Tangled Up

I am in a bit of a tangle, to be perfectly honest. When do you tell someone that Santa Claus does not exist? Or, do you allow one to think incorrectly about something if that something is working well for them?

For example, there are a few Sanskrit phrases and terms that are used on a daily basis, quite often incorrectly with regards to the actual meaning. Sometimes I feel obliged to spell it out  because it is truly a misconception, whereas other times, does it really matter?

I went to an Iyengar yoga class this weekend and it was great to be back in such a class, having thoroughly enjoyed my hatha lessons in India and recent vinyasa ones, thoug, at heart, perhaps I am Iyengar, or at least inspired.

Regardless, at the beginning of the class, the so-called "Invocation to Patanjali" is chanted. It is very pleasant and a nice way to begin the class, something I had not done with my Iyengar teacher in Austin.

To make a long story short, the translation is widely and internationally accepted as correct, is well, to put it bluntly, wrong. I twisted my Sanskrit brain in many contortions this weekend thinking about the invocation and it just doesn't work. There is no way to translate it the way that all sites that I found on the website translate it. Further, I am not even sure that the Sanskrit is correct as I was not able to find the source text.

Does it matter? What if I produce a "correct" translation? Similar to the Christian tradition of translating the Greek parthenon as "Virgin," when it does not necessarily mean that, but...if it doesn't mean that. Or, does it matter if the wrong translation causes a great deal of good?

So, whereas I had originally planned to publish my "correct" translation here of the invocation, I am still puzzling through this hermeneutic tangle that I am caught up in. Suggestions are welcome...

Waking The Dream

I am sitting in one of my favorite cafes on the Dageraadsplaats in Zurenborg, Antwerp in Belgium. As, if in a dream.

Life goes on outside, kids are playing on the playground among the golden brown and ruddy, damp leaves that have fallen from the trees. Twilight approaches and there is calm all around. People are enjoying life: eating, drinking and talking. This life has gone on all the while that I was in India and will continue on after when I have died one day. Life goes on.

Life also goes on in India right now. The streets of Madurai are most likely anything but calm, filled with honking and bells of varous degrees, and music and song. People are going to the Meenakshi Temple, doing Pooja, wafting incense and preparing for bed with their final prayers of the evening.

Life goes on in America right now as well. The Sunday morning is just beginning, people going to Church or lazing around the house, getting ready for NFL on the television, hoping that today’s games are more exciting than the disappointing 9-6 victory of #1 LSU over  #2 Alabama, deflating any expectations of a game of the century scenario.

Each one of these lives I have been an integral part of, yet often each one of them seems to be as vague and fleeting as a passing dream that lingers in the backstreets of my mind, memories stretched across the corridors like laundry in Naples. Feeling at times like Descartes, wondering if indeed an evil demon merely whispers into my ear and causes the illusion of the world around me, the intangibility of these various worlds is unsettlingly tangible.

Less than 100 hours ago, I, Robert Fulton, was in India, yet at the moment, I am sitting in Antwerp, Belgium, recalling the memory of that, but in all honesty, am skeptical myself that it really happened at moments. Such are the tricks our mind and memory can play with us, playful at times, mercilessly mocking at others.

My entire life at times feels as if it were but a dream, full of the sound and the fury, signifying no-thing...and yet...

Shankara’s Aparokshãnubhuti, or Self-Realization, is a lesser-known text of his Advaita Vedanta writings that I picked up at Pilgrim’s Bookstore in Varanasi. I found the following passages rather poignant to the experience of these feelings.

Though this world is experienced, and suffice in its purpose, exists

Like a dream, of the non-existent, contradicting itself at every moment.

The dream is unreal upon waking, and waking eludes the dream.

Both, however, in deepest sleep are absent, likewise elusive.

Thus are all three states unreal as they are products of quality;

Yet the reality which binds them is beyond Quality, eternal and Consciousness itself.