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Purpose and Tools for Getting There

Purpose and Tools for Getting There

Defining Purpose and Tools to get there.  GREAT Lucid Ideas  

I asked myself what my purpose in life is.  I couldn't figure it out.  So I asked, "Okay, what definitely IS NOT my purpose in life?".  I thought about it and said, "to wear socks -- my purpose on life is definitely NOT to wear socks."  That's great!! Why because that process of elimination helps define some crucial criteria for better solidifying and illuminating what I my purpose IS on the planet.  The logic behind "not here to wear socks" was because everyone can and does do it. Everyone wears socks, so my purpose couldn't possibly be to wear socks because it's not unique.  

Therefore, a key criteria for my purpose is that few people possess your aptitude and high-level skill in that purpose.  The purpose must be unique and of high-skill level so that very few (or maybe even no one) can do that purpose better than I.  If tons of people can do my "purpose" better than I can, then that isn't a purpose, that's a mere tool.  

Tools help improve, hone, and refine your purpose.  They're things your'e good at and are a qualified specialized skill, but a few others or much better than it than you, but certainly not everyone.

"Wearing socks" is an example of any person with a fraction of a brain can do.  Unlike tools, those "givens" require no special learning no brain power so givens are rarely mentioned.

Bottom line if you're REALLY REALLY good at a unique skill that only small number of people can do, it could quite likely be your purpose.  If you're good at a unique skill that's hard to learn but notice many others better than you, that's most likely a tool to help, chisel, enchant, and engineer exciting new dimensions to your purpose.

My Potential Purposes -- Activities/Skill in which I have a global high-caliber level of uniquely high proficiency

HAVE CHANNELED ALL THIS INTO COACHING!

Comedy

Acting

Life-Coaching

Romance with Women

Psychology -- Knowing people's emotions; understanding what people feel. 

Sensitivity to what people feel and what they express and share.

Tools -- Highly skilled areas that require a degree of skill that I possess. but areas in which others who possess such skills far out excel me.

Exercise self-discipline

Running, Biking, Swimming training and focus

Martial Arts wisdom, philosophy, and centeredness and piece of mind

Ability to write books

Perseverence and self-discipline to run marathons

Web Design skills and expertise

Computer science

Computer programming and logic

NLP 

recordings

Yeah...I'm Totally 100% I Followed Movies in order to Coach Actors

http://www.yahoo.com/s/1081179

Carradine's death and Heath's death in early 2008 (both suicides) shows that actors are unhappy. They need and are lost and confused. I'm 100% convinced that the reaons for following film and studying acting for a bit was to eventually Coach actors in areas of fulfilment and health and performance and meaning. It's simple. Actor's have a lot of money and little happiness. I have a lot of happiness and little money. I can teach the happiness; they can give me the money. Both parties happy. :D!!


This makes you realize that Hollywood is truly just a massive Cult of Marketing and ploys nad disillusionment tied in with the media to create the illusion of the "glory of fame and stardom" etc. Well Hollywood went down the tubes. Seriously. I've been living 20 miles west of "Hollywood" the past year and the place is like a vacant ghost town when I visit it (seriously). Additionally, the silver screen pictures and that whole era from a sales/business point of view is completely wasted and gone. Youtube, private casts, internet "films" are now reality. So the Cultu of Hollywood is slowly dying.

Boy has my thought evolved rapidly the past years!! Only three years ago I was fascinated with and enthralled by actors. Now, after discovering some truly clear thinking rocking bodacious people (DB, Dawkins, etc). I've realized, sure, some actors may be genuinely cool, great people, but their profession is the biggest kind of cult disillusionment mass hypnosis possible. Tahts' why so many off themselves because their profession is so warped and disillusioned and they're a servant for "product placement" in the films! They likely have very little sense of self after playing characters and roles for many years of their life.

Coaching is the opposite of that. I spend YEARS of my life writing books on discovering exactly what I want to know and who I want to be and I discover that! I was interested in spirituality and when I was, it was exciting but various things (prosetylizatio in Costa Rica on multiple occasion, reading up on cults and witnessing identical similarities between cults and major religions etc) emerged and I evolved out of that. Now science and atheism are rivetting. TRULY rivetting. But the truth of the matter is. They've ALWAYS been rivetting! I've ALWAYS been this nerdy, scientific atheist. I watch home videos of me as a kid and I see that and know that. "Devout Atheism" (:D) is what's true for me. Kiekegaard says "I must find a truth that's true for me". Well, soren, I did just that and it's refreshing and incredibly MASSIVELY empowering!! Wow. So empowering to honor my genuine LOVE for science! Three kinds of symbiotic relationships, Stomata on plants, cellular respiration I love that high-tech jargon and better yet the fact that it's linked to real things in nature. But physics is like some of the most absolute truths of all tied in with the precision of math. I'm very interested in physics especially. Sweet!!

Schwarzenegger: Keep Our Beaches Open! Move Towards At Least Commensualistic Symbiosis

Dear Governor Schwarzenneger,

(From John Thomas "Kooz" Kuczmarski)

I'm a strong believer that the purpose of a city should serve Nature. Nature -- wildlife, animals, we homo sapiens ARE Nature -- should be the intention of anything municipal, or city-based. Therefore the idea of actually closing beaches, closing a way for humans to enjoy nature (the ocean and beaches) would be undermining the very purpose of a city.

Do you really think people will stand for not being able to access beaches? Have you any idea how ludicrous that sounds?

I think anyone who believes eliminating parks-nature-Beach funding for the purpose of redirecting those funds to something non-Nature-based needs to re-evaluate their mission, don't you?

If the significance of Nature (the oxygen we breath from the botanical plants of parks) and the body of water that keeps us alive (planet earth ecologically could not survive if it were not for it being covered with over 70% water) is eclipsed, all is lost for EARTH and humans. This sounds extreme and that's because it is. If anything, funding needs to be redirected to opening MORE beaches and parks to remind us homo sapiens that we are just highly-evolved primates, elements of nature and truly do deserve to connect with Nature readily and frequently.

I think one problem with American government is that it HAS too much funding!! IT has so much funding that it redirects it's energies, finances, and time away from the absolute necessities (nature, oxygen, planetary perpetuation and survival).

What would be the result of this situation? What would the HUMAN RACE look like couped up in offices and buildings withotu access to Nature (our origin). To euphemistically refer to the chaos, inhuman treatment, loss of identity, uncertainty of values, drop in wholistic health, and slow disintegration of the third planet from the sun -- Bad things would occur to our planet and humans.

Closing parks is analogous to saying "we dont' need to focus on nature, on beaches, on the very oxygen we breath - the most fundamental survival necessity of us humans, mind you" And that is indirectly saying "it's okay for people to suffocate and die". I wont' go as far as saying that choosing to close beaches is identical to some kind of asphixiation concentration camp -- because that would be extreme -- but I think the analogy does exist there in some form.

For the Health of Homo Sapiens (and other flora and fauna on the planet), I urge you to make the decision to NOT close the beaches and to instead maybe apply funding to actually creating more (instead of less) of an awareness of the Significance of the health of our planet. The Pacific Trash Vortex, for example....that's something more people need to be aware of, in order to stop trash accumulation in the oceans. We're failing as a species, dumping trash into the ocean?! No other species does that.

The very LEAST we can do is keep beaches and parks open to ensure that the deteriorating of our most vital resource -- OUR PLANET -- does not continue.

And we do not possess the earth. The earth does not possess us either (for we can take flight into space and leave earth), but homo sapiens MUST have a MUTUALISTIC relationsihp with the earth and we are failing because The relationship of homo sapiens and Earth has become PARASITIC. We are feeding off and hurting the ecology or our own home (earth) and not giving back. A commensualistic Symbiosis would be better than the Parististic symbiosis that humans currently have with our planet. We Should be having a mutalistic symbiosis but are in fact, having the complete opposite of that.

So again, I urge you, could you try to elevate our already-suffering relationship with the planet from parasitistic to (at the very leaast) commensualistic symbiosis, and direct funds towards cultivating attention TOWARD the necessity of beaches and parks, not away from them?!!!

Thank you!


-- Johnt Thomas "Kooz" Kuczmarski

Accessing the Core of Spirituality: Religion in Equus

Accessing the Core of Spirituality: Religion in Equus

John Kuczmarski

November 8, 2004

Professor Soderholm

Accessing the Core of Spirituality: Religion in Equus

What is a church?  What makes up a religiously spiritual sanctuary?  Is it darkened corridors echoing with hymnal reverberations , ornately colored stained glass, and the smoothened, mahogany wood found in most chapels?  Or is it some relationship that you intrinsically cultivate and carry around with you, regardless of your environmental surroundings?  The Greek word for “church”, “kyriakos”, means  “belonging to the lord”, “the body”, “extraordinary being”, and “to make a house”, while “ekklêsia” (another synonym for “church” used in the Gospels) means “assembly” or “congregation”(Liddel 385).  Even further from the conventional connection of “church”, occurring before any of the books of the New Testament, is the Aramaic definition, which has a variety of etymological roots connoting festival and celebration (Liddel 385).  Maybe a church-like experience should not be a confined, solemn habitat, but an atmosphere that simply provokes and promotes authentic spirituality and connected nurturing of one’s passion.  According to Greek ideology, we must experience pain and suffering in order to become passionate spiritual beings.  This painful suffering becomes a carving process, whittling away the excess residual sculpture, allowing one to arrive at the altruistic soul.  This transparency is created not by a church, but by one’s relationship to his spirituality – his essential religious core.  Almost 2000 years after St. Paul’s blinding and consequential conversation to Christian faith, Peter Shaffer’s 1973 play, Equus, exemplifies how the protagonist, Alan, initiates a blindingly pious worship involving horses.  In Equus, the core of worship and sexuality is accessed on myriad different levels of interpretation, spiritual environment, and church.  

