X-Digest-Num: 67 Message-ID: <44114.67.318.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 20:02:54 +0200 From: Robin Turner Subject: {zo'o.o'i} non-mystically-inclined lojbanists trash this immediately! X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 318 Content-Length: 3552 Lines: 86 la kris. cusku di'e > On Fri, 19 Feb 1999, Robin Turner wrote: > > > {.a'u.ienaisai} Cultural "hooks and levers" are {li'a} very useful, but > > not much help to people outside the culture > [...] > > {.i'a} you often need some kind of symbol/myth/archetype system to give > > emotive power to whatever practices you're experimenting with {ku'i} > > Full agreement; that's my point. What kinds of hooks and levers do the > lojban language and culture provide the aspiring lojbanic mystic? Anything > besides what its speakers bring from outside? Well, you bring in some stuff from outside, then it gets kind of transmuted ... read on! > > > It's often better to work with your own, and Lojban can aid this process > > of internal world-creation, while avoiding the trap of uncritical > > cultural assumptions. Apart from anything else, it forces you to think > > about what you really mean {mu'a} if I'm designing a Lojban > > prayer/meditation/affirmation, it makes a difference as to whether I > > start something with {.a'o} {.e'o} {ju'o} {se'o} etc. etc. > > Agreed. That's why I'm creating pala-kalloejna, of course. > ki'a zo gy. pala-kalloejna gy. > > > {ta'o} I posted an example of this some time back. > > Well, know everyone knows what I'm doing on a Friday night: scouring the > lojban list archives. :^) To save you the trouble, and explain more ..... {puzuvu} a guy called Matsyendranath ("Fisherman-master" - also credited by some as the founder of hatha yoga) wrote a book called "Kaulajnana Nirnaya" ("clan-knowledge" duuh, something-or-other). Tucked away amongst all the rather improbable-sounding instructions on how to cause earthquakes etc. is a rather neat little meditation on three shaktis: Iccha ("Will") Jnana ("Knowledge") and Kriya ("Action"), who are associated with the "three lights": sun, moon and fire, and soul/emotion, mind and body respectively. In the meditation they are visualised in the heart, head and abdomen/genitals. I really liked this meditation ({zo'o} never managed the earthquakes, though!) and started playing around with it. Since I don't speak Sanskrit, and don't have much to do with medieval Indian culture (much of which the Kaula Tantra is a witty protest against) I reworked it extensively, first in English, then in Lojban. The end result was a meditation I submitted to this list, the core of which is: .i .eo doi solri ko kurji ro'i .i .eo le pruxi cu prami je gleki .i .eo doi lunra ko kurji ro'e .i .eo le menli cu sarlu je sanji .i .eo doi fagri ko kurji ro'o .i .eo le xadni cu kanro je tsali (there's more, but it's not really pertinent) NOTE: strictly speaking, {doi} requires a cmene, so it ought to be {la solr.} etc. but that screws up the poesy, so I left them as gismu. Also in normal Lojban usage {doi} would be preceded by a vocative - in this case {pe'u} - but {.eo} is still grammatical, and sounds better here. What has happened here is that you have a framework for meditation/visualisation which is not bound to a specific culture or belief-system, but still has a certain emotional impact, because sun, moon and fire have pretty universal associations. If you're a polytheist, you can see {la solri} et al. as god(esse)s; if you're a monotheist you can see them as aspects of God (like the 99 names of God in Islam); if you're an atheist you can simply see them as personifications of abstract properties. What I found, surprisingly, was that using Lojban actually had more "oomph" than either English or Sanskrit. co'o mi'e robin.