living' till eternity, and nothing ever changes in this slow march to nothingness, the writer turns inside out that small room into the bigger canvas of our lives where the self is trapped similarly (in a small room) trying to live those moments, grappling and trying everything in the hope that something sticks before the coming Endgame.

“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that… Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.” 

Hermann Hesse - Siddhartha [Selected Sections - I]

Siddhartha had started to nurse discontent in himself, he had started to feel that the love of his father and the love of his mother, and also the love of his friend, Govinda, would not bring him joy for ever and ever, would not nurse him, feed him, satisfy him. He had started to suspect that his venerable father and his other teachers, that the wise Brahmans had already revealed to him the most and best of their wisdom, that they had already filled his expecting vessel with their richness, and the vessel was not full, the spirit was not content, the soul was not calm, the heart was not satisfied. The ablutions were good, but they were water, they did not wash off the sin, they did not heal the spirit’s thirst, they did not relieve the fear in his heart. The sacrifices and the invocation of the gods were excellent— but was that all? Did the sacrifices give a happy fortune? And what about the gods? Was it really Prajapati who had created the world? Was it not the Atman, He, the only one, the singular one? Were the gods not creations, created like me and you, subject to time, mortal? Was it therefore good, was it right, was it meaningful and the highest occupation to make offerings to the gods? For whom else were offerings to be made, who else was to be worshiped but Him, the only one, the Atman? And where was Atman to be found, where did He reside, where did his eternal heart beat, where else but in one’s own self, in its innermost part, in its indestructible part, which everyone had in himself? But where, where was this self, this innermost part, this ultimate part? It was not flesh and bone, it was neither thought nor consciousness, thus the wisest ones taught. So, where, where was it? To reach this place, the self, myself, the Atman, there was another way, which was worthwhile looking for? Alas, and nobody showed this way, nobody knew it, not the father, and not the teachers and wise men, not the holy sacrificial songs!They knew everything, the Brahman and their holy books, they knew everything, they had taken care of everything and of more than everything, the creation of the world, the origin of speech, of food, of inhaling, of exhaling, the arrangement of the senses, the acts of the gods, they knew infinitely much—but was it valuable to know all of this, not knowing that one and only thing, the most important thing, the solely important thing?
 
Surely, many verses of the holy books, particularly in the Upanishads of Sama veda, spoke of this innermost and ultimate thing, wonderful verses.“Your soul is the whole world,” was written there, and it was written that man in his sleep, in his deep sleep, would meet with his innermost part and would reside in the Atman. Marvelous wisdom was in these verses, all knowledge of the wisest ones had been collected here in magic words, pure as honey collected by bees. No, not to be looked down upon was the tremendous amount of enlightenment which lay here collected and preserved by innumerable generations of wise Brahman.—But where were the Brahman, where the priests, where the wise men or penitents, who had succeeded in not just knowing this deepest of all knowledge but also to live it? Where was the knowledgeable one who wove his spell to bring his familiarity with the Atman out of the sleep into the state of being awake, into the life, into every step of the way, into word and deed? Siddhartha knew many venerable Brahmans, chiefly his father, the pure one, the scholar, the most venerable one. His father was to be admired, quiet and noble were his manners, pure his life, wise his words, delicate and noble thoughts lived behind its brow —but even he, who knew so much, did he live in blissfulness, did he have peace, was he not also just a searching man, a thirsty man? Did he not, again and again, have to drink from holy sources, as a thirsty man, from the offerings, from the books, from the disputes of the Brahman? Why did he, the irreproachable one, have to wash off sins every day, strive for a cleansing every day, over and over every day? Was not Atman in him, did not the pristine source spring from his heart? It had o be found, the pristine source in one’s own self, it had to be possessed! Everything else was searching, was a detour, was getting lost.

[.....] 

Om is the bow, the arrow is soul, The Brahman is the arrow's target, That one should incessantly hit.

[.....]

A goal stood before Siddhartha, a single goal: to become empty, empty of thirst, empty of wishing, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sorrow. Dead to himself, not to be a self any more, to find tranquility with an emptied heard, to be open to miracles in unselfish thoughts, that was his goal. Once all of my self was overcome and had died, once every desire and every urge was silent in the heart, then the ultimate part of me had to awake, the innermost of my being, which is no longer my self, the great secret.
 
