Showing posts with label metaphors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label metaphors. Show all posts

Monday, September 3, 2012

Enough Rambled: Journal Concluded (Summum Bomus)

The Half-Satori journey has reached its natural conclusion. This process journal will stay online for a record on the process of sorting out slices of the universe into a coalescing weave of awareness. One day I'll be a comedian. Or a heavy metal artist. Let's see which way the world turns after the Mayan '12 illusions are through with. The tables are turning in the mirror, the backstage is full of inversions. Meanwhile, I'm playing the sama-data-matrix game for creating a symmetric open-source insight commons. What a grand journey to nowhere!

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Conscious evolution is a process of refinement from the grosser to the subtler. Whoever lets go of particular attachment and moves towards the general commonality of life, he/she can easily learn simpler and more efficient methods of natural and systematic communication. From speaking in sutra-compressed algorithmic phrases to exploring basal sounds and the origins of semantic and cognitive patternation; from understanding natural symbols and signals to using any binary-capable "device" for transmitting communication. The more subtle the mind becomes, the more insight it will be able to absorb from less content. We're simply too wordy and complicated for our own good. We need a process of semantic dissolution to dissolve the knots.


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It's hardly surprising that the content in this process journal may not communicate much for those unfamiliar with the classic and ancient sources of systematized knowledge I've explored for the greater part of my short life — or for those without background in open introspective contemplation for that matter. These writings come from a phase where I was into in-depth practice of Hindu and Buddhist methods of meditation, parsing through their nature-based ontologies, and attempting to abstract the whole lot into more general terms. What you read here is probably a bit easier to absorb than classic Buddhist suttas or Hindu cosmology, for example. It isn't exactly "hands-on particular" in terms of modern applicability though. Some conscious effort required.


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The archived writings in the Half-Satori journal— whatever of it may make sense — have been based on following a self-evident binary pattern of coalescence and paired unification that appears in countless permutations and vectors of interdependent generation in both the natural and the social world. Here's that same old basic pattern again — certainly not my invention — in three levels of bipolar composites (unary, binary, ternary):

 ∞ 000 001 010 011 ⋅ 100 101 110 111 ⋅ 00 01 10 11 ⋅ 0 1 ½ ∞ EOL.

Our choice of dual pairings for algorithmic balance is immaterial — the basic levels and junctions of the pattern equate as independent of its semantic variables. I've collected some sets of symbols at http://wisdom.com.es/ for an illustration of how such patterns can be modeled in practical environments. If you see there a matrix that talks to you, please let me know and toss in some reflections using the comment-feature. If you're on Facebook, please join the "Branches of the World Tree" discussion group to exchange perspectives.


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— While I've used a number of "spiritual" frameworks, so-called, over the years to complement my understanding of the basic patterns that underlie our conscious processes, more recently I've worked towards turning it into something concrete — in any scenario whatever, to ensure it's abstract and subtle enough. If the so-called "transcendent" fails to become "immanent" in the here-and-now, in whichever context, it becomes altogether irrelevant for anything but advancing one's subjective sense of enthused living experience.


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— Leaders and followers are obsolete. Masters and disciples are obsolete. Gurus and laghus are obsolete. Humans and non-humans are obsolete. Only the absolute is non-obsolete. What is that absolute? That unified state, in which the ego-self does not interfere in the paired dancing and interdependent flux of nature. Thence onward, it's blips and blops dancing together in the axial hall of mirrors; who cares for the little self when the world is a pattern just the same as the self in itself, reflected above as below in the mirror of the mind.


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— It's best to act as a transparent co-median. Who cares for another fat-hat tripper on a high seat. For that matter, who cares for another tip-hat groveler at the bottom of the floor either. Natural complementarity ascends the low and descends the high; leveling the field into a plateau of seamless exchange between interdependent peers. — That is a healthy way forward; not a recycling of the old dualistic paradigm that merely enforces separation, where coalescence should unfold at this junction of our civilization. Those who care for religions, however, can follow Swami Blogannatha 2.0 who's been watching the internets for some time now via the Anonymous Matrix of integration. Homma-Humma-Hum — Legions!! http://www.gobloga.com/ <— Maybe better not go there after all.


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Now here's something patently scary to establish a grave concluding point to all these ramblings. Better let the whole lot of this crazy-complicated world rest in the lap of Alpha and Omega in the potentive Quantum Axis in the median of awareness and patterns; happiness and distress; spirit and matter; light and darkness; above and below; outside and inside; living and dead; or butter and bread; or perhaps nirvana nevermind instead. Better to resolve that perennial tangle of conflicted interests in the fragmented mirror of awareness; and then let all phenomena rest and flow in their interdependent nature; in freedom from a concrete and fixated self that asserts itself over others.


