Hermann Hesse - Siddhartha [Selected Sections - III]

Siddhartha learned something new on every step of his path, for the world was transformed, and his heart was enchanted. He saw the sun rising over the mountains with their forests and setting over the distant beach with its palm−trees. At night, he saw the stars in the sky in their fixed positions and the crescent of the moon floating like a boat in the blue. He saw trees, stars, animals, clouds, rainbows, rocks, herbs, flowers, stream and river, the glistening dew in the bushes in the morning, distant high mountains which were blue and pale, birds sang and bees, wind silverishly blew through the rice−field. All of this, a thousand−fold and colourful, had always been there, always the sun and the moon had shone, always rivers had roared and bees had buzzed, but in former times all of this had been nothing more to Siddhartha than a fleeting, deceptive veil before his eyes, looked upon in distrust, destined to be penetrated and destroyed by thought, since it was not the essential existence, since this essence lay beyond, on the other side of, the visible. But now, his liberated eyes stayed on this side, he saw and became aware of the visible, sought to be at home in this world, did not search for the true essence, did not aim at a world beyond. Beautiful was this world, looking at it thus, without searching, thus simply, thus childlike. Beautiful were the moon and the stars, beautiful was the stream and the banks, the forest and the rocks, the goat and the gold−beetle, the flower and the butterfly. Beautiful and lovely it was, thus to walk through the world, thus childlike, thus awoken, thus open to what is near, thus without distrust. Differently the sun burnt the head, differently the shade of the forest cooled him down, differently the stream and the cistern, the pumpkin and the banana tasted. Short were the days, short the nights, every hour sped swiftly away like a sail on the sea, and under the sail was a ship full of treasures, full of joy. Siddhartha saw a group of apes moving through the high canopy of the forest, high in the branches, and heard their savage, greedy song. Siddhartha saw a male sheep following a female one and mating with her. In a lake of reeds, he saw the pike hungrily hunting for its dinner; propelling themselves away from it, in fear, wiggling and sparkling, the young fish jumped in droves out of the water; the scent of strength and passion came forcefully out of the hasty eddies of the water, which the pike stirred up, impetuously hunting.

All of this had always existed, and he had not seen it; he had not been with it. Now he was with it, he was part of it. Light and shadow ran through his eyes, stars and moon ran through his heart. On the way, Siddhartha also remembered everything he had experienced in the Garden Jetavana, the teaching he had heard there, the divine Buddha, the farewell from Govinda, the conversation with the exalted one. Again he remembered his own words, he had spoken to the exalted one, every word, and with astonishment he became aware of the fact that there he had said things which he had not really known yet at this time. What he had said to Gotama: his, the Buddha's, treasure and secret was not the teachings, but the unexpressable and not teachable, which he had experienced in the hour of his enlightenment−−it was nothing but this very thing which he had now gone to experience, what he now began to experience. Now, he had to experience his self. It is true that he had already known for a long time that his self was Atman, in its essence bearing the same eternal characteristics as Brahman. But never, he had really found this self, because he had wanted to capture it in the net of thought. With the body definitely not being the self, and not the spectacle of the senses, so it also was not the thought, not the rational mind, not the learned wisdom, not the learned ability to draw conclusions and to develop previous thoughts in to new ones. No, this world of thought was also still on this side, and nothing could be achieved by killing the random self of the senses, if the random self of thoughts and learned knowledge was fattened on the other hand. Both, the thoughts as well as the senses, were pretty things, the ultimate meaning was hidden behind both of them, both had to be listened to, both had to be played with, both neither had to be scorned nor overestimated, from both the secret voices of the innermost truth had to be attentively perceived. He wanted to strive for nothing, except for what the voice commanded him to strive for, dwell on nothing, except where the voice would advise him to do so. Why had Gotama, at that time, in the hour of all hours, sat down under the bo−tree, where the enlightenment hit him? He had heard a voice, a voice in his own heart, which had commanded him to seek rest under this tree, and he had neither preferred self−castigation, offerings, ablutions, nor prayer, neither food nor drink, neither sleep nor dream, he had obeyed the voice. To obey like this, not to an external command, only to the voice, to be ready like this, this was good, this was necessary, nothing else was necessary.

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At times he felt, deep in his chest, a dying, quiet voice, which admonished him quietly, lamented quietly; he hardly perceived it. And then, for an hour, he became aware of the strange life he was leading, of him doing lots of things which were only a game, of, though being happy and feeling joy at times, real life still passing him by and not touching him. As a ball−player plays with his balls, he played with his business−deals, with the people around him, watched them, found amusement in them; with his heart, with the source of his being, he was not with them. The source ran somewhere, far away from him, ran and ran invisibly, had nothing to do with his life any more. And at several times he suddenly became scared on account of such thoughts and wished that he would also be gifted with the ability to participate in all of this childlike−naive occupations of the daytime with passion and with his heart, really to live, really to act, really to enjoy and to live instead of just standing by as a spectator. But again and again, he came back to beautiful Kamala, learned the art of love, practised the cult of lust, in which more than in anything else giving and taking becomes one, chatted with her, learned from her, gave her advice, received advice. She understood him better than Govinda used to understand him, she was more similar to him.

That high, bright state of being awake, which he had experienced that one time at the height of his youth, in those days after Gotama's sermon, after the separation from Govinda, that tense expectation, that proud state of standing alone without teachings and without teachers, that supple willingness to listen to the divine voice in his own heart, had slowly become a memory, had been fleeting; distant and quiet, the holy source murmured, which used to be near, which used to murmur within himself. Nevertheless, many things he had learned from the Samanas, he had learned from Gotama, he had learned from his father the Brahman, had remained within him for a long time afterwards: moderate living, joy of thinking, hours of meditation, secret knowledge of the self, of his eternal entity, which is neither body nor consciousness. Many a part of this he still had, but one part after another had been submerged and had gathered dust. Just as a potter's wheel, once it has been set in motion, will keep on turning for a long time and only slowly lose its vigour and come to a stop, thus Siddhartha's soul had kept on turning the wheel of asceticism, the wheel of thinking, the wheel of differentiation for a long time, still turning, but it turned slowly and hesitantly and was close to coming to a standstill. Slowly, like humidity entering the dying stem of a tree, filling it slowly and making it rot, the world and sloth had entered Siddhartha's soul, slowly it filled his soul, made it heavy, made it tired, put it to sleep. On the other hand, his senses had become alive, there was much they had learned, much they had experienced.

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Just slowly and imperceptibly, as the harvest seasons and rainy seasons passed by, his mockery had become more tired, his superiority had become more quiet. Just slowly, among his growing riches, Siddhartha had assumed something of the childlike people's ways for himself, something of their childlikeness and of their fearfulness. And yet, he envied them, envied them just the more, the more similar he became to them. He envied them for the one thing that was missing from him and that they had, the importance they were able to attach to their lives, the amount of passion in their joys and fears, the fearful but sweet happiness of being constantly in love. These people were all of the time in love with themselves, with women, with their children, with honours or money, with plans or hopes. But he did not learn this from them, this out of all things, this joy of a child and this foolishness of a child; he learned from them out of all things the unpleasant ones, which he himself despised. It happened more and more often that, in the morning after having had company the night before, he stayed in bed for a long time, felt unable to think and tired. It happened that he became angry and impatient, when Kamaswami bored him with his worries. It happened that he laughed just too loud, when he lost a game of dice. His face was still smarter and more spiritual than others, but it rarely laughed, and assumed, one after another, those features which are so often found in the faces of rich people, those features of discontent, of sickliness, of ill−humour, of sloth, of a lack of love. Slowly the disease of the soul, which rich people have, grabbed hold of him.

Like a veil, like a thin mist, tiredness came over Siddhartha, slowly, getting a bit denser every day, a bit murkier every month, a bit heavier every year. As a new dress becomes old in time, loses its beautiful colour in time, gets stains, gets wrinkles, gets worn off at the seams, and starts to show threadbare spots here and there, thus Siddhartha's new life, which he had started after his separation from Govinda, had grown old, lost colour and splendour as the years passed by, was gathering wrinkles and stains, and hidden at bottom, already showing its ugliness here and there, disappointment and disgust were waiting. Siddhartha did not notice it. He only noticed that this bright and reliable voice inside of him, which had awoken in him at that time and had ever guided him in his best times, had become silent.