The blinding and conversion of St. Paul (then known as Saul) occurred a couple decades after his birth in 10 ad. and caused Jesus of Nazareth to reveal his perception of Paul via Ananias “a vessel of election, to carry [God’s] name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel”  (Acts 22:14).  Could it be that the young teenager, Alan, felt compelled to become a “vessel of election” and, with missionary-like conviction, spread the word of his equestrian religion; or, possibly, did Alan deify himself to play the role of God by blinding six horses?  Alan may not have deified himself, but he certainly was perceiving messages that were, like those Paul recieved, not being experienced by others: “the others could who were with [Paul] saw the light but did not hear the voice of” God (Acts 22: 9). In the story of Paul’s Conversion, Ananias plays the role of a Platonic Guardian because he went back into the cave, to provide Paul with his sight, encouraging him to spread the word of God and practicing moving the soul “from the world of becoming into that of being”  by becoming “a vessel of election, to carry [the name of Jesus] before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel" (Plato 143)(Acts 22:14).  Plato and the writer of Acts had congruent beliefs regarding the process of enlightenment involving an initial blinding glare of insight.  Both of these authors would, no doubt, find meaning in the Zen parable encouraging one to “empty your cup”, insinuating that we only learn new knowledge by being a vessel to communicate a message.

 In Equus, Alan becomes a similar kind of Guardian, like Ananias to Paul, liberating the psychiatrist, Dysart, from the “black cave of the Psyche” ( Shaffer p. 75).  In Plato’s Allegory, the “church” or location of veritas (teachings of being, instead of becoming) was the new mysterious Sun of Reason and Goodness outside the dark psychic cave, and Alan became a master of this mysterious unknwon, with his “real worship” (p.82) -- the only form of worship he has ever known.  Plato tells that stepping into the world of being revolves around the application of the soul: “the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being”.  Because Alan applies his soul, unlike Dysart who only applies his mind, to knowledge (exemplified by his hour of equestrian freedom and worship) he steps into the liberating world of being.  This profound worship allows Alan to grow: “without worship, you shrink”, and create a haven for his practices – the corral (Shaffer p. 82).  

Alan’s conception of church clearly revolves around the stable and the horse corral.  This environment provides spiritual cultivation and access to the deified Equus and other horses for sexual and spiritual worship.  Yet, Alan interprets the corral as a permanently safe sanctuary solely for horse worship.  By limiting the spiritual context of the stable solely for horse worship, Alan immerses himself in maladaptive isolation and fixates himself in a dangerously intractable position. An ancient Taoist monk said, “Changing with change, is the changeless state”.  The wisdom entrenched in this simple adage rings remarkably true with Shaffer’s message regarding the dangers of immutability.  By orchestrating a symphony of horse galloping, medieval-like worship, and “fantastic surrender to the primitive”, Shaffer depicts Alan’s interpretation of the corral as “church” to be exclusively used for spiritual connections with horses (p.82).  Even though his “real worship” illuminates Dysart, like Ananias did with Paul, Alan’s rigid interpretation of the stable becomes his confining cave.  With his excessibely myopic perception, he fails to change with the change, and this produces blatantly brutal and bloody ramifications, neglects to make the religious sanctuary a church that could house sexual spirituality with humans, and denies himself the capacity to grow and connect with Jill.

Our ability to comprehend that the relationship to the environment, and not the environment itself, cultivates spirituality in a place is remarkably important and poignant.  Once we realize that “Passion, you see, can only be destroyed by a doctor.  It never can be created”, we begin to cease external seeking a remedy for a lack of truth and fulfillment, and examine ourselves for spiritual prescriptions, engendering our internal capacity to nurture the generation of our intrinsic truths (p. 108).  Once these truths have been accessed, we embrace the core of our spirituality, and by seizing and holding onto that core, we can, regardless of the atmosphere, remain engulfed in a connection spiritually-insightful poignancy and.  Like any entity that can be used to catalyze serenity or deified to provoke celestial callings, the distinctive line separating horses and spiritual connections becomes remarkably porous if you’re committed to the experience.  I have a friend who, after riding for over 14 years, has developed a connection with the horse where she simply thinks about turning, and through a meditative-like connection, the horse instantly responds as if the human and the horse were one.  This exemplifies a fundamental tenet of Zen Buddhism: wie wu wie, or “doing not doing” (Lao-tzu vii).  By being immersed in the experience of the present, the rider, thought and action, dream and reality, are smudged together in a cohesive bond of instantaneous connection. .  If Baudrillard discusses the formation of an image, where the simulacra’s perversion and concealment of reality’s absence creates a “pure simulacra”, the meditative experience that unites horse and rider, like Alan’s relationship to Equus, represents the reverse process – the dissimulation of such an image, where the reality, and not the simulacra, becomes pristinely real (Baudrillard).  This pure connection with religion is what Alan then tries to dissimulate, “to feign not to have what one has”, at the onset of his psychological dialogues with Dysart (Baudrillard).  When Dysart sees through Alan’s ploy of Socratic irony, he becomes enticed by Alan’s intimate connection to the “dessert of the real” (Baudrillard) and uses some of his own “bloody tricks” to not only get Alan to confess, but to try to access his own authentic church (Shaffer 79).

It is clear that this pristine connection with the environment exemplifies the church that many characters in Equus try to emulate.  The church for the psychiatrist, Dysart, in the play was clearly the psychological office and his ritualistic hobby of perusing Grecian art books.  This was his ritual and provided him with a personally cultivated agenda for meaning, and, relative to Alan, this ritual manufactured an exponentially smaller amount of religious poignancy, but simulated fulfillment in Dysart’s dryly insipid sexual life, absent marriage, and confining home.  Finally, the church for many of the men viewing the pornographic film, including Alan’s father, Frank Strang, was illuminated as the theater itself.  When experiencing the milieu of the room, the bewildered and awe-struck Alan said, “all the men were staring up like they were in church” (p. 92).  The lustful men had the metamorphic capacity to transform a sleezy porno theater, into the reverence one would exhibit in a cathedral.  The role of the authentic church is one that holds on to a center, but has incredible spiritual potential, as well.

In the ancient Tao Te Ching, or “Book of the Way, by Lao-Tzu, a free-flowing entity called the Tao is discussed in detail: “The Tao is like a bellows:/ it is empty yet infinitely capable./  The more you use it, the more it produces;/ the more you talk of it the less you understand./ Hold on to the center” (Lao-tzu 5).  Even though these Chinese words of wisdom were written nearly 500 years before Paul’s christening, the parallels between God’s message to hold on to the Christian center and to seek out its infinite capability are remarkably similar.  The mathematician, Koch, produced a formula that deals with infinitum.  His curve mathematically proves a infinite perimeter, but finite area of a curve.  This simultaneously restricted and boundless – finite and infinite – curve illustrates the mathematical equivalent of the Tao.  The Christian message of Paul’s conversion, the above Chinese words of wisdom, and Koch’s curve suggest a truly boundless faith – unconditionally infinite – in order connect with an authentic church.  According to Thomas Paine who said, “my mind is my church”, we realize that this message encourages us to live connected to the spiritual core of our own vitality, not to become paralyzed by over-analysis, and most importantly, to hold fast to our own spiritual center of poignancy – the mind.  Unlike the Cyclops, who lacks awareness and only “dwells in his own mountain cave…indifferent to what the others do”, we must avoid blindness in our mind’s eye by cultivating awareness and by holding on to our center, or we risk being distracted by tempting veils of unfulfilling endeavors (Homer 306: 119).  The Christian church would refer to these as sins of temptation, but anything that doesn’t resonate with your authentic self keeps you in the cave, sacrificing mobility of your core.  

Stepping out of the cave does not, certainly, insinuate abandoning the church, but it does imply the necessity of expanding our perception of religion and a house of religion.  When I was in Costa Rica participating in a Christian Surfer mission, the religious priests, confident that “they carry the church with them”, had daily sermons on the beach.  Despite their glamour, do we really need the stained glass, pews, and altar to create a building, housing religion?  At the end of Equus Alan’s fervent piety provoked Dysart to realize his perversion with psychiatry and embrace the conversion of authentic being.  Outside of one’s allegorical cave, authentic faith has the capacity for unconditional and omnipresent worship -- unaffected by the environment -- in any nostos (Greek, for home) be it a horse stable, movie theater, or Cycloptic cave.

But everything is reflective of the beholder.  Embracing a religion that upholds morality and virtue doesn’t make your good.  Everything is interpretative and dependent on how your utilize beliefs.  Terrorists, for example, use the September 11 bombings as placation for religious qualms.  They erroneously substantiated Islamic faith as proof to support the terrible destruction and death they incurred.  Being ideologically allied with one of the world’s major religions, this erroneous alignment became dangerously charged.   In his Republic, Plato reminds us of enlightenment’s double-edged design: “Did you never observe the narrow intelligence flashing from the keen eye of a clever rogue --how eager he is, how clearly his paltry soul sees the way to his end; he is the reverse of blind, but his keen eyesight is forced into the service of evil, and he is mischievous in proportion to his cleverness”.  Despite their inherent nature, enlightened beliefs can be used for malign, perpetuating evil or for devout veneration, promoting the endurance of benevolence and compassion.   We must make the choice to enliven our generous capacity for love.