Instructed by the oldest of the Samanas Siddhartha practiced self-denial, practiced meditation, according to a new Samana rules. A heron flew over the bamboo forest—and Siddhartha accepted the heron into his soul, flew over forest and mountains, was a heron, ate fish, felt the pangs of a heron’s hunger, spoke the heron’s croak, died a heron’s death. A dead jackal was lying on the sandy bank, and Siddhartha’s soul slipped inside the body, was the dead jackal, lay on the banks, got bloated, stank, decayed, as dismembered by hyenas, was skinned by vultures, turned into a skeleton, turned to dust, was blown across the fields. And Siddhartha’s soul returned, had died, had decayed, was scattered as dust, had tasted the gloomy intoxication of the cycle, awaited in new thirst like a hunter in the gap, where he could escape from the cycle, where the end of the causes, where an eternity without suffering began. He killed his senses, he killed his memory, he slipped out of his self into thousands of other forms, was an animal, was carrion, was stone, was wood, was water, and awoke every time to find his old self again, sun shone or moon, was his self again, turned round in the cycle, felt thirst, overcame the thirst, felt new thirst.
 
Siddhartha learned a lot when he was with the Samanas, many ways leading away from the self he learned to go. He went the way of self-denial by means of pain, through voluntarily suffering and overcoming pain, hunger, thirst, tiredness. He went the way of self-denial by means of meditation, through imagining the mind to be void of all conceptions. These and other ways he learned to go, a thousand times he left his self, for hours and days he remained in the non-self. But though the ways led away from the self, their end nevertheless always led back to the self. Though Siddhartha fled from the self a thousand times, stayed in nothingness, stayed in the animal, in the stone, the return was inevitable, inescapable was the hour, when he found himself back in the sunshine or in the moonlight, in the shade or in the rain, and was once again his self and Siddhartha, and again felt the agony of the cycle which had been forced upon him.

And Siddhartha said quietly, as if he was talking to himself: "What is meditation? What is leaving one's body? What is fasting? What is holding one's breath? It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of
being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox−cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice−wine or fermented coconut−milk. Then he won't feel his self any more, then he won't feel the pains of life any more, then he finds a short numbing of the senses. When he falls asleep over his bowl of rice−wine, he'll find the same what Siddhartha and Govinda find when they escape their bodies through long exercises, staying in the non−self. This is how it is, oh Govinda."

[.....] 

Quoth Siddhartha : "It took me a long time and am not finished learning this yet, oh Govinda, that there is nothing to be learned! There is indeed no such thing, so I believe, as what we refer to as ‘learning.’ There is, oh my friend, just one knowledge, this is everywhere, this is Atman, this is within me and within you and within every creature. And so I’m starting to believe that this knowledge has no worse enemy than the desire to know it, than learning."

Poems Of India - VIII

A man filled grain
in a tattered sack
and walked all night
fearing the toll-gates

but the grain went through the tatters
and all he got was the gunny sack.

It is thus
with the devotion
of the faint-hearted

****

Can the wind bring out
and publish for others
the fragrance
in the little bud?

Can even begetters, father and mother,
display for onlooker's eyes
the future breast and flowing hair
in the little girl
about to be bride?

Only ripeness
can show consequence,

O Ramanatha.

--DĒVARA DĀSIMAYYA [Translated by A. K. Ramanujan in the book - Speaking of Siva]

The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XLVIII

While the Rose blows along the River Brink,
With old Khayyam the Ruby Vintage drink:
And when the Angel with his darker Draught
Draws up to thee—take that, and do not shrink.

This is the forty-eighth quatrain of the FitzGerald's Rubaiyat. The poet says, while the roses in this pleasant garden along a river blows in the wind, and old and ripe Khayyam is sitting drinking his favorite wine and enjoying the sights and sounds that nature offers him and the glass of his beloved wine and satisfaction of his age and life lived. And in this setting, when the Angel (of Death) draws up close to you with his darker brew, take that what comes your way and accept it and do not shrink. Death has to come to all and when the time comes, accept it gracefully and with all dignity.

Poems Of India - VII

If mountains shiver in the cold
with what
will they wrap them?

If space goes naked
with what
shall they clothe it?

If the lord's men become worldlings
where will I find the metaphor,

0 Lord of Caves

-- ALLAMA PRABHU

***

The crookedness of the serpent
is straight enough for the snake-hole.

The crookedness of the river
is straight enough for the sea.

And the crookedness of our Lord's men
is straight enough for our Lord!

