The current issue in the village is street names. We never decided on any. There are house numbers, and that's all we need for most issues.

But sometimes there are companies that demand actual street names. Recently there was a supermarket chain suggested to make me a member of their loyalty club, but I couldn't sign up because their website demanded a street name, which it checked against a national database, so I couldn't make something up.

Then there are large foundations, such as those connected to the US Government, whose SAM.gov system depends upon NATO's N-CAGE for address verification. And N-CAGE too demands a street name for our association. Without a street name, no registration. I wonder how they deal with Japan, which doesn't use street names hardly at all, even in large cities like Tokyo?

Translator's preface to the Ashtavakra Gita (Bart Marshall)

In Vietnam when I was twenty-one a hand grenade or mortar round–the circumstances made it difficult to determine which–blew me into a clear and brilliant blackness. For the next thirty-seven years that glimpse of infinite emptiness, so intimate, so familiar, kept me looking almost obsessively in esoteric books and far corners for an explanation of myself. Then, “suddenly,” the veil, as they say, was lifted.

A few months after that occurrence, as my interest in reading began to slowly return, I found myself drawn mainly to the sayings and writings of old masters. What did Buddha have to say? What did Christ? Lao Tsu? Patanjali? I wanted to read them with new eyes.

Oddly, in those thirty-seven years of seeking, I had never read the Ashtavakra Gita, and indeed was barely aware of its existence. Then recently, as I sat at the bedside of a dying friend and teacher, another friend placed it in my hands. I opened it and was astonished. Here, in one concise volume, was all that needed to be said.

I learned yesterday of the death of Dorab Framji of Tiruvannamalai at the age of 92. A Parsi (Zoroastrian) from Bombay, he was one of the few living disciples of the advaitic sage Sri Ramana Maharshi (who left the world in 1950).

Dorab accompanied his father on visits to see Ramana as a child. He moved to Tiru permanently when he grew older. His home was five minutes walk from the ashram, just next to the Osbornes.

He had the reputation of being gruff and grumpy to strangers but was exceedingly kind to friends. I was privileged to stay with him for a month in 2019 and, in retrospect, am sorry that I did not take up the invitation to spend more time with him. (Maybe I should have stayed till he himself would throw me out, and not run off to visit Madurai and Kerala?)

His moving story is told in the ashram newsletter, Saranagathi.

"Better to die there": Palestinians mourn Ein Samiya Eviction

Palestinian toddler hit by Israeli army gunfire dies

A person who has to be laid up for several months due to a couple of unexpected spinal operations wrote that:

"I'm feeling ok now - a little mentally traumatised still from the urgency and unexpectedness of the surgery. The randomness of life really hit me."

I wrote back that I wasn't sure that "life is random" because I've been conditioned to think of it as prarabhda karma - which Jiddu Krishnamurti would have laughed at, because we create theories to explain away life's mysteries. I also wrote that I try to relate to the "random" things that happen to us as gifts from the universe, as a bhakti would do. Baruch ha shem be tov ve ba ra as they say in Judaism.

But then she asked me to explain all these words, so follows my explanation:

'Prarabhda karma' is one of three types of karma according to brahmanist texts: it's the kind that you have already been landed with, as against the karma you are now creating, or the karma that you have already perpetrated, but which has not yet resulted in anything. Actually, there's nothing mystical about the word karma itself - it simply means action - the Indo-European root is cognate with our word "create", but there's a whole philosophy built around it (in both Hinduism and Buddhism): the result of "bad" actions, good "actions", and doing action without seeking reward, etc. - the Bhagavad Gita, a poem of 700 verses, spends a lot of time on it.

'bhakti' means someone of a devotional bent, who might find himself in opposition to, say, a "raja yogi" or a dhyani. The analogy they usually give in India is that a bhakti is like a kitten, who his mother picks up by the scruff of his neck, and allows himself to be carried along, surrendering personal will to divine providence, whereas other kinds of yogis are more like the monkey baby, tenaciously clinging to their stated objective.

' blessed is God who brings goodness and ba ra' I suppose "praise G-d whether he brings us good things or bad things" is the spirit of it. Bhakta, or devotion, is pretty much the same in all religions, I think. In one of Paul Bowles books, set in Morocco, there's a scene where the narrator accidentally slams the taxi door on the hand of an elderly fellow passenger. Wordlessly, the old guy wraps his bloodied fingers in his shawl, mutters "alhamdulillah" (praise be to Allah!) and goes on his way.