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= 2x:4x:8x — Triune Levels: Short Ascending Coalescence =

0~00~000 | 0~00~001 | 0~01~010 | 0~01~011 |
1~10~100 | 1~10~101 | 1~11~110 | 1~11~111 |
☻~☻☻~☻☻☻ | ☻~☻☻~☻☻☺ | ☻~☻☺~☻☺☻ | ☻~☻☺~☻☺☺ |
☺~☺☻~☺☻☻ | ☺~☺☻~☺☻☺ | ☺~☺☺~☺☺☻ | ☺~☺☺~☺☺☺ |
 
= 2x:4x:8x — Triune Levels: Short Descending Coalescence =

1~11~111 | 1~11~110 | 1~10~101 | 1~10~100 |
0~01~011 | 0~01~010 | 0~00~001 | 0~00~000 |
☺~☺☺~☺☺☺ | ☺~☺☺~☺☺☻ | ☺~☺☻~☺☻☺ | ☺~☺☻~☺☻☻ |
☻~☻☺~☻☺☺ | ☻~☻☺~☻☺☻ | ☻~☻☻~☻☻☺ | ☻~☻☻~☻☻☻ |
 

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If you venture deep enough into the darkness, you will enter the grave. In that pitch-black grave, there's an impenetrable black sarcophagus oozing with sparks of translucent crystal-blue essence. That is the dynamic cognition-essence; and the other is the static pattern-essence. When these two implode and boil into a non-differentiating weave of complementary and seamless unison, the seer and the seen become translucent in the mirror of the non-self-continuum.

 
For all those asking about "spiritual things" so-called; the path of dissolution (nivritti-nirvana) is the path that I best understand. This is where I came from; and this is where I will return. Anything that is "I" is destined to perish in the battle of the ancient powers of awareness. I have nothing here that I care to offer as a bridge of bondage for people who are unwilling to let go of the ever-subjective, ever-biasing, ever-projecting, ever-dependent self. I've been there and done that, and really it's not my thing.
 
It is best when each individual follows their own straight and natural process(es), experienced as immanent both self and its shared environment, in basal and immediately accessible terms. Face the raw and uncertain self in the cave of your deepest and morbid'est fears. Find their root; terminate their root; liberate the natural flow. Real rock-bottom and sacrifice of self-interest makes the spirit healthy again; then maybe some "spiritual life" and automagical Moo-cows roaming in a hive-land of interlinked quantum awareness sometime afterwards. Now, let's enter that inner cave...
 

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— "In the midnight of the Dark New Moon, mystified by the unseen and the unknown, the twelve seers of wisdom wished for a journey to the Cave of the Underworld. It became a true inner quest to uncover the experience of the bare self, the plain nature of suffering, the equanimity that rests in such abiding, and the wisdom that is locked therein. This, they reasoned among themselves, would reveal the root of the unseen shackles that enforce the bondage of this world. Then, prepared with the physical, emotional and rational requisites for such an undertaking, free of fear they aimed on the path of smoke into deep darkness..."
 

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vidyāṁ cāvidyāṁ ca yas tad vedobhayaṁ saha |
avidyayā mṛtyuṁ tīrtvā vidyayāmṛtam aśnute || Isopanisad 11

"Knowledge and ignorance, who understands the two together;
via nescience he transcends death — via knowledge he revels in ambrosia."
 
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— "Mahā-parinibbāna-sutta, the Buddha's final series of teachings, in outlining his systematic path of sentient resolution, features a noteworthy set of "eight liberations" ("aṭṭha vimokkhā"). This ladder for the wholesome resolution of conditioned awareness presents us with a sequential experience of emancipation and enlightenment — first in understanding and reconciling forms; then in understanding space and awareness; then in understanding non-space and non-awareness; then in attaining the resolution of individuated awareness." 

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☻:☻☻
Two friendly pigeons were longing for their love;
One of them sought high, the other one sought low;

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Two friendly pigeons were dreaming of their life;
One of them for husband, the other one for wife;

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Two friendly pigeons were nesting in their tree;
One of them would hear, the other one would see;

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Two friendly pigeons were flying in the wind;
One of them flew forth, the other one behind;

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Two friendly pigeons were planning for an egg;
One of them would borrow, the other one would beg;

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Two friendly pigeons were protecting their nest;
One of them would watch, the other one would rest;

☺:☺☻
Two friendly pigeons soon matured their chick;
One of them would groom, the other one would pick;

☺:☺☺
Three friendly pigeons then danced amid their nest;
All of them were different, united each was best!


