The Whatchamacallit

My pot of Earl Grey is settled on my table, being warmed by a glowing tea-light; I'm seated comfortably here in my apartment study, listening to some Nocturnes from Chopin playing in the background and I'm now ready to tackle my blog article of the week.

As we all cruise towards year-end, there's a more relaxed feeling in the air. Everyone is clearing their annual leave and I'm also doing the same, at most 2 days at time for I dislike long breaks from work. I like my current rhythm of work and play, juxtaposing 'dull' IT work with my other pursuits--art, literature, philosophy, spirituality, music and science.

Weekends are reserved for reading, writing and appreciating the finer things in life. When I look at my collection of books, it feels like I've already gathered enough provisions to last me through all the remaining winters of my life.  

And because I have so many areas of interests, knowing that time is finite, I try to stack my activities so that I can kill two, even three birds with one stone. To pursue my interest in writing and to indulge in my fountain pen hobby, I journal daily using one, while listening to some good music on Spotify. I focus on the works of a single composer every week. This week I'm getting acquainted with the piano music of Scriabin and I'm loving it so much.

Of course, listening to audiobooks is another good way of 'reading' while doing something else that does not require any mental effort. I do this every weekend on my walk and jog at the park. I've been working through a book by Douglas Murray over the past couple of weeks. While driving here just now, I was listening to lectures on the History of the Catholic Church from the Great Courses series. 

Even though most of my favourite activities are solitary, I also enjoy socialising with my friends. I try to catch up with them whenever I can. Which reminds me that I have a dinner with some of my university mates this Sunday and look forward very much to it.  

People are interesting because you can learn so much from someone's experience.  It is a good source of knowledge. Each one of us is a unique experiment. We find ourselves born with specific 'boundary conditions'. And that defines and limits the possible solutions to the equation of life.

The sky is getting darker and I'm certain that the heavens will be emptying out its contents soon with lightning and thunder as it does almost every other day this time of the year. It's actually my favourite time of the year--good for reflecting on the year that's ending and to plan for the coming one. The piston of time drives us forward relentlessly and we just have to ride along its forward momentum, putting its power to good use.

It doesn't look like I will dive into any deep topic today and I'm just happy to ramble on about anything that comes to my mind, and marvel at the miracle of writing itself.  I can see the vertical streaks of rain outside my window as I type this, enveloping me within a curtain of solitary comfort. Nature goes about its job, fulfilling the karmic life of water as it reincarnates as raindrops onto earth, to restart its long journey back to the heavens.

I'm no different from these water droplets, surging up the roots of trees and leaping off leaves, lifted up by the sun into the clouds. I'm reminded again by those magnificent lines from Dylan Thomas which had enthralled me in my youth: 

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees

Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever

When we see ourselves as part of nature, there's a certain transcendence that gives meaning to our existence, whatever meaning is. We partake in this cosmic dance that at once makes us both creator and creation, played against a larger canvas where the whole can only be comprehended by dissolving into its parts.

Philosophers over the ages have tried to articulate this mystery of existence and even the most inspired ones can only hint at. And as I write these sentences, I'm simply doing what I'm supposed to do, as dictated by the greater impulse of nature. 

And if you do chance upon these lines, maybe we could all marvel together at the beauty of it all. You and I connect now, and in that moment of contact, we catch a glimpse of the Infinite, the One, the Cosmic Mind, Brahman, Atman, Ishvara, God or Whatchamacallit. It doesn't matter.

The Garden Path of Language

Time to write! I've been late in posting my blog article this week because I had a social function yesterday--Saturday, my usual day for blogging. I came back rather late and was too tired to write. But it was great to be able to catch up with some old friends again. We are all trying to find meaning in our lives in some way and each chooses a path based on circumstance and fate.

Why are some of us Christians and others Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists or Muslims? Is one religion superior to another? In my case, I love all of the above and I try to be a student of them all. I've made my music-religion analogy many times in previous articles before. I appreciate many types of music and listening to many enriches my life considerably. But I will call out someone who thinks only his or her music is the only true one.

Why some of us prefer a particular music to another is akin to why we choose one religion over another. If you are Chinese and grew up in an environment where you're exposed to more Chinese music, that will inevitably influence your choice of music. Similarly with religion. 

And then each one of us has our own individual tastes. Religious text is like poetry. We respond to language differently, depending on our personality. Some prefers the language of love, others the dry but more precise language of logic. Which is why the Bhagavad Gita outlines the many paths towards enlightenment: karma yoga (action), bhakti yoga (devotion), jnana yoga (intellectual) and the raja yoga (spiritual) paths. 

I love all of them. But I also understand the pitfalls of each, if one were to think that any one of them is the only exclusive path. Often any religion is a mixture of all four. You would have a system of ethics that give you guidance over day to day action or conduct; some prayer and rituals which help to cultivate a devotional heart, some doctrinal philosophy to satisfy your intellectual doubts and curiosity and some mystical or contemplative practices such as meditation or silent retreats to awaken the divine spirit within.

To pursue any religious path, one must also understand the limitations of language. Again my music analogy comes in handy: the beauty of music is directly experienced. Any attempts to 'explain' why a particular piece of music is beautiful ultimately falls short. Religious texts seek to inspire rather than inform. All words are pointers to the truth. Not understanding this fact, leads to fanaticism.

"The Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao". The first line of Lao Tze's Tao Te Ching basically lays done this basic truth about the limitation of language in expressing ultimate reality. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God". The first verse of the Gospel of John also alludes to this. "Word" here is translated from the Greek "logos", which also means "reason". The moment any ultimate truth is articulated in language, it is already a model, an imprecise pointer, a map and not the actual terrain itself. 

Emptiness is form, form is emptiness as the Mahayana Buddhists would tell you. Is the concept of emptiness a form of nihilism? No. It may appear so because, again we have to express things in language and language is also a kind of form that attempts to represent a truth. Which is why Buddhist philosophers like Nagarjuna uses the language of negation to express what's actually there.

In Nagarjuna's Madyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy, the tetralemma involved in every proposition is denied. Let's say someone asserts that 1. there is a self.  The answer is no. If so, then can one conclude with lemma 2: There is no self? The answer is also no! Then, what about 3:  there is both self and no self. No again!  And finally, in exasperation, we say: there is neither self nor no self. Nagarjuna says no, that is also not true!. What's left of all these negations is the best approximation of the truth, which is the essence of Nagarjuna's Middle-Way. 

Zen masters also tries to dislodge their students from the grip of conceptual language thinking using koans. Truth can only be realised by transcending language. At the meantime, we will still talk, write and reason as much as we can, so that we get a glimpse of the Truth. But don't get too hung up on them.  The large language models, LLMs, derived their intelligence from language itself. We know how that sometimes lead to hallucinations. But even hallucinations can be useful pointers to the truth as they reveal the nature of the model itself.

The world we experience is maya or virtual. But it is also our instrument for inferring the truth. Our sciences, built using the precise language of mathematics have been able to penetrate the secrets of nature beyond our wildest dreams, and continue to do so. The scientists know the limitation of their mathematical models and are constantly on a lookout of better ones.

Beautiful though the existing paths are, we must not be seduced by them. If we are not vigilante, language, concepts and religious doctrines could lead us down that garden path.