I find I don't have a problem reconciling between the attitudes of these different religions, while not believing in a conceptualization of God as some of them do. "God" is just a shorthand term used for convenience; a personalisation similar to the way some people assign personal names to inanimate objects. If they find it helpful, let them do so. Just don't try to persuade me that divinity is the way that you imagine it, based on what has been drummed into you in churches and temples. Or that the god you yourself have set up on a pedestal needs to be pulled down, because either way, it is of no consequence to me. Agnosticism and atheism are nonsense terms and only imply that we haven't understood, while "belief" will always be extremely fragile.

On my phone, using Epicyon, I noticed that there are interesting differences between Firefox (and Mull) and Chrome, in the way they handle progressive web apps. The launcher I use does not directly support pwas. But I found that if I create a Chrome pwa in Samsung's default launcher, I can then go back and use it in my launcher. But the same is not true for Firefox pwas. They can be added to Samsung's home screen, but do not show up among the applications, as do Chrome pwas. I don't normally use Chrome and when it began to pester me about syncing between devices, I decided not to use it for Epicyon either. So, since I can't use Firefox web apps under my launcher, I simply open Epicyon from a Mull tab. I might eventually put Vivaldi back on my phone, so then I'll see what happens with the web apps that it creates, but for Epicyon I can manage like that. My launcher, by the way, is Baldphone - it's supposed to be a simple launcher for old people. Maybe I'm getting old, because although I've experimented with every launcher in F-Droid, I like it best.

Someone said the other day that it isn't entirely true to say that "the Fediverse is bigger than Mastodon" because, as it stands, Mastodon by itself has many more people on it than any of the other non-Mastodon instances. (And what happens if all of Tumblr joins the Fediverse?) Anyway, for now, the effect of Mastodon's "market dominance" is that all the other instances need to conform to Mastodon first, and then worry about being interoperable with each other only later. As a result, although almost everything I do in Epicyon and Hubzilla will work in Mastodon, and everything I receive from Mastodon is likely to come through fine, this is not true if I try to follow someone on Hubzilla from Epicyon, and, as I just discovered, posting an image in Hubzilla will come through blank to Akkoma (a Pleroma fork). Even with Mastodon, Epicyon and maybe Hubzilla have compatibility problems. From Epicyon, I discovered that I cannot respond to surveys, for example. Images can be given alt tags in Hubzilla (through a non-intuitive and undocumented syntax), but these do not seem to work in exactly the same way as in Mastodon. It's all a bit wild. So, for interoperability it's best to keep posts as simple as possible.

When political realities change for the worse, we tend to adapt to them by hardening our positions. When Russia invades Ukraine, this has an inhibiting factor on all discourse that tries to be even-handed. Suddenly we are all against Russia, siding with the warmongers of NATO. That's too bad, because the necessary nuances are lost - with the darkness of night comes our inabilities to perceive differences in colors.

It's the same now with what's happening in Israel/Palestine. Israel's new regime is so harsh, anti-Arab and Fascist, the world cannot do other than to side with Palestinians and to unite against Israel. This usually results in sending Israeli Jews into defensive mode. A people so traumatized by historical antisemitism have a strong defensive reflex. This too is dangerous.

But what can one do? What can one do when a conflict seems to require that we take sides? To sign up anyway but just not to be happy about it?

Lao Tsu has the following to say about war:

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 31

Good weapons are instruments of fear; all creatures hate them.
Therefore followers of the Tao never used them.
The wise man prefers the left.
The man of war prefers the right.

Weapons are instruments of fear; they are not a wise man's tools.
He uses them only when he has no choice.
Peace and quiet are dear to his heart.
And victory no cause for rejoicing.
If you rejoice in victory, then you delight in killing;
If you delight in killing, you cannot fulfill yourself.

On happy occasions precedence is given to the left,
On sad occasions to the right.
In the army the general stands on the left,
The commander-in-chief on the right.
This means that war is conducted like a funeral.
When many people are being killed,
They should be mourned in heartfelt sorrow.
That is why a victory must be observed like a funeral.

I'm told that there's a parallel Talmudic passage.

War and peace may be governed by firm principles, or be in the domain of realpolitik. But they are also matters of the heart. When it comes down to it, I am not going to listen to Lao Tsu, Marx, Jesus, my elders, the Prime Minister or the laws of the nation. I'm going to do what my heart tells me to do.