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You can explode-implode and reach back to the big bang if you must...



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Or you can service the Inputs and Outputs in their natural motion...



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Wherever you move in the system or outside the system
— never forget that a life of humor is embedded in the process!


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~ ... You didn't think this would end without ontology charts now, did you!! ~


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~ You didn't think this would end without the Pyramids of Giza now, did you!! ~








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— Friendly fellows are running on the air;
— Time is running still, level'd highest hill;
— Pattern watchers are sitting in the cave;
— Fabric is dissolved, problems are resolved...



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Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Boat of Three and Eight Maidens in Emptiness

The mystic poems of the Charyapada are a collection of esoteric verse by the Mahasiddhas of tantric Buddhism, dating to 8th-12th century eastern India. This series of poetry from the masters of yore is laden with insight on the interplay of the microcosm, the macrocosm, and the great void beyond. Poems of the genre are grasped and tasted in a heart of primal symbolic awareness; read not the surface tale, taste the flow underneath!

With the heart of the mystery in the mid-stream that reveals the nature of the opposites, the tantric tradition employs rich imagery of the male-female interplay to reveal the principles of the sun, the moon, and the central pillar of fire as energetic and ontological beacons in the ocean of existence. Here's a fresh translation of the 13th poem by Kanhapada, a beautiful gloss on the enlightened human situation.

It's not the eight maidens in this painting; yet the ocean and the means are the same.

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ti-śaraṇa nābī ki'a aṭha-kumārī | ni'a deha karuṇā-śūṇame herī || 1
tarittā bhava-jaladhi jima kari mā'a suinā | majha beṇī taraṅgama muni'ā || 2
pañca tathāgata ki'a keḏuāla | bāha'a kā'a kāhni la mā'ājāla || 3
gandha parasa rasa ja̮isoɱ ta̮isoɱ | niṁda bihune suinā ja̮iso || 4
ci'a-kaṇṇahāra śūṇata-māṅge | calila kāhna mahā-suha-sāṅge || 5

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"In a three-refuge boat I captured eight maidens;
In my body, I behold compassion and emptiness.
Crossing the ocean of being as a phantom dream;
The mid-stream led me to understand the waves...
Deploying the five Tathagatas as the oars;
Kanha rows the outer form in a wire-net of magic.
Smelling, touching, tasting, as they are;
Like a dream without sleeping!
Awareness as helmsman in the blessed void;
Kanha sojourns in union's highest bliss..."

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In Siddha Kanhapada's song, a three-refuge boat is the vehicle for the journey. We have three perennial refuges (in general and Buddhist terms): [-] Negative (Dharma: Unifying Awareness), [±] Middle (Sangha: Mirror Awareness) and [+] Positive (Buddha: Specifying Awareness). Compassion (Karuna) and Wisdom (Prajna), or Compassion (Karuna) and Emptiness (Sunya), create the two flanks of [±] transparent yoga-balance. Three refuges give shelter to eight phenomenal maidens: [---] Earth, [--+] Mountain, [-+-] Stream, [-++] Wind, [+--] Thunder, [+-+] Fire, [++-] Lake and [+++] Heaven — the fundamental building blocks of the luminous eightfold path of human resolution.

The bipolar waves of the phantom dream are only witnessed in the ☯ Middle-Golden-Stream. Five Tathagatas ("thus-gone-ones") are the oars for the five pure lights, the five faculties, the four cardinals with a center — the sacred pentad of primal awareness. Here are the five Dhyani-Buddhas: 1) Buddha Mahāvairocana ["super-luminous-sphere"]: Tathatā-jñāna, "Awareness of Suchness", 2) Buddha Akṣobhya ["non-disturbable"]: Ādarśa-jñāna, "Mirrorlike Awareness"; 3) Buddha Amitāyus ["immeasurable-lifecycle"]: Pratyavekṣaṇa-jñāna, "Investigative Awareness"; 4) Buddha Ratnasambhava ["jewel-potential"]: Samatā-jñāna, "Unifying Awareness"; and 5) Buddha Amoghasiddhi ["successful-accomplishment"]: Kṛty-anuṣṭhāna-jñāna = "Accomplishing Awareness".

The ocean of existence is likened to a wire-net of phantasmagoria. The objects of the senses and the sense-faculties are exactly what they are. When left in their own nature without craving or projection, the shackles of bondage unravel, severing the steel-ropes of the material anchor with the sword of transcombinatory awareness. For the remainder of the journey, now in a state of transparent seedlessness, the phenomenal world transforms into a waking dream that holds no sway over the conscious dreamer. In effect, the world is beheld from behind a primal mirror; touched, but not touched; smelled, but not smelled; and tasted, but not tasted.