He had been captured by the world, by lust, covetousness, sloth, and finally also by that vice which he had used to despise and mock the most as the most foolish one of all vices: greed. Property, possessions, and riches also had finally captured him; they were no longer a game and trifles to him, had become a shackle and a burden. On a strange and devious way, Siddhartha had gotten into this final and most base of all dependencies, by means of the game of dice. It was since that time, when he had stopped being a Samana in his heart, that Siddhartha began to play the game for money and precious things, which he at other times only joined with a smile and casually as a custom of the childlike people, with an increasing rage and passion. He was a feared gambler, few dared to take him on, so high and audacious were his stakes. He played the game due to a pain of his heart, losing and wasting his wretched money in the game brought him an angry joy, in no other way he could demonstrate his disdain for wealth, the merchants' false god, more clearly and more mockingly. Thus he gambled with high stakes and mercilessly, hating himself, mocking himself, won thousands, threw away thousands, lost money, lost jewelry, lost a house in the country, won again, lost again. That fear, that terrible and petrifying fear, which he felt while he was rolling the dice, while he was worried about losing high stakes, that fear he loved and sought to always renew it, always increase it, always get it to a slightly higher level, for in this feeling alone he still felt something like happiness, something like an intoxication, something like an elevated form of life in the midst of his saturated, lukewarm, dull life.

And after each big loss, his mind was set on new riches, pursued the trade more zealously, forced his debtors more strictly to pay, because he wanted to continue gambling, he wanted to continue squandering, continue demonstrating his disdain of wealth. Siddhartha lost his calmness when losses occurred, lost his patience when he was not payed on time, lost his kindness towards beggars, lost his disposition for giving away and loaning money to those who petitioned him. He, who gambled away tens of thousands at one roll of the dice and laughed at it, became more strict and more petty in his business, occasionally dreaming at night about money! And whenever he woke up from this ugly spell, whenever he found his face in the mirror at the bedroom's wall to have aged and become more ugly, whenever embarrassment and disgust came over him, he continued fleeing, fleeing into a new game, fleeing into a numbing of his mind brought on by sex, by wine, and from there he fled back into the urge to pile up and obtain possessions. In this pointless cycle he ran, growing tired, growing old, growing ill.

Then the time came when a dream warned him. He had spend the hours of the evening with Kamala, in her beautiful pleasure−garden. They had been sitting under the trees, talking, and Kamala had said thoughtful words, words behind which a sadness and tiredness lay hidden. She had asked him to tell her about Gotama, and could not hear enough of him, how clear his eyes, how still and beautiful his mouth, how kind his smile, how peaceful his walk had been. For a long time, he had to tell her about the exalted Buddha, and Kamala had sighed and had said: "One day, perhaps soon, I'll also follow that Buddha. I'll give him my pleasure−garden for a gift and take my refuge in his teachings." But after this, she had aroused him, and had tied him to her in the act of making love with painful fervour, biting and in tears, as if, once more, she wanted to squeeze the last sweet drop out of this vain, fleeting pleasure. Never before, it had become so strangely clear to Siddhartha, how closely lust was akin to death. Then he had lain by her side, and Kamala's face had been close to him, and under her eyes and next to the corners of her mouth he had, as clearly as never before, read a fearful inscription, an inscription of small lines, of slight grooves, an inscription reminiscent of autumn and old age, just as Siddhartha himself, who was only in his forties, had already noticed, here and there, gray hairs among his black ones. Tiredness was written on Kamala's beautiful face, tiredness from walking a long path, which has no happy destination, tiredness and the beginning of withering, and concealed, still unsaid, perhaps not even conscious anxiety: fear of old age, fear of the autumn, fear of having to die. With a sigh, he had bid his farewell to her, the soul full of reluctance, and full of concealed anxiety.
Then, Siddhartha had spent the night in his house with dancing girls and wine, had acted as if he was superior to them towards the fellow−members of his caste, though this was no longer true, had drunk much wine and gone to bed a long time after midnight, being tired and yet excited, close to weeping and despair, and had for a long time sought to sleep in vain, his heart full of misery which he thought he could not bear any longer, full of a disgust which he felt penetrating his entire body like the lukewarm, repulsive taste of the wine, the just too sweet, dull music, the just too soft smile of the dancing girls, the just too sweet scent of their hair and breasts. But more than by anything else, he was disgusted by himself, by his perfumed hair, by the smell of wine from his mouth, by the flabby tiredness and listlessness of his skin. Like when someone, who has eaten and drunk far too much, vomits it back up again with agonising pain and is nevertheless glad about the relief, thus this sleepless man wished to free himself of these pleasures, these habits and all of this pointless life and himself, in an immense burst of disgust. Not until the light of the morning and the beginning of the first activities in the street before his city−house, he had slightly fallen asleep, had found for a few moments a half unconsciousness, a hint of sleep.  

With a gloomy mind, Siddhartha went to the pleasure−garden he owned, locked the gate, sat down under a mango−tree, felt death in his heart and horror in his chest, sat and sensed how everything died in him, withered in him, came to an end in him. By and by, he gathered his thoughts, and in his mind, he once again went the entire path of his life, starting with the first days he could remember. When was there ever a time when he had experienced happiness, felt a true bliss? Oh yes, several times he had experienced such a thing. In his years as a boy, he has had a taste of it, when he had obtained praise from the Brahmans, he had felt it in his heart: "There is a path in front of the one who has distinguished himself in the recitation of the holy verses, in the dispute with the learned ones, as an assistant in the offerings." Then, he had felt it in his heart: "There is a path in front of you, you are destined for, the gods are awaiting you." And again, as a young man, when the ever rising, upward fleeing, goal of all thinking had ripped him out of and up from the multitude of those seeking the same goal, when he wrestled in pain for the purpose of Brahman, when every obtained knowledge only kindled new thirst in him, then again he had, in the midst of the thirst, in the midst of the pain felt this very same thing: "Go on! Go on! You are called upon!" He had heard this voice when he had left his home and had chosen the life of a Samana, and again when he had gone away from the Samanas to that perfected one, and also when he had gone away from him to the uncertain. For how long had he not heard this voice any more, for how long had he reached no height any more, how even and dull was the manner in which his path had passed through life, for many long years, without a high goal, without thirst, without elevation, content with small lustful pleasures and yet never satisfied! For all of these many years, without knowing it himself, he had tried hard and longed to become a man like those many, like those children, and in all this, his life had been much more miserable and poorer than theirs, and their goals were not his, nor their worries; after all, that entire world of the Kamaswami−people had only been a game to him, a dance he would watch, a comedy. Only Kamala had been dear, had been valuable to him−−but was she still thus? Did he still need her, or she him? Did they not play a game without an ending? Was it necessary to live for this? No, it was not necessary! The name of this game was Sansara, a game for children, a game which was perhaps enjoyable to play once, twice, ten times−−but for ever and ever over again? 

Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart (Summary)

Just finished reading Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart. This probably is the only second novel that I have read that has Africa as its setting (first being Heart of Darkness). This novel is about the rise and the disgraceful fall of Okonkwo, a well respected leader in the clan of Umuofia.

