The unquiet mind

I've been crap at meditating recently. Unable to concentrate, unable to quiet the mind.

I did experience some minor success when I tried meditating with an arm raised. At the point the arm becomes tired, the mind has to fight against it. But with some persistence, the mind can become indifferent to the strain. Still, not much to show for it.

I feel blocked and chaotic, but I continue to meditate daily because when all else fails, keep practicing.

I'm also trying to finish up the first degree of my CR+C studies which lagged behind over the winter. There's quite a lot of material, but few practical experiments, and those have been mostly fruitless for me. On the other hand, I do appreciate the structure, which is something I don't naturally create for myself.

I'd have to say I'm about 3/10 in terms of my practice at the moment, and not from lack of trying. Overcoming obstacles is not something I'm good at. If I can't just go around them, I get stuck. If I can't be superlative, I just spin my wheels. So I'm trying to think of showing some discipline as success in its own right.

Detachment and Compassion

The other day I was meditating and an image of a flower came to mind, complete with its lovely fragrance. Once I inhaled deeply to savor the aroma, the flower suddenly changed to a dead animal, complete with the odor of decomposition.

I realized that in fact neither state should necessarily be preferred over the other. Everything changes. Nothing permanently remains as it is.

But I also realized something else. That awareness of detaching oneself, of being indifferent to the changes, brought up a sense of great compassion.

It seems paradoxical to talk about indifference and compassion as being intimately linked, but I think they are. When you experience indifference to the inevitable cycle of change, you also experience compassion for the system as a whole, a kind of universal compassion that's inaccessible while you're holding onto an egoistic desire to hold onto things as you want them to be.

The First Rosicrucian

I googled "first rosicrucian" and the first like that popped up said "Understanding reincarnation" which leads me to the topic of today's post: Pythagoras.

He is primarily remembered today for his theorem concerning right triangles, but the history (mostly mythology, actually) of Pythagoras goes much deeper than that.

As a seeker of knowledge, he did not seem to distinguish between empirical and mystical ideas, and he was said to have been very keen to learn from cultures older than his native Ionian Greek civilization. Hence he traveled to Egypt and, it is claimed, to India.

An Indic concept of reincarnation first enters recorded western thought through the Pythagoreans, along with the concept of the monad or brahman as the source of all creation. If Pythagoras was not a real, historical individual, it certainly seems that the character must have been based on one or more real people who were exposed in some depth to the Vedic tradition and brought its ideas back to the West - kicking off a cycle of historical and legendary Westerners periodically "rediscovering" the knowledge of the East, from Pythagoras to Christian Rosenkreuz to Mme. Blavatsky to the Beatles.

Astrological Signs

I wanted to include an astrological reference in my Trojan War story, so I went digging for info. It turns out there is something that fits the narrative at around about the right time.

When Teliassa sets out for Troy, about six months before the end of the war, a quarter moon rises in Sagittarius. It's the end of October, 1185 BC - a time of change and danger for Teliassa the archer....

Trojan War Epic: Page 1 Revisited

A revised Page 1 that gets straight to the source of Teliassa's later drama :

Sing, O Muses, the heart of fiery-haired Teliassa, the keen-eyed daughter of Caprias, who longed to wet her trusty arrows in the well of Trojan misery. For the men of Ilium had killed her father, that celebrated Larissan who had sailed with Achilles.

A fierce warrior was Caprias, but in the end he fell, surrounded by many foes, the stench of cloven entrails thick in the dusty air. Indeed he had afflicted the defenders of the Troad grievously before his death.

When Teliassa heard of it, she wept tears of bitter grief and cried out to the heavens: May Troy not see victory, nor sing the glory of its heroes, but let them fall to the last man!

Thus having spoken, she called for a long-horned ram and sacrificed it, eating its eyes and tongue as if they were those of her accursed enemy, promising before the gods to repay the Trojans in kind.

Now, Ares favored Troy, but he was struck by the fervid maiden's desire for vengeance, and he granted her a boon, a peerless bow of yew wood inlaid with silver, saying: The beauty of this weapon is matched only by your own!

Teliassa resisted his advances, but Ares' interest in her aroused the infamous jealousy of Aphrodite, and she swore to revenge herself on the Aeolian girl.

Tricks of the Trade

In working on my Trojan war story, I've got the phrase ὡς δ’ ἤκουσε ἕθεν (and when she heard of it) which can be written in a couple of ways. The normal way would be to contract ἤκουσε ἕθεν to ἤκουσ’ ἕθεν. But in Aeolian Greek, the genitive object would be ϝέθεν with the digamma. And even when the digamma disappears from writing, its pronunciation can still be indicated by writing the phrase as ἤκουσε έθεν.

Tricks of the trade in a 3,000 year old language.

Trojan Epic Page 1

Been a while since I posted, but here's some of what I've been working on, a Trojan war narrative in Homeric verse.

Sing, O Heaven, the heart of fiery-haired Teliassa whose love for her father brought her to the walls of Ilium, for Caprias son of Dion was slain by the Trojans, that celebrated Larissan, sire of the fierce maiden who swore to avenge his blood in war.

Now when Teliassa arrived at the Achaean camp, the men marveled at her appearance, which was like an Amazon's, her eyes dark with the stare of one who has seen slaughter. Indeed she was not the same child who was left behind when her father sailed for Troy with Achilles, watching from shore as the ship vanished beyond the horizon. The gods had led her far and wide ere she could reach the city of Priam, site of her father's demise.

Before leaving Aeolia, she had sacrificed a fine goat to the sun god, her ancestor, and she ate its eyes and tongue, saying: May Troy not see victory, nor sing the glory of its accursed heroes!