Sankara's ontology

We start from the premise that an effect contains its cause. Oil from oil seeds doesn't appear magically. The oil already existed in the seeds. To be more precise, at least the oil-ness already existed in the seeds. The process of crushing brought it out.

There are two ways to look at this. That the oil is just another form of something that pre-existed in the form of the seeds. Or one may claim that the oil is an entirely new substance, created by the process of pressing oil seeds. Shankar argues that it's implausible to assume that the oil is different, in substance, from the oil seeds. He argues that the oil just manifests a different quality of the same substance that comprised the seeds. The substance doesn't change. It always existed. It just changed its from from that of the seeds to that of oil.

Shankar's argument in favour of a single enduring substance is a bit of sophistry. He says, reasonably, that any two forms of a substance are always related in some way. In the absence of such a relationship we couldn't reasonably claim that the two are related forms. And if we consider the two forms to be entirely different substances, then we must accord the same status to the thing that relates them. So from the two forms A and B, which we claim are different entities, we must now assume the the relationship between A and B, say Rel(A, B) is also such an entity. Obviously this regresses infinitely, since from A, B, and Rel(A, B) we must also allow for Rel(A, Rel(A, B)) and so on. Shankar claims that such an infinite regress prevents us from ever being able to explain the relationship between A and B. Since such a relationship is perceptually evident, we must assume, therefore, that, A and B are essentially the same.

Now if a cause and it's effect are just different forms of the same reality, then one may wonder where one would reach if one kept going backward from effect to cause, and further to it's own cause and so on. What remains at the beginning of this causal chain. In other words, Given the wide variety of material forms which are involved in all forms of change, what is that quality that they all share. Shankar, here, makes a bold and fairly compelling conjecture. He says they all share the quality of existence, or, simply, of existing. This is how Shankar leads to the conclusion that underlying different forms of reality that we perceive, there is but one thing that is real, and that is existence itself. It is this that Shankar calls brahm.

And to the extent that all the material forms that perceive share this underlying substance, the different forms are just perceptual layers wrapped around, the one common reality, which is brahm.

Having come this far, we may now consider whether this absolute reality, or brahm, is conscious or unconscious. We normally associate external objects as being unconscious and our own internal or mental states to be conscious. As such it is difficult to say whether absolute reality is conscious or not, since it clearly underlies all that exists - both mental and external objects or states. However, if we considers closely why we allow for the existence of different things, we can see that we allow for their existence because they are revealed to us. So they have the quality of being self-revealing. This quality is what is common between apparently external objects and mental states. Therefore, one may further argue that this aspect of being self-revealing is a quality of brahm, or absolute reality. So we have a self-revealing absolute reality at basis of all that exists. 

Shankar's argument which reaches a a contradiction by showing the existence of an infinitely expanding set is very similar to the Aristotelian third man argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_man_argument

Being human in Patna

I saw a young man on a cycle overtake an auto-rickshaw at a rather sharp turn. For a few moments the auto driver bore an expression of shock at the cyclist's dangerous manoeuvre. And then I saw the cyclist grinning impishly. The auto driver's face relaxed in a tired smile.

I peeked into cars, overcrowded buses, the faces of pedestrians, driving along the busy streets of Patna. I somewhat naively expected to find disappointment, anger, unhappiness, at least, frustration in these faces. But I mostly saw contentment, even frolic. This city, stuck in time, poverty, squalor lives another life, rather distanced from the critical newspaper articles you read that dissect poverty and aspire for riches for all.

Towns in India, I guess like towns all over the world, have unique individualities. I grew up in Patna in the 70's and 80's. At that time, the only other cities I knew of were Delhi and Kanpur. When I first saw these other cities I realized, rather strikingly, that Patna was really a very literate place. Signboards in English were rarely misspelled. In places like Kanpur this was pretty common. After several years in Pune, which has a remarkable concentration of colleges, I realized, in contrast, the vast richness of book stores in Patna. In the older parts of the city, you could find book stores catering to the weirdest of tastes.

