Godā Stuti, 20

dhanye samasta-jagatāṃ pitur uttamāṅge
tvan-mauḷi-mālya-bhara-saṃbharaṇena bhūyaḥ |
indīvara-srajam ivādadhati tvadīyāny
ākekarāṇi bahumāna-vilokitāni || 20 ||

Godā Stuti, 19

tuṅgair akṛtrima-giraḥ svayam uttamāṅgaiḥ
yaṃ sarva-gandha iti sādaram udvahanti |
āmodam anyam adhigacchati mālikābhiḥ
so ’pi tvadīya-kuṭilāḷaka-vāsitābhiḥ || 19 ||

Godā Stuti, 18

cūḍā-padena parigṛhya tavottarīyaṃ
mālām api tvad-aḷakair adhivāsya-dattām |
prāyeṇa raṅga-patir eṣa bibharti Gode
saubhāgya-saṃpad-abhiṣeka-mahādhikāram || 18 ||

Godā Stuti, 17

viśvāyamāna-rajasā kamalena nābhau
vakṣaḥ-sthale ca kamalā-stana-candanena |
āmodito ’pi nigamair vibhur aṅghri-yugme
dhatte natena śirasā tava mauḷi-mālām || 17 ||

The Ashes

I'm quite surprised by how long it has been since I've posted on cricket, but this incident is definitely worth noting: England have finally beaten Australia in Australia, retaining the Ashes. With this, Ricky Ponting has become the first Australian captain to lose three Ashes series (2005 and 2009 in England, and now 2010 in Australia) in the last fifty years, at least.

<CORRECTION>
I realize I miscalculated. England are up 2-1 in the series, which means there is no way they can lose the series. Thus, they are definitely going to retain the Ashes (since they won the last round). However, Australia could still win the final Test and draw the series 2-2. While they won't regain the Ashes, they will at least have the pleasure of denying England an outright series win in Australia. Similarly England will want to win (or at least draw) the fifth Test, in order to pull off a series win in Australia and to actively win the Ashes.

Given that rain is predicted in Sydney on all five days of the fifth Test, Australia are going to have to make a real effort to win this Test. 
</CORRECTION>

Godā Stuti, 16

tvan-mauḷi-dāmani vibhoḥ śirasā gṛhīte
sva-cchanda-kalpita-sapīti-rasa-pramodāḥ |
mañju-svanā madhu-liho vidadhuḥ svayaṃ te
svāyaṃvaraṃ kam api maṅgaḷa-tūrya-ghoṣam || 16 ||

Godā Stuti, 15

āmodavaty api sadā hṛdayaṃ-gamā ’pi
rāgānvitā ’pi laḷitā ’pi guṇottarā ’pi |
mauḷi-srajā tava Mukunda-kirīṭa-bhājā
Gode bhavaty adharitā khalu vaijayantī || 15 ||

Godā Stuti, 14

tvad-bhukta-mālya-surabhīkṛta-cāru-mauḷeḥ
hitvā bhujāntara-gatām api vaijayantīm |
patyus taveśvari mithaḥ pratighāta-lolāḥ
barhātapatra-rucim āracayanti bhṛṅgāḥ || 14 ||

Godā Stuti, 13

nāge śayaḥ sutanu pakṣirathaḥ kathaṃ te
jātaḥ svayaṃvara-patiḥ puruṣaḥ purāṇaḥ |
evaṃ vidhāḥ samucitaṃ praṇayaṃ bhavatyāḥ
saṃdarśayanti parihāsa-giraḥ sakhīnām || 13 ||

On freedom, choice(s), and democracy

Snowed in, I spent all of today reading a very interesting book by Prof. Loren J. Samons II of Boston University, with a very provocative thesis. The book's not-so-subtle title, What's Wrong with Democracy? From Athenian Practice to American Worship, belies its careful argument. Although the bulk of the book involves a close study of historical sources in order to examine the actual practices of the government of the Athenian polis, the author's overarching motivation is not the reassessment of contemporary perceptions of a long-extinct society merely for the sake of historical understanding. His point, rather, is to 

"present and foster criticism of modern democracy … [that is] aimed at the philosophical foundations of democracy, the popular conception of democracy, the practice of representative government through democratic elections, and the social and intellectual environment generated by democratic thought and practice in contemporary America" (p. 1). 

