(cosmic uplink) empathy,agent of change.
Empathy, the agent of change - 09.April.08.Wed.Economic Times.
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Ka, Roberto Calasso's meditation on Rigvedic myths opens and ends with the flight of Garuda. The divine eagle, which later became a mount for the god Vishnu, was intrigued by the invocatory question posed in the 10th book: "Who (Ka) is the god to whom we should offer our sacrifice?" The search for the answers occupies the rest of the book. One branch of inquiry goes back to the father of creation, Prajapati, who predates even Brahma, the grandfatherly preceptor of the Hindu pantheon.
Like Proteus, the Greek god of ever-morphing shapes, Prajapati, too, is said to be "shapeless". But being the "only lonely" one can be scary. Not surprisingly, Prajapati "didn't even know whether he existed or not". This state of Prajapati's existential ambiguity vibes well with the spirit of the Rigvedic Nasadiya ('not there') Sukta, which grapples with enigmatic questions about who or what might have been present, if at all, before the birth of the universe.
Assuming it was Prajapati, how does one account for the rest of the bewildering biodiversity? The answer provided by Rigvedic seers reveals an intensely human bias: it is to relieve his crushing sense of loneliness that Prajapati divides himself. Prajapati's creations are thus sparked by the desire to gain self-consciousness.
This is also echoed in the popular traditions of India. The legendary singer of the Patiala gharana, Ustad Bade Gulam Ali, for example, had a musical explanation for cosmic loneliness. This he said was epitomised in the notes of the twilight raga Marwa. The enigmatic scale lacks the parental pancham and its ancestral shadja is more like an absent father, always on tour. So Marwa invariably creates a restless mood, the Khansaheb said, which was reflected in the deepening of twilight into night's mysteries. It is to relieve this poignant state that the God made Man, and gave him Marwa, the maestro famed for soulful thumris added, to remind us of our Maker.
A similar insight crops up in behavioural economics in a relativistic garb: "Most people don't know what they want unless they see it in context," says Dan Ariely in Predictably Irrational. "We don't even know what we want to do with our lives - until we find a relative or a friend who is doing just what we think we should be doing. Everything is relative." But one can change everything with empathy. For as the Sufis say, the human heart is capable of every form.
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Ka, Roberto Calasso's meditation on Rigvedic myths opens and ends with the flight of Garuda. The divine eagle, which later became a mount for the god Vishnu, was intrigued by the invocatory question posed in the 10th book: "Who (Ka) is the god to whom we should offer our sacrifice?" The search for the answers occupies the rest of the book. One branch of inquiry goes back to the father of creation, Prajapati, who predates even Brahma, the grandfatherly preceptor of the Hindu pantheon.
Like Proteus, the Greek god of ever-morphing shapes, Prajapati, too, is said to be "shapeless". But being the "only lonely" one can be scary. Not surprisingly, Prajapati "didn't even know whether he existed or not". This state of Prajapati's existential ambiguity vibes well with the spirit of the Rigvedic Nasadiya ('not there') Sukta, which grapples with enigmatic questions about who or what might have been present, if at all, before the birth of the universe.
Assuming it was Prajapati, how does one account for the rest of the bewildering biodiversity? The answer provided by Rigvedic seers reveals an intensely human bias: it is to relieve his crushing sense of loneliness that Prajapati divides himself. Prajapati's creations are thus sparked by the desire to gain self-consciousness.
This is also echoed in the popular traditions of India. The legendary singer of the Patiala gharana, Ustad Bade Gulam Ali, for example, had a musical explanation for cosmic loneliness. This he said was epitomised in the notes of the twilight raga Marwa. The enigmatic scale lacks the parental pancham and its ancestral shadja is more like an absent father, always on tour. So Marwa invariably creates a restless mood, the Khansaheb said, which was reflected in the deepening of twilight into night's mysteries. It is to relieve this poignant state that the God made Man, and gave him Marwa, the maestro famed for soulful thumris added, to remind us of our Maker.
A similar insight crops up in behavioural economics in a relativistic garb: "Most people don't know what they want unless they see it in context," says Dan Ariely in Predictably Irrational. "We don't even know what we want to do with our lives - until we find a relative or a friend who is doing just what we think we should be doing. Everything is relative." But one can change everything with empathy. For as the Sufis say, the human heart is capable of every form.
posted by Borrowed Wisdom at 12:47 AM
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