upanishads plus kabbalah equals love
I love the Upanishads. They come from the Vedas, which are ancient scriptures, probably first written down around the time the books of the Old Testament were being written although according to Vedic mythology they were passed down as an oral tradition for thousands of years before they were ever written. They contain a beautiful and mystical cosmology on which Hinduism is based.
Of course, you can Google Upanishads for all the technical details. I love them because I love the creation myth they contain and, if I had to nail down something of my own belief system, it would be nailed in roughly the same pattern of the Upanishads. What moves me most is that this ancient cosmology is now backed up by things we understand about modern physics and what science tells us about the origin of the universe.
Basically, according the Upanishads, Brahman is all there ever was, is and all there will ever be. "He" split himself into spirit and matter by a long, reverberating sound, OM, which is the sacred sound of creation. (I'm using the masculine pronoun out of convention and convenience, forgive me.) Thus, everything that is exists came from Brahman, is made of Brahman and will return to Brahman. This gels with science which says the universe began as a singularity (a tiny, dense mass that contained all the matter and energy crammed into the smallest amount of space possible) and that, with a very big noise, aka: a bang (like, perhaps, a sacred sound of creation), this singularity exploded and birthed the universe. All the matter and energy was present in the singularity and now all that matter and energy (which can't be added to or subtracted from) is what fills the universe. Every part of everything is made from that matter and energy and is, in that sense, eternal.
That is, of course, just a thumbnail sketch of the info in the Upanishads and my own retelling of what science has to say about it all. I wanted to convey, however, how much all this moves me and how excited, therefore, I was when I started reading this book about Kabbalah last night and realized that it contains exactly the same language concerning the unity of all existence -- that all things emanate from that unity and that all things are therefore created from it and can never exist separate from it. The Upanishads calls the all-pervading force Brahman, science calls it something like matter and energy and the Kabbalah calls it something like g-d, but does it matter? It seems so clear that they're all talking about the same thing. The unmoved mover. The uncaused cause.
Why am I studying law when I should be studying divinity? I'll tell you something, now that you ask, completely off subject but what the heck. I'm interested in the Talmud and I realize, having done some reading yesterday, that a big portion of it has to do with a complicated legal code extrapolated from and rationally ordered by interpretations of the Torah. With my head full of esoteric mysticism, I don't usually have time for a "religion" that purports to worry about the nuts and bolts details of what god's will might be concerning the goring of a man by another man's ox -- but I realized something important yesterday about religion that I'd been missing for a lot of years. While I've been busy with my head literally in the stars trying to figure out the deepest secrets of life and the universe, some folks have been caring for the divinity (ie: the people) here on Earth by carefully reasoning out moral and legal codes to help order and structure lives and communities.
Ordered and structured lives and communities, especially those ordered by religion, have always felt awful and oppressive to me and believe me, I'm not interested in signing onto any kind of old-school community just yet. However, I suddenly have a new appreciation for the thoughtfulness and care that inspired learned people and scholars to study the Torah to extract solutions to day to day problems for regular people to apply. It's really very sweet, as far as I can tell, and I like thinking about it. For now I'm going to leave aside my natural revulsion at the parts that, for instance, call for the stoning to death of an adulterous woman. Some things, with time, evolve and I imagine Talmudic law might do the same. I will focus, instead, on the scholarship and the care that inspires it. Is there a word for that? I am imagining it as a kind of deeply committed, altruistic scholarship that doesn't study for the sake of knowledge, but studies for the sake of helping other people in some way. A scholarship inspired by love and community. That's the kind of scholarship I'm interested in pursuing.
Of course, you can Google Upanishads for all the technical details. I love them because I love the creation myth they contain and, if I had to nail down something of my own belief system, it would be nailed in roughly the same pattern of the Upanishads. What moves me most is that this ancient cosmology is now backed up by things we understand about modern physics and what science tells us about the origin of the universe.
Basically, according the Upanishads, Brahman is all there ever was, is and all there will ever be. "He" split himself into spirit and matter by a long, reverberating sound, OM, which is the sacred sound of creation. (I'm using the masculine pronoun out of convention and convenience, forgive me.) Thus, everything that is exists came from Brahman, is made of Brahman and will return to Brahman. This gels with science which says the universe began as a singularity (a tiny, dense mass that contained all the matter and energy crammed into the smallest amount of space possible) and that, with a very big noise, aka: a bang (like, perhaps, a sacred sound of creation), this singularity exploded and birthed the universe. All the matter and energy was present in the singularity and now all that matter and energy (which can't be added to or subtracted from) is what fills the universe. Every part of everything is made from that matter and energy and is, in that sense, eternal.
That is, of course, just a thumbnail sketch of the info in the Upanishads and my own retelling of what science has to say about it all. I wanted to convey, however, how much all this moves me and how excited, therefore, I was when I started reading this book about Kabbalah last night and realized that it contains exactly the same language concerning the unity of all existence -- that all things emanate from that unity and that all things are therefore created from it and can never exist separate from it. The Upanishads calls the all-pervading force Brahman, science calls it something like matter and energy and the Kabbalah calls it something like g-d, but does it matter? It seems so clear that they're all talking about the same thing. The unmoved mover. The uncaused cause.