There are many things unique to small towns and many things that are the same. I am always amazed at the openness in conversation. The other day I stood by a tea stall sipping hot sugary tea. Two boys sat on a bench. One was short in height, perhaps showing the long-range effects of undernourishment, the other more or less, of average height. The tea stall owner was like the owner of any other road-side tea stall dotting the breadths of India - the road his god, yielding periodic bounties in the form of pedestrians and travelers, who would infrequently suspend their struggle with time, to stop by and have a cup (or more commonly, a glass) of tea; he had the resigned look of a person who has long abandoned expectation and lives by time. His time versus the time of gods - secure in the knowledge that while his wait will end, the gods will wait much longer.

The boys were in the middle of a conversation centered around the height of humans and its effect on intelligence. The short boy proposed the thesis that short people are smarter. That nature makes them smarter because it has to spend less making them taller and can channel its finite resources into building up the intelligence of the person. Various short and tall persons were cited and there were occasional objective debates like - was Nehru tall? Shastri was cited as a smart prime minister whose lack of height was, undoubtedly, the cause of his meteoric rise to glory. The debate was going nowhere. Objective evidence was not clear enough to clinch it one way or the other. As a final step, the boys appealed to the stall owner, who was busy rinsing out some glasses, at the moment he was addressed. Without looking up, he nodded his head. This could have meant anything. The shorter boy, who seemed to be more aggressive, and probably had more at stake, took this as conclusive proof that his thesis was correct. 

We were all sitting just outside the high compound walls of an all-girls government school. Suddenly the boys moved on to discussing the mysterious happenings inside such schools. And that was that.

During this visit, I was looking after my father who had had a short surgery. I had a lot of time to hang around the hospital premises, watching and looking at people. Somehow all of this brought me closer to the thoughts and feelings of my boyhood. Adrift from my usual modern moorings of messages, emails, TV programs, game shows, traffic snarls, water shortages, and all the other usual features of my life, brought me back to things which were more primitive, more human, more like I was when younger and probably happier.

it's been a long time. i don't know if I'm good to write anymore. it doesn't feel as fluent and easy off the keyboard as it used to.

i'm getting older and i've started feeling more honest about myself and my life.

it is late and i should be asleep. mondays are constant reminders that god exists.

it's late and my folks are asleep, i think, and i have in front of me, arrayed in the backlight of my monitor, in an otherwise dark room, i have three things in front of me - an empty glass of whiskey, a plastic jar with a bottle of blue ink inside it and a tube of moisturizing cream. i'm getting old and the dry winter dust now smarts and leaves my skin dry and painful. old parched skin hanging off a scaffold of withering flesh and creaky bone. that's what the cream's for.

the bottle of blue ink is another attempt to do something out of passion. so when it's so easy to buy ball pens or gel pens, i mess my hands with ink every now and then, and then scratch paper with the ink until it's time to fill up again. it reminds me when i was younger and did things with the gusto of unaware youthfulness.

i do that all the time - pick up new passions. if you feel hollow inside you keep picking up things that convince you that still feel. it's ersatz love. so you get a new hairdo. you watch French movies. and at night you nurse your glass of whiskey - not one too many. you want to savour the pleasure of empty bleak pain, the bleakness of impending death, the pain of continuing life.

The other day, after a tiring day in office I was reading a book on popular mathematics called Symmetry. At the same time, the TV was on and my daughter was watching Chak de India. Symmetry is an exploration into the mathematics of art and geometry and describes the role that symmetry plays in making sense of these rather diverse sensate areas of human experience. The movie on the other hand, is a sentimental play on nationalism, the competitive drive of sports, and experiences of a leader. Both absorbing in their own ways but appeal to different areas of the brain.

This experience, common-place and very domestic, brought to me a flash of the intellectual dilemma I have faced since I was in school. In school I was fairly good in mathematical subjects. Fairly good - not exceptional. I was always clear I had no outstanding talent in these subjects but I was not a laggard either. On the other hand, I loved the liberal arts. I remember that Shakespeare could transport me into rhapsodies of rapture - I was almost jealous of the old master.

These were the 1970's when jobs were scarce in general. If you wanted to assure yourself of a job you needed a specialized education in engineering or medicine. Education in liberal arts was just a way to spend time while looking for a job as an administrator or a bank officer.

My first instinctive inclination was to get into the medical stream. That would assure that I could continue to maintain a strong connection to people, so my yearning for the softer aspects of life may be satisfied while I would continue to have some semblance of job security. Over my high school days, I realized that biology required too much application of memory. There were inadequate abstractions, so you basically had to memorize things. This put me off, so in my final high school year I dumped medicine and devoted myself to mathematics and physics.

