Time

I want to elaborate a bit on what I said about Indian time yesterday. Ironically, I feel like Western intellectual and cultural history works in more of a cyclical way than the Indian; in the West, we are constantly having revolutions and reactions. Each generation defines itself in opposition to the last one. Dissent comes in waves and break in revolutions. Institutions tend to be conservative, and then are destroyed or altered by liberal movements which seek to break down something about that revolution., In indian intellectual history, I feel that both sides of the coin are usually represented in the same general epoch, and both the conservative and reactionary viewpoints can be seen within the very institution itself. I'll give examples from the chunk of India I know best: ancient hindu mythology and scripture. In the Gita, Krishna explicitly says that Caste is part of the natural rythem of life, and that out of His body came four Castes. However, in the Srimad Bagavata, Narada says that Caste is just a part of our material existance, that it is like our bodies, and thus the enlightened man seeks to transcend caste values. Actually, that is sort of a secondary example; this pattern of dogma and rebellion within the instituion itself can best be seen in the figure of Siva, who is one of the three most important Hindu gods and is revered by all Hindus. You see him worshipped much more than you see the other two; I don't think I've ever really seen Brahma worshipped. Siva is the rebel. He blatantly defies the idea of ritual purity that lies at the base of the caste system. He covers himself with ashes of dead bodies, has dreadlocks and takes a lot of mind altering drugs. All of that is in the scripture (he is allowed to take mind altering drugs because he has injested and digested Divine Poison. So don't do it at home, kids). The holy men of India, the Saddhus, look like the rasta or the hippy of the west, because they follow Shiva's path of shedding material purity in favor of inner purity. They all have dreadlocks and huge beards and cover themselves in ash. they beg for their food, they sleep on the ground, and before they eat, they have to dunk their food seven times in the Ganga. One of the most famous moments in the mythology of Shiv is when he rode an ass through the streets. Donkeys are the most low class animal, and are usually used only by Dalits, or untouchables. Yet Shiv is worshipped by all upstanding hindus, because they recognize that rules exist to be defied, and a thing does not exist without it's opposite. That's not right at all; they recognize that both the thing itself and it's negative are part of the same cohesive whole, and that neither of them truly exist, they are just part of the Lord's illusion. I think that this is why hindu theology and mythology has proved so timeless; it is flexable and allows expression of dualities and exceptions, and does not really depend on materialistic moral imperatives like western religions do.