Class Notes 3/29

Avatara, The Humanization of Philosophy Through the Bhagavad-Gita, was one of the books passed around in class.
here are two quotes I picked out of it while flipping through:
pg 175 "Arjuna, however, collapses in the battlefield unable to balance the terror of being a man with the decision to being a man."
pg 174 "To be a warrior in this tradition is the ability to act without attachment to the fruits of action."

theophany, Job, God speaks out of the whirlwind because Job is not ready for, or could not handle the true form of God. As Actaeon is turned into a stag and sporagmosed by his own dogs, or the girl blown up by making Zeus promise to reveal his true form to her.

Arjuna is coming to realize more than Krishna as a divinity, he also realizes that he is a part of that divinity.....

Introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita (Translation of Bhagavad-Gita by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood.) by Aldous Huxley.

"At the core of the Perennial Philosophy we find four fundamental doctrines.
First: the phenomenal world of matter and of individualized consciousness--the world of things and animals and men and even gods--is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being, and apart from which they would be non-existent.
Second: human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine Ground by inference; they can also realize its existence by a direct intuition, superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.
Third: man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul. It is possible for a man, if he so desires, to identify himself with the spirit and therefore with the Divine Ground, which is of the same or like nature with the spirit.
Fourth: man’s life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so to come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground.
In Hinduism the first of these four doctrines is stated in the most categorical terms. The Divine Ground is Brahman, whose creative, sustaining and transforming aspects are manifested the Hindu trinity. A hierarchy of manifestations connects inanimate matter with man, gods, High Gods, and the undifferentiated Godhead beyond."

spark of divinity in the soul......sounds like gnosticism

all roads lead to Rome, symbolizes the place we need to get to...where atman and brahman meet....where the rose and fire are one.....

way of devotion....different ways/paths getting to the same place...

reality = battlefield of life

Dr. Sexson likes Tai ties and Taylor tailors because the action is the basic activity of textualization

The function of the poet, the literate person, the English Major is to record what is seen as the kind of music appropriate to vision... singing the songs of what happens

Kari's final paper topic - anxiety of influence, War and Peace, epiphanic experiences in literature, epiphanies about nature of history.

Act I Scene V of Hamlet
ghost informing Hamlet of his duty...'what have you been doing??'....'get on with it'

distracted from distraction by distraction

ln. 87 in Hamlet, page 32 in my edition: "The glowworm shows the matin to be near, And 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire. Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me."

last lines of Finnegans Wake "mememormee"

being remembered is how we can allow our bodies to die

alchemy: transmutation of base matter into purified being...

pg. 78 of Hamlet directly connects with Dry Salvages...should thinking about God at all times...move and measure like a dancer, remember constantly the divinity, time of death at every moment...

"need to have the brick fall on our head and have a good death"

rather than saying "Have a good day!" try "Have a good death!" see how that goes over....

Blog Homework, blog about other blogs, and about the last scene in Hamlet.