At the end I got into engineering where after the painful process of entrance exams and selections I got into an engineering college. I started studying metals and material engineering. However, I realized again that this area also suffered from the same lack of abstractions which made medical studies so unattractive to me.

So after some maneuvering I got into this new industry called software engineering, which had the underpinnings of mathematics, was highly logical and abstract, and generally provided a high sense of job security. All seemed well, until it dawned upon me, that I had lost my connection to the liberal arts. I compensated for that, like many of my college mates by reading fiction and poetry. And life progressed.

A lot time has passed since then. I have entered middle age and I have more financial security than I had anticipated when I started working. So it seem time to look at other aspects of life and see whether there's still some urge left in me to pursue these other aspirations that I've always had. I am increasingly convinced that meeting personal intellectual aspirations is the key to happiness. All you have to risk is the uncertainly associated with changing course in life.

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
- T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Moving words, but perhaps written to different weather patterns. If you happen to live, as I do, in or around Pune, this is the time of the year that trees put up their most spectacular shows, reminding us of their unbidden beauty, of their quiet rhythms, amidst our urban maelstroms of dust and stone and unrequited hopes.

It's a bit late now for one of the early traffic-stopping shows put up by the Caribbean trumpet tree (Tabebuia aurea) with dramatic yellow flowers on leafless trees. There are a few, in front of YASHADA along Baner Road. These are non-native trees and fairly common in Pune. I've seen a few in the Hinjwadi area as well.




The ubiquitous rain tree (Samanea saman), a pest in Pune, is also in flower with pink tufts. Not very showy but very common.

Palash (Bombax ceiba), which is pretty common in Pune (there's a large specimen right next to Aundh police station) is now losing it's flowers.

While another one, Indian coral tree (Erythrina variegata) is still in bloom. There's a dramatic specimen right next to the toll naka, opposite Aundh Chest hospital. It would appear that this specimen will be lost to the road widening operation currently underway, and perhaps, foreknowledge of it's destiny, has sparked a vividness in it's valedictory show.

(Dashehra)
Crackers popped out of the guts of faux evil today. Ravana, the power-soaked worshipper of Shiva, was burnt down to a politically incorrect heap of ashes and unburnt scrap. My eyes, dimmed by whisky and fumes, saw the dismal flames of our lives, flickering on this late summer evening – bursting ever so often, into a concealed passion of firecrackers. I saw mother-in-law’s, driven by a bounden duty to withhold the culture of older years, watching the flames with purses tightly held against stiff sarees. I saw younger mothers, holding heavily the burden of their flesh and looking to lose the deadening routine of raising children, in the flames of good and evil. What is really evil? Is it the boredom etched on a child’s face? Is it the more complex allure of a woman? Is it the swerve of the teenager, balanced powerfully on a motorcycle - papa’s gift, counting the quick step of the evening with an insouciance that time did nothing to deserve?

There come times in my life, when the relentless logic of doubt lays seige to my thought, when action seems pointless, when life itself seems like a story turned stale by the telling. I have been through such times, though the clouds now seem to be lifting. I hope. I have spent enough time rushing "too much with hurried hands and worried minds". Looking for the next opportunity to set up some reason to dread the world, waiting for the next mail in my inbox to declare a collapse of all that we assumed was reasonable to believe in.

In the loneliness of my pain, I have roamed the streets of this city, seeking the succour of crowds. I glimpsed stories on fleeting faces, whispered into cell phones, or cast, despairingly, at the grey streets. I saw trivial passages of accidental destiny in eateries and shops. Oh how I longed to trap this pitiful urban meaninglessness into words - once and for all, and to rid myself of this burden of gloom.

I suppose someone must always bear the cross. Jesus was not the first and neither the last.

...

Each day, as I wake early to beat the heat, I open up doors and windows of my house, to let the dew-scented early morning coolness in. As the sun sweats on its way to its searing pinnacle in a sky paled by the heat, I, once again, close those doors and windows and lie trapped inside, until, the sun gives way to the eternal trier - the dusk of a summer day. And then wait for the concrete and stone and glass to
give up the anger of the day, to lie blissfully in the cool clasp of another summer night.