Showing posts with label Upanishads. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Upanishads. Show all posts

Sep 22, 2015

The archetypes of wholeness and “energy loss”

In the previous article dedicated to psychosomatics in Yoga Sutras I draw reader’s attention to the association between the state of “chitta-vikshepa – the scattering of chitta – and somatic responses that has been foregrounded by Patanjali. Let me remind that the word “vikshepa” in the framework of 

“Chitta-vikshepa” term is derived from the verbal root kṣip (क्षिप्) — to throw, with help of the prefix vi- (वि), that corresponds to the Russian “vy-“ and ‘ras-“ [or English “dis-“ as well as the particles“away”, “off”, “out” – transl. note]. Of the other hand I shall refer the reader to the opening articles of this blog where we were discussing in details the category of “chitta” having defined it as “substantiated self-sentiment of one’s mind” and were talking about impropriety of simplified definitions of chitta like “mental processes”, “mind/ consciousness” etc.

Apr 8, 2014

The Lessons of Mahabharata and “Traditional” Values

Have you ever paid attention to the fact that allgrand classic epics are utterly tragic and their endingsare worlds away from those happy-ends of Hollywoodthat we are used to? So that even if the principal (allegedly positive) characters attain their goals they experience heavy disappointment all the same.Gilgamesh loses the magical herb of immortality andaccepts his destiny of a mortal man; Rama is not ableto enjoy the company of his wife whose bringing backcost him significant efforts, and so he suffers from loneliness; the Pandavas, the principle characters of Mahabharata, having survived the tragic death of almost all of their relatives and fellows-in-arms during the war that they had launched are ill-fated in their attempts to ascend to heaven alive and end up finding themselves in the realms of the hell (having in factcommitted a ritual suicide).