Luminosity of primal awareness is the helmsman of the boat of the body in the blessed void; and the object-streams shape the countless waves of the ocean. A journey to the highest bliss of union is fulfilled when above and below are joined in the middle without friction, reconciling and uniting the inner with the outer, reaching the pinnacle of conscious equilibrium, and ultimately, unbinding the thread of patternation altogether. That is the fullness of the bliss of union in the blessed void.

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You can download a translation of Charyapada at the SySpir Central ArcHive in PDF format (98 KB) — archived from an expired website. Translator unknown. It's a fair rendering, albeit missing a good deal of nuance; as can only be expected in working through an archaic mixture of Bangla, Oriya and Assamese! Art base: "Jesus walks on water" by Ivan Aivazovsky (1888).

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Metric Soul and Divided Minds & Divinities

"A one-hundredth part of a hair's tip, and again split into hundred,
this fragment is the living self or soul, also conceived of as endless."
(Svetasvatara Upanisad, 5.9)
The following text is drawn and expanded from my reply to a friend's query on the Upanisadic descriptions of the soul being the size of a ten-thousandth of the tip of the hair, and at the same time pervade the body; in general, the diverse depictions of the soul to be of a particular measure can come across as confusing. The second half of the post discusses the greater "divided spirit" issue of God and soul.

Oxymoron of Metric Soul


The soul, if we choose to believe in one that is, being an immaterial spirit-substance, cannot have a scale of comparison with matter. It is no more the size of a proton than it is the size of a hamburger or a Polish truck-driver. It is neither proportionate nor disproportionate to the object it appears to animate, for it has no proportion in common with inanimate matter.

Of course one might compare the soul to a lamp and the pervading of the body to its rays in a room, and that's a rather appropriate analogy as long as we forget about our attempts to pin it out on the metric scale. Both the lamp and the rays are finite objects, as are the individual jiva-soul and his field of awareness; hence the metaphor works in this application.

Technically speaking, the soul pervades and animates the body through the conscious mental functions (citta) filtered through the medium of ahankara conjointly with Antaryamin, the Inner Regulator or the so-called "super-soul" (paramatman). The antaryamin is variously identified as Ishvara (Supreme God) or Atman (Supreme Self) in differing schools of thought.

Atisayokti - Literary Exaggeration


Everything in the scriptures is a mixture of literal and metaphorical. There is svabhavokti or statement (ukti) reflecting or object's own (sva) nature (bhava), and there is atisayokti or excessive (atisaya) statement. All the four standard atisayoktis in the alankara-shastra (e.g. Alankara-kaustubha: 8.23), or the classical Indian corpus of books on  literary composition and criticism, feature departures from the literal or face-value meaning.

The third excessive metaphorical statement, where the impossible is being stated, is the one we are primarily after at the moment, for the soul has no material scale. Therefore, the statement of comparison is an impossibility. The two first atisayoktis are comparisons to other objects (and I suppose taking this as a hyperbolic diminutive would be every bit as valid), the other overt and the other covert, and the fourth features effect as simultaneous with or preceding the cause.

If we were to indeed indeed pursue this literally, as fundamentalists frequently do, we would have to first ask whether this proverbial hair is Afro-American, French or Vedic Indian — perhaps the sage in question split his own hair tip into 10,000 pieces and compared it to his soul, discovering it was an exact match under his microscope? Did he split it with a Vedic hair-splitter? Perhaps everyone's soul is 10,000 tip of their own hair? This again is problematic for men with thinning hair or baldness; their souls must be approaching limbo...

God and Souls - Divided Minds


A related field of paradox is in the supposed division that exists between the Jiva-Atman and the all-pervasive Brahman or ultimate God. From where I look at things, Advaita-vedanta is quite right in insisting that the atman (which is equated in the realization-stage with the brahman although brahman and brahman alone was the atman was all along) cannot be factually divided into individual soul-units, and that the individuality in question is only a temporary illusion rooted in Avidya or primal ignorance. This is naturally solved with the acquisition of Jnana or knowledge proper.

Let us assume the presence of an individual "soul fragment", a separate conscious unit. Fragments by definition cannot have the same quality as an unbreakable whole, for they differ in the quality of being fragmentable. Again, if the great whole can be divided into fragments, a second is thereby posited next to the non-dual, leading to a number of questions on the unique nature of the supposed one and the greatest non-dual spirit proclaimed across the Upanishads.