I hesitate to offer a summary of the book for fear of oversimplifying its complex, historically sensitive argument. Very crudely put, Prof. Samons: 

Godā Stuti, 12

prāyeṇa Devi bhavatī-vyapadeśa-yogāt
godāvarī jagad idaṃ payasā punīte |
yasyāṃ sametya samayeṣu ciraṃ nivāsāt
bhāgīrathī-prabhṛtayo ’pi bhavanti puṇyāḥ || 12 ||

British architecture, urban planning, and decay

This is a powerful, hard-hitting essay by Theodore Dalrymple at the City Journal, describing the post-WWII destruction of Britain's stunning architectural heritage by urban planners who were high on Modernism and Brutalism and a whole lot of other "isms"s that promised utopias and kinda sorta underdelivered. Dalrymple uses his pen like a fine sword to slice and dice and skewer the grand plans of the postbellum planners. Worth reading in its entirety, but here are some quotable quotes.

On the energy with which post-war planners approached the reorganization of British cities:

"The Luftwaffe had been bungling amateurs, it turned out, compared with the town and city fathers of Britain. The Germans managed to destroy a few cities—though none utterly beyond repair, if a will to repair had existed—but the local authorities ruined practically everything, with a thoroughness that would have been admirable in a good cause."

On the typical attitudes of the planners towards the people, and on their opinion of themselves (this point is repeatedly made in James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State):

"Intellectuals viewed British towns and cities as the antithesis of planning: like Topsy, they just growed. It didn’t occur to the intellectuals that these were places where successive generations, over many centuries, had produced an urban environment that had charm and was intensely social and livable, largely because those who built it had to live in what they built … [A]s rational men, the planners knew what people needed: roads and parking lots, so that they might conveniently get to and make use of their shopping and cultural centers."

A hilarious description of one such "successful" modernization project, the replacement of the library of Birmingham with a modern design:

"[T]he magnificent Victorian library of 1866 [was] pulled down in 1974 and replaced with an inverted concrete ziggurat of such ugliness and (now) dilapidation that it defies description, at least by me. Its environs serve now as a giant pissoir and, at night, as a safe haven for drunks and rapists; and thus the Albert Speers of Britain have converted the Victorian dream of municipal munificence into the nightmare of administered anomie."

Writing about the most recent architectural phase in Britain, Dalrymple notes first that people throughout the country have woken up to the necessity of protecting their architectural heritage, and that the new generation of architects is less drunk on the intoxicating wines of "ism"s, but then goes on to note:

"With few exceptions, no contemporary British architect believes that he builds sub specie aeternitatis; on the contrary, he expects what he constructs to be pulled down soon and replaced. That a building should be sound enough to last perhaps 30 years is the city council’s main demand, which is conducive neither to solidity nor to fine workmanship."

A remarkable essay, and worth reading in full, and absorbing.

The beautiful innocence of childhood

A beautiful, evocative message about the necessity, and the redemptive power, of hope, from over a hundred years ago. It is the response of the editor (presumably) of the New York Sun to an eight-year old girl who wants to know if Santa Claus really exists. 

Godā Stuti, 11

dig dakṣiṇā ’pi pari paktrima-puṇya-labhyāt
sarvottarā bhavati Devi tavāvatārāt |
yatraiva raṅga-patinā bahumāna-pūrvaṃ
nidrāḷunā ’pi niyataṃ nihitāḥ kaṭākṣāḥ || 11 ||

Godā Stuti, 10

tātas tu te madhu-bhidaḥ stuti-leśa-vaśyāt
karṇāmṛtaiḥ stuti-śatair anavāpta-pūrvam |
tvan-mauḷi-gandha-subhagām upahṛtya mālāṃ
lebhe mahattara-padānuguṇaṃ prasādam || 10 ||