Okonkwo is a self made man, hard working and a wrestling champion. His father was totally unlike him and died leaving a legacy of debt and neglect. Okonkwo is ashamed by his father's life and vows never to be weak. He has build himself a decent estate and has three wives and many children. His father's timidness and debts haunts him and so he strives for wealth, strength and respectable place in a society which he ultimately all achieves. Okonkwo is appointed a guardian of Ikemefuna (who is taken from his clan as a settlement for a murder) and this boy lives with him now and their relationship flourishes. Later the village oracle orders the boy to be killed. Okonkwo, to avoid looking weak killed the boy himself despite having a choice to not be party to the killing. Amid a enveloping gloom for killing the boy who he cherished (and the feeling was mutual), things start going wrong for Okonkwo. In a community funeral, Okonkwo gun accidentally kills someone. He and his family are sent into seven year exile to please the gods that has been aggrieved.
While away in exile, he learns of the advent of christian missionaries who have started their proselytizing among the tribes. Slowly as their numbers grew, they introduced the white man's law and government. The locals adjust to this new environment with a bit of give and take for they do not believe their society could be upended by them. Okonkwo's son joins the missionaries as he resents his father's behavior towards him. Okonkwo is ashamed by this. After finishing his exile, Okonkwo returns to his village and find it a changed place. Tribal customs & practices have been replaced by Church and its followers intent on mischief and disrespect. After a convert vandalizes a cultural ceremony, the clansmen destroy the local church. Okonkwo and other community elders are arrested and badly insulted in the custody by the fledgling administration pending a payment for damages. After their release, the disquiet quickly swells into calls to finally uproot this new system. Okonkwo, ferocious as ever saw this as a chance to wage the decisive war against white people. In a meeting of community elders to decide future course of action, messengers of the government intervenes. Okonkwo in a fit of rage, beheads one of them. The clansman allow the rest of the group to flee. At that moment Okonkwo knew that Umuofia will not go to war. Instead of resolute action, he heard voices of tumult and of questioning his action. When the white government came to arrest him, he had already hanged himself to avoid getting tried in the courts that he did not believe in. In his suicide, Okonkwo was repulsed by his tribe for its a sin to kill oneself. Its an abomination for them to even bury such a man!

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Couple of theme are very evident in the book. One about Okonkwo and his fall from grace in the tribal society and the other being the clash of cultures and the uncompromising world view that the new world order brings that wipes clean anything that it does not see fit. Both are conflicts that are eternal. One is the individual conflict, of finding one's place in the society of men, of greatness and respect, of not appearing to look weak, of being ashamed by failures and non-conformity. The cast and situations may change but these struggles are same in human society since time immemorial. Okonkwo was haunted by his father's failure. For him, that shame was life long and everything he did was to undo that legacy. That drive and ambition and his innate sense to appear strong drove his every day behavior. The greatness that he had accomplished was something that constantly need to be groomed and worked upon. It was not given or ordained to him and he did good for himself. But a sudden misfortune (by accidentally killing a clansman), this was all lost. His estate, his wealth, his place in society but he keeps his honor by going into exile. That surety about his place in society, that familiarity of pace of things is lost when on return he sees his world has been trampled by new order that does not care or accommodates. He shakes it off violently and in that end up losing his life in ignominy. He suffers the same fate as his father who died in shame. Even as cultures as old as Okonkwo the trials and tribulations of the life are same.

The other theme is of change and especially in context of proselytizing religions. Okonkwo had lived off that land for thousands of years. His world view, his customs, his religion, his law, his society has been created and refined over countless generations to suit his needs and his people and his lands. To an outsider it may appear brutal or without taste and monotonous but there was life and there was every day drama in it. But the social order could not hold under the aggressive and over zealous nature of the missionaries who come with the self appraised notion of 'bringing the lords name' or 'reforming the savages'. The natives could have measured up to say a devastating famine or incessant internecine wars or hunger. But how to measure up to a system or a social order that is totally new and unforeseen and uncompromising. Of what will become of clan elders when white man's runs it's courts. Of what will become of our gods when we have to pray to his foreign god. Of what will become of our spoken tradition when our children go to their schools and learn their language. Our whole lives become meaningless. That certainty of life, of how things are, of death , even a heroic death in war or sudden death due to preventable fever has been lost. Things fall apart, of center that could not hold.

Hermann Hesse - Siddhartha [Selected Sections - II]

Quoth Siddhartha: "One thing, oh most venerable one, I have admired in your teachings most of all. Everything in your teachings is perfectly clear, is proven; you are presenting the world as a perfect chain, a chain which is never and nowhere broken, an eternal chain the links of which are causes and effects. Never before, this has been seen so clearly; never before, this has been presented so irrefutably; truly, the heart of every Brahman has to beat stronger with love, once he has seen the world through your teachings perfectly connected, without gaps, clear as a crystal, not depending on chance, not depending on gods. Whether it may be good or bad, whether living according to it would be suffering or joy, I do not wish to discuss, possibly this is not essential--but the uniformity of the world, that everything which happens is connected, that the great and the small things are all encompassed by the same forces of time, by the same law of causes, of coming into being and of dying, this is what shines brightly out of your exalted teachings, oh perfected one. But according to your very own teachings, this unity and necessary sequence of all things is nevertheless broken in one place, through a small gap, this world of unity is invaded by something alien, something new, something which had not been there before, and which cannot be demonstrated and cannot be proven: these are your teachings of overcoming the world, of salvation. But with this small gap, with this small breach, the entire eternal and uniform law of the world is breaking apart again and becomes void. Please forgive me for expressing this objection."

Quietly, Gotama had listened to him, unmoved. Now he spoke, the perfected one, with his kind, with his polite and clear voice: "You've heard the teachings, oh son of a Brahman, and good for you that you've thought about it thus deeply. You've found a gap in it, an error. You should think about this further. But be warned, oh seeker of knowledge, of the thicket of opinions and of arguing about words. There is nothing to opinions, they may be beautiful or ugly, smart or foolish, everyone can support them or discard them. But the teachings, you've heard from me, are no opinion, and their goal is not to explain the world to those who seek knowledge. They have a different goal; their goal is salvation from suffering. This is what Gotama teaches, nothing else."

"I wish that you, oh exalted one, would not be angry with me," said the young man. "I have not spoken to you like this to argue with you, to argue about words. You are truly right, there is little to opinions. But let me say this one more thing: I have not doubted in you for a single moment. I have not doubted for a single moment that you are Buddha, that you have reached the goal, the highest goal towards which so many thousands of Brahmans and sons of Brahmans are on their way. You have found salvation from death. It has come to you in the course of your own search, on your own path, through thoughts, through meditation, through realizations, through enlightenment. It has not come to you by means of teachings! And−−thus is my thought, oh exalted one,−−nobody will obtain salvation by means of teachings! You will not be able to convey and say to anybody, oh venerable one, in words and through teachings what has happened to you in the hour of enlightenment! The teachings of the enlightened Buddha contain much, it teaches many to live righteously, to avoid evil. But there is one thing which these so clear, these so venerable teachings do not contain: they do not contain the mystery of what the exalted one has experienced for himself, he alone among hundreds of thousands. This is what I have thought and realized, when I have heard the teachings. This is why I am continuing my travels−−not to seek other, better teachings, for I know there are none, but to depart from all teachings and all teachers and to reach my goal by myself or to die. But often, I'll think of this day, oh exalted one, and of this hour, when my eyes beheld a holy man."

The Buddha's eyes quietly looked to the ground; quietly, in perfect equanimity his inscrutable face was smiling. "I wish," the venerable one spoke slowly, "that your thoughts shall not be in error, that you shall reach the goal! But tell me: Have you seen the multitude of my Samanas, my many brothers, who have taken refuge in the teachings? And do you believe, oh stranger, oh Samana, do you believe that it would be better for them all the abandon the teachings and to return into the life the world and of desires?"

"Far is such a thought from my mind," exclaimed Siddhartha. "I wish that they shall all stay with the teachings, that they shall reach their goal! It is not my place to judge another person's life. Only for myself, for myself alone, I must decide, I must chose, I must refuse. Salvation from the self is what we Samanas search for, oh exalted one. If I merely were one of your disciples, oh venerable one, I'd fear that it might happen to me that only seemingly, only deceptively my self would be calm and be redeemed, but that in truth it would live on and grow, for then I had replaced my self with the teachings, my duty to follow you, my love for you, and the community of the monks!"

With half of a smile, with an unwavering openness and kindness, Gotama looked into the stranger's eyes and bid him to leave with a hardly noticeable gesture. "You are wise, oh Samana.", the venerable one spoke. "You know how to talk wisely, my friend. Be aware of too much wisdom!"

