always will reblog
clivedavinci: …..and i don’t need society, or another person, for i have a caring heart
Neti, Neti
Do not define God:
When we have figured out all the answers.
He changes the questions.
So, what shall we do then?
Bask in her bliss.
Splendor in his creation.
Love the bits of him that exist in all things.Om Gam.
Meditative Kali. Its my current Google background.
These 17th century Hindu paintings strongly resemble 20th century modernist paintings! I find this so interesting.
Kali’s Symbolism
Hair:
Kali’s hair is always loose and disheveled. She is never depicted with it bound or braided. Kali’s unbound hair stands for her disdain for convention. Kali is free from convention, wild and uncontrolled in nature, not bound to or limited by a male consort. It also suggests the end of social and cosmic order.
Tongue:
Kali’s lolling tongue denotes the act of tasting, consuming and enjoying what society regards as forbidden, foul, or polluted, her indiscriminate enjoyment of all the world’s “flavors.”
Eyes:
Her three eyes represent the Sun, Moon, and Fire with which she is able to observe the three modes of time: Past, Present, and Future.
Adornments:
Her Girdle of Severed Arms represents the destruction of her devotees’ karma. They symbolize deeds, actions, karma. The binding effects of this karma have been overcome, severed as it were by devotion and service to Kali. She blesses her devotees by cutting them free from this karma.
Her Garland of Severed Heads represent the sounds of the alphabet, the underlying essence of reality as manifest in sound. From the various sound seeds, all creation proceeds and Kali is the underlying power.
The Bloodied Sword and Severed Head symbolize the destruction of ignorance and the dawning of knowledge. The sword of knowledge cuts the knots of ignorance and destroys false consciousness, represented by the severed head. Kali opens the gates of freedom with her sword.
I love this chart. I was at one point preparing myself to start a personal journey to try to understand the chakras. This is one of my favorite concepts from Eastern culture.
We must first understand the “I Am” before we can really begin to understand the “I Feel” of existence, and so on and so forth. One builds on another, but to completely meditate on and immerse yourself in the chakra you are exploring you must dismiss and move on from the previous chakra. They are only stepping stones to the next level of understanding but they are equally important to the process.
July 26th
5:42 PM
5:42 PM
day 18:your beliefs
my beliefs? that’s vague.
I believe in science, jackalopes, and Harry Potter.
I believe that we are miniscule, and incredibly lucky. The stars literally had to align in such a way for us to exist— for life to form on this tiny planet. I am not qualified to determine whether or not there’s a big guy up there that made it happen, neither is anyone else. And yet we still have people forcing religion down other peoples’ throats.
I think I have some vague concept of a soul… or an essence… or something that makes us all inescapably interconnected. We need our wits to survive, but we need relationships in order to thrive.
I’d like to think that when we die we are reincarnated, like the Hindu and Buddhist beliefs. It’s not a privilege to keep being reborn over and over again, but a form of suffering according to them. I like this whole cycle though because we’re so flawed as humans that it takes a couple of tries for us to figure out our place in the world. Suffering helps us to gain perspective and become more acquainted with what really matters to us.
June 27th
12:02 PM
12:02 PM
day 4:your views on religion
Well I was raised roman catholic… kinda. Religion was never a huge part of my immediate family. I never really understood mass and I was never inclined to do anything church related.
I decided in my early teenage years that I wasn’t going to prescribe to a religion that I didn’t have any faith in, and was content with the idea that gods were created by men to create unity amongst populations and explain the unexplainable. Religions do wonders to establish moral codes, but in very extreme cases it can evoke inexcusable behavior.
The more I learned about religions in history the more I disliked the idea of being a part of an organized religion. It was too focused on politics, power, and proving who’s god was the right one.
Now that I finished up my summer course, Encountering Sacred Writings, and studied the philosophy of religions I have a bit more appreciation for the intricacies of different religions and beliefs. I’m still not considering myself catholic or anything else— at most I’d agree to agnostic.
I still think that it takes a lot more than being taught what to believe to inspire faith in someone. Lately I’ve been really fascinated with the Hindu and Buddhist religions, and I think that the closest I would come to following a religion would be adopting some of their philosophies in order to guide myself in the direction of happiness.
I can be a good person without categorizing myself under one type of religion or another.
SUBMISSION: A mass ordination of 34,000 monks at Wat Phra Dhammakaya, a Buddhist temple in Thailand. Photograph by Luke Duggleby, UK.