Godā Stuti, 9

mātaḥ samutthitavatīm adhi Viṣṇucittaṃ
viśvopajīvyam amṛtaṃ vacasā duhānām |
tāpa-cchidaṃ hima-rucer iva mūrtim anyāṃ
santaḥ payodhi-duhituḥ sahajāṃ vidus tvām || 9 ||

Godā Stuti, 8

bhoktuṃ tava priyatamaṃ bhavatīva Gode
bhaktiṃ nijāṃ praṇaya-bhāvanayā gṛṇantaḥ |
uccāvacair viraha-saṅgamajair udantaiḥ
śṛṅgārayanti hṛdayaṃ guravas tvadīyāḥ || 8 ||

Godā Stuti, 7

valmīkataḥ śravaṇato vasudhātmanas te
jāto babhūva sa muniḥ kavi-sārvabhaumaḥ |
Gode kim adbhutam idaṃ yad amī svadante
vaktrāravinda-makaranda-nibhāḥ prabandhāḥ || 7 ||

More on truth and fiction and myth

This post, by a rabbi on Christmas, speaks to a question that I have often wondered about. I've chatted earlier about the differences among truth, fiction, and myth, and Rabbi Rami's response to both Christian literalists and to atheists / agnostics is worth pondering over:

“Myth” is not the same as “falsehood.” Myth is a narrative structure used to convey some of the deepest truths we humans can glean. Myths are not believed in but unpacked and lived.

This is especially important in our society today because we have forgotten the difference between myth and fiction, conflating both with the category of the unreal, which is then automatically compared unfavorably with the real, which is seen as truth and (implicitly) as accessible through only one method—whether scriptural literalism or scientism. And having (awesome!) TV shows called Mythbusters doesn't really help the reputation of myths either.

This was known to thinkers of the past, most notably Ibn ‘Arabī, who exalted the power of the human imagination as a way to access something of value about the real and the true. As Rabbi Rami beautifully puts it:

If we reclaimed the power of myth, and understood its role in our lives, we could reclaim the world’s religions as keepers of myth and train clergy to be guides to myth who can help us live out the mythic and imaginal dimensions of our lives through acts of compassion and contemplative spiritual practice.

The rational without the imaginative is robotic; the imaginative without the rational is hallucinatory.


<UPDATE>
Sheldon Pollock has written a fascinating article on the Mīmāṃsaka and literary theorist Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka, whose Hṛdayadarpaṇa ("Mirror of the Heart") was a response to, and a critique of, Ānandavardhana's game-changing Sahṛdayāloka. Sadly Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka's work is no longer extant, but elements of his ideas have survived and Pollock masterfully reconstructs his ideas from these stray references. He notes that 

"Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka did not just borrow a term here or there from Mīmāṃsā, however, as scholars like Ānandavardhana did; he borrowed, and in doing so rethought, an entire conceptual scheme." (p. 144)

But what relevance does this have to truth and fiction and myth? The school of Mīmāṃsā, of which Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka was an acknowledged master, is best known for its resolute defence of Vedic orthodoxy against all other intellectual players in classical India, most importantly the Buddhists, but also the Hindu Naiyāyika natural theologians and the Vaiyākaraṇa grammarians. Pollock points out that "Mīmāṃsā's views on the nature of discourse were the most sophisticated of any in the premodern world; only recently have Western scholars begun to make real sense of its complexity, and many aspects await serious clarification" (p. 149). Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka applied and adapted this complex theory of discourse to the world of literature, and in doing so drew important distinctions among different domains of language.