[....]

When Siddhartha left the grove, where the Buddha, the perfected one, stayed behind, where Govinda stayed behind, then he felt that in this grove his past life also stayed behind and parted from him. He pondered about this sensation, which filled him completely, as he was slowly walking along. He pondered deeply, like diving into a deep water he let himself sink down to the ground of the sensation, down to the place where the causes lie, because to identify the causes, so it seemed to him, is the very essence of thinking, and by this alone sensations turn into realizations and are not lost, but become entities and start to emit like rays of light what is inside of them. Slowly walking along, Siddhartha pondered. He realized that he was no youth any more, but had turned into a man. He realized that one thing had left him, as a snake is left by its old skin, that one thing no longer existed in him, which had accompanied him throughout his youth and used to be a part of him: the wish to have teachers and to listen to teachings. He had also left the last teacher who had appeared on his path, even him, the highest and wisest teacher, the most holy one, Buddha, he had left him, had to part with him, was not able to accept his teachings.

Slower, he walked along in his thoughts and asked himself: "But what is this, what you have sought to learn from teachings and from teachers, and what they, who have taught you much, were still unable to teach you?" And he found: "It was the self, the purpose and essence of which I sought to learn. It was the self, I wanted to free myself from, which I sought to overcome. But I was not able to overcome it, could only deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from it. Truly, no thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being separated and isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha! And there is no thing in this world I know less about than about me, about Siddhartha!"
Having been pondering while slowly walking along, he now stopped as these thoughts caught hold of him, and right away another thought sprang forth from these, a new thought, which was: "That I know nothing about myself, that Siddhartha has remained thus alien and unknown to me, stems from one cause, a single cause: I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself! I searched Atman, I searched Brahman, I was willing to to dissect my self and peel off all of its layers, to find the core of all peels in its unknown interior, the Atman, life, the divine part, the ultimate part. But I have lost myself in the process."

"Oh," he thought, taking a deep breath, "now I would not let Siddhartha escape from me again! No longer, I want to begin my thoughts and my life with Atman and with the suffering of the world. I do not want to kill and dissect myself any longer, to find a secret behind the ruins. Neither Yoga−Veda shall teach me any more, nor Atharva−Veda, nor the ascetics, nor any kind of teachings. I want to learn from myself, want to be my student, want to get to know myself, the secret of Siddhartha." He looked around, as if he was seeing the world for the first time. Beautiful was the world, colourful was the world, strange and mysterious was the world! Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, the sky and the river flowed, the forest and the mountains were rigid, all of it was beautiful, all of it was mysterious and magical, and in its midst was he, Siddhartha, the awakening one, on the path to himself. All of this, all this yellow and blue, river and forest, entered Siddhartha for the first time through the eyes, was no longer a spell of Mara, was no longer the veil of Maya, was no longer a pointless and coincidental diversity of mere appearances, despicable to the deeply thinking Brahman, who scorns diversity, who seeks unity. Blue was blue, river was river, and if also in the blue and the river, in Siddhartha, the singular and divine lived hidden, so it was still that very divinity's way and purpose, to be here yellow, here blue, there sky, there forest, and here Siddhartha. The purpose and the essential properties were not somewhere behind the things, they were in them, in everything.

"How deaf and stupid have I been!" he thought, walking swiftly along. "When someone reads a text, wants to discover its meaning, he will not scorn the symbols and letters and call them deceptions, coincidence, and worthless hull, but he will read them, he will study and love them, letter by letter. But I, who wanted to read the book of the world and the book of my own being, I have, for the sake of a meaning I had anticipated before I read, scorned the symbols and letters, I called the visible world a deception, called my eyes and my tongue coincidental and worthless forms without substance. No, this is over, I have awakened, I have indeed awakened and have not been born before this very day." In thinking this thoughts, Siddhartha stopped once again, suddenly, as if there was a snake lying in front of him on the path. Because suddenly, he had also become aware of this: He, who was indeed like someone who had just woken up or like a new−born baby, he had to start his life anew and start again at the very beginning. When he had left in this very morning from the grove Jetavana, the grove of that exalted one, already awakening, already on the path towards himself, he he had every intention, regarded as natural and took for granted, that he, after years as an ascetic, would return to his home and his father. But now, only in this moment, when he stopped as if a snake was lying on his path, he also awoke to this realization: "But I am no longer the one I was, I am no ascetic any more, I am not a priest any more, I am no Brahman any more. Whatever should I do at home and at my father's place? Study? Make offerings? Practise meditation? But all this is over, all of this is no longer alongside my path."

Motionless, Siddhartha remained standing there, and for the time of one moment and breath, his heart felt cold, he felt a cold in his chest, as a small animal, a bird or a rabbit, would when seeing how alone he was. For many years, he had been without home and had felt nothing. Now, he felt it. Still, even in the deepest meditation, he had been his father's son, had been a Brahman, of a high caste, a cleric. Now, he was nothing but Siddhartha, the awoken one, nothing else was left. Deeply, he inhaled, and for a moment, he felt cold and shivered. Nobody was thus alone as he was. There was no nobleman who did not belong to the noblemen, no worker that did not belong to the workers, and found refuge with them, shared their life, spoke their language. No Brahman, who would not be regarded as Brahmans and lived with them, no ascetic who would not find his refuge in the caste of the Samanas, and even the most forlorn hermit in the forest was not just one and alone, he was also surrounded by a place he belonged to, he also belonged to a caste, in which he was at home. Govinda had become a monk, and a thousand monks were his brothers, wore the same robe as he, believed in his faith, spoke his language. But he, Siddhartha, where did he belong to? With whom would he share his life? Whose language would he speak?

Out of this moment, when the world melted away all around him, when he stood alone like a star in the sky, out of this moment of a cold and despair, Siddhartha emerged, more a self than before, more firmly concentrated. He felt: This had been the last tremor of the awakening, the last struggle of this birth. And it was not long until he walked again in long strides, started to proceed swiftly and impatiently, heading no longer for home, no longer to his father, no longer back.

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."

Borges - The Shape Of The Sword (Summary)

In this short story "The Shape Of The Sword" Borges revisits his theme of shared experience of the whole of humanity that is a recurring theme in many of his works. In this story, the narrator tells of a man called "the Englishman" who has a vengeful scar on his face. During a session of their drinking together at his place, the narrator inquires about his scar. The host agrees to tell the story under one condition - "no contempt or condemnation be withheld, no mitigation for any iniquity be pleaded." The Englishman reveals that he is in fact Irish and was a revolutionary conspiring to win Ireland's independence. During these times, he met a young man called John Vincent Moon who was also part of the struggle, though the Englishman impression of him was that he is invertebrate and full of vanity of his supposed intellect. The young man showed arrogance and contempt towards whosoever gets into a debate with him. One night, they are stopped by a soldier, John freezes because of terror, but the Englishman knocks down the soldier and they ran away. During this melee, a bullet grazes John's shoulder who is visibly shaken and they take refuse in a country home. Nine days they spent here. The Englishman leaving at dawn and returning late every night while working with other undergrounds, on the other hand John stayed at home feigning injury.

I was embarrassed by the man and his fear, shamed by him, as though I myself were the coward, not Vincent Moon. Whatsoever one man does, it is as though all men did it. That is why it is not unfair that a single act of disobedience in a garden should contaminate all humanity; that is why it is not unfair that a single Jew’s crucifixion should be enough to save it. Schopenhauer may have been right—I am other men, any man is all men, Shakespeare is somehow the wretched John Vincent Moon.

On the tenth day, he returns early and hears John talking to someone on the phone, promising to deliver him in return for guarantee of his own safety. The Englishman seizes a sword and chases him across the vast country house and leaves an unforgiving scar on his face before he is arrested. The Englishman then says to the narrator

To you alone,Borges—you who are a stranger—I have made this confession. Your contempt is perhaps not so painful. Here the narrator halted. I saw that his hands were trembling."And Moon?" I asked. "What became of Moon?""He was paid his Judas silver and he ran off to Brazil. That evening, in the city square, I saw a dummy shot by a firing squad of drunks."I waited vainly for the rest of the story. Finally, I asked him to go on.A groan made his entire body shiver; he gestured, feebly, gently, toward the curving whitish scar."Do you not believe me?" he stammered. "Do you not see set upon my face the mark of my iniquity? I have told you the story this way so that you would hear it out. It was / who betrayed the man who saved me and gave me shelter—it is /who am Vincent Moon. Now, despise me." 