Why am I studying law when I should be studying divinity? I'll tell you something, now that you ask, completely off subject but what the heck. I'm interested in the Talmud and I realize, having done some reading yesterday, that a big portion of it has to do with a complicated legal code extrapolated from and rationally ordered by interpretations of the Torah. With my head full of esoteric mysticism, I don't usually have time for a "religion" that purports to worry about the nuts and bolts details of what god's will might be concerning the goring of a man by another man's ox -- but I realized something important yesterday about religion that I'd been missing for a lot of years. While I've been busy with my head literally in the stars trying to figure out the deepest secrets of life and the universe, some folks have been caring for the divinity (ie: the people) here on Earth by carefully reasoning out moral and legal codes to help order and structure lives and communities.
Ordered and structured lives and communities, especially those ordered by religion, have always felt awful and oppressive to me and believe me, I'm not interested in signing onto any kind of old-school community just yet. However, I suddenly have a new appreciation for the thoughtfulness and care that inspired learned people and scholars to study the Torah to extract solutions to day to day problems for regular people to apply. It's really very sweet, as far as I can tell, and I like thinking about it. For now I'm going to leave aside my natural revulsion at the parts that, for instance, call for the stoning to death of an adulterous woman. Some things, with time, evolve and I imagine Talmudic law might do the same. I will focus, instead, on the scholarship and the care that inspires it. Is there a word for that? I am imagining it as a kind of deeply committed, altruistic scholarship that doesn't study for the sake of knowledge, but studies for the sake of helping other people in some way. A scholarship inspired by love and community. That's the kind of scholarship I'm interested in pursuing.
posted by reasonably prudent poet at 11:39 AM
8 Comments:
look out legal worlds here comes the lawyer of the universe
gorgeous to read your weavings and comings together, especially on the day that the Nobel prize for physics was awarded to two dreamers who found ways to track that big old bang happening
in taoism/chinese medicine creation goes like this:
first there was nothing
then there was something
qi
qi spun and formed into two
the yin and yang
and from that everything
how it's taken us 30,000+ years to come back to dreamtime creation myths is the great wonder of this existance, and the perfection of it too
as far as i am concerned of course!
OK, I looked - and you definitely qualify for the badge :-) The code to add to your site is available at the same link you left the comment at:
http://www.knowprose.com/node/10870
As far as the Upanishads - very interesting texts. The Hindu Trinity is derived from one and the same. :-)
What a lovely post! Isn't it amazing how people all over this stony planet are cottoning on to the deeper underlying truths?
It's almost as if this knowledge is our inheritance, our heritage, and all we have to do is ask the right questions...and put all the puzzle pieces together :)
lovely!
i love upanishad and kabbalah as well.
agree with what u say.
also i recommend Rumi to find something more about LOVE!
Hullo! Thanks for the visit to Cuckoo's Call, and I'm happy to discover your blog as well!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the significance (and deep compassion) of legalistic work.
Speaking personally, after having disdained rituals, I was fortunate to gain an awe-struck appreciation of rituals and their meticulous preservation, e.g. in south Indian temples. Even as millions of people mechanically practice rituals, they still continue to hold, for the discerning seeker, valuable meaning. In a poem of mine (on my poetry blog, "Inheritance"), I wrote about this: "Rituals - exemplars of absolution ...".
I still do not observe any rituals, and I still believe we need to create new rituals, embedding new meanings into activities, so as to invoke a sense of the sacred, and its fragility. But now I at least have an appreciation, for the awesome service to humanity implicit in this!
Best
rama
This was really beautiful. I found you via the link you left in my blog earlier this week, and I was really moved by this particular post. I really loved what you had to say about the coming together of law, and relationships, and divinity.
A lot of my work is in the area of right relationships and how relationships manifest--and create--God. And that these things, this tangible world and its care, is just as important as any mystical experience of God. The visceral is still holy.
Anyway, I look forward to reading more :)
Hmm I just recently looked inot the upanishads, guess Im gonna look at Kaballah as well...
Good Posting
This reminds me of a book called "Who's Afraid of Schrodinger's Cat?" that goes into how much of the new scientific thinking harkens back to ancient ideas that were rejected as we embraced the mechanistic view of the universe. It also brings to mind how much Western medicine is learning from/making use of practices it once condemned as barbaric and stupid such as traditional herbal medicines and leeches (now used to assist in the healing of reattached digits and limbs). It's too easy for us advanced types to look down our noses at the wisdom of the ancients or "primitives".
I like your idea of scolarship with love. Too many assign nefarious motives to those who made well-meaning mistakes in applying the lessons of faith. It's good to see someone acknowledge that many acted from a kind of love we can use more of these days.
Post a Comment
<< Home