Where “Good Morning” came from

Here is my theory of where “Good Morning” came from:

In the desert, out on the west coast of India, one of the standard morning greetings, in translation, used to be, "Have you had a good breakfast?" The words used, with a questioning sound were "gûr-mäni?" Gûr is the common north Indian word for jaggery. Mäni is a pita-type of coarse patted, flatbread made from pearl millet, or bäjrä that is made on a low fire. My theory is the English "Good Morning" comes from “gûr-mäni" and never mind what the lexicographers, and language-historians of English say. What do they know any way?

Updating Yahweh: Tetragrammaton Musings

Working with my Jewish friends leads me to muse about the Jewish name for God, Yahveh.

Of course, "Tetragrammaton" - Tetra_gram, resembles "Chaturaanaana", the four-faced name of Krshna.

In reduced form Yahveh is Ya (not yaa) and Vaa (yes vaa) and means, in Sanskrit, "This & That". When you put them together to make a word you integrate their meanings, Interestingly Tat and asi, That tvam (Thou) also have a corresponedence with the former group 'asi,', in Tat tvam asi, is 'is/are' Thou are That as rendered in English. Thus Yehveh can only be 'Yaweh' if it includes you and everything else....

The thing started as a joke: I wondered whether "Up Yours" had been registered as a domain name--upyours.com--if not could any advantage be taken of it... So how about "U-Y.com". but this would be tacky...Mngling and intertwining with this thought had been an interpretation of Krishna Geetaa which in nearly so many words allows you to "customize" God. Bucky Fuller's book, "No More Secondhand God" and his "Ever rethinking the Lord's prayer" -- So one way to kill the hatred/fervor amongst the 'relgious' would be a Wiki version for God that would by "U-Y.edu" and the letters then can stand for Updating Yahweh" Loopy,indeed...

Sanskaar

Popular derivative resonances of the word Sanskrit that you may not have had a chance to be familiar with:

Sanskaar - value, as in family/cultural values, habits parents inculcate in children. Opposite is Ku-sanskaar

PraSanskaran - Increasingly used these days for processing or "value adding" natural products into marketable ones - Thus processed food would be "prasanskrit khaaddya"

Apa-Sanskriti - Opposite of Sanskriti, usually meaning "Culture/heritage/tradition etc" the word is often used to mean the consumerist-hedonistic influences of the west

WWW: Wine Women and Wantonness

The White Man strikes Asia again with the Internet! We're snared in the World Wide Web.

A local wag said WWW stood for Wine Women and Wantonness.

Never a moment for contemplative meditation! This is what will cause the downfall of the Hindoos!

Phonetic English - A horse designed by a committee

Scripts are believed to have evolved from pictographs. Some scripts, like the Chinese script, for instance, are still pictorial. Over time obtaining information via these scripts subtly creates viewing habits in the human mind. These scripts, which are visual cues for sounds, dicscipline and, in some cases, even prejudice our conduct. The habit these scripts impose on us, in turn, subtly inform and influence our perspectives, relationships, and behavior.

As there was no one like Panini to order and organize the alphabet of the Abrahamic languages - which was adopted by the Roman, mainly their monks in the Roman Catholic Church. The Church lots of power over the affairs of people who lived beyond the borders of present day Italy and, as a result, their script came to be used for all the languages in Eurpoe.

The Indic languages - spoken in most of Asia except
the Oriental countries like China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia - are generally believed to be more ancient
the Abrahamic and European languages. They did experiemnted a lot in creating scripts and you can see that a large country like ours, which in many ways, comparable to the whole of Europe, has many scripts - Telugu, Gujarati, Bengali and so on. At a fortunate point in time we had Panini, who organized the alphabet and Grammar of the parent language, Sanskrit, so well that, although our scripts are different, all of us use the same alphabet and grammar.

One of the things he did was create a vowel system that made all these Indic scripts phonetic. In a stroke of genius,
when these vowels were attached to consonents, a set of marks, or maatraas, around them told you how to pronounce it. As an example, in having to write 'ko' in the Roman script you need to write the 'k' and, next to it, the vowel ''o'. But if you were to to do this in the Devnaagari script you simply add the maatraa of the vowel 'O'.