 ****

Borges again raises the idea of interdependence of all human experience, the shared experience of what one man goes through, it is as if all men go through. In this story, even though the John switches his identity and tells the story about himself and his betrayal, yet he is shamed by John's cowardice not because he is in fact John but because in some measure all men (including himself) shared the same cowardice. And to similar end, he identifies with the "Englishman" whose death he caused. The notion of "what you are" and "what you are not" is no more there. I am all men! The hero is a villain and vice-versa. The experiences are shared, the consciousness is shared. There is nothing original to it. What I have felt, would have been felt by some one before me in past and would be felt by someone after me in future. Experiences are nothing but repetitions of what has happened previously or previously experienced. The loss of originality of an experience or an emotion can be extended to the loss of individuality  or of "Being". How can I claim to be I if I am just a repetition in an endless cycles of thought! What is my claim to originality of thought? of my ego, my betrayal, my passion, my defeat.

Voltaire - Candide (Summary)

"Candide: or, Optimism" - This is the first work by Voltaire that I have read. Voltaire was fleeting covered in our school history as one of the critical influences for the French Revolution. This story is about Candide, a young man who is thrown out of a castle and his adventures as he travels wherever his fate takes him.

The story begins with Candide living in the castle in Westphalia. Alongside is the baron's daughter Cunégonde and their tutor Pangloss among others. Pangloss is an ardent believer in Leibniz philosophical thought that teaches that this is the "best of all possible worlds" and "all is for the best". Candide is attracted to Cunégonde and they are caught kissing one day. The baron throws Candide out of the castle. Candide roaming around is caught up in a brutal war between two armies and is conscripted. Nearly executed, he escapes to Holland where he meets Jacques and by chance Pangloss (who is sick and in bad shape). Jacques takes both of them in and cares for them. Pangloss revels that the castle was destroyed in the wars and everybody was killed. Candide mourns the loss of his beloved. Traveling to Lisbon, Jacques is subsequently drowned while saving someone. Pangloss stops Candide from rescuing him saying that this harbor was created for him to drown and provides an optimistic commentary of their situation. They both are captured by the inquisitors and condemned. Candide is flogged and Pangloss is hanged. Left to his state, an old lady leads Candide to a house where he meets Cunégonde who reveals her terrible escape from near death in the castle. She is now owned by a merchant and an church official who take turns to her company. Candide slays both men and escape to Americas with Cunégonde and the old woman. During the voyage, the old woman reveals her unimaginable horrors that she had faced. On reaching Americas, in Buenos Aires, Cunégonde gets separated from him. Candide escapes with his valet (Cacambo) as he is being pursued. They together face countless adventures (wars, cannibalistic tribes) until they reach El Dorado. In this fabled land of unimaginable riches and utopia, they stay for a month. But soon Candide longs for Cunégonde. The king of El Dorado provides them with many sheep full of diamonds for their journey back. Candide and Cacambo travel back to Suriname slowly loosing the treasures. At Suriname, he sends Cacambo back to Buenos Aires to buy back Cunégonde and to meet him in Venice while he proceeds to Venice directly. Candide needing a companion for his journey back to Venice hires the services of Martin (who is a Manichean and a believer that the world is inherently evil). The rest of their journey is made over lengthy discourses on philosophy.

But then, to what end," said Candide, "was the world formed?"
"To make us mad," said Martin.
"Do you think," said Candide, "that mankind always massacred one another as they do now? Were they always guilty of lies, fraud, treachery, ingratitude, inconstancy, envy, ambition, and cruelty? Were they always thieves, fools, cowards, gluttons, drunkards, misers, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, and hypocrites?"
"Do you believe," said Martin, "that hawks have always been accustomed to eat pigeons when they came in their way?"

They reach Venice and wait for Cacambo. Cacambo arrives and tells them that Cunégonde is taken as a slave in Constantinople. They all leave to retrieve her. On the ship, Candide comes across Pangloss (he survived being hanged by inquisitors) working as slave in a ship. Candide buys his freedom. They all reach Constantinople where Candide is united with his beloved. Cunégonde is now ugly and pale shadow of her former glory but Candide still marries her. With whatever diamonds left, Candide buys a farm and they all (Candide,Cunégonde, Martin, Cacambo, Pangloss, the old woman) live together. Eventually boredom catches with them and each is now much more unhappier with their lives. Each of them philosophizing over their state and the turn of events. They go to a dervish to seek answers.

Candide asks "Master, we come to entreat you to tell us why so strange an animal as man has been formed?"
"Why do you trouble your head about it?" said the dervish; "is it any business of yours?"
"But, Reverend Father," said Candide, "there is a horrible deal of evil on the earth."
"What signifies it," said the dervish, "whether there is evil or good? When His Highness sends a ship to Egypt does he trouble his head whether the rats in the vessel are at their ease or not?"
"What must then be done?" said Pangloss.
"Be silent," answered the dervish.
"I flattered myself," replied Pangloss, "to have reasoned a little with you on the causes and effects, on the best of possible worlds, the origin of evil, the nature of the soul, and a pre-established harmony."
At these words the dervish shut the door in their faces.

Confused, they leave for home and on way, they meet an old man who is content selling the fruits of his farm.The old man tells them that his whole family works on their farm and work keeps three great evil as bay - boredom, vice and want. Returning to their home, Candide and all reflected on what the old man said. They decided to work without reasoning as that is the only way to make life bearable. Things start looking up and each one is meaningfully engaged and productive. Though Pangloss still sometimes insisting that see ultimately all turned out to be the best and used to saying

"There is a concatenation of all events in the best of possible worlds; for, in short, had you not been kicked out of a fine castle for the love of Miss Cunégonde had you not been put into the Inquisition; had you not traveled over America on foot; had you not run the Baron through the body; and had you not lost all your sheep, which you brought from the good country of El Dorado, you would not have been here to eat preserved citrons and pistachio nuts."  

"That is all well said, but we must cultivate our garden", answered Candide

*****

The story is very dense in terms of events and story line. Events move fast and episodes of chance meeting of characters and characters narrowly escaping death are far too many to be believable (I do not think it even tries to be a realistic story). The story touches the political and religious climate of early 1700s Europe that was caught in internecine wars, religious persecution, slavery and exploitation all around. The torture and the evil around shows its face over and over again and nowhere does Candide ever gets a chance to redeem his optimism. Slowly his faith in optimism is shredded away and by the end, Candide ignores the Pangloss continued optimism and says that "we must cultivate our garden". The story does not develop any over riding moral tale or theories on human ethics or the nature of evil. It is endless series of adventures with evil and exploitation (and satire thrown in equal measure) that covers the face of the earth and in all classes, be it kings, or clergy or common-folk. Voltaire is very critical of religion (in fact of all religions) and widespread slavery and the incessant wars that the Europe saw. Unimaginable brutality (including sexual violence) is common in the story. At the end, Candide sees through that absurdity of philosophical argument and realizes events will happen on their own accord and what he can do is to work and take responsibility of one-self. Debating over the issues that afflict human condition or having an optimistic outlook does not absolve one from the need for individual responsibility and action. Good may or may not always begets good, but inaction always begets boredom and dissatisfaction. Pangloss belief that evil is part of the larger good and world is in pre-established divine harmony is discredited in endless tale of horror and misfortune. The faith in larger Good, in the benevolent God, in optimism all amounts to nothing. Candide seeing all the misery around him, finds the world anything but harmonious. Any perspective or theory provided, can not and will not solve or even explain the workings of this world. The only way to make sense of this world, is to do the work required of you and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Albert Camus - The Plague (Summary)

I just completed reading Albert Camus work - The Plague. This is the second book by Camus that I have read after his best know work 'The Stranger'. The Plague is a story of the plague that reaches epidemic levels before dying out in small coastal town Oran in French colonial territory of Algeria. It chronicles the lives of people caught up in that quarantined city and narrates the lives of doctors, lovers, trapped tourists and ordinary day people in-midst of the horrible tragedy.