Palestine: Unite or die | Israel-Palestine conflict | Al Jazeera This article by an al-Jazeera senior journalist suggests that it's imperative for Palestinians to put aside their differences if they want to struggle against the new political realities in the region.

2022’s Best Investigative Stories in India - GIJN

There are amazing stories here.

" That is to say, if he has not… drunk the glass of love, and has not found annihilation in the ipseity of God, when he says "He", he will be speaking according to his own conjecture, imagination, understanding and relativity. He brings the Being of God into imagination, and gives it a form. Because he has not divested himself of being and reached Absoluteness. Consequently, he puts God under a condition, according to his conjecture and imagination and draws around him a limit; thereby he will have immanenced Him and invented Him. And thereby he has worshipped a creator which he himself has originated."

This is a perfectly vedantic commmentary, relating to the dangers of false understanding and imagination of the Absolute, and the need for complete self-annihilation (nirvana) before approaching or presuming to be absorbed in the divine essence.

Yesterday I watched the documentary, "The Pirate Bay - Away from Keyboard". The latter phrase is the way, according to Peter Sunde, of saying "in real life", because for those who spend their lives on the internet, the internet is real life. Well, of course it is. But is playing a game real life? Being immersed in a novel, or in TV, like the character in "Being There", or in a hallucinatory drugged state? Or in a psychosis?

It is, actually, just in the same way as what we call reality is engineered by our imagination. Reality is there, but it is warped into something different. For example, we could say that, from a position of higher understanding, the universe is all in sync; in harmony; in a state of cooperation. Whereas, in the consciousness of an ordinary, conditioned individual, there is instead, competition and rivalry. The big fish eat the little fish; entailing the necessity for constant defence against adversity. This is not just a matter of seeing the world a little differently. It is a fundamental difference; a night-and-day difference. So yes, by the measure of reality, it is likely that we are in a state of psychosis. And a person who sees the world according to a different paradigm from our mundane perception of it would be labeled psychotic. And who can say who is right? We only know that owing to the strict behavioural rules of society and of the human-created world, it is difficult for a person who perceives and understands in a completely different way to function.

In such a world, where one has little chance of ever seeing the real outside of our human-created mould, we might just as well live in a fantasy that is provided by television, by the internet, by the game-makers, or psycho-active drugs; so long as is does not interfere too much with our ability to function, for part of the day, in the "away from keyboard" world constructed by human society for the purpose of eking out a livelihood, consuming, procreating, etc.

There is, however, the unfortunate fact that our human activities are destroying the biosphere. Here again, we find that humans have found a way of incorporating concern for the biosphere into their carefully constructed world of illusion. They believe that if they live according to certain constraints, they will minimize the damage. Thus the founders of the Pirate Bay, despite their disregard for other human conventions, incorporated vegetarianism into their lifestyle. It is fairly easy to integrate "environmental awareness" and other values into our carefully constructed fantasy world.

Whatever the outcome of the environmental crisis we are facing, it is likely that the omnipotent and omniscient pan-consciousness behind the world of appearances has long ago taken human activity into account, and that all of our actions take place against the background of this consciousness.

The real question for us, for human beings, is whether we must reconcile ourselves to living always and forever in illusion, or whether we can follow Ibn Arabi in seeking a reality that is not conditioned by imagination?

The world, the universe, reality, can be said to exist both in diversity and in unity. In diversity it exists as a conglomeration of separate semi-autonomous parts. These semi-autonomous parts are governed by laws of self-preservation. But ultimately they depend upon and are absorbed back into the underlying unity from which they have arisen. The universe of things is intimately connected – no thing exists independently. It is joined not only by what we think of as physical “laws” that govern the way in which the parts interact with each other (gravity, magnetism, etc.) but also at a deeper level, in that all of these “things” are manifestations of the same underlying field of existence/consciousness. Each “thing” is not a partial but, in its essence, a full expression of the underlying field.

purnam adah, purnam idam purnat purnam udachyate; purnasya purnam adaya purnam eva vasisyate

That is full, this is full. From that fullness comes this fullness. Having removed fullness from fullness, verily fullness remains. (Brihadaranyaka Upanisad 5.1.1)

This underlying field is what gives rise to the universe of things in the first place; the universe depends upon it for its existence.

