2 Kings 17:10-11

What customs theses people were attracted to:

It would seem like light of freedom that God would grant.

The landscape of dreams in the waking world in a land so abundant;

Where rain had nourished with life, all the grass and trees with green.

The beauty of orgies amidst the cool wind, under the shade of evergreen trees,

Twisted sacraments and forbidden practices to savor indulgence all the more;

To be ignorant of the deficiency of a depreciated heaven on earth.

The brightest light in the bluest sky, delight that makes life seem worth living;

The anticipation and alleviation of worldly love, pleasure of taking, pleasure of giving.

But after a while, the light rusts old,

from sterling silver to ephemeral gold;

and leaves them behind as their deterioration unfolds.

Thus, the dark ruins, of what has passed, we suffer today,

With stars kept, only behind a glass, to contemplate.

Love poem for a Whitman friend

1:00 a.m.

I went to bed and my body began to generate some intense emotions again, as I thought about Friend #2. I decided to get out of bed and get my note book to write what went through my head as I combined these two:

Whenever I think of spending my life with you, my universe opens up from the inside and allows me to know once again that nothing is impossible for me.

Maybe it’s your name that is engraved in a childhood memory of a childhood memory; your name that connects me to a time in my life when I still had my innocence.  When life still illuminated, upon me, its hope of infinite peace and warmth. 

With you I am like a child, like an angel that has never been defiled.  I can physically feel the warmth of the sun coming from inside my body as I think about you.  I can feel my heart begin to beat as vigorously and as gently as that of a newborn child fresh from the womb.  My body begins to generate enough heat for itself again; with an abundance of love and warmth that is enough even for the rest of the world. 

You are a dream come true.  You are the hope I lost as I bore the first heartbreak I ever had; you make my heart whole again.  My heart wakes up from its life-long stupor; it radiating light through my veins, circulating life to my limbs again.  My heart is alive again.

I am an angel ready to love, ready to forgive the flaws of the world; ready to do the work of God and sanctify the earth with His Love and Power.

Friend #2,

You kindle my cold dying body,

You fill with life my dry and withered bones,

You enliven my decaying soul.

I would not be surprised if God told me that you were the first love I ever had, and that every other girl I desired would only incompletely fill in the void that you were meant to overflow.

The world is our playground, I shall not be afraid.  With you I can never be lonely again; since, just the thought of you is enough to keep me warm at night.

My sunshine, my sunflower; day and night you keep me warm.

You bring the breeze that cools me down in the summer,

And you are the light that breaks through the clouds in the winter.

            You are like the flowers of spring without the allergies,

And like the wind of autumn without a cold to catch.

            You are like Psalms 23 in 3D and in living color.

My spirit, my body, my twin-soul.

            When I look into your eyes I can see my life story.

I can see myself within you, as if we were one.

I am too skeptical to call it love,

But I can assuredly tell you that I have never felt like this for anyone else before.

You make me whole.

                        My love for you can never know pain,

Since it only fills my body with radiance.

                        Once complete it can never be broken,

Since I have found what I was ordained to seek.

            I reached my destination when I crossed paths with you.

Though our bodies may deteriorate with the rest that is corruptible,

This love makes the soul immortal.

           

When I thought there were certain things I aimed for in my “princess charming”, you broke through those measures and filled a void so deep I had forgotten it was there; bringing to life who I was meant to be, a person that had been buried deep for ages, and only manifested itself as who I have been all these years.  But now, you have converted this soul to peace and truth.

Mula Veda

Writing a paper for Southern Asian religion class.  Assignment is to write a text that resembles the religious text of Hinduism.  I really like the assignment, because there are a lot of correlation with the direction that my mind already thinks in:

Vedic text:

The Great All

Creation of the universe and all its creatures begins in the middle of eternity. Eternity exists forever and will forever remain the same.  The ends of eternity are just like the middle, and it is all the same all around; every point in eternity is the same measure away from the ends as any other.  Eternity is indefinite, indivisible and simple; this is the All.  There is only one All.  Every element of the universe and every creature is embodied and beheld in the All.The All is simple so that it has no parts that can be distinguished from one another.  The All is indivisible. The All is all that exists; the All is the only consciousness that exists; there is only one life.