The novel starts with occasional dying out of rats in Oran. Soon thousands of rats start dying, leading to panic and hysteria in the city. The civic authorities unaware of the seriousness of the situation start half-hearted measures. In some days, human deaths follow. Rieux (the main character) is convinced that plague is taking hold of the town. As more people die, the authorities start desperate measure and the town is sealed off. No one can enter or leave the town and all other services are restricted. These measures have an effect of an exile on the citizens who feel as if trapped and isolated. Rieux is friends with Rambert (a journalist who was visiting Oran but is trapped in the city now), Tarrou (a vacationer), Paneloux (the town priest), Cottard (a former criminal who attempted suicide but is smuggling goods now) and Grand (a ageing civil servant obsessed with composing a perfect sentence). Rieux's wife is under treatment in a difference city for some grave illness. The book accounts for the feeling of isolation that is all pervasive and the despair that gives rise to emotional collapse. Paneloux using masterly oration chides people that this plague is God's will and its time for all to turn to church. Tarrou comes up with the idea of the health teams that will aid the civic authorities. Rieux and Grand joins him in these teams. Rambert initially desperate to flee the city (to be with his wife in Paris), later feeling ashamed, joins these health teams. Paneloux also joins. As the situation worsens, even more desperate measures follow. People are shot while fleeing, mass funerals are conducted and occasional looting happens. Rieux and the health teams work tirelessly. Slowly as the winter chill starts, the plague starts to loosen its grip over the city but not before Paneloux and Tarrou die of it. Grand is infected but makes a surprise recovery. The town's quarantine is lifted. Cottard is arrested for his past crimes and Rambert is reunited with his wife. Rieux is informed that his sick wife is dead while Grand goes back to composing his sentence.

The storyline is fairly straightforward. It is story of lives of people who got caught up in the epidemic sweeping the town. As with situation, you have all kind of people behaving in all kind of ways. Some turn to God, others to crime and fatalism, some to a higher purpose and others rise to the occasion and do what is correct. The book makes no notion about what is correct and what was wrong. It is a narration of events filled with narrator's point of view. The theme of separation from either the loved ones or from one's daily habit is recurring throughout the book. This feeling of separation leads to hopelessness pervading everyday lives were people now attempt to live the moment as it comes and not looking out for the hopes of future for the exile could be endless. Besides their thoughts, their personal freedom (like the beaches that they enjoyed previously) also gets restricted. Absurdity of human life (on which Camus writes repeatedly), the idea of a absent Benevolent and rational God or that human lives having any higher purpose is the other prominent idea of the book. The plague is the irrational executioner that will come after anyone irrespective of who they are how they live their lives. The lack of control over our lives and our destiny, the randomness of life and death. In all this, death and suffering however absurd they might be seem is the only certainty that awaits us all. And in this constant overhang, one has to live life and give meaning to life by living it. Life is not sacred, the act of living is sacred and worth fighting for, even in the face of insurmountable plague. Another aspect of the story was that of health teams and even tough they did not achieve much, but the resistance they offered was worth it, not for some grandiose idea of heroism or bravery but for a simple fact that it was a noble struggle and defiance against death. For even a rat when pushed to a corner, will fight it out/ We for all the 'isms' and spirit, can definitely accomplish more.

Frits Staal - Discovering the Vedas (Summary - II)

This is the second part of the my summary on Frits Staal's book - "Discovering the Vedas". The first part of the summary is here. The first part basically focused on the origin of early Vedic speakers and the time and space in which the Vedas were written. This one is brief gist on Vedas and their context. As with the first part, the summary below is what I have read in the book and I am no Vedic culture expert to deny or confirm any of the ideas that the book puts forward.

By the end of first part we had come to a conclusion that early Vedic settlers came from somewhere in Russian steppes, made a long and arduous journey taking along with them their Indo-European language, myths, fire worship, soma practice and knowledge of horse and chariots. They initially settled in NW India around 1800 BC slowly moving east into the Gangetic plains. The culture was primarily village based, male dominated and ritual driven. It could have been that women (for marriage) would have come from the indigenous population and early Vedic settlers married into indigenous tribes to advance their clan or family's political/societal aims. These indigenous population contributed greatly like the name of tribes which later became the name of Vedic schools (sakhas). Women are not mentioned frequently in early Vedic text. We hear very little about women or their state. There is specifically no mention in Vedas of what was to be later known as "dependence of women" that states that a women's dependence is first on her father, then on her husband and lastly on her sons. This idea was codified much later in the 2nd century AD in the manu-smriti from where is widely took life of its own and could be said to be a seminal event in relatively poor state of women's status in Indian society. Similarly caste began appearing in the later Vedic works and in the post-Vedic dharamsutras and by the time of manu-smriti in 2nd century AD, it was also codified. Though the widely prevailing view is that caste was inherent to Vedic society probably because it fits into the aryan invasion theory whereby the invaders became the higher caste and indigenous tribes the lower status groups. But since in the first part summary, we have concluded that there was no invasion, instead a smaller group of settlers crossed over. The genetic material also goes back 9000 years making the idea that Vedic speakers could fashion a new social order so quickly is far fetched. The idea of attribute caste to Vedic civilization is either to make them easy scapegoat or to make the concept as being divine and foretold by Gods. Rig Veda (RV) mentions broad classes like árya and dása. Possibly árya could have been Vedic settlers and indigenous tribes being dása. But Vedas does mentions something very similar to the current social order. It states in the below lines [bráhman, ksatram, viš] which could relate more to the realm of occupation that groups of people are engaged in rather than a strict societal order. These lines are from RV -

promote the bráhman (language) and promote poetic inspiration,
promote the ksatram (power or dominion) and promote able bodies men
promote the viš (the common people) and promote cows.

These words were to later become brahmin, ksatriya and vaishya which now are the three higher castes (varna). Note that there are only 3 words mentioned[bráhman, ksatram, viš] and RV does not clearly state what could these words mean or if they actually meant social order. Multiple references in later works display no fixed social hierarchy and it looks like order did not matter initially and sometimes these words have no settled meaning or the meaning seems to shift. Also in the Vedas itself, there are references of a united front of brahman-ksatriya against vaishya who may have been indigenous. bráhman was still a flexible term and does not seem to occupy a fixed place in rigid system of classes or caste. That hardening happened much later. In early Vedic sense, varna could have referred to the state of a person like being royalty or learned. RV has no word for social classes but has a word 'varna' which meant color and this word is mentioned only once in RV, on the other hand jati (birth) was not even mentioned in Vedas. In RV's famous purusha sukta,[10.90] is the only place where a four layer social order is mentioned. In this hymn, purusha is a primordial man that is being sacrificed and it assigns the four varnas - brahman, rajanya, vaishya and sudra to his mouth, arm, thighs and feet. This is the only place where four layers social order instead of three are used and most linguistics and scholars agree that this sukta(hymn) is a late addition to RV as it does not resemble any other RV myth (in form and diction) and is not in accordance to early Vedic social distinction. Most likely it was added later in RV to give weight and justify the new social order. So what originally started as an order to classify people into árya and dása groups later became three layered (middle Vedic) and then four layered (later Vedic) and then to a complex conundrum of varna and jati (British age) by cooperating priests-royalty combine.   