As members of this universe of parts we cannot directly comprehend the underlying unity while simultaneously seeing ourselves and the world as autonomous independent beings. We either see the forest or the trees. However, seeing the one without seeing the other makes our vision of the world incomplete and therefore mistaken, and this has consequences for the way that we relate to our fellow beings, for our behaviour in and towards the world.

Because we see the world as a subject – object reality, in which we, as subject, exist in a world of other beings or things, we are unable to see the unitary whole upon which the perceived world depends. However, not being able to see the unitary whole does not imply that this does not exist. It also does not mean that we are unable to sense its existence, based on all that we see. In the same way, astronomers can predict the existence of an unseen celestial body by measuring its effects upon other bodies that can be seen. Some scientists, based on their observations, have come to the conclusion that the universe is conscious, or constructed of consciousness. Ordinary perception of the world can lead to the understanding that it is controlled by laws that spring from an underlying unity. The more that we learn about nature and our biosphere, the more we understand that it expresses an inherent harmony and equilibrium. Without this, the world would not be able to exist or continue. The biosphere is threatened when these laws are not respected.

In an earlier age, it was more difficult to identify the cause of our misery as a consequence of wrong vision. It was less easy to grasp this rationally because the end result, which we can now see clearly, was not so obvious. Such a conclusion was however reached through the intuition of mystics and sages, through meditation and samadhi. Intuited understanding is difficult to conceptualize intellectually or express verbally and, when it is expressed, often leads to contradictory expressions in various theories and schools of thought. This has resulted in the various darshanas of Indian philosophy, various schools of Buddhism, and similarly contradictory expressions among Islamic, Christian and other mystics, etc. There is no consensus on whether reality consists solely of pure consciousness, the void, is in a relationship of subservience to divine will, etc. However, there is an underlying agreement that our everyday perception of the world is in error and that selfish, unprincipled, egoistic behaviour is destructive. There is further consensus that action should be non-selfish, as expressed in the injunction to “love thy neighbour/companion as our self”.

The mystic vision of sages and the founders of the our religions has been expressed variously through scriptures that carry the injunction towards virtuous and altruistic action. If our actions were truly based on these agreements, we would exist in a state of harmony between each other and our world. However, this is not the case.

The mystics who gave expression to these scriptures had an intuited, integral vision. An integral vision, i.e, one that is not simply rational or intellectual, transforms one’s world in such a way as to produce a harmony at all levels of one’s being. It governs our behaviour and informs one’s actions in a way that a merely rational or intellectual understanding fails to do. There is no question of being at odds with one’s vision because any will to act in a way that contradicts it disappears.

When we comprehend a thing rationally or intellectually, or try to obey religious injunctions out of belief, we introduce the possibility of inner conflict. Our conscience may tell us one thing, but our desires and cravings have a life of their own. So either our actions will be imperfect, or we will fail totally. Our actions may result in partial compliance, non-compliance, hypocrisy, lip-service or repressive behaviour that results in mental aberrations or maladies.

Religions, ethical codes, human laws, have largely failed in their mission to keep egoistic behaviour at bay, create peaceful societies, prevent wars, or create a sustainable future for humankind and our fellow creatures.

Because of the failure of religions to effect real change, some thinkers have come to the conclusion that there will be no real transformation unless individuals can attain to the same integral and intuitive realization as that of the saints and sages and founders of the religions.

There are several problems with this aspiration.

• It is impractical to hope that, in the conceivable future, a large mass of people will attain an integral vision that comprehends the underlying unity. The obstacles are great, as is proved by the small number of people who have been able to attain this throughout history. Even with good intentions and diligence, it seems that such a true realization is exceedingly uncommon.
• There appear to be issues with the attainment of the unitary vision itself. Some who have been able to comprehend the underlying unity have afterwards been unable to function in the real world. Traditional brahmanic scriptures themselves have proclaimed that those who attain to the state of nirvikalpa samadhi die quickly. (Sri Ramakrishna said the one who attains to this state leaves his body after 21 days. - The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna .) Those who do go on living may embrace a monist vision that upholds the underlying unity, while declaring the “world of things” to be unreal and invalid. Whereas previously they were unable to see the forest for the trees, they are now unable to see the trees for the forest. A real transformation of the human condition requires the ability to see the world in its diversity as well as in its underlying unity. (See “The Eternal and the Individual”, Chapter 3, The Life Divine, by Sri Aurobindo and elsewhere.)
• The unitary vision is not a communicable experience at all. This is reflected in the contradictions in the way that the various sages have described or extrapolated from their experience. It is also reflected in the refusal by many sages to discuss their experience. It is therefore not practical to expect that any individual realisation will lead to real change at the level that is required to transform our plight.
• There is real urgency to our problem. We are creating untenable conditions for our continued existence on the planet. We are destroying our biosphere. We are setting the ground for multiple disasters as competition over basic resources like water, land, food and air will grow acute to the point of open warfare. We are not even aware of the multiple ways in which pollution, destruction of habitat, climate change, depletion of resources, overpopulation, etc. will interact. Although we know that disaster is looming, we are unable to reverse or even mitigate the practices that lead to it. Our failure to act is a result of our wrong vision.

