we refuse to See

when we read a book,
or when when we hold a conversation,
our mind takes an absent minded walk.
its this walk that traces or writes
our (mis)understandings.

we want to fight
with what we read,
without trying to see how the arguments follow,
for we know that We know better.

in a conversation
we fight and wait inwardly,
without listening,
as the other speaks,
to explode with our objections.

once i was talking to an academic friend
about problems of mastering hegel.
i have seen about
5 different interpretations
of his Phenomenology Of Spirit,
and yet the text maintained its ambiguity,
leaving other possibilities.
i just couldnt meet hegel yet!

she started laughing.
i asked her, "whats so funny?"
"hey! You can never indentify the author's context"
she was bored,"its just another old problem."
when i asked her,
"but has it become a problem for u yet?"
there was no answer.
she was just repeating
a certain theory of literature.

to tell another story,
a friend once found
the bus conductor and some people
roughing up a middle aged man
for not getting his ticket.
people were whispering,
'what could happen if u take
a bus ticket.
its not a lot of money.
he should be punished.'

my friend
went up to the man and asked him
why he didnt get the ticket.
he said,
his son was admitted
in the medical college hospital,
he was bringing him food,
and he didnt even have enough money
to buy medicines.
my friend, a doctor at the same hospital,
rescued the man
and she later met his son.
the boy had meningitis.

understanding the other in her own terms;
why is it so difficult?

Martin Buber said in I And Thou,
"this is our exalted melancholy
that every Thou in our world must become an It."

its by seeing the other through
the veils of prejudice of ages,
and objectifying him/her,
that we feel stronger.

its the fear of seeing one's own self
reflected in the other like an apparition,
that keeps our lives away,
from our dwelling, Love.

in response to atul

i wanted to mention godel.
infact the frege-russel-whitehead project
and wittgenstein's answer to that.
but they all still fall within the realm of formal logic and they show,
like u said how the system/structure cannot explain itself.
this problem, ofcourse, was well adressed by
the linguistic turn continental philosophy
took around the mid 1900s;
from sassure and early foucault, to later foucault and derrida.

then these were never newly found problems.
they can be seen in the work of bhartrhari, and nagarjuna
who reveals the empiness through a linguistic play
in mulamadhyamakakarika and vigrahavyavartini.
then in kant's third critique
where he discusses problems of measurement.
from these one can move towards the joke.

to me Ramana
is a different case.
Ramana here is trying to show something else.
he is putting an experience up front.
if u share the same sphere of consciousness
it might be revealed, i presume.
it is also an extension
of ramana's endless quiestion,
"who am i?"

sages were doing it all the while.
one may find these in the aranyakas,
zen,eckhart,nietzche,heidegger, and so on.

the two enquieries, of godel and co and of ramana,
have the same root,
yet they are so different.
around here which road to take
is quite a difficult issue,
for we see all roads dissolve
into a vapour of puzzles and paradoxes.

wittgenstein in the end of tractatus said,
"whereof one cannot speak,
thereof one must remain silent."
ask urself if u would still want to speak,
why? and how?

In response to Satish

satish,
i dont come online that often.
so there is always some delay in response.
but i will get back to u eventually.

the 'loop' u r talking about here
is sort of like paradoxes.
the one u pointed out infact is
a refined liar's paradox.

the liar tells them,
"from now on, whatever i say is a lie."
so is he lying?
or is he telling the truth?

but they, paradoxes, are always
seen as a logical game.
but things like antinomies in kant or
,when hegel says,
"all existents resolve in contradictions".
or neitzsche's demon
or the Zen koan "mu",
are putting everything in quiestion.
they are asking us, "where do u stand now?"
as they slip the ground from beneath our feet.

also,
i i dont understand Ramana's joke at all.
i dont have that realm of experience
to see it other than as a joke,
or a shallow joke in an insignificant way.

but then
the joke must be told.

anyway if u are interested
i'll continue the discussion here,
and may be we'll discuss an interesting interpretation
of the joke.

best :)

from Kant's what is enlightenment


Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage.
Tutelage is man's inability to make use of
his understanding without direction from another.
Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason
but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another.
Sapere aude! "Have courage to use your own reason!"-
that is the motto of enlightenment.

the last joke told by a friend

buddha was in newyork.
he wandered around the whole morning
and now he was hungry and tired.
(buddhas do get hungry
and they shit too)

he approached a road side hot dog vendor
and asked him,
"make me one with everything."
the man took the $20 bill and
gave buddha one hot dog
with all the ingrediants.

buddha after finishing the food asked for change.
the vendor said,
"sir, change comes from within".

from a letter to a friend

this whole place is so full of him.
i feel surrounded by his sweet smell
and kind smile.
i feel myself as witnessed by him
while i am here.
his fondness is holding me so close
and i dont know how to hug him back.
i am so angry with him.

as i was sitting in my room
and going through
an old copy of nietzsche that he used to read,
i could hear his words more clear than anything
that i have heard after him,
"its the will thats most important.
its from will power to will to power."
now i understand its meaning..

my own palm is more alive in the memories
where it touched him
and my body is so real in those mornings
when i embraced him.
i guess i laughed best in those moments where
i made fun of his lil tummy.

i see his chair and i realise that
he will never be there.
i see his books and i see that childlike frown
that he had while he read.
i see my own self in the mirror,
and i tell myself that
this image wont be seen by him.
and now as i walk the streets of this silly town,
all that i could see his absence
and that past where i walked around this town
holding his hand
like a lil prince
who didnt have to fear anything.

why did it happen like this?
i just dont understand.
i am so angry with him
for abandoning me like this.
i can feel his laughter slowly blooming,
first a suppressed smile,
then the snickering,
the full grin,
and now his whole body is shaking
with waves of laughter.
but i cant scold him anymore.
i think i shouldnt write anymore on this..