Works Cited

Bible, The. New International Version.  Grand Rapids Michigan: Zondervan Publishing 

House, 1984.  

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulations. Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed. 

Mark Poster. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1988. pp.166-184. 

www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/ Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html - 54k - Nov 6, 2004

Homer.  The Odyssey. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces; Ed 7,. Vol. 1. 

Ed. Sarah Lawall. New York: Norton & Company, 1999.

Lao-tzu. Tao Te Ching. Tran. Stephen Mitchell. New York; Harper & Row, 1988.

Liddel, Henry G. and Scott, Robert.  A Greek and English Lexicon: Based on The German Work of Francis Passow; Ed. 3. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1849.  p. 1-1622

Plato. The Republic. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. 

http://www.plotinus.com/plato_allegory_of_the_cave.htm

Shaffer, Peter. Equus. New York: Penguin Books, 1977.

The Power of "I'm not Interested"

"I'm not interested". "I love your energy and you're doing a great job selling, but I'm not interested, mate." "I can tell you REALLY want me to, but not interested. Thanks though! Happy travels!" "No, zero interested". There's magic in those phrases. There's abundant, liberating, FREEDOM in those phrases. What do those phrases do? Those phrases reclaim your time. Those phrases reclaim your life. In life, all you really have is time. It's arguable that you have decisions and time, but for someone committed to taking action (less decision-making), you truly only have time. Utilizing your time with the right decisions will earn you money, put you in the best place in the world, where you want to be.

If you don't have the capacity to say those phrases, and control YOUR time, do you know how dangerous life will become??!!! Your life will become someone else's life. Some salesman who invites you to test drive his car, or some teacher who wants you to pay them to take her class...all of those things you will do and people will drain you of money, drain you of time, drain you of life.

People may get offended if you politely tell them you're not interested. Guess what? Their feeling offended is NOT your problem! If someone says to you "I'm not interested" and I feel offended because someone expressed their opinion about an offer, I'd have a seriously low-esteem or "taking things personally" or confidence problem! So honor someone being offended by you politely saying "I'm not interested, but I appreciate your offer" as some problem THEY have!!

If someone "NEEDs" you to accept their offer for the sake of their own self-esteem, emotional well-being they have a serious problem!! Acknowledge that clinginess as a problem (obviously, they've tied emotional validity to someone accepting their offer which is not true!)

So cultivating the comfort and ease of saying "I'm Not interested" reclaims the power and clarity back in life!

I could list all the times NOT saying "i'm not interested" and then continuing on my current problem/agenda created massive havoc for me, but I won't do that...the list is too long! Here's a sampler:

Was sorting contacts in address book. Friend invited me to go to bar. What happened because I FAILED to say "Not Intersted".
--Almost got beat up.
--Almost got assaulted
--Got locked out of car for 24 hours
--Got shinsplits
--Had to ice legs for next 4-5 days

What happened because I didn't say "Not interested": I drove to the bar, met the friends, started hitting on a girl, her Iraq meathead 2.5 IQ boyfriend showed up and said "get back here punk" and almost assaulted me because he thought I was stealing his girlfriend (which I was), then I got back at the valet area late so my car was locked for 24 hours. I then had to wander around Los angeles for 24 hours wearing sandals. I got shin splints and thought I seriously injured my leg.

What Would've Happened if I successfully said "Not Interested":
--Productivity on my addressbook
--Clarity on all my contacts
--Great peace of mind, freedom of thought
--Greater likelihood of connecting with good people in the future
--Less baggage with my communications
--Clarity on who my contact friends are

"I'm not interested" is a great thing to do!

Get er Done! Why Sign and Utilize Contracts?

In the business, professional, internet, or any world with which you associate yourself. Professionalism, formality, closure and safety are all important. Read on to see why contracts move goals forward!

1. Formality. It adds to the REALNESS of the coaching relationship for BOTH the client and coach. As a coach I don't want some client joking around wasting my time if they aren't committed to changing. I take coaching VERY seriously. I've deliberately started and stopped smoking for 2 month segments specifically for the purpose of learning about the addiction so I could educate myself on how to help clients break it! I take coachign incredibly seriously and I need clients that are committed to changing as well! From the Client POV, I'm sure a sincere and focused client who' serious about achieving his/her goals WANTS a serious coach who's determined to make them realize their goals and potential!! A contract creates this formality to the coaching-client relationship.

2. Closure. A contract creates closure and certainty on the duration of the coaching. This is ESSENTIAL for goal-setting because it shows the coach and client how fast they ahve to move and what they will have time to cover or not. If the coach and client only have 2 coachign sessions, they'll most certainly have to focus on different things than if they had 10 coaching sessions. A contract creates closure.

3. Professionalism. This is the most simple and obvious reason for using a contract -- Professionalism! Real coaches, real clients -- real professionals, be it a businessperson, an actor, a performer, a therapist, anyone exchanging in a business agreement with a person who expects to get anything done, does work AFTER signing a contract.

4. Safety. Again, another obvious, but vitally important reason. Contracts ensure that expectations and needs are agreed upon and it provides the comfort of knowing that the client and coach both will provide the details of the exchange! From the service-provider point of view, this ensures you get paid, and from a client point of view this ensures you don't get ripped off! That mutual safety creates for a more lucid experience.

Self-Love and Jinana: The Symbiosis of Desire and the Mind

John Kuczmarski

11/03/05

Hinduism

Professor Coleman

Self-Love and Jinana: The Symbiosis of Desire and the Mind

When the major cities of Harrappa and Mohenjo Daro collapsed, the Indus Valley Civilization became extinct, resulting in a large migration of strongly militant, Sanskrit-speaking western people into the Indus Valley (Olivelle xxv).  The link between these people and the origin of the Upanisads and other Hindu texts is unclear.  However, having been recorded in 1200 BC and 800 BC, the Rig Veda and Upanisad scriptures, are 3,200 and 2,800 years old, respectively.  Their depth, significance, and historical placement in forming the Hindu religion from the emerging Hindu philosophies are without equal.  The Yoga Sutra, written by the great Indian philosopher, Patanjali, is from a much earlier era, but carries a similar amount of monumental significance in shaping the Hindu traditions and beliefs.  Amongst the origin of existence, earth, and man, these scriptures also discuss the details of the development of deities, such as Agni, the god of sacrificial fire, Yama, the death god, and Indra, the warrior god.  However, one of the reoccurring, almost thematic, explanations in the scriptures is the concept of desire.  Theses texts frequently reiterate and re-examine the origin of desire, it’s relationship to the mind, and its link to suffering and fulfillment.

A universally paramount message found in world religions is the necessity of restraining desires.  In Hinduism, over-indulgence of the sensual desires results in bad karma, suffering, and the consequential samsara; in Christianity, over-indulgence causes sin and then a descent into Hell; in Islam letting your chariot of desire be guided without restraint results in neglect of the five Pillars – Shahada (declaration of Allah), Prayer (five times a day), Zakat (obligatory tax of giving about 2.5% to the poor), Ramadan (month-long fasting), and Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) – and the consequential departure from salvation.  Desire threatens to hinder the progress of the ultimate goal of salvation in other religions, as well.  However, it is only Hinduism that validates the importance of desire.  

According to the Rig Veda, desire is related to the origin of all existence.  The Creation Hymn, or Nasadiya, discusses how in the beginning of the universe, “darkness was by darkness” and “there was neither death nor immortality” (Doniger 25).  From this state of existential nothingness arose the incitation of “the power of heat” (Doniger 25).  The catalyst for this heat was desire.  Desire, creativity, and impulse seemed to have been the ingredients for the origin of existence: “desire came upon that one in the beginning” (Doniger 25).  Therefore, desire created the momentum, while the poets, through the process of creativity, “found the bond of existence in non-existence” (Doniger 25). The poets create substance out of nothing by “seeking in their heart” (Doniger 25).  The ability to utilize the generative powers of creativity is clearly exemplified with Henry Fielding’s discussion of creativity: “[it] is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature”.  In this case, these “founding poets” introduced substance into the absence of everything, but desire was the catalyst for this birth of existence.  Clearly, the combination of creativity coupled with desire is a very potent convergence – it is the recipe from which all life began.  

The Rig Veda prompts “was there below? Was there above?” and responds by saying the above there was “giving-forth” and below, there was  “impulse” (Doniger 25).  It seems that from this desire came the creativity which formed substance, and then these different substances began to interact each other through impulses or “giving forth”, depending on whether or not these forces were below or above.

  In his discussion of the origin of desire, Maurice Bloomfield describes desire and the mind to have reciprocity between each other because they both relate to each other through a certain degree interdependence.  Bloomfield references the Hinduism notion that the vehicle for desire is the mind.  He says, “you mount your mind or wish-car and reach your destination, that is to say, the object of your desire” (Bloomfield 281). While the mind may be the vehicle for attaining desires, the mutual symbiosis between the mind and desire becomes more blatant when one realizes the similarities between the manas (desire-vehicle mind) and kama (desire).  Bloomfield perpetuates the interdependent relationship with desire and the mind by referencing the exchange directly: “fulfill desire, fulfill the mind of the poet” (Bloomfield 281).  Desire completes and is integral to the fulfillment of the mind, but the mind in turn delivers and acts out the desire: “by means of the mind one exercises desire” (Bloomfield 281).   There is totally reciprocating exchange between the mind and desire because the mind could not live without the fuel and the fulfilling impact of desire, but the desire needs the mind to implement itself on the world.  The mind simultaneously manufactures and receives the fulfilling benefits of desires.  Bloomfield’s argument that “either [desire or the mind] indifferently may be mounted and ridden to the goal,” is illogical because the destination of desire is only acquired through the mind and desire typically never “acquires itself” (Bloomfield 281).  However, Bloomfield’s recognition of the overlapping exchange between desire and manas has validity throughout the Hindu scriptures.  