Lower All’s

Within this All, there are smaller All’s; they do not compose the Great All and do not depend on the Great All.  The smaller All’s have the same intensity and immutability as the Great All.  Each smaller All is branded by the Great All, though each one has its own unique name.  The name of each smaller All is a fraction of the name of the Great and indivisible All.  There is an infinite number of smaller All’s because that is the capacity of the eternity of the Great All.  Within the smaller All’s, there is also an infinite number of properties, which reflects the capacity of the eternity of the Great All.  Thus there is no distinction between the smaller All’s and the Great All, between the smaller All’s and their properties, nor within the smaller All’s.  The all reflect each other in its own way, and there is no distinction between them.

Uniformity of All in All

Each smaller All has its own distinct properties different from all others and from the Great All, but each one reflects the Great All in its own way.  The infinite properties of each All allows each one to make reference to every All, their properties, and the Great all in its own way.  It also allows a smaller All to make reference to the reference that another All makes about it; in this way each all has the same capacity as every other All, so that there is no distinction between them.

The Thread:

There is ghost-like thread that is indirectly composed of parts of the Great all.  The thread is like smoke in that no point of the thread is intact to any other part of the thread, but all points flow freely.  The thread does not exist as a thread, but from an alleged imagination.  As the thread is created from an alleged imagination, it is a delusion; but as subset of the Great All it too has the capacity of the Great All.  The thread inevitably reflects the Great All, and has no distinction from it.  The thread is of the same constituent as the smaller All’s; there is no distinction between the threads, and the smaller All’s.  All points in eternity are the same.  The Great All beholds and embodies every element in the universe, in every All.  They are all immutable and indivisible.

Colors:

The thread has a unique color, the color is power; the power it has, is the power to see color.  The power gives the thread’s color, power to see color.  So the power is color, and color has power to see other colors within color, within itself.  Each color has an infinite amount of shades, each shade has an infinite amount of properties.  Thus, each color, shade, and property reflects the infinity of the Great All, and has no distinction from it.  Every subset has the same amount of ascendancy as the Great All.

Deterioration:

A thread courses to depths; it chooses to run through only one color, bypassing all others; it chooses to run through only one shade, bypassing all others; it chooses to run through only one level of that shade; in this way, thread corrodes as it runs deeper bypassing properties of the Great All.  The direction that the thread runs is not into depths, but in a deteriorating direction, as it bypasses unlimitedness of each subset.  This deterioration direction is just another alleged imagination; thus, a subset of the Great All.  Deterioration is perfect in its depth; it refers to all other All’s, and threads in its own unique way.  Deterioration reflects the Great All, the smaller All’s, and the threads, and has no distinction from them.  They are all immutable and indivisible.

Lack

The thread’s deterioration is perfect; as the thread crosses the path of deterioration, it loses properties.  As the thread loses properties, it gains emptiness.  Emptiness reflects the Great All, the smaller All’s, all threads, and all deteriorations in its own unique way; emptiness has the capacity to behold all properties of the Great All.  There is no distinction between emptiness and the Great All, or any of its properties.  They are all immutable and indivisible.

Creatures

Within all these subsets there are creatures.  Each creature beholds the Great All perfectly and completely in its own unique way.    Each creature reflects the Great All and all of its properties; it has no distinction from it.  Every creature has the capacity to behold and reflect every other All, and their reflection of other alls, in its own way.  They are all immutable and indivisible.

Man-Creature

The deterioration of man-creature befalls from a delusion in his mind.  This delusion comes from alleged imagination; a subset as infinite and complete as the Great All.  They are all immutable and immortal.

Suffering

The delusion is the agency of a thread that seeks incompleteness (a deteriorating thread).  The continuum of the thread is what causes delusion and misconception of the only all.  The goal of man-creature is to not deteriorate, to lack nothing.  But man-creature’s immutability will not allow it to change and will remain in the delusion of deterioration forever.  The goal of man-creature is to keep from delusion; the fate of man-creature is to remain in delusion.  And so it will remain in this subset, the thread that reflects all aspects of the Great All and has no distinction from it.  The goal of man-creature is to be as the Great All; the fate of man-creature is to remain in this thread.  Man is and will remain as the Great All forever; immutable, immortal, indivisible.

Note: The reason I did not use the terms (such as Brahmin and Atman, or any other name of gods) is because I feel that the terms we have used in class have already gotten a stereo-typical image stuck to them and would therefore not allow the intended message go through correctly.