The book also broadly touches on the Vedas and their context. There are 4 Vedas and each Vedas has four different layers. The core is the samhitas which are verses and mantras, mostly in praise of Gods. The next layer is aranyakas (which literally mean 'produced in forest'). This layer mainly deals with ritual (maybe rituals in the forest as possibly forest are seen as a mysterious place where mantra and ideas originate). The next layer is brahmana which are broad commentaries on many topics. The last layer is called upanishads which is a open category and deals with philosophy and spiritual ideas. The Vedas are not one piece and never composed as one piece. They have constantly evolved over the times. The chief division of Vedas is sakhas(school) from where they originated. Each school goes back to a clan or tribe in a particular area and each sakha would memorize a specific Veda (and all it layers). The Vedic text itself of these sakhas would be slightly different from other schools of same Veda but the difference is minor. Most of these text of these schools have now been lost, but still some survive. In a settled village based Vedic civilization, cattle and cow was the primary means of wealth. Society transformed from a nomadic lifestyle to a village based. Spoke chariot building were specialized skills and the builders had a high place in society. They were called rathakára. RV does not mention them, but taittiriya brahmana states rathakára in line with other three castes. It looks as if the three caste did not have the same meaning in RV as in post Vedic works, rathakára occupied high status in Vedic times before the actual codified caste came into being where it got lost. RV was composed in upper Indus valley and the other three in upper (kuru/pancala) and middle (kosala/videha) courses of the Ganges. In midst of this geographical migration towards east, there is an evolution in Vedic Sanskrit thought and culture besides language. (Early, Middle and late Vedic)

Rig Veda [RV] is the oldest and mostly composed in Indus valley area [Early Vedic period, 1800 - 1200 BC] mostly by clans. The importance of some Gods seem to change within the Vedas itself and some ideas of early RV were discarded by the time the other Vedas were composed. In this sense, we can say the RV was probably most alien with ideas and discourse closer to nomadic culture than to the settled cultures of later Vedas. In RV, there are 12 invocations of varuna, 23 invocations for varuna-mitra, mitra is not only a friend but personification of contract (he is something similar to mithra of iranian religions). These deities have a much smaller cult compared to indra who pervades the RV. In later works, mitra no longer appears. Most likely mitra was part of old folklore of nomads wandering around Asia as mitra is present in Iranian and Mittani religions as well and was discarded later on. Also present in RV is the battle of 10 kings who were tribal chiefs. Bharata won this battle due to mantra power. This was the age of mysterious mantras and sublime language. The indigenous tribes may have also adopted the language partly because of its alleged mantra power. Here language became a tool for political ends. RV emphasized male lineage and the transmission of Vedas was also patrilineal. RV was the world of men, by men, for issues of men. RV is most ancient, venerable, obscure, distant and difficult to understand and easy to misinterpret. The composers of RV composed it mainly for their family and clan and that is why so much remains obscure to outsiders. It started with a smaller set of poems which were gradually expanded. The nomenclature the poem in the Vedas follow a circle.poem.verse. naming convention. The early reciters needed three additional information about each poem - deity, composer, the meter. The most common deities were agni, indra, soma, and though agni & soma were impersonal divinities they were concrete as well and both are ritualized while indra has more personal traits.

The other three Vedas were composed in the Middle Vedic period [1200 - 700 BC]. The heart of Vedic culture had shifted east from the Indus valley to upper Gangetic plains. While RV was more inward looking and mysterious, the other three became more outward looking. Sama Veda come from indigenous sources and most likely from non-Indo-Aryan lineage while Atharva Veda is full with local cults. The RV was the poetic high point of the Vedic culture and by the time Yajur Veda was composed, it looked as if composing Veda becomes routine, like it being part of a job. kuru/pancala is most important kingdom/tribe in this age and Kuruksetra was now the heartland of brahmanical orthopraxy. A section of kuru/pancala compositions from their schools became the three later Vedas. During middle ages, soma was combined with agni into vast complex rituals (both these being material as well as deity). The rituals were huge and tedious and explains why middle Vedic age was not poets but scholars doing mundane stuff. The vision of RV is replaced by pedantry. Vision would return with Upanishads.

Sama Veda [SV] is made from sáman which means chants and it consists entirely of the verses of RV set to music. SV has to be heard as it is more of melody of the same RV verses. Usually the words of first lines of most hymn are carefully selected to fit the melody but the rest of the lines were forced into the same format. The forced words are changed or transformed or embellishments are added which are called stobha which is just a meaningless text. It could be that melodies were earlier sung to a different language before Vedic settlers came to India. In this transformations, phrases were added removed, repeated, changed to make it fit a melody. The core of SV is ritual chants and it exhibits two types of chants - 'to be sung in village' and 'to be sung in forest'. The village ones are accessible while forest/wilderness ones are complex and more powerful. It supports a theory that forest is dangerous and a place full of powerful chants and it point to indigenous origins that were settled long time before. Both parts stressing the village and forest being the two sides of the Vedic life. Atharva Veda [AV] survives in two schools and it mainly consists of sorcery chants, speculative and mystical poems, fragments of rituals and compositions that relate to art of healing. Yajur Veda [YV] deals with the ritual. It is said that YV provides the space for RV and SV to display their beauty. It incorporates RV verses and SV chants in its ritual framework. Yajur Veda created more school then all three Vedas put together as they created the concept of school and the other three Vedas were assigned to a place. Yajur Veda thus become the assigner that will occupy the center.

Later Vedic Period [700 - 300 BC] - In this period, Vedas were refined and reworked and the final canonization of the four Vedas were done. Also during this age, from Yajur Veda, a newer version was extracted and made into white YV and old unrefined one was called as black YV which found refuge in South India. It was called white as it separated mantra and brahmanas portions from the old and thus returning to the purity of RV which consists of poetry only.  Most of the Vedic canon was closed by now. Caste was gaining ascendancy as Vedic culture was becoming caste obsessed and ritual driven. Primarily against a reaction to this caste and ritual over zeal, the reformists ideas like Jainism and Buddhism came to fore in the Indian subcontinent during this age.

What we have discussed above is the mostly the core layer of the Vedas which is the samhitas that are widely read and translated. There are three more layers [brahmanas, aranyakas  and upanishads] to each of the Vedas. In RV, SV, AV and White YV, the samhitas and brahamans are distinct, while in in Black VY there is this continuous series to which brahmanas, aranyakas  and upanishads are attached. So while all Vedas have the samhitas, brahmanas and the upanishads layer, only RV and YV have the aranyakas layer as well. Both the brahmanas and aranyakas layers are large reservoir of comments, observations and interpretations, stories and speculation but they also seem mostly meaningless. They are huge and inaccessible and can support any theory and most of the times they do not make or convey any sense. Upanishads is the final layer of the Vedas and they are also called as Vedanta (end of Vedas). The end could mean the final piece of writing or it could also be interpreted as the ultimate aim or goal. The literal meaning of the word upanishads means sitting close to the teacher. There are 108 Upanishads of which 12 to 13 are classical which were written first (before 600 BC) and are the most important. The non classical upanishads continued to be added later on. In a broad sense of any society it can be said that humans are bound by ritual and freed by knowledge. In Vedic context, the karma or ritual is brahmanas/aranyakas and jnana or knowledge is upanishads.

This brings us to the end of my write up on this book. I must admit, I haven't read much on very early Indian history so it was a informative read but it has opened up a lot more questions than it has answered. What does the voluminous Vedic literature contain? Is there anything we can deduce or meaningfully understand. What was the significance of such extensive ritual and mysterious mantras? What of caste? How did caste became so central to Indian society?

Borges - On Exactitude in Science

Borges never stops to fascinate me. I just read this ten line story called “On Exactitude in Science” and one can not stop thinking the imagery and the ideas that this story opens up to. Here Borges revisits his favorite theme of real and unreal that is all too frequent in his works. Below is the full text of the story.

. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Incumbencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography...

This is such a small piece of work, yet the idea that a map so big that it covers the real. There is no point of reference now if you think of it. All of real is same as all of simulation. The Map is the real and the real is the map. The relationship has been let loose to such an extent that whatever we perceive or sense can easily be from our experiences of our interactions with the model or simulation of the real. The unreal and real lose context, If the unreal is as good as real, then unreal mirrors reality (it can replace reality totally). It is no more unreal. It is the real. In a sense, Map is just a construct. The idea of reality being mirrored to such perfectness that it is no longer a mirror. Then how do you define real? Do you even need real? Maybe it is the real whose tattered ruins lie all around!