-- BASAVAŅŅA

 [Translated by A. K. Ramanujan in the book - Speaking of Siva]

Photos Of The Day

Nettle Cave, Jenolan, NSW

The Grand Arch at Jenolan Caves, NSW

Nettle Cave, Jenolan, NSW

Umberto Eco - How to Be a TV Host

This is a short essay from Umberto Eco's collection of essays "How to travel with a Salmon' that I have been reading and found it interesting. This story focusses on the writer's experience in the Svalbard Islands where he was invited to spend several years studying the fictional Bonga nation and their society. This fictional story is very similar in its literary devices and treatment to Borges's work - "Tiön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius". The one thing unique about Bonga nation was their unusual insistence on the explicit, the declarative. They ignore the art of the implicit, the taken-for-granted.

For example, if we begin to talk, obviously we use words; but we feel no need to say so. A Bonga, on the contrary, in speaking to another Bonga, begins by saying: Pay attention. I am now speaking and I will use some words. We build houses and then (with the exception of the Japanese) we indicate to possible visitors the street, the number, the name of the occupant. The Bongas write “house” on every house, and “door” beside the door. If you ring a Bonga gentleman’s bell, he will open the door, saying, “Now I am opening the door,” and then introduce himself. If he invites you to dinner, he will show you to a chair with the words: “This is the table, and these are the chairs!” Then, in a triumphant tone, he announces, “And now the maid! Here is Rosina. She will ask you what you want and will serve you your favourite dish!” The procedure is the same in restaurants.  

It is strange to observe the Bongas when they go to the theatre. As the house lights go down, an actor appears and says, “Here is the curtain!” Then the curtain parts and other actors enter, to perform, say, Hamlet. But each actor is introduced to the audience, first with his real first and last names, then with the name of the character he is to play. When an actor has finished speaking, he announces: “Now, a moment of silence!” Some seconds go by, and then the next actor starts speaking. Needless to say, at the end of the first act, one of the players comes to the footlights to inform everyone that “there will now be an intermission.” 

The writer was unable to reason as to what drove them to this obsessive clarification. Perhaps they are slow-witted and need to be told what is being implied or the Bongas are perhaps performance-worshippers, and therefore they have to transform everything—even the implicit—into performance. During his stay, he also investigated the history of applause in this culture.

When television shows were first broadcast in Bonga, the producers lured relatives of the organizers into the studio and, thanks to a flashing light (invisible to viewers at home), alerted them when they were to applaud. In no time the viewers discovered the trick, but, while in our country such applause would have immediately been discredited, it was not so for the Bongas. The home audience began to want to join in the applause too, and hordes of Bonga citizens turned up of their own free will in the country’s TV studios, ready to pay for the privilege of clapping. Some of these enthusiasts enrolled in special applause classes. And since at this point everything was in the open, it was the host himself who said, in a loud voice at the appropriate moments, “And now let’s hear a good round of applause.” But soon the studio audience began applauding without any urging from the host. He had simply to question someone in the crowd, asking him, for example, what he did for a living, and when he replied, “I'm in charge of the gas chamber at the city dog pound,” his words were greeted by a resounding ovation.  

Applause became so indispensable that even during the commercials, when the salesman would say, “Buy PIP slimming tablets,” oceanic applause would be heard. The viewers knew very well that there was no one in the studio with the salesman, but the applause was necessary; otherwise the program would have seemed contrived, and the viewers would switch channels. The Bongas want television to show them real life, as it is lived, without pretence. The applause comes from the audience (which is like us), not from the actor (who is pretending), and it is therefore the only guarantee that television is a window open on the world. 

I cannot say that the Bongas are our inferiors. Indeed, one of them told me that they plan to conquer the world. That evening I turned on the TV and I saw a host introducing the girls who assisted him, then announcing that he would do a cosmic monologue, and concluding with: "And now our ballet!" A distinguished gentleman, debating grave political problems with another distinguished gentleman, at a certain point broke off to say, "And now, a break for the commercials." Some entertainers even introduced the audience. Others the camera that was filming them, Everyone applauded.
Distressed,  I left the house and went to a restaurant famous for its nouvelle cuisine. The waiter arrived bringing me three leaves of lettuce. And he said, "This is our macedoine of laitue lombarde, dotted with rughetta from Piedmont, finely chopped and dressed with sea salt, marinated in the balsamic vinegar of the house, anointed with first-pressing virgin olive oil from Umbria."