The mutual essentiality of both concepts, mind and desire, is obvious because without the fuel of desire, the driver (and car) would be immobile, but without the navigation of the mind-driver, the car would soon crash into something.  However, given this mutually symbiotic relationship between desire and the mind, there is a need for some discipline.  Bloomfield recalls “the man who rides (as it were) in a chariot drawn by his five senses and directed by his mind (as the charioteer), who keeps it on the path of the virtuous, can never be overcome by his enemies (lust, wrath, and greed)” (Bloomfield 282). Some sections of the Upanisads and the Yoga Sutra pose a stark contrast to the Rig Veda in references to desire because they call for the discipline of wishes, to not let one’s senses run rampant, and to recognize desire as a potential cause of suffering.  

In the ascetic prevention of over-indulging, understanding is created.  “When a man has understanding, his mind is ever controlled; his senses do obey him, as good horses, a charioteer” (Olivelle 239).  This is a stark contrast from the man who lacks understanding because “his senses do not obey him, as bad horses, a charioteer” (Olivelle 239).    In other words, through the power of understanding one acquires more mastery over their senses and indulgences, and from this mastery, desires are more efficiently fulfilled because the senses work in harmony instead of discordance. 

Equally important to having your chariot of desires being pulled by good horses (i.e. an understanding mind), is the fulfillment of one’s desires.  The very fulfillment of desires dissolves avidya and generates a form of mokti where that self “cannot be grasped, by teachings or be intelligence, or even by great learning” (Olivelle 276).  A passage from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet describes children as having a similar inaccessibility: “You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts.  You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow” (Gibran 4).  The clarity associated with the self that enters the “Brahman-abode” and the unfathomable and unreachable alacrity of children have similarities (Olivelle 276).    However, the source of acquiring the ungraspable state of mokti is “when one’s desires disappear in this very world” because they have been authentically fulfilled (Olivelle 275).  So the Hindu view of desire-fulfillment is not selfish, but extremely selfless because by fulfilling your desires, you acquire more of a Brahman state from which you can more effectively help others.  In that sense, fulfilling your desires is the pathway to becoming the most effectively compassionate because you would have acquired a state of ungraspable continuity of presence.  

When the Upanisads say, “one who hankers after desires in his thoughts, is born here through his actions,” they are referring to the ephemeral, fleeting existence – the lack of a consistent presence – in someone who lacks mastery over their desires (Olivelle 275).   The man who has fulfilled his desires has a greater consistency of presence because he is not fleeting in and out of existence; he possesses the permanence of the “Brahman-abode” (Olivelle 275).  From this Brahman-abode, the Brahman works with seers, the wise, aesthetics, and the worlds, themselves.  The seers attain him and are freed from “passion and tranquil” and are made perfect, while the wise attain him and “enter into that very All” (Olivelle 276).  Furthermore, the ascetics become disciplined through renunciation, and then the worlds are “fully liberated” (Olivelle 276).  Clearly, the tactful, or mindful, fulfillment of desires generates the Brahman-abode, which leads one to a higher didactic and altruistic capacity that collectively helps others.

Desires can be fulfilled through self-love and knowing one’s self.  In the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, during the discussion between Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi, Yajnavalkya conveys that “one holds a husband dear…not out of love for the husband; rather, it is out of love for oneself (atman) that holds the husband dear” (Olivelle 28).  As the  dialogue progresses, it becomes clear that the relationship between self-love and external love is true for external desire; if you love or desire a wife, children, Gods, wealth, power, worlds, or any other possible thing, this love is a manifestation of self-love, of love for one’s atman.  This concept alludes to the idea that desire not only originates in our self, but also is satiated through our self-love.  Additionally, “by reflecting and concentrating on one’s self, one gains the knowledge of this whole world” (Olivelle 29).  So it is through knowing one’s self through reflection and concentration and through self-love that desires are swiftly fulfilled.  However, one cannot meander a fantastical world, believing their desires are instantly fulfilled through simple reflection.  Instead, enlightenment must be cultivated through various forms of yoga and through the utilization of the senses.  

If used correctly, our senses do much more than bombard us with desires; they become primary mechanisms for cultivating our desires .  The early Brhadaranyaka Upanisad discusses how in the beginning – after the spark of desire, creativity, and impulse – there was only the atman and desires of Brahman.  Brahman then used his sight to acquire “human wealth”, his hearing for “divine wealth”, speech for his wife, breath for his offspring, and body for his rites (Olivelle 17).  This is not to be taken linearly, insinuating that looking around will make you a billionaire, that listening to the radio will generate spiritually alignment, that speaking will cause your wife to spontaneously emerge, that when one breaths babies appear out of no where, or that one’s body will automatically perform rituals.  What the Upanisads are referring to here is that you possess the tools and gifts required to generate all of your desires.  With your own faculties of mind and senses, you can create a poignant relationship with a wife by communicating emotions, sincerity, and love; you have the calmness of breath to raise children, the intellectual expression to communicate and exchange wealth on a material level, the intuitive hearing to listen to and comprehend your inner voice, and the body to exercise ceremonial rites.  In other words, you are fully equipped with the tools needed to fulfill all desires and therefore should direct your love to the self instead of outwardly grasping for desires.  

It’s important that self-directed love is not misinterpreted as selfish conceit because “the Whole has become one’s very self,” according to Hindu belief.  Therefore, self-love is the pathway to most effectively love your world, wife, husband, gods, family, friends, and any other external entity (Olivelle 30).

The paradoxical relationship between atman and desires, in Hinduism, however arises when one understands that desires and wishes as infinite, while the body as finite.  However, by using one’s sight, hearing, speech, breathe, and body, one can recognize the everlasting nature of one’s jiva, the invariant component the emerges with each new reincarnation, and abandon the problematic idea of an ephemeral being.  No one is immortal, obviously, but recognizing the qualities of immortality, namely ideas, solves the problem with having a finite body with infinite desires.  John F. Kennedy once said, “A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on”.  Kennedy’s reference to the everlasting nature of ideas, amongst the fleeting, impermanent nature of man and worldly things can be used to solve the “infinite desires within a finite and ephemeral body” dilemma because one simply harnesses the power of the mind, to create the eternal ideas.

In the Svetasvatara Upanisads the ramifications of truly knowing God are discussed in relationship to desire.  The verse reads, “when one has known God, all the fetters fall off…birth and death come to an end” (Olivelle 254).  Furthermore, in addition to the cessation of samsara, or the termination of birth-death cycle, when one meditates on god, there is a “dissolution of the body…and in the absolute one’s desires are fulfilled” (Olivelle 254).  Through the devout and continual practice of comprehending god and by being mindfully meditative of God, the problems of the body, literally dissolve, and desires are instantly fulfilled.

Desires are significant because they generate motivation.  If one desires to know God, according to the Svetasvatara Upanisad, such a desire will consequentially result in the discovery of God and then the fulfillment of one’s desires.  However, desires must, not necessarily be “tamed”, but they truly must work in correlation with the mind.  The Katha Upanisad reminds us “when a man’s mind is his reins, intellect, his charioteer; he reaches the end of the road” (Olivelle 239).  By having the mind be the navigator that control’s the chariot of desire, one reaches the end of the road and their ultimate goal.  But this does not insinuate a termination of practice because new desires are generated and must be integrated with the mind.  Therefore, reaching the “end of the road” is not a signal to kick up your heals and retire from the process of acquiring jinana, but, rather, it is an indication of balance between the mind and desires, and that one’s process of knowing Brahman has evolved.

The Yoga Sutra teaches one to enjoy a state of objectivity where one’s “spirit stands in its true identity as observer to the world” (Miller 29).  Such centeredness is acquired through the “cessation of thought”, which is manufactured by, amongst other things, “practice and dispassion” (Miller 32).  Dispassion is specifically defined as “mastery over the craving for sensual objects” (Miller 32).  Because it is defined as simply mastery over desires and the senses, dispassion is not the abandonment of sensual satisfaction, but the mitigation or total elimination of the control that sensual desires exert over one’s spirit.  

While the Yoga Sutra doesn’t call for a total renunciation of all sensual desires, which would result in a divine being, the relationship with desires and the senses must be controlled.  The stance proposed by Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra portrays desire as perpetuator of “the control that material nature exerts over the human spirit,” preventing us from rediscovering our state of centeredness or sattva guna (Miller 1). 

In Samkhya philosophy, one of the six schools of Hindu Indian philosophy, a guna is described as a tendency towards a mental state.  In Samkhya there are three guna’s, or three of these mental state tendencies – sattva, rajas, and tamas.  Sattva -- most closely associated with the brahmin class -- implies a perfect equilibrium of will and desire and the tendency to always do good over evil.  The rajas mental state --most common in the second, kshatriyas varna -- implies a mental state that is too overactive and chaotic.   The third guna, tamas -- most closely referenced to the fourth, shudra varna -- refers to too much inactivity, lethargy, darkness, and obfuscation. 

