Posts tagged "walking":

Lazy day at home

Went for an early morning walk with my new barefoot-like sandals: crossing through the pinewoods, descending the path that leads down to the vineyards in the valley, then back up through the woods towards home. Surprised that despite the stony paths around here, there was no discomfort in these sandals, except once when I was looking at my phone and banged my toes into a rock lying on the path. That's the thing about walking without adequate foot protection: you have to be mindful.

While walking I listened to another chapter of The Dawn of Everything, then some beautiful hang-drum and flute music by the Nadishana Trio, and similar tracks on Sound Cloud.

After breakfast, I watched a Frederick Wiseman documentary, High School.

H, a friend of D came to visit, bringing with her a dessert she had made for the holiday known as Layali Beirut ("Nights of Beirut"), which I enjoyed with a cup of English breakfast tea. It's a kind of firm pudding, made from semolina, cream, orange blossom syrup, sprinkled with pistachio nuts.

In the evening I took some photos of the sunset, from the village entrance (above - more at my photoblog).

Walks, thoughts

It being the eve of the Day of Atonement, when the roads become quiet and the sounds of nature come to the forefront, I enjoyed my afternoon walk through the woods and fields, without the distant roar of traffic.

Earlier I had seen part of an episode of The House of the Dragon series and read the final chapter of Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry of the Future . Probably these influences were in the background of my thoughts. The Dragon series is about in-family rivalry over the struggle for the throne and dynastic succession - itself rather a boring plot-concept, but one that is well-rooted in our history and culture. One of the characters, thinking of his legacy, says that history remembers "name" rather than "blood[line]". The interest in how one will be remembered is, according to vedantic thought, a projection of sat (existence), and the longing to live forever; the instinctive wish for immortality.

The Ministry of the Future also circles around these ideas of mortality and legacy; of the meaning and possible influence of a single human life and of the survival of the species in the time of the climate crisis. Taking the risk of venturing into new-agey territory it celebrates nature and urges human self-restraint in terms of population growth, resource use and territorial expansion.

I already feel like I've lived a long life and when I die can hope to be forgotten. But most likely I will go on living for awhile, so I sometimes feel a need to assess the use of my time. Influenced by yoga and eastern philosophies, I have always understood life and human evolution as the striving for the attainment or rediscovery of our true nature. Besides the aspect of sat (existence) mentioned above, this is said to include also chit (consciousness) and ananda (bliss, or joy). We have a voracious interest in acquiring knowledge and experience on account of sat and chit, and a hunger for pleasure on account of ananda. All three of these basic instincts are infinitely insatiable. So we want to live forever, accrue knowledge, experience, money, material goods and sensual gratification, while fearing suffering and our mortality.

Indian philosophy says that the only way to "quench / to extinguish" these drives is through inner/integral (not solely intellectual) understanding of our true nature as already immortal, omniscient and joyful. Thereupon, according to both Buddhism and yoga, we attain nirvana (which means literally the action of extinguishing).

So how to do that? Not, I think, by denial of these instincts (asceticism). That has no meaning. Not by diminishment. As we approach death, we experience the extenuation of the physical and mental faculties. This morning I read that dear old Shraddhavan recently died at the age of 80. This English woman was one of the founders of Auroville and for years and years held study circles on the meaning of Sri Aurobindo's poem Savitri. The obituary said that since the end of last year, she began gradually to "fade away". Whether or not that is true I do not know, but my hope is that this was just how it looked. My hope is that, rather than diminishing, we grow, i.e. expand into the cosmic, the universal, the infinite. From the outside, this can also look as if we are "fading" because the attention has shifted.

In the final pages of The Ministry of the Future Robinson mentions the statue of Ganymede and the eagle on the lake shore of Zürich. His character surmises that the bird may really be the phoenix, which constantly rises from its own ashes, and that the bronze human statue is making an offering of himself, and all that is, to it, for the sake of immortality.

At the end of the day, we die. The atoms that made up our bodies, our brains and the wisps of consciousness that gave meaning to our lives, seep out into the ether. They are carried on the cosmic wind, to recombine and make new bodies, new souls. We may hope to leave a legacy, to live on through our children or our good deeds. But the fear of death and the longing to continue at all costs, even with senses and bodily functions impaired, seem to express doubt.

If we want to die instead with an intimation of our immortality, with awareness of the universal, and with the feeling of deep joy that are our birthright and inner-nature, we need to consecrate our lives to expansion, rather than fear extinction. But why wait for death, if we can seek to do this already? That's the purport of vedantic philosophy.