The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XLVII

And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in the Nothing all Things end in--Yes--
Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what
Thou shalt be--Nothing--Thou shalt not be less.

This is the forty-seventh quatrain of the FitzGerald's Rubaiyat. The poet says that - If the wine you drink, and the lips of the beloved you press,  if these pleasures end in Nothing, then everything of us, everything we do, everything we part of or in midst of, all amounts to nothing in the end. Then fancy this my friend while you are here, you are nothing and you shall be in future no less, where you shall be Nothing. You shall be no less, no more from your current state of play and so do not be over joyed or over dismayed by these and live as it comes!

Poems Of India - VI

When they see a serpent carved in stone,

They say: Pour, pour the milk!

If a real serpent comes their way,

they cry "Kill, Kill!"

To the servant of the god who could

eat if served they say: "Go away! Go away!"

But to the image of the god which cannot eat,

they offer dishes of food.

-- BASAVAŅŅA

Borges - The Chess

                           I
Set in their studious corners, the players
move the gradual pieces. Until dawn
the chessboard keeps them in it’s strict confinement
with its two colors set at daggers drawn.

Within the game itself the forms give off
their magic rules: Homeric castle, knight
swift to attack, queen warlike, king decisive,
slanted bishop, and attacking pawns.

Eventually, when the players have withdrawn,
when time itself has finally consumed them,
the ritual will certainly not be done.

It was in the East this war took fire.
Today the whole earth is its theater.
Like the game of love, this game goes on forever.

                           II
Faint-hearted king, sly bishop, ruthless queen,
straight forward castle, and deceitful pawn -
over the checkered black and white terrain
they seek out and begin their armed campaign.

They do not know it is the players hand
that dominates and guides their destiny.
They do not know an adamantine fate
controls their will and the battle plan.

The player too is captive of caprice
(the words are Omar’s) on another ground
where black nights alternate with whiter days.

God moves the player, he in turn the piece.
But what god beyond God begins the round
of dust and time and sleep and agonies?

--Jorge Luis Borges – Selected Poems

Taking the previous quatrain from FitzGerald's Rubaiyat, where the poet talks about Gods playing a game with this world of ours as an instrument/dice for their own caprice & amusement, this poem by Borges takes that idea forward. Here king, queen and countless other pawns fight it out with all their plots and their honor and valor to outdo the other on the checkered battlefield unaware that hand of the player guides their destiny. Likewise the player plays out his life and actions on the checkered arena we call night and day. Like the pawns unaware, the player play out their moves as played out by the Gods who moves the pieces around on this chess board (as fate has willed it). Borges in his true self, puts a infinite regression into this by suggesting "what God beyond God" start the opening move. Who moves the Gods in the cosmic chessboard. Maybe Gods are itself some pieces on this game worked around by some other higher power. How do we know that God is up there commanding us to do this and do that and having all the answers. Maybe He/She is up there as confused as we are or worse, not being in control!

The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XLVI

For in and out, above, about, below,
‘Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show
Play’d in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

This is the forty-sixth quatrain of the FitzGerald's Rubaiyat. The poet relates the reality all around to a magic shadow show where images are not real but part of a show put on by the all powerful. We are nobody but phantom figurines that come to live there life in the game the creator put on. Like a square box with a candle in the center and shapes cut out on the box sides, when the hot air slowly rotates the box, the candle puts on a show of shadows. Its the same with the universe, we are just small pawns devised for entertainment by the Showman. Like that magic box show where candle is the center, in this magic show the sun is the candle and we are that shapes that rotate in the night sky for someone's amusement!

Poems Of India - V

If they see
breasts and long hair coming
they call it woman,

if beard and whiskers
they call it man:

but, look, the self that hovers
in between
is neither man
nor woman

0' Râmanâtha

***

Suppose you cut a tall bamboo
in two;

make the bottom piece a woman,
the headpiece a man;

rub them together
till they kindle:

tell me now,
the fire that's born,
is it male or female,

0' Râmanâtha?

--DĒVARA DĀSIMAYYA [Translated by A. K. Ramanujan in the book - Speaking of Siva]

Poems Of India - IV

Unless you build,
Space will not get inside
a house;

unless the eye sees,
mind will not decide
on forms;

without a way
there's no reaching
the other;

0' Ramanatha
how will men know
that this is so?

--DĒVARA DĀSIMAYYA [Translated by A. K. Ramanujan in the book - Speaking of Siva]