 By having dispassion and control over desires for material cravings, one can observe “the lucid perfection of nature and spirit” (Miller 71).  Such a state of attentiveness can only be generated by not the abandonment, but the transcendence of the senses: “when the senses are mastered, they can be transcended, giving one immediate apprehension of all dimensions of nature” (Miller 72). In turn, this state of sattva creates absolute freedom, which “occurs when the lucidity of material nature and spirit are in pure equilibrium” (Miller 73).  Such a state of equilibrium is the same experience that famous American writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, described when he experienced a state of “Universal Being”: “my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes.  I become a transparent eye-ball” (Emerson 1109).  This state of incredibly transparency is the same equilibrium defined by the Yoga Sutra as absolute freedom.   In other words, absolute freedom and tranquility are not acquired by discarding desires.  Instead, such liberation and clarity is generated through mastery and tranquility over wishes, by absolving over-attachment to material longings, and by contemplating the pristine equilibrium of nature and spirit.

Despite the apparent disparity in the definitions and interpretations of desire, all the texts point to desire being a key element in the equation for eliminating suffering.  The Yoga Sutras point out how excessive desire must be eliminated, while the Rig Veda consider it a proliferating force, that it was the origin of existence, and the Upanisads calls for the necessity of balance, to ensure mental mastery from the mind over the chariot of the senses and desire, but they do mention how fulfilling one’s desires helps the wise, the seers, the wise, the ascetics, and liberates worlds.  

Whether the interpretation considers desire to be stifling or motivating, it is a major concept in Hindu philosophy.  Conclusively, desire should be examined as a vital source of motivation that must be neither abandoned nor allowed to run rampant.  Without desire, one runs the risk of slipping into a lethargic tamas guna, but with too much desire, one could become chaotically over-active, with a rajas mental tendency.  Only through the simultaneous mastery and fulfillment of desires can one acquire the “faith, heroic energy, mindfulness, contemplative calm, and wisdom” that generates tranquil cessation of thought and liberation (Miller 44).

Works Cited

Bloomfield, Maurice. “The Mind as Wish-Car in the Veda.” Journal of the American 

Oriental Society, 1919. p. 280-282

Provided a very philoosphically inspiring idea of the mind as a wish-car and scope on the rig veda as a whole.

Doniger, Wendy.  The Rig Veda. London: Penguin Books, 1981.

The core text of the Rig Veda.

Emerson, Ralph W. “Nature”. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 6^th ed. New 

York: Norton and Norton Publishing Co., 2003. p. 1106-1135.

The text of Emerson’s “Nature” used for references to Universal Being state being similar to the Yoga Sutra’s description of absolute freedom.

Gibran, Kahlil.  The Prophet.  New York: Alfred Knopf Publishing, 1953.

Useful interpretation of the pristine nature of children.

Miller, Barbara. Yoga:  The Discipline of Freedom.  Barbara Miller Trans.  New York: 

Bantam Books, 1998.

The core text of Patanjali’s Yoga sutra.

Olivelle, Patrick.  Upanisads. Trans. Patrick Olivelle. Oxford: Oxford U P, 1996.  

The primary text of the Hindu Upanisads.

Kuczmarski  PAGE 1 

Hold Your Breath or Embrace the Process: The Bhakti and Moksha Feast of Rama, Rhada, and Ramprasad

John Kuczmarski

11/16/05

Professor Coleman

Hinduism

Hold Your Breath or Embrace the Process:  The Bhakti and Moksha Feast of Rama, Rhada, and Ramprasad

In March of 2002, “vengeful Hindu mobs burned Muslim homes” and ended up killing over three hundred people in Gujarat, India (Dugger 1).  In 2002 Muslims launched a terrorist attack on a Hindu train traveling to Ayodha; Hindus responded with retaliatory riots.  These Muslim attacks on the Hindu train, however, were retaliatory in themselves; because Muslims were responding the demolition of a “16^th century mosque that was razed by Hindus in 1992” (Dugger 1).   This ping-pong game of back-and-forth retaliatory destruction has become detrimental to both religions by destroying the presence of safety as well as sanctified temples and buildings.  Is it possible that such violent outbursts could be prevented with a greater emphasis on dharma and, more specifically, bhakti in the Hinduism faith?

The etymology of bhakti is derived from the word “bhaj”, meaning to share, or to be devoted, to love” (Eck 103).  In other words, it is the devotional sharing of love to a God, or “the heart’s attitude toward devotion and love toward the lord” (Eck 103).  The Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana have their differences; the Bhagavad Gita is commonly considered to be more of a Machiavellian-like text, emphasizing power and schisms, while the Ramayana emphasizes dharma, duty, virtue and family.  Even though they were written over two millennia ago, both these texts play a monumental role in defining the mythology, stories, history, and lessons of bhakti today.

The key message of bhaktiyoga in the Bhagavad Gita is that one must practice the devotion and the love without expecting or having attachment to the fruits of honoring Krishna.  Lord Krishna reminds us that “no effort in this world is lost or wasted; a fragment of sacred duty saves you from great fear” (Miller 35).  If interpreted as a reference to bhakti, this would mean that the very intention of performing the sacred duty of bhakti, , even if it is a mere “fragment”, would liberate one from their fears.  This liberation from doubt and uncertainty through the act of bhakti is precisely what happens to Rhada in his love for Krishna, which will be discussed later.

In the Fifth teaching of the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna asks Krishna if actions are better than discipline and Lord Krishna responds, “renunciation and discipline in action both effect good beyond measure; but of the two, discipline in action surpasses renunciation of action” (Miller 57).  Because “renunciation is difficult to attain without discipline,” discipline is vital to the process of acquiring renunciation, and without discipline, eliminating one’s hates and problems via renunciation would be impossible (58).  This type of discipline is strongly associated with the devotional discipline of bhakti. According to Krishna, discipline – whether it be discipline of bhakti or dharma – becomes a tool that arms the practitioner, so they can “subdue the self, master his senses, unite himself with the self of all creatures” (Miller 58).  Bhakti can dissolve ego, give control of the senses, and make one recognize universality.  Both discipline and renunciation, when combined with bhakti, have tremendous significance in shaping the relationship between God and man in the Bhagavad Gita.

At the end of the Ramayana, it was bhakti that made the face of even the most demonic foe, Ravana, become “aglow with a new quality” (Narayan 159).  By the time Rama fires the Brahmasthra weapon, Ravana’s layers of “dross, the anger, conceit, cruelty, lust and egotism, which had encrusted his real self” had already been chipped and chiseled away by Rama’s arrows (Narayan 159).  After the brittle coating of debauchery and the cracked crust of deceit had been destroyed, Ravana’s “personality came through in its pristine form – of one who was devout and capable of tremendous attainments” (Narayan 159).  These incredible attainments and devotional-bhakti were concealed behind the external, grimy crust of malevolence, but the intense devotion had always been there. Because of his patience and insight, Rama was able to see through Ravana’s deceitful malign and recognize his wickedness simply as a sham.  Rama saw that deep down, beneath those vile layers, he was a bhakta.  Rama was able to have compassion for Ravana and have faith that even those most immoral enemy would be good because Rama, being the ideal king, husband, and man, possessed patience and faith for every human.  It’s extremely fortunate that Rama did reach out with his compassion and hang in there because Ravana, the person who maliciously captured Sita, had cultivated bhakti from meditating on Rama and from that devotion, he, indeed, did prove to be good: “his face shone with serenity and peace” (159).  Once again, devotion transformed malign into clarity in the Ramayana.  

The mythology and lessons of the Ramayana Bhagavad Gita tell us all about the interpretations and usages of bhakti, but one still needs to understand how bhakti is an evolving concept in Hinduism.  Juergensmeyer discusses how bhakti was one of the variables that has constantly evolved within the Hinduism faith.  He discusses that the devotional-love movements of bhakti were pioneered by “North Indian poet-saints of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries and by South Indian bards who lived centuries before” (Juergensmeyer 82).  Bhakti-devotion to a deity is seen in many different forms, and is something that has adapted and changed throughout time. One of the most interesting portrayals bhakti-devotion is in Radha’s relationship with Krishna, and Ramprasad’s with Kali.  

While Ramprasad and Rhada both experience suffering associated from being separated from their respective gods, they each have incredibly distinct and unique interpretations of this experience of samsara, and, consequentially, vastly different perspectives of moksha.  In the poetry of “Praise of Krishna”, it is obvious that Radha, like Ramprasad, suffers.  Radha is clearly plagued by snakes, darkness, night, and the times when his “feet were muddy and burning where thorns had scratched them” (Dimock 21).  However, unlike Ramprasad, Radha recognizes the suffering of samsara as a stepping-stone, and is part of the process, to moksha.  It is evident that Radha has this awareness that samsara continues into moksha, when he says,  “but I had the hope of seeing [Krishna], none of it mattered, and now my terror seems far away” (Dimock 21).  Radha’s fear literally dissolves as his love and trust in Krishna becomes salvation itself.  People say that “hope makes a good breakfast but a bad supper,” but here, hope has resilience and it endures.  His hope not only pulls and motivates Radha through the suffering of the material word, but his faith actually liberates him so that “all [his] anger is gone” (Dimock 50).  In a sense, his bhakti  to Krishna delivers him to the “far shore of this sea of conflict” (Dimock 46).  

With Rhada’s love and bhakti for Krishna, he doesn’t even have to hold his breath.  Instead, he simply transcends suffering altogether by embracing the process and discovering liberation through suffering, and then reunites with Krishna in the trysting place.  Radha’s interpretation of the juxtaposition of moksha and samsara insinuates a transiency; samsara is part of the process of liberation.  He believes that suffering, if interpreted correctly, can actually become moksha – being almost liberation “disguised as pain or suffering”.  This does not imply that all pain or suffering is fallacious or non-existent, but that, with the right interpretational twist, a person can transcend that real suffering and transform it into a freedom.

