Sep 14, 2005 14:08
Still considering why we ask 'why,' it occurs to me that the question might be the answer. If it seems like such musings make yours truly sad, it's not a sad so much as a pensive. It's a shame that these days people equait pensivity (from french penser (vb meaning to think) and probably some latin root or something) with sadness, but I suppose they do. One of the upanishads identifies the answer to the question as essentially simultaneously Om (or aum) and atman which are respectively the word that contains everything, and the self, the sort of spiritual reflection of one's individuality.
According to this text to declare "He Is," thereby acknowledging the presence of this sort of pervasive divinity, and to accept it, to internalize it, is to answer The Question, and achieve enlightenment, become the gautama. In short believing is seeing. It seems roughly analagous to Emerson's sort of weird willfull passivity of surrendering the flesh and the societally-constructed humanity in order to become part-or-particle-of-God in Nature.
This seems an oversimplification, and most likely is, considering that it's only one part of a cycle of a hundred and eight texts. And that much only in one of however many hundreds if not thousands of religions and systems of beliefs across the world.
In short I'm not yet satisfied. However my idea of the equation of wandering, wondering, and writing, has been nothing but bolstered in the course of my Honors Project.
My biography of HDT came in the mail today.
shb
thoughts