The Theory of Simultaneous Difference-Nondifference


Gaudiya Vaishnavism proposes an inconceivable symbiotic difference-cum-non-difference solution to the issue under the heading of acintya-bheda-abheda. Aristoteles would insist things either are or are not, for they cannot be both. A follower of Jiva Goswami's would then employ the acintya-shakti defence: You need to believe that God has the power to not make sense to make headway with the dilemma.

All too often, the inconceivability card is a handy answer to each and every equation that doesn't exactly add up because a transcendent object is beyond logical derivation and accessible perception. This leaves me wondering whether this God does not become irrelevant altogether, stretching entirely out of our objective human grasp and contact as he does.

Of course we also have the standard explanation with the shakti-vada and the nonduality between the energy (shakti) and the energetic (shaktiman), the former of which would include all of us and the inanimate world. Not the least of the problems is the fact that shakti-vada has nothing to do with Vedanta and everything to do with the tantric tradition.

Setting aside doctrinal purism and strict Vedanta interpretation for a moment, the tradition of Kashmiri Saivism which is the root of the shakti theory also features an extensive existential grid, in many ways unique, and in many others parallel to the Vedic Sankhya and its model of causal derivation.

All of that notwithstanding, the problem of evidently divided consciousness between us and God remains. I for one do not possess all the knowledge of God, indicating we are clearly separate units of consciousness. There is little practicality to the proposal of the every-day experience of me being one with a personal and actively omniscient God.

Like Sun and Sunshine?


Omniscience indicates a flawless and all-pervading entity or state of being. This one, all-knowing and all-encompassing God is all that is. Shakti cannot be classified as a second separate unit, even as dependent and subordinate, for this would be introducing dualism, the existence of a second beside God; assuming the non-duality of God and creation, one would expect us souls to share of the same pristine strata of undivided and omniscient existence.

The simile of the sun and the sunshine should be understood for what it is: a simile. A simile does not constitute proof in and of itself, it is a manner of illustrating a more abstract principle. The problems we run into applying this to the case at hand are manifold.

The most obvious of all is the fact sun and sunshine do not feature a known conscious property, whether unified or divided; both are mechanical, passive factors incapable of decision-making, unlike soul and god. Independent decision-making and limited or unlimited fields of awareness, in turn, are the very factors begging the question to begin with.

If a simile is employed in illustrating simultaneously one and different consciousness(es), and especially in the capacity of proof, it should be a comparison of strict equals.

A Monistic Angle


There is a very vivid and distinct duality here, indicating we need to either admit to the non-reality of duality and divided consciousness, labeling them as a mere illusion (and moreover an illusion occuring in Brahman with no existence to its occurence), or do away with an undivided and omniscient, yet eeriely antropomorphic God.

Advaita-siddhanta considers Isvara (personal god) to be the most you can see of the nondual absolute through the veil of maya; as ajnana or individual ignorance is dispelled, the ignorance concerning duality is dispelled, and the one atman alone remains aglow. The doctrine of atman then becomes a de-facto doctrine of anatman, for there was no everlasting individual soul to begin with.

Neither duality nor nonduality are entirely satisfactory for a philosophical answer. I don't have an exact answer for the way all stuff works, though I do have some cool ideas I need to explore a bit further. The citta-matram doctrine of the Yogacara-school of Buddhism, the theory of an unified mind-field and repository consciousness or alaya-vijnana, comes across as rather fascinating to me, and also correlates with some of my experiences.

Summa Summarum


My preferred approach to the question, independent of any scriptures, is to conceive of a single mental field in which both the Ishvara and the jivas are fluctuation in greater or smaller degrees. The only factual omniscient potential is in the universal mind-field, an uninvolved, egoless all-containing entirety, where no catalyst (ahankara) for individuality exists; hence seeing without a seer is actualized. The concept appears to make seamless sense to me, independent of conformance to any ancient or contemporary theories.

In the end, fiddling with lofty philosophical formulations amounts to little more than an entertaining mind-game fulfilling our intellectual urges. Otherwise, assumptions of mastery of a theory may help one to comfort himself and bring order into the surrounding chaos, or to command and conquer existence through comprehension.

Nirvana and God remain lurking in the fabric of the harmony, peace, clarity and joy of an independent nature we discover within ourselves through personal experience, introspection and natural immersion. Even if we all have our respective philosophies and mythologies with diverging particulars, it really doesn't matter a damn thing as long as you arrive at the conclusive non-dual One-Zero paradox at the end.


Related satire from Dissociated Press: Hare Krishna Swami Loses Soul - Downtown Helsinki (DP)