Ramprasad, and his relationship with the Mother, Kali, however, is not as lucid as Radha’s, and he is deluded by Maya, while being overwhelmed with an emotional angst throughout the poetry of Grace and Mercy in her Wild Hair.  Ramprasad says, 

“About maya this is the strangest of all – those trapped in it scurry every which way.  Those free of it rest contented.  ‘I’m this. This is mine.’ Idiot thoughts. O mind, you imagined all that stuff was real and carelelessly entangled the heart!” (Nathan 38).

Clearly, Ramprasad recognizes and is affected by these illusions that entangle him in tormenting problems.

Throughout the poems, the reader is positioned at a unique vantage point to witness Ramprasad being affected by these illusions.  From this “omniscient crow’s nest”, the reader, endowed with an outside perspective, can observe can observe Ramprasad being deluded by maya, even though he may not know he is experiencing an illusion.  An example of an unclear, deluded moment was when Ramprasad says, “I’m sweating like the slave of an evil spirit” (Nathan 12).  Later, he says, “Mind – no one’s anything to anyone” (Nathan 13).  These are not exactly lucid thoughts.  Instead, they seem to be quite obfuscated – thoughts reminiscent of being deluded by illusion.

Additionally, Ramprasad’s poetry is strongly emotional as opposed to being divine.  In some parts of the poem it appears to be just a common, everyday conversation between a bickering, needy adolescent and his occasionally nude mother.  There is an interesting inconsistency between the grand reverence of Kali by all the other gods and the simplicity and plainness of Ramprasad’s request for Kali’s affection.  To the Gods, Kali’s very “name is the only freedom,” but Ramprasad, at times, simply just thinks of her as a mother (Nathan 6).  While Ramprasad recognizes Kali’s divinity and omniscience, he clearly is more interested in simple love and affection, or at the least, recognition from his mother.

Ramprasad has the power to vindicate himself because he, in part, has created his own imprisonment.  The bulk of his imprisonment is based on his inability to be at peace with mind, Maya, and material possessions.  Ramprasad has allowed his mind to deplete his essence: “mind, you gambled and lost everything so how do I move now?” (Nathan 22).  Furthermore, in his discussion of Maya, he asks, “who am I? Who is mine? Who else is real?” showing that his inability to relinquish Maya has demolished his identity.  Finally, he is consumed by material possessions when he talks about beauty living “in a pleasure house” and being “lured” into the world” (Nathan 8).  Ramprasad experiences bouts of disparity and lack of clarity, but he also can be incredible wise and illuminated at times, too.

Amongst being partially deluded at times, one can witness him flickering in and out of awareness with crystal-clear alacrity.  Towards the end of the poems, he eliminates the “wine of desire” and “begging door to door” (Nathan 47).  Clearly, the curtains of moksha open for split second, and Ramprasad mitigates some of the habits that entangle him in suffering.  He is, at times, no doubt deluded by mind and illusions, but he experiences incredible awareness and displays the capacity to truly free himself.  During those times of illumination, he knows what to do and executes it with incredible tenacity.  He is aware of the deception of illusions and even says, “I’m not going to be fooled anymore” (Nathan 47).  Additionally, he’s aware and is “light of the passions that almost sank me in the poisoned well” (Nathan 47).   Ramprasad makes his relationship with Kali extremely bleak and full of despair, but he is aware of his possession of knowledge and knows how to truly utilize his mind to liberate him “into the saving waters” (Nathan 65).  

The poetry of Kali is not about Ramprasad’s trials and tribulations, but rather his respect of Kali and struggle to free himself from being overly self-conscious.  When Ramprasad describes his mother running around naked, he is at first, offended: “Why are you naked again?  Good grief, haven’t you any shame…don’t you have any clothes” (Nathan 40).  But even though he may have initially taking offense, Ramprasad is captivated by Kali's ability to obliterate being overly self-conscious.  In her nakedness she has a tremendous presence of self-confidence that makes her “necklace gleam,” so that “even Shiva fears [Kali] when [she’s] like this” (Nathan 40). While Ramprasad often awe-struck with admiration for Kali’s demolition of inhibition and doubt, he is not jealous.  Ramprasad still considers Kali to be close to him, and simply has maternal respect for the deity. 

Rhada recognizes the contingency of samsara into moksha, while Ramprasad detrimentally sees both concepts as separate entities.  Rhada, unlike Ramprasad, would see the samsara of “being born in 8 million forms” as part of the liberation process (Nathan 8).  However, Ramprasad does have moments of illumination and respect for Kali, even though he primarily interprets interactions with Kali as snares of entrapment or the prolongation of suffering. Ramprasad looks at the prolongation of distance between he and Kali as suffering, but Rhada deals with the prolongation as something that will make the union with Krishna, all the more spectacular and freeing.  This is kind of similar to the concept of fasting.  One can interpret fasting the “Ramprasad-way” -- as suffering, starvation, and torment -- or the “Rhada way”-- as something that makes the final feast so much more enjoyable because of the building anticipation.  The latter method allows one to not only enjoy, but to respect the fasting process (or the duration of time away from God), and through that appreciation, generate liberation.

In his discussion of new patterns in Hindu traditions involving bhakti, Ted Solomon talks about a shift in the methodology of Brahmin practitioners.  Solomon writes, “Orthodox Brahmins traditionally committed to the paths of ritual observance and of knowledge are turning to the path of devotion” (Solomon 32).  Even the most converntional Brahmins, typically gravitating to the knowledge-based path, are realizing the significance for the poignant path of love and devotion.  They do not abandon their traditions nor discard knowledge, but embrace a more wholistic pursuit involving the essentiality of bhakti.  Embracing more paths of bhakti, as opposed to solely paths of knowledge impact culture as well: “modern cultural performances, such as concerts, ballet, and dance-drama, ‘gain their deepest significance for Indians and expressions of devotion’” (Solomon 32).  So even today, the practice of bhakti is shifting and undergoing altercations within the different varnas, just as it was shifting around the 1600s with the North Indian poet-saints.  Hopefully, with greater attention to the scriptures and the detailed duty of dharma and compassion derived from bhakti, there will cease to be episodes of violence like the 1992 riots.  Furthermore, instead of a neutral position, simply one of cessation of violence, hopefully more people will practice bhakti and embrace the ideals of Rama and the appreciations of Rhada to not simply find liberation, but to have faith, despite outward appearances, in the intrinsic goodness all people.

.  

Works Cited

Dimock, Edward C. & Levertov, Denise.  In Praise of Krishna.  London: U of Chicago P, 

1967.

Poetry of Radha and Krishna.

Dugger, Celia.  “Hindu Rioters Kill 60 Muslims in India”. The New York Times.  March 

1, 2002.

Discussion of violence and riots in India between Hindus and Muslims.

Eck, Diana. Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India.  3^rd ed.  New York:  Columbia U P, 

1998.

Interesting interpretations of seeing the divine deity image, darsan.

Juergensmeyer, Mark. The New Cold War? : Religious Nationalism Confronts the 

Secular State. Comparative Studies in Religion and Society; 5.  Berkeley, Berkeley U P, 1994.

Discussion of violence in religious political groups and the role of bhakti in developing Hinduism.

Miller, Barbara. The Bhagavad Gita. Trans. Barbara Miller.  New York: Bantam, 1986.

The Full text of the Gita.

Narayan, R. K. The Ramayana. Trans. R. K. Narayan.  New York: Penguin Books, 1972.

The translation of the Ramayana.

Nathan, Leonard & Seely, Clinton. Grace and Mercy in her Wild Hair. Prescott: Homh 

Press, 1999.

Ramprasad’s relationship with Kali in poetry.

Solomon, Ted.  “Early Vaisnava Bhakti and Its Autochthonous Heritage.” History of 

Religions. Chicago.  Chicago U P, 1970. p. 32-38

Interesting discussion of new images of bhakti in Brahmin culture.

Moby Dick: Capturing the Geist of the American Renaissance through Melville’s Transparent Eye

Moby Dick: Capturing the Geist of the American Renaissance through Melville’s Transparent Eye

John Kuczmarski

 “It may no be precisely accurate to refer to our mid-nineteenth century as a re-birth; but that was how the writers themselves viewed it.  Not as a re-birth of values that had existed previously in America, but as America’s way of producing a renaissance, by coming to its first maturity and affirming its rightful heritage in the whole expanse of art and culture”

-- Francis Matthiessen, American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman

September 25, 2005

Colorado College

Professor Dan Tynan

English 394: American Renaissance

Moby Dick: Capturing the Geist of the American Renaissance through Melville’s Transparent Eye

In his “hugely influential book”, Francis Matthiessen asserts, “works such as Moby Dick came to be seen as declarations of American cultural independence from the aesthetic canons of England and Europe” (Selby 51).  In other words, Melville, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Whitman, and other mainstream American authors that wrote around the 1840s, produced quintessential “declarations” that not only differentiated from the traditional European and English frameworks, but also generated an entirely genuine American literary construct in itself.  Although these writers and their craft, like Melville’s Moby Dick or Emerson’s Nature, mark only the nascence of the “flowering of native American literary culture”, this burgeoning style was the very first clean break from the English and European literary methods (Selby 51).  Because the era was the genesis of an entirely original and undiluted American style, Matthiessen and literary scholars refer to that period as the “American Renaissance” (Matthiessen vii).  