This still does not really answer the how. On my walk, perhaps with Robinson's Ministry resonating still in me, I began to think that one approach could be to live more closely to nature. From the perspective of climate action, this is a little counter-intuitive. The best arrangement for humans is to inhabit small to mid-sized communities or towns that provide most of their needs within walking or cycling distance, without the need to commute or import. Ideally goods would be shared rather than owned. If we are fortunate to live in a place where heating and air-conditioning are less necessary, the carbon footprint can be further reduced.

But there are communities that fulfill these requirements while still being close to nature. That's why I looked again at Auroville (and discovered Shradhavan's death). From their newsletter I also learned about the latest developments regarding the internal strife that they have been experiencing within the last year. But like the Aurovillians themselves, I believe they will eventually overcome those difficulties, since their lives there really depend upon that.

As human beings in our world community, the lives of our children and grandchildren depend upon overcoming the enormous challenges of our era. It's the dire necessity of doing so that underlies the optimism in Ministry of the Future. As Robinson says, "we will cope no matter how stupid things get" and "the only catastrophe that can't be undone is extinction."

I would add that something of ourselves survives even extinction. Matter, energy and consciousness are never truly destroyed - they simply recycle to make something new. Seeing this can lead to an understanding of the inseparable interdependence between ourselves and our biosphere. If as a species, we begin to get, to really grok, this interdependence, we will surely take all the steps that are necessary to safeguard our planetary home.

Back home from Camino

We're back home from the Camino: this time the Camino Portugues. It went well, despite mishaps. The principle mishap was getting COVID about 3 days into the walk. Both I and D got it, by turn. It wasn't so significant - just fever and a cold for about 3 days - but it slowed us down. We mostly rested those days, and took private rooms, of course, rather than dorms, and wore masks everywhere.

So we didn't complete the planned 200+ kilometers, and did perhaps 160. The walking was the best part. Of the towns, we enjoyed visiting the old cities. Porto's amazing - and we spent about 3 days there - but overly touristic. Like other famous cities, it suffers badly from its popularity.

As we combined the coastal way with the traditional central route, we enjoyed both the coast and the inland areas. Inland, along the Portuguese and Spanish parts, often actually means wide river estuaries. These have been compared to the fjords of Norway.

In Porto, I was inspired by the museums, as I sometimes am. The National Museum in Porto was mostly closed for renovations, but had an amazing exhibition on Magellan - whose expedition was the first to circumnavigate the world. I had never considered the singularity of his attainments and courage - virtually discovering the Pacific Ocean (which he named) and then successfully navigating across it. His expected trans-Pacific voyage of "3 or 4 days" took 3 months and 20 days. Learning about the expanse of the oceans in comparison with the size of the land areas changed human perception of the planet. Magellan's voyage was really a leap into the unknown - more so than the voyages of Columbus, a few years earlier. I wonder if the men who sailed in those ships would have done so had they known what the voyage would entail? Of 5 ships and hundreds of men, only 18 made it around the world. The rest died of hunger, disease, in battles with indigenous peoples, or in mutinies. The men of one ship fled home earlier, escaping during the search for a passage through the straits at the bottom of Chile. Magellan himself perished in a battle in the Philippines. It was only a stroke of luck that the ship's chronicler, an Italian by the name of Antonio Pigafetta, made it home and spread the story.

We also visited the Seralves museum, which is on the outskirts of the city. There were several interesting exhibitions. A common theme, perhaps, was learning to see the world differently. This was true of the filmmakers shown, especially Manoel de Olveira - whose career spanned decades: he began making films in the silent era and continued till close to his death, at the age of 106. In the interviews, it was stated that he didn't believe in the reality of the world as most of us see it. The same idea - of learning to perceive the world in new ways - was there in all the other exhibitions, including those of Rui Chaves and Maria Antonia Leite Siza. The latter was a young artist of the '60s who died at the age of 32. The exhibition traces her drawings from the advent of her short career till close to her death. The covers of her bed, in which she enjoys to spend so much time in dreams becomes in the drawings a pupis, through which she rises like a butterfly. Agnès Varda is both a filmmaker and a photographer. In the exhibition is a work on potatoes, in which one sees this earthy vegetable transformed into an object of wonder. The images are shown in a room in which the floor is covered with actual potatoes, so that their fusty odour permeates the space.

I suppose that what art can do for us is to help us change our perception of the world, in this way. The museum is set in a beautiful park; and the park, as well as the architecture, enhances the same purpose.

For example, one of the features is a "treetop walk" that allows us to explore nature in a new way. And, back on ground level, there was a venerable chestnut tree, whose characteristic spiny fruit littered the entire surroundings like objects fallen from space. So the park, which we explored afterwards, helped to transport the inspiration gleaned from the exhibitions, outwards into nature.