Jean Baudrillard describes this in this book "Simulacra and Simulations". Quoted from this book are the two paragraph below..

If once we were able to view the Borges fable in which the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly (the decline of the Empire witnesses the fraying of this map, little by little, and its fall into ruins, though some shreds are still discernible in the deserts — the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction testifying to a pride equal to the Empire and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, a bit as the double ends by being confused with the real through aging) — as the most beautiful allegory of simulation, this fable has now come full circle for us, and possesses nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.
Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory — precession of simulacra — that engenders the territory, and if one must return to the fable, today it is the territory whose shreds slowly rot across the extent of the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself.

Frits Staal - Discovering the Vedas (Summary - I)

I have always been fascinated by how cultures developed overtime. Early humans foraging for food and shelter slowly come together to form a settlement that ultimately becomes part of a bigger civilization. Language develops, Gods are created and venerated and a basis of religion is formed. I am currently reading Frits Staal's book - "Discovering the Vedas". This is the first book I am reading on how early Hinduism came into being and it has found me all excited. The premise of the book is since early Vedic civilization left no records (like built structures or written text), the starting point for how to describe the times would be the Vedas itself and if we can de-construct them, we can understand the broad contours of the time and space that they were created in. The below write up is a broad summary of the first section of the book and I will try to come up with similar summaries of other sections as well. In no way whatsoever the ideas puts forward in this book are definitive but it is definitely worthy of a thought.

So what is Vedas? - Vedas are archaic text that are regarded as 'revealed' or sruti, or literally 'what is heard' by sages from the Gods. But they are of human origin written by early Vedic scholars and are basically hymns used to address and invoke Gods. They were passed from teacher to pupils orally [called as Oral Tradition] over a thousands of years and were created in early Vedic language which is archaic form of classical Sanskrit. Vedic (or early classical Sanskrit) is one of the many Indo-Iranian language that rose during that prolific time that ultimately all trace back to a common Indo-European ancestor language. Vedas were finally written down sometime in the early Common Era. Contrary to common knowledge, Vedas were not created in one piece or one place. They were composed in multiple places over a long period of time and some feature are not be even part of Indian subcontinent. Rig Veda is most archaic and other three Vedas depend and quote it extensively.

Where were they written? - The book states that Rig Veda (RV) records the name of rivers of north west India and Pakistan extensively. So they must have been created in or in vicinity of north west India. Harappa civilization existed in the same region around 3000 BC to 1800 BC and it was well known for the proper city planning and fired bricks. But RV never mentions of cities or bricks in its verses. It talks of fort with mud walls but never of bricks. In RV, there is mention of mythical river Saraswati flowing in north west India. Saraswati  has the same language origins as with another river called as Haraxaiti [river Helmand in Afghanistan]. Both words sound very similar and have same meaning [i.e. river with ponds or that dries in desert]. The book puts forwards a theory that early Vedic people knew about Haraxaiti as they lived around it and when they moved to north west India and when they found a similar river there, they named it similarly. Like English migrants named New England in US when they came from England and found it similar. Hence Vedas were likely composed in north west India with rivers and early tribes names providing the geographical fingerprint. The centre of the Vedic culture slowly kept moving west starting in frontier Pakistan and ultimately moving to the Gangetic plains of Bihar.(where later Vedic text was composed)

When were they written? - The current generally accepted time of composition of RV is around 1500 BC. Harappa culture was also in the same space (north west India), but they never shared time. So RV was either pre-3000 BC or post-1800 BC as Harappa culture existed during this period and they both seem to be mutually exclusive. More on timelines later when we discuss the origin of early Vedic people.

Where did early Vedic people came from? - This is the big question and the book proposes a theory which many may not necessarily agree. The book briefly touches on genetic make-up of Indian population (caste or otherwise) and states that the predominant DNA material goes back to 9000 years and Vedic people can not contribute so much of DNA material so long back. It also mentions of another source where a similar ancient Vedic culture sprung up (more on Mitanni on wiki). In ancient middle east, there was a treaty between Hittite kingdom (modern day Turkey) and Mitanni kingdom (modern day Syria/North Iraq) that refers to Vedic gods of Indra and Varuna. Mitanni nobles spoke of language that was very very close to Vedic. The text tablets of the treaty are dated around 1400 BC and are basically horse training and chariots making manuals for fighting wars. Now to posit that a group of Vedic people moved from India to modern day Syria does not cut ice. Most likely a group of near-Vedic speaking people wandering around split and some came to India while the other group went to middle east taking with them the language and equestrian skills. Mitanni nobles had knowledge of something that allowed them to rule the more numerous natives. Maybe in India something similar happened that allowed a small group of people to become kings and chiefs and they slowly kept moving west.These people brought with them the power of written language and the skills of horse and chariots (spoke based chariots that are much faster) over the mountains to north west India. Harappa culture had no written language. Probably the idea of a written text filled the gap. The language also brought with itself the power of mantra and myth to invoke Gods that may have added to the power of ruling elite besides the charm of the language. Horses were introduced from else where as they were not native to India. They were not present in Harappa culture but they are everywhere in RV. It points that horses and chariots were fashionable as probably they were new to the land. The overall premise of the book being that instead of an big Aryan invasion (as is generally thought of), maybe Vedic people trickled over the mountains in small numbers and settled over time and became royalty as they had the skills alien to the land (i.e horses, chariots, language, mantra and myth) but fashionable.

How does this all hang together? - The book proposes that the origins of early Vedic people were most likely somewhere in Sintashta culture (in Russian steppes, south of Ural mountains that developed around 2100-1800 BC). In Sintashta culture which was primarily a Indo-European or maybe Indo-Iranian language culture, evidence of early chariots and horse/fire sacrifice have been found extensively. This culture is further north of another culture called BMAC which is a non Indo-European culture located on the banks of Amu Darya river in Central Asia. One wave of people from Sintashta move south via BMAC into northern Iran where they form the basis of early Iranian culture and language [Avestan/Zoroastrianism]. At the same time, another set of people from Sintashta start moving east on to wide empty plains of Kazakhstan and continue moving east to what is now called as Chinese Xinjiang. Here in the dry Tarim basin countless mummies have been found dating to 2000 BC with Indo-European features. During this long trek over mountains and deserts the language started changing from India-Iranian into Vedic. High in the mountains the early Vedic people find the plant Soma which is heavily mentioned in Vedas for its stimulant qualities and is said to grow near Mount Mūjavant. The author proposes that Mount Mūjavant could be Muz-tagh Ata near the Pamir mountains. After crossing the Pamir, north of Karakoram the nomads enter Afghanistan. Here they mingle with the BMAC culture and influence each other. Number of non-Indo-European words are picked and added into the Vedic vocabulary here. This maybe dated around 1800 BC. Once in BMAC, they split, one goes west to formed Mitanni state [in 1500 BC]  and the other moved to north west India via Khyber pass. This fits nicely with linguistic side as Vedic and Mittani are more similar then say Iranian and Mitanni. Another set of people moved further south and entered India via Bolan pass picking the Iranian word Haraxaiti from eastern Iran. So somewhere around 1500 B.C.,the early settlers settle themselves in northern India bringing with them the power of language and art of horse riding and fast chariots. In fact Harappa has toys with solid wheels but RV never mentions solid wheels and instead has whole terminology for chariots and its parts showing that it was more fashionable and probably an in-demand skill at that time. This brings us to the end of the first section that provides a brief take on that era when early Vedic civilization rose.

Whatever the author proposes is difficult to prove one way or other but I find one thing hard to believe. While the origin of Vedic people may be in Sintashta culture of the Russian steppes or near about, but the idea of large number of people along with their women/children and possibly livestock as well moving around in such treacherous and nearly inhospitable terrain of Pamir and Tarim is difficult to comprehend. Would it not been easier for them to just move south to BMAC directly and then enter India via Khyber taking along with them the horse and the chariot. At least this route is easier and more live-able. Well! we will never know the answer!