Where to begin...something small perhaps. Though I hesitate because only a few short weeks ago I wrote "little things are very very big things." Either way I'm the proper number of Big Sky brewery beers to begin my musings on the two works we have been assigned.
I want to back track to Eliot and the "Still Point." I struggled mightily with the concept of the Still Point as it is a place that moves "neither from nor towards" and "at the still point, there the dance is." A seeming paradox, movement in non-movement, warps my tiny brain. That is until i tweaked the nouns ever so slightly to fit a more Gita/Hamlet model. The Still Point is the point of Action within Inaction. Eureka! I've found it.
In both the Gita and Hamlet, time stops while Arjuna and Hamlet speak to their spiritual guides, Krishna and the Ghost. In Arjuna's case, a lone chariot stands in limbo between two blood thirsty armies for an hour or longer yet no emissary comes to ask why he delays the slaughter. In Hamlet, Hamlet follows the Ghost; Horatio and Marcellus chase after him a mere 6 lines later, yet the Ghost and Hamlet have a conversation that lasts over 10 minutes before they catch up to him. In both cases, the timing doesn't make sense, it isn't linear. Both characters leave point A in route to point B yet somehow get lost and end up at point Q before they materialize back at point B. They both pass through a place where "the light is still/ at the still point of a turning world" (Burnt Norton 135). The spiritual revelations of both the Ghost and Krishna are extremely profound but also extremely instantaneous, a point that nearly doesn't exist yet are more moving than any point that does.
This provokes an even more profound question. When the Still point occurs, when the instantaneous revelation sweeps over us, do we even realize it? Or do we simply "have the experience and miss the meaning?" Perhaps this why we struggle with the Epiphanic feeling. As the ghost says "Remember Me." Maybe we must remember the Still Point. The inaction and hesitation that plagues both Arjuna and Hamlet are really just memory glitches. Moments when we forget our Sacred Duty, our Inscape. Eliot says "At the moment which is not of action or inaction/ You can receive this: "on whatever sphere of being/ The mind of a man may be intent/ At the time of death"--that is the one action/ (And the time of death is ever moment)" (Dry Salvages 155-159). To me he is saying we are always focused on our sacred duty. Arjuna is always focused on being a warrior. Hamlet is always focused on his revenge. Kevin is always focused on Kevining. But humans aren't perfect and we forget, especially as we get older. Being forgetful is succumbing to inaction. The Still Point is the instantaneous point of forgetfulness and inaction in which the Self must dance with itSelf to return to the rhythm of Sacred Duty. The Celestial Self Vinyl has skipped a beat, or as Hamlet says "The time is out of joint" (1.5.210). My guess, we need these periods of forgetfulness as reminders to the reality of important things, I think I would call it a reminder of the Ultimate Practical. I read the Gita and I listen in class and I cant help but think that the Ultimate Practical is always within us. Krishna calls it the Sacred Duty of the Self. Hopkins calls it inscape. I might also call it the Cosmic Watermark, always there but only visible in certain light.
Now for some closer to my thoughts. In the introduction to the Gita, Miller says that much confusion surrounds the final lines.
O King, when I keep remembering
this wondrous and holy dialogue
between Krishna and Arjuna
I rejoice again and again.
In my memory I recal again
and again Krishna's wonderous from--
great is my amazement, King;
I rejoice again and again.
Where Krishna is lord of dicipline
and Arjuna is the archer,
there do fortune, victory, abundance,
and morality exist, so I think.
Rememberence causes Sanjaya to rejoice. He remembers his Sacred Duty, to be a poet, the mouthpiece of Krishna. He erases his previous moments of forgetfulness. However, the important place in the entire dialogue isn't during the revelation or any one of the teachings, but when "Krishna is lord of dicipline/ and Arjuna is the archer." The important place is the Still Point between two armies bent on destruction. The important place is before any of the teachings are even unfolded or the majesty of Krishna is unveiled. The important place is instantaneous, action within inaction. The important place is where Arjuna forgets and therefore must remember. Because "there do fortune, victory, abundance,/ and morality exist, so I think."
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