The failure of human laws to create a peaceful world and sustainable future The laws that govern the universe of things are themselves the manifestation of the unitary existence-consciousness that underlies reality. These laws govern the way the manifest universe interacts with itself. They are based both on the need and tendency of the individual for self-preservation and upon the underlying cooperation and bonding between individual and individual within the universal whole. In eastern philosophies there is the view that the universe functions according to an overarching law of dharma, and within it each individual operates according to his own prescribed dharma within this macrocosmic reality.

Our understanding of the laws that govern the universe is imperfect and this imperfect understanding, often first expressed in religious scriptures, lies at the basis of our human laws. In codifying the laws that govern us, we have tried to mimic cosmic laws, both in the attempt to safeguard the rights of the individual and in the attempt to create harmony between individuals, in society and in the world.

Though the law books are the outward expression of our original attempt to mimic laws that govern the universe, we are also guided by a personal moral compass. This is based on learned behaviour with regard to societal norms, codes of morality received through education and an inner voice which we call conscience. Our behaviour is therefore affected by the fear of punishment through our legal systems, by the wish not to transgress societal norms learned through education, and by our inner voice. Yet none of these have been enough to create peace with our neighbours and fellow beings nor a sustainable future for humankind.

We cannot, with the best intentions, create a sustainable future while viewing the world through the lens of our egoism. If we obey laws because we fear punishment, or obey unwritten rules based on the fear of being ostracized from our society, or act according to a wish not to feel ashamed of ourselves, we are still acting within the field of our egoism. We cannot transform our relationship with the world unless we are able to transform our wrong vision. Transformation won’t come about through the fear of punishment but only through a positive sense of participation, cooperation, empathy and love. As seen in Buddhism, and sometimes in other paths like yoga, the practice of dharma is a training or a teaching, towards an intuitive and integral understanding of oneness, rather than a cultivation of obedience to ethical prescriptions and injunctions. Practiced in this way, dharma, such as the five precepts (pañcasila) noble eightfold path of the Buddha, or the yamas and niyamas at the basis of Patanjali’s system of raja yoga, becomes a form of sadhana (spiritual discipline).

The practice of dharmic sadhana gives us the opportunity to change our relationship with our fellow beings and the world from a state of competition to a state of cooperation and equal participation. This depends not only upon good intentions but the acquisition of skills and knowledge. Interaction with our fellow beings is not simply a matter of following what is lawful, socially acceptable or even unconscionable, but a matter of acquiring skills such as nonviolent communication, the ability to listen and interpret the subtle signs expressed by others, as well as empathy. Environmentally sustainable practices requires a knowledge of how to choose the least damaging or most beneficial course of action, based on science, economics, mechanics, and whatever else is relevant to the case. Living as a good citizen of the 21st century requires awareness and knowledge.

The value of following a practice of dharma as a sadhana is that it provides the only response that can be helpful in the critical stage that we have reached. The situation in the world requires immediate action that is based on the acknowledgment of the underlying unity of all things, because our wrong vision of division has created the problem we now face. Dharma means, among other things, the performance of effective action that is based on correct vision. This is exactly what we need, and basically the only thing that can save us.

This article reasons that our view of the universe as divided into separate objects is flawed in that it fails to acknowledge a fundamental unity. It states that it is this wrong vision that has led to the current crisis we are facing. It casts doubt on claims that the situation can be be changed through solely personal transformation and suggests the practice of dharma as a more practical method of tackling our problems and transforming the world. It claims that the practice of dharma is also a sadhana, i.e. a means to gaining an integral understanding that the “world of things” depends upon underlying unity.