The factors that caused the break from traditional literary transitions launched extremely revolutionary ideas.  Some of these radical messages included the economic self-sufficiency and omnipresent divinity inherent in the revolutionary transcendentalism of Emerson, Whitman, and Thoreau, and Hawthorne’s dark-sided criticism of the Puritan mind.  Pinpointing the precise cause of this movement is complex, but it is clear that a creatively energetic and flourishing period of entirely new ideological and literary frontier emerged.  The backbone of this shift revolved around the authors of that time and, more specifically,  Melville’s Moby Dick.  Moby Dick was such a seminal piece of American literature because of its simultaneous depiction of antebellum America, the emphasis of antebellum America in defining the American Renaissance, and most importantly, Melville’s ability to intertwine the myriad contemporary transcendental ideas with rich Biblical, geographical, historical, and psychological themes into the text.

While Benjamin Franklin was no doubt the key figure representing Enlightenment in American -- by founding the American Philosophical Society and his myriad inventions, from the lightning rod to ventilation systems -- Melville, Emerson, and the other transcendentalists, no doubt, define the literary American Renaissance (Hoffman 36).  Scholars claim that Melville’s work operates on so many different layers that the same text of Moby Dick can be read literally, psychologically, morally, or mythically (Bixby107).  David Leverenz even believes that Moby Dick can be read purely in terms of gender issues: “Moby Dick is obviously a man’s book, about a man obsessed with avenging his shattered manhood” (Leverenz 126).  From whatever perspective the text is read, it no doubt leaves an impact. Additionally, Moby Dick is a novel that plugs into nearly whichever generation that reads it, and it is precisely this ability, to connect with myriad generations, that makes it an archetypal text.

Because Moby Dick portrays “an image of America that is particularly conducive to that specific generation of readers,” Donald Pease and Wai-chee Dimock declare that Moby Dick is an “archetypal American text” (Selby 147).  Given that Pease can only really be understood by following the logic of Matthiessen, because so much Pease’s criticism revolves around Matthiessenian analysis, one thing is clear from Pease: Moby Dick has become an archetypal text because it elucidates “the tensions and struggles within antebellum America” (Selby 147).  However, just because the book uses brilliant imagery -- drawing Biblical, geographical, psychological, and historical references – to paint the picture of America before the Civil War, does not make it the so-called great make American novel; what makes Moby Dick the great American novel is the fact that antebellum American – the very era of which Melville wrote – is the period that has “come to be seen as epitomizing American identity and culture generally” (Selby 147). 

In other words, it is the formation  “American Renaissance”, and the specific gravitation to the pre-Civil War era, that embosses Moby Dick upon American literature. If this same logic was extrapolated and applied so that the Gilded Age or the Post-Reconstruction Era was said to embody American culture and identity, then Twain’s Huckleberry Finn or Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, respectively, could easily have been the “great American novel”.  However, this was not the case. Melville’s masterpiece is the centerpiece of the antebellum era, and antebellum America is the centerpiece of the American revolutionary identity and Renaissance.  Because of this inference, interpreting Moby Dick, or more specifically, the protagonist of the novel, remains one of the best ways to investigate the American Renaissance.

One of the key discrepancies in the format of the novel is that the unequivocal nature between the narration and the character of Ishmael.  From the first sentence, Melville degrades his primary character by dubbing him Ishmael – “the very name being significant of a propensity to wander” (Parker and Hayford 595).  In giving him this name, Melville connotes the Biblical, outcast Ishmael, who “will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers: (Genesis 16:12).  Right off the bat, Melville crafts the character Ishmael into a penniless, low status wanderer -- a stark contrast from the magisterial presence and long-winded narrative of the narrator Ishmael. 

And it is this contrast that gives Ishmael the status of the “Twenty-Ninth bather” from Whitman’s Song of Myself , which is a model of Emerson’s transparent eyeball image.  Whitman asserts that to truly experience the world one must be fully in it, yet distinct enough from it.  This is fully exemplified with Melville’s creation of Ishmael because the character Ishmael he can be “bathe by the shore…dancing and laughing”, while the narrator Ishmael can remain hidden, “handsome and richly deft” (Whitman 2238). The narrative-character duality between Ishmael simultaneously gives him the immersion of experience and the awareness of outside observation.  Clearly, Melville did not splatter the messages of contemporary writers into a messy pastiche, but cleverly intertwined them into a delicate framework throughout the story of the Great While Whale.

But one other essential detail must be addressed regarding the protagonist is this: it was not Melville who dubs the narrator Ishmael, but the character himself who asks the reader to “call [him] Ishmael (Melville 1).  By having the narrator christen himself as Ishmael, the very first sentence is symbolic of America independently identifying its own style; it is not a British or European label, but an American identity made by America, for America.  Through this simple phraseology Melville brilliantly makes the storytelling much more tangible by using the low-status, “donkey of a man” character coupled with the elaborate story-telling capacity of the narrative Ishmael.  The penniless, Ishmael character can objectively wander throughout Nantucket and observe the dealings of the Pequod, while the narrative Ishmael, with his majestic descriptions, can infuse the details of the story that the character Ishmael experiences.  The two are almost completely distinct personas, but they both embody the self-identifying richness of American heritage.   

But Ishmael is more than a simple character narrative; he is what Emerson would refer to as a “transparent eyeball” where one feels like a “part or particle of God” and where “all currents of the Universal Being circulate through [him]” (Emerson 10).  There are strong Emersonian themes running throughout Melville’s work.  In regards to writing style, Nina Baym remarks, “It is surprising how much Melville resembled Emerson” (Baym 2).  Additionally, in a letter to Evert Duyckink, Melville alludes to Emerson’s elevated intelligibility and remarking on Emerson’s depth of thought, Melville remarks, “I love all men who dive” (Melville; Duyckink 1).  To further understand Melville’s link between Ishmael and the transparent eyeball state, one must dive into an understanding of Emerson.  

As one Colorado College professor scrutinized, “Emerson is not a philosopher”; he approaches the topics in Nature is in a literary manner, not a typical philosophical train of logic.  While Emerson’s methods may not be philosophical, the concepts in Nature certainly are.  Melville’s usage of circle, transparent, and nature imagery is strongly reminiscent of Emerson’s concepts in nature.  Especially significant, however, is Emerson’s discussion of the communicative distinction between God and man is of primary importance to understanding Ishmael.

The relationship with fellow man is different than the relationship with God.  There are tasks, routines, agendas, appointments, and scripts involved with relationships with fellow man; those create the enchaining protocol of conduct that simultaneously provide direction, but also completely limit man.  The very human-to-human interaction, even if it is devoted to the liberation or removal of the enchaining protocol of conduct, cannot escape its medium because.  Just as a telephone call cannot occur without some form of telephone wiring, station, or signal, the human-to-human interaction cannot function without the enchaining protocol of conduct.  Communication with God, however, is the abandonment of script; it is the abandonment of certainty, and the fixation and obsession with compassion.  However, because the essence of universal communication revolves around compassion, the established connection is very strong.  When the Universal being is felt and “all egotism vanishes,” confining protocols cease to exist (Emerson 10).

The transparent eyeball image is vital to explaining the distinction between spiritual communication and human-to-human communication.  This state of universal knowing and awareness can only be acquired, Emerson states, when all “mean egotism vanishes” and during this time of incredible humanitarian unity, ironically, Emerson feels that “the name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental” (Emerson 10).  Not only does the presence of fellow man – friend or stranger, master or servant, whatever the relationship – appear accidental, but it is a “trifle and a disturbance” (Emerson 10).  And it is a trifling disturbance that confronts Ishmael in the first three inns he visits.

Upon settling on the Spouter-Inn, Ishmael has tapped into the universal being.  His first attempt at finding a place to rest, the “Crossed Harpoons”, is “too expensive and jolly” (Melville 8).  And even though the “dreary streets” are checkered with “blocks of blackness”, Ishmael’s next stop, the “Sword-fish”, is too illuminated, with “such fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packaged snow and ice” (Melville 8).  Next, “The Trap”, where the Negro church represents the sacrificial “Ben Hinnom” Valley, or the Valley of Slaughter, from the Biblical location of Tophet near Jerusalem, is too dark and hell-like (Melville 8).  What is Ishmael looking for?  More directly, what is Melville showing us?  His character doesn’t want a place too bright or too luxurious, like the “Crossed-Harpoons or Sword-Fish, because such a place is not fluid, but fixed – the opposite of the Emersonian state of Universal Being, which is “not fixed but fluid” (Emerson 48).  Nor does Ishmael want a vile, dark place like “The Trap”, where “disagreeable appearances, swine, spiders, snakes…and the sordor and filths of nature” lie because that is an impediment to the Universal being, as well (Emerson 48).  Melville deliberately shows Ishmael’s elimination process to show his unity with the Universal being.  Additionally, it is the “zephyr” from the Greek west wind god, Euroclydon that causes Ishmael to settle on the Spouter Inn.  Being drawn to the inn but a gust of wind is strongly reminiscent of the “pure spirit, fluid, volatile, and obedient” quality of Universal oneness (Emerson 48).  

Once Ishmael commits to the “universally connected” Spouter-Inn, his tale has already begun.  In fact, all throughout his journey on shore, Ishmael is on board some kind of ship on another.  He is already “aboard a boat” more or less when he sees the “straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft” (Melville 10).  Additionally, when he hears Father Mapple’s sermon, the preacher had ascended the “perpendicular side ladder” to the pulpit as if “mounting a ship form a boat at sea” (Melville 37).  Clearly, when Ishmael has decided on the Spouter-Inn, his sea-faring journey has already begun.