Pollock summarizes:

As Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka was at pains to make clear, the output of literary discourse is thus as different from other discursive genres as its input: just as literature's dual treatment of wording and meaning differs from that of both scripture and itihāsa [history] (where wording has primacy in the one case, and meaning in the other), so does literature differ in it [sic] effects: whereas scripture leads to moral action and history to knowledge, literature leads to pleasure." (p. 161)

Elsewhere Pollock presents a very interesting analogy offered, apparently for the first time, by Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka:

"[W]orldly knowledge is in the province of historical discourse, which can thus be likened to a friend who advises; moral precepts in the province of scripture, which can thus be likened to a master who commands; and literature in the province of rasa, which can thus be likened to a beloved who seduces." (p. 152)

References

Pollock, Sheldon. "What was Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka Saying? The Hermeneutical Transformation of Indian Aesthetics." In Sheldon Pollock, ed. Epic and Argument in Sanskrit Literary History: Essays in Honor of Robert P. Goldman. Delhi: Manohar, 2010, pp. 143-184. Available for download here.

</UPDATE>

Godā Stuti, 6

śoṇā ’dhare ’pi kucayor api tuṅgabhadrā
vācāṃ pravāha-nivahe ’pi sarasvatī tvam |
aprākṛtair api rasair virajā svabhāvāt
Godā ’pi Devi kamitur nanu narmadā ’si || 6 ||

Godā Stuti, 5

asmādṛśām apakṛtau cira-dīkṣitānāṃ
ahnāya Devi dayate yad asau Mukundaḥ |
tan niścitaṃ niyamitas tava mauḷi-dāmnā
tantrī-nināda-madhuraiś ca girāṃ nigumbhaiḥ || 5 ||

Godā Stuti, 4

kṛṣṇānvayena dadhatīṃ yamunānubhāvaṃ
tīrthair yathāvad avagāhya sarasvatīṃ te |
Gode vikasvara-dhiyāṃ bhavatī-kaṭākṣāt
vācaḥ sphuranti makaranda-mucaḥ kavīnām || 4 ||

More stunning nature

I cannot communicate the experience of seeing the entire sky over Lake Þingvallavatn light up over and over again as wave upon wave of green and orange light washed over it, illuminating not just sky but also lake and shoreline. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the actual experience is worth many thousands of pictures (or videos)!

Aurora Borealis timelapse HD - Tromsø 2010 from Tor Even Mathisen on Vimeo.

This beautiful time-lapse sequence depicts the aurora borealis over the Norwegian city of Tromsø. Not quite the same as being there, but it will have to do!

Stunning nature

Phytoplankton bloom off the Chatham Islands, to the east of New Zealand. 

Image taken from NASA's Earth Observatory page.

And here is a much larger version of the same image, with far greater detail. Truly gorgeous, a glimpse into the wondrous forces that govern our world—atmospheric, oceanic, geological, and biological.

Godā Stuti, 3

tvat-preyasaḥ śravaṇayor amṛtāyamānāṃ
tulyāṃ tvadīya-maṇi-nūpura-śiñjitānām |
Gode tvam eva janani tvad-abhiṣṭavārhāṃ
vācaṃ prasanna-madhurāṃ mama saṃvidhehi || 3 ||

Godā Stuti, 2

vaideśikaḥ śruti-girām api bhūyasīnāṃ
varṇeṣu māti mahimā na hi mādṛśāṃ te |
itthaṃ vidantam api māṃ sahasaiva Gode
mauna-druho mukharayanti guṇās tvadīyāḥ || 2 ||

Godā Stuti, 1

||    atha Śrī-Godā-stutiḥ    ||

śrī-viṣṇucitta-kula-nandana-kalpa-vallīṃ

śrī-raṅga-rāja-hari-candana-yoga-dṛśyāṃ |

sākṣāt kṣamāṃ karuṇayā kamalām ivānyāṃ

Godām ananya-śaraṇaḥ śaraṇaṃ prapadye || 1 ||

Godā Stuti

śrīmān Veṅkaṭanāthāryaḥ kavi-tārkika-kesarī |
vedāntācārya-varyo me sannidhattāṃ sadā hṛdi ||

The noble Veṅkaṭanātha,
endowed with śrī,
(saffron-maned) lion among poets and philosophers,
supreme teacher of the Vedānta
—may he be established forever in my heart!

