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Easy PDF Copyright © 1998,2004 Visage Software This document was created with FREE version of Easy PDF.Please visit http://www.visagesoft.com for more details [Compiled as a token of gratitude to Ken Knight] Message 23043 of 23496 | Previous | Next [ Up Thread ] Message Index Msg # From: ken knight <[email protected]> Date: Sat May 29, 2004 5:03 am Subject: June topic Namaste All, The intention is to provide a body of material that will be of value to all, whether the subject is new to you or you have had the benefit of many years of study and practice. It is hoped that all members will contribute. Questions are of great importance, they give those with much greater understanding than myself the opportunity to help push the study along the main road and the byways that will appear; one road appearing as many, as it were.. I have divided the topic into two sections. The first will focus on the context and understanding of the Vedas, the second will concentrate upon the use of mAyA in the actual texts of the Vedas. Inevitably, the first section had me writing too much but I have left plenty of 'gaps' for others to contribute. The second section will be much more text based and will depend upon your insights. I foresee the situation arising when the two sections could overlap although I intend beginning the second, and more important section, after about ten days. Postings for the first section will come under the following headings, and, I would suggest, be posted every couple of days as they are meant to build up a background of information. Any points arising from a posting can continue to be developed as the others are also presented : 1) Intro:..personal as well as to the topic 2) The Vedas: Infinity and authority 3) Understanding the hymns 4) Context of the poets: the power and the glory 5) 'That one and the many' 6) Yaska, Vedangas and understanding the hymns 7) Explanation through division 8) Some key words 9) Book and Web-site list ( this is ongoing and will have grown by the end as I hope you will all contribute titles and websites. ) At the moment I have written the first two postings of the second section. As I do not want to overload your Easy PDF Copyright © 1998,2004 Visage Software This document was created with FREE version of Easy PDF.Please visit http://www.visagesoft.com for more details mail boxes with lengthy hymns that you can easily download for yourselves, I will experiment a bit with the best way to study texts on-line. Finally, my junior school teachers used to hit me with a leather strap on a daily basis in order to slow me down and make me check my work. This was not a successful method of teaching as I still make many errors for which I apologise in advance. Thank you for your attention, Ken 'From this Supreme Self are all these, indeed, breathed forth.' ================================================================ Message 23101 of 23496 | Previous | Next [ Up Thread ] Message Index Msg # From: ken knight <[email protected]> Date: Tue Jun 1, 2004 6:15 pm Subject: June Topic: MAyA in the Vedas: Understanding the Hymns Namaste All, The following continues what I hope is a slow introduction for those with little previous reading of the Vedas as well as providing some challenge for the experts to take up. Understanding the Hymns: 'The Waters' Son hath risen, and clothed in lightning ascended up into the curled cloud's bosom; And bearing with them his supremest glory the Youthful ones, gold-coloured, move around him.' RV II.35.9 apaáM nápaad aá hy ásthaad upásthaM jihmaánaam uurdhvó vidyútaM vásaanaH | tásya jyéSTham mahimaánaM váhantiir híraNyavarNaaH pári yanti yahviíH || The language of the Rgveda is mantra. It reveals its truth in its own way rather than have our intellects scramble away at meaning and imagery. By all means though, let us proceed with such scrambling as it is a better use of the intellect than idly dreaming about some future personal fear or pleasure. The above stanza and hymn contains imagery of myths known to its original listeners while it also describes the processes of the appearance of the 'Many out of the One'. It is to do with The Word, vAk. It is to do with the appearance of inspiration or Easy PDF Copyright © 1998,2004 Visage Software This document was created with FREE version of Easy PDF.Please visit http://www.visagesoft.com for more details intuition of truth which transcends and dissolves the clouds of ignorance we have allowed to trap us in delusion. More of this hymn will be posted in the future. In order to help us to appreciate the contexts of the hymns we may take as a first step a consideration of what may be termed the 'inner and outer spaces'. The 'outer space' is that filled with the objects of name and form that can be empirically studied and the resultant knowledge shared and examined. The 'inner space', the world of insight, imagination and thought is less easily accessed because the individual intentions and cultural background colour the expression of any essential inspiration. It is this 'space' we need to access in our efforts to understand the hymns. We best serve the aim to hear the 'sound' of the Vedas by allowing unnecessary activity, the attachment to long-held concepts, to fall back into stillness. The RgVeda is the outpouring of religious experience, in and through that inner space and its parallel in the outer space; expressed through the imagery of its traditional knowledge held in the chanted mantras and enacted through ritual. This imagery, with its mythical tales as a background, is known to the speaker and audience of its time but inaccessible for most of us today. However, once an essential insight has been revealed the richness of the original imagery can be studied and experienced afresh so that its qualities can be valued in their own beauty, a few rays of which may enlighten our own understanding today. The search for the centre of that 'inner space' leads us to an enquiry into what we may term as the 'heart and mind' of the individual whether in the Vedic or our contemporary contexts. This search is clearly in the philosophical teaching sections of the Vedas, which are interspersed with the directions for ritual practices. At the centre of these teachings is a vision of the fluency of The Word emerging from the Sun. Frequently the imagery of waters and rivers is related to the source of speech in our 'centre of intuition': samyák sravanti saríto ná dhénaa antár hRdaá mánasaa puuyámaanaaH || 'Together flow the rivers (of speech), like rivulets, purified within by the heart/mind.'RV. IV.58.6 Easy PDF Copyright © 1998,2004 Visage Software This document was created with FREE version of Easy PDF.Please visit http://www.visagesoft.com for more details For both the first Rishis, the later poets and the exegetes of the Upanishads, there was a greater awareness, possibly shared by the non-literate peoples of our present times, of a flow and connection between our outer and inner worlds of experience than we have in our literate, more individualistically self-aware societies. This flow proceeds eternally in a greater, limitless ocean or space; a 'mysterious abyss' to use the Vedic image. 'Some floods unite themselves and others join them; the sounding rivers fill one common storehouse. On every side the bright Floods have encompassed the bright resplendent Offspring of the Waters.' RV II.35.3 Please use www.flaez.ch for the Sanskrit and Monier Williams dictionary to try to get a better translation of this verse suitable to your own understanding. In the non-dual philosophy of the Vedas, this flow is a continuum rather than an interaction between a particle and its enclosing energy or power. We may use as an illustration the classic image of the space within the pot. There appears to be a separation by the clay of the 'within' and 'outside' spaces but we know also that there is space within the molecular structure of the pot; the space is not contained. And so when we read the hymns we need to be aware of three 'spaces'; the inner, the outer and the all-pervading/embracing mysterious abyss in which all are interconnected or rather inter-fluent. Although we may name them as different spaces for the purposes of conversation, we acknowledge at the same time that such enumeration is relevant only in dualistic thought. We need to understand and apply this as we encounter the hymns and their imagery of the Sun, Dawn, Oceans and Cows etc. When the poet speaks of the Sun rising this is not a simple simile or metaphor but a unity of experience, of a sun rising in the outer space, of the inner sun rising in the intuitive heart/mind and the unveiling of that Sun that pervades and transcends all. It is through the very sound of the mantra that this continuum is realised. That is why we need to hear the mantras. I will return later to the understanding of three 'levels' when I introduce Yaska. 'From this Supreme Self are all these, indeed, breathed forth.' Message 23115 of 23496 | Previous | Next [ Up Thread ] Message Index Msg # Easy PDF Copyright © 1998,2004 Visage Software This document was created with FREE version of Easy PDF.Please visit http://www.visagesoft.com for more details From: "V.