More importantly, however are the Biblical connotations for arriving at the Spouter-Inn by the Euroclydon wind because this is exactly what happened to Paul, formerly Saul, in his sail for Rome.  Along the shore of Crete, Paul’s ship was “caught by the storm and could not head into the wind; so [he] gave way to it and were driven along” (Acts 27:15).  This maneuver of being carried by what the Bible describes as the “wind of hurricane force”, the Euroclydon wind, is in itself extremely in tune with the Emerson’s idea of Universal Being (Acts 27:14). After all, giving into the course of the celestial Euroclydon storm would be becoming one with the “uncontained and immortal beauty” running through the “currents of the Universal Being” (Emerson 10).   

Just as Saul, reborn as Paul, goes on to tell the story of “the Kingdom of god…about Jesus from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets” when he arrives to preach in Rome (Acts 28:23), so does Ishmael, possibly reformed himself, go on to tell his story of the universe of the Pequod, the sinister Ahab, the prophet Gabriel, who forbade Ahab’s doom for seeking out the whale, and Ishmael’s near-death escape from the “closing vortex…ever contracting toward the button-like black bubble” that sank the Pequod (Melville 566).  The ties between the Euroclydon wind driving Ishmael to the Spouter-Inn automatically encapsulate the story as having biblical significance because Ishmael, in that specific context, symbolizes Paul, telling his tales after so many years of blindness to, and then illumination toward, God.  Additionally, however, the process of eliminating the fixed (and not fluid), expensive inns along with the inn of “blackness and darkness” reveals Ishmael’s tendency to gravitate toward loci where the Universal Being force can resonate, which shows his appreciation of nature.  

To Emerson, the universe is composed of nature and soul. Nature, basically everything except your soul, is all other men, body, nature, and art. “Nature in the common sense refers to essences unchanged by man “like space, the air, rivers, and life (Emerson 8).  Art, on the other hand, is “applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture” (Emerson 8).  So the Pequod would be an example of art – the “contrasting things – oak, and maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp” -- within the unchanged essence of the ocean (Melville 547).  Because of the “man-made art within nature context,” Ishmael experiences oneness by simply being aboard the Pequod.

But on board the Pequod, whether it be near the horn of Africa or in the vastness of the Indian Ocean, some form of Universal being constantly surrounds Ishmael: “the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman’s look” (Melville 531).  As the hunt for Moby Dick reaches its apex, Ishmael witnesses how the Pequod itself “held them all…all the individualities of the crew, the man’s valor, that man’s fear; guilt and guiltiness, all varieties were welded into oneness” (Melville 547).  Furthermore, as Ishmael observes a pod of nursing mothers, he sees the beauty of nature in the ocean that is “to a considerable depth exceedingly transparent” (Melville 386).  Out of all the depictions of nature’s beauty and “unearthly reminiscence” witnessed by Ishmael, it is no coincidence that one of the most wondrous occurs with the usage of Emersonian transparency.  Clearly, the link between Emerson’s universal being and transparency and Ishmael’s narration is secure, and even though the vessel may be set on an outrageous hunt and controlled by a mad captain, it, nevertheless, operates as binding universe in itself where, as Emerson put it, “all the parts incessantly work into each other’s hands for the profit of man” (Emerson 12).  

One of the interesting things about Ahab, which Ishmael gets to observe, is his almost intrinsic connection with the whale. Nearly every ship-captain Ahab encounters he interrogates about the Whale and everyone tells him to turn back, but Ahab’s obdurate resilience is indefatigable.  When he meets the Jeroboam he is encountered by the mad Gabriel who prophetically was “ascending to the main-royal mast-head, was tossing one arm in frantic gestures, and hurling forth prophecies of speedy doom” about pursuing the whale (Melville 315).  When Ahab meets Captain Boomer from the Samuel Enderby, Bunger is astonished at the devil-like heat that radiates from Ahab: “this man’s blood – bring the thermometer! — It’s at the boiling point!” (Melville 439).  And even when Captain Boomer suggests that the whale is “best let alone”, Ahab remarks that Moby Dick is “a magnet” perpetually luring him into the chase (Melville 439).  

Another interesting quality of Ahab is his demonic personality.  M.O. Percival references Kierkegaard: “the demonic person, he says, becomes more and more shut up and incommunicative” (Percival 59).  Connecting with the “many silences in Ahab’s life”, one could infer that the captain becomes more and more demonic throughout the journey.  However, despite what Kierkegaard says, it is not simple isolation that creates a devilish character.  Instead, it is the a combination of Ahab’s oddities -- the “solemn meals, eaten in awful silence,” how “Ahab’s soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom,” and the hot-blooded demeanor that constantly affects Ahab – that make him a very mercurial character (Melville 151).  Mercurial offers a much more accurate description of Ahab because from Captain Boomer’s remarks about his boiling blood and from witnessing his dream episodes, where he “would burst from his state room, as though escaping from a bed that was on fire,” one realizes that Ahab is a character who suffers with his compulsive pursuit of the great White Whale and should by pitied, not demonized (Melville 201).  

Alternatively, maybe Ahab is sexually deprived or, through some seriously awkward logic, maybe relates the great White Whale to sex.  After all bursting from a “fiery bed” and constantly getting “boiling blood’ when discussing Moby Dick certainly has its sexual connotations, as well.  But if Melville is symbolically linking Ahab to Satan, then, in a purely Biblical context, he is insinuating that he is Lucifer – a former archangel who had stood side-by-side with God before becoming corrupt and falling from Heaven to Hell.  Given the symbolic link to Lucifer being a degraded, character who lost his place, Ahab could use a little compassion, considering his state.  Besides, compassion goes a long way, even if it is “sympathy for the devil” (Jagger and Richards).  Regardless of the cause of Ahab’s idiosyncrasies, considering the captain’s obstinate and deranged drive to hunt the whale, it is amazing that Ishmael managed to escape the deadly demise of the Pequod at all.  

But Ishmael’s ability to so effectively account the story of Moby Dick goes back to how Ishmael first sought the ideal place to begin his journey -- seeking, not places of luxury, not of poverty, not of illumination nor darkness, but a place that resonates with the Universal Being.  By synchronizing himself with the Universal being Ishmael was able to decide upon a place that would harmonize him with methods to not only survive the adventure, but also to then effectively re-account the story. 

It is very fortunate, too, that the protagonist of the great American novel symbolizes universal being and the biblical journeys of Paul because this bodes a very auspicious future for America in the Reconstruction era.  Even though it was Melville, in his Hawthorne and his Mosses, who referred to Hawthorne as an “American Shakespeare”, Melville -- because of his literary mastery and ability to intertwine biblical, geographical, historical, religious, and psychological themes – is most certainly an “American Shakespeare” himself.  This mastery is certainly revealed in his masterpiece.

So Moby Dick represents the American Renaissance because the book reflects antebellum America and antebellum America is considered the centerpiece of American revolutionary identity; but it is not simply the connection with antebellum America that makes Moby Dick a centerpiece of American literature and the great American novel.  Instead, it is Moby Dick’s connection with antebellum American coupled with Melville’s ability to intertwine the contemporary transcendentalist ideas of Emerson’s universal being along with rich psychological, religious, historical, and geographic themes that make Moby Dick capable of taking the cake for capturing the cultural geist of the entire American Renaissance. 

Works Cited

Baym, Nina. “Melville’s Quarrel with Fiction.” Proceedings of the Modern Language 

Association of America. 34, 1979.  p. 909-923.

Described Melville’s similarity to Emerson

Bixby, William.  Rebel Genius: The Life of Herman Melville.  New York: David McKay 

Company, Inc.

Described the multiple ways MD can be read and Melville’s rebellious bio.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays and Lectures. New York: The Library of America, 1983.

Excerpts from Nature regarding the transparent eyeball image and the details of Universal Being.

Hoffman, Abraham & Soifer, Paul. United States History. New York: Wiley Publishing, 

1998.

Useful account of Ben Franklin and general antebellum to reconstruction US 

History.

Holy Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 

1984.  

Essential reference for deciphering Melvillian Biblical metaphors.

Jagger, Mick and Richards, Keith. “Sympathy for the Devil”. Beggar’s Banquet. Dec. London: London 

Records,1968.

The lyrics of “Sympathy for the Devil”.

Leverenz, David. Manhood and the American Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell U P, 1989. 

p.270-281.

Discusses MD in terms of gender roles and manhood.

Matthiessen, Francis Otto. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of 

Emerson and Whitman.  London: Oxford UP, 1941. p. vii.
Quintessential resource for one of the primary analysts of what is none to be the 

American Renaissance.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Random house, The Modern Library, 1926.

The primary text of MD.

Melville, Herman. “On Ralph Waldo Emerson and his Philosophy.” Letter to Evert 

Duyckink. March 3, 1849.  HYPERLINK "http://www.melville.org/hmquotes.htm" http://www.melville.org/hmquotes.htm.

Primary source reference of Melville’s thoughts on Emerson.

Percival, M.O. A Reading of Moby Dick. Chicago: Chicago U P, 1930.

Selby, Nick. Herman Melville: Moby Dick. New York: Columbia U P, 1998.

Wove together reflections or literary critics, including Matthiessen and Leverenz.

Whitman, Walt. "Song of Myself". The Norton Anthology of American Literature: 

1820-1865. Vol. B. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003. p. 2232.

The full text of "Song of Myself".

  It is important to note that, because of the distinction between compassion and pity, Ahab would deserve compassion, but Lucifer, most likely, would not.  Ahab truly suffers and deserves compassion, which is a sympathetic concern for one’s sufferings with the desire to alleviate and/or reduce such sufferings.  But, the corruptness of Lucifer more aptly deserves pity, which is a simply an emotion of sorrow upon encountering a person who suffers, making it compassion without the desire to help, or “indifferent compassion”.

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