The noble Veṅkaṭanātha, often referred to within Śrīvaiṣṇava circles with the greatest of reverence as Śrī Vedānta Deśika, the Teacher of the Vedānta or, more grandly and formally (as my grandfathers always referred to him), as Swāmī Śrīman Nigamānta Mahādeśika, was easily one of the most brilliant individuals to have ever lived. He set his formidable intellectual powers to work in service of the Śrīvaiṣṇava community, establishing a philosophical, theological, and poetic edifice upon the foundations that had been laid by other intellectual giants before him (such as Śrī Rāmānujācārya, who is perhaps the best-known of the early thinkers, at least outside the community). What has fascinated so many people, both within and without the Śrīvaiṣṇava community, is the depth and breadth of Śrī Vedānta Deśika's work; as Steven P. Hopkins puts it,

"Along with working in three major languages of his southern tradition—Sanskrit, Tamil, and Māhārāṣṭrī Prākrit—Veṅkaṭeśa was a master of many genres of philosophical prose and poetry. He wrote long ornate religious poems (kāvyas) in Sanskrit; a Sanskrit allegorical drama (nāṭaka); long religious lyric hyms (stotras and prabandhams) in Sanskrit, Māhārāṣṭrī Prākrit, and in Tamil; as well as commentaries and original works of philosophy, theology, and logic in Sanskrit and in a hybrid combination of the Sanskrit and Tamil languages called maṇipravāḷa ('jewels and coral')." (p. 11, An Ornament for Jewels: Love Poems for the Lord of Gods by Vedāntadeśika)

Work is now being done in the Western academy on Śrī Vedānta Deśika not just as poet or philosopher alone, but as someone who combines the two, who uses the creative tension between these two poles of human intellectual capacity to explore more fully the limits of human thought and to convey in language some truths about the universe, God, and man. This combination of poetry and philosophy is particularly interesting in Śrī Vedānta Deśika's stotras, which are devotional poems of short-to-medium length (anywhere from four to a hundred verses) addressed to different manifestations of the Śrīvaiṣṇava conception of the Divine.

In this month of Margazhi (mārkali), when it is customary throughout the Tamil lands to sing, recite, and listen to the Tiruppāvai hymns of the saint-goddess Āṇṭāḷ, I hope to translate the Godā-stuti of Śrī Vedānta Deśika, twenty nine verses in Vasantatilakā and Mālinī meters that are addressed to Āṇṭāḷ (whose name was Godā in Sanskrit, written as Kōtai in Tamil). I will be using the beautiful LaTeX version prepared by Sunder Kidambi, generously made available at this site. This will be my first attempt at translating a short-ish devotional poem, and I hope to constantly update and refine my translations over the course of the month. I beg you to indulge me, to forgive me for my mistakes and to not take offense at my missteps, and to correct me so that I may produce the best work I can.

<UPDATE>
I found this link at the old Bhakti-list archives to a person's account of Sri Velukkudi Krishnan's exposition of the Godā-stuti and of its connections to the Tiruppāvai (and to other texts held sacred by the Śrīvaiṣṇavas).
Thanks to more Googling I found this complete, excellent translation of the Godā-stuti online. I will avoid referring to it as far as I can so that I can claim some level of originality, but it certainly seems like a very useful resource to draw upon when stuck.
</UPDATE>

True wisdom

This pearl, from pg. 2 of Raymond Smullyan's The Tao is Silent, is particularly relevant to me right now as I procrastinate, neither working (as I could be) nor sleeping (as I ought to be).

Had I been Laotse, I would have added the following maxim—which I think is the quintessence of Taoist philosophy:

The Sage falls asleep not 

because he ought to 

Nor even because he wants to

But because he is sleepy.

True words of wisdom indeed.

Vois Sur Ton Chemin (Look to Your Path)

I had promised myself not to blog until I got through all the work that eagerly and hungrily awaits to devour me, but this song was just so exquisitely beautiful that I had to drop everything else and post it here. It featured in the 2004 French movie Les Choristes, directed by Christophe Barratier, and was composed by Bruno Coulais.

C'est vraiment une chanson incroyablement belle, et le chanteur Jean-Baptiste Maunier a la voix d'un ange. Voilà!



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