When you read words in the non-phonetic Roman
script, part of your mind is busy acessing your 'pronouncing archive' so that when you have
deciphered the spelling by looking at group of the vowels and consonents in front of you and figure out how to pronounce it. In this situation of having to use up some resources to access the memory of the sound of the word you are forced to minimize your attention on what is in front of you. If you stop to notice you will find that in reading English words in Roman script you pay more attention to the first few letters of the word and surmise the rest from context. If the first few letters are' journ' you will surmise from context that the others are either 'ey' or 'al.' You will not really look at them. This is true of wording ending in 'tion' or 'ing' and you seldom 'see' them but surmise from context. I call this habit, 'the skipping mind' because, our attention is, like a flat stone thrown horizontally over a pond, will skip over its surface - i.e. make only brief contacts with it - a few times before it sinks.

You can now see that by limiting yourself to the habit using the Roman script you invite a perceptible loss of acuity and sensitivity in perception and unsustained attention during a relationship event.

In the case of the Devnaagari script, you do not have
to go to your memory bank to find out how a particular group of letters has to be pronounced because the script is phonetic. So this frees up your mind to 'see' what is in front of you. Furthermore, as the maatraas surround the consonent, you have to first look at it, and then around it, for them. In this situation the mind is developing the habit of focusing on the central core and then on its periphery. Instead of the 'skipping mind' you have a mind that is always in balanced contact with what is in front of you.

One reason, why people from India are perceived to be 'smart' and 'brainy' is the way they relate to their scripts and the habits they acquire in doing so.

While we are certainly One-up in our alphabet, grammar and our script, we have to understand that, as bad money chases the good money out of the market, the perceived dominance of English, the Abrahamic alphabet and the Roman script today, is something need not be slaves to. Indians are lucky to have what they have, thanks to their forbears. But they will be pitiable if they will let it go for a
short-term advantage. If I were a dictator, I would say, "Learn and use English, its A,B,C,D, and its
nonphonetic script which burdens you with having to memorize the spellings of thousands of words, by all means, if you have to get ahead, BUT ONLY if you do not give up what is not only yours, but, in comparison, far superior.

Wisdom and Weap

I like that Sanskrit calls weapons 'shashtra' and wisdom/scriture/knowledge etc "Shaashtra". The resonance is terrific and onomatopaic shhhhh but also as always 'tra'.

I spent the better part of the last hour making it presentable to 'western' eyes and the result is the attachment titled "wisdom & weapons".

About the latter, one of the meanings in the dictionary is "there are eighteen of them...names.. in which the sages have shown the actions and duties that are of benefit".... Then there is the unusual use of the word shaapa. Usually it means a curse but heer it means the "power of knowledge" (perhaps, to cause mental anguish/pain")

The second, green+highlight part says, in the vedas instruct thta "youth is worthy of a bow"; and the upanishads have this litany of attributes that deserve to be called youthful

-Everything always takes me back to Sanskrit. I like it. Then almost everything needs to me to render it in English in keyboard script. I hate that part.

Westoxified

Westoxified: The state of being intoxicated with Western ways, to the detriment of other, local, more life giving and healthy ways.

On -ject

What is this English phoneme -ject?

-ject tagged after everything it could lay it hands on.

• There is only One, all inclusive Subject. And it’s all-inclusive nature means there are no objects left to object to this One Subject being the all inclusive Subject.
• Any other who tries becomes abject and then becomes a reject.
• Then the One Subject injects a little bit of One subject into the reject and includes this hitherto abject who was objecting into the One all inclusive omni Subject.

Maya - illusion/delusion

Helping a friend working on the connections between Schopenhauer, Einstein, East and West.

My first comment as a Hindoo is - What if the translations that were available to Schopenhauer were in error? I think Max Mueller did a fair bit and - in fact - got a fair bit right. You have to understand that by the time these Europeans accessed "Hindoo" thought, India had had nearly 1500 years Buddhism "on the rampage" on its land - and influence that became intolerable to "tolerant" India*. Vivekananda has admired the Buddha as a Vaidik but says Buddhism did "sarvanaash" - destroyed everything.... I'll elaborate on this later...

But, to me, the greatest mischief is interpreting the word "Maya". As I understand its best English rendering would be "indeterminate"; but this is not what is generall understood - ost, including a large section of the "Hindoos" understand it is "illusion/delusion"...

Maya can be immediately and easily understood if one recalls and has no cause to disagrees with - what Bucky says: that 99% of what is going on is subsensorial. An expanded meaning would overarch entropy/chaos and the general 'determinism' that embedded itself in European thinking and is still hard to uproot, Einstein's efforts not withstanding - (Universe is stranger than you can think) - or those of Bucky, Heisenberg etc.

A linkage to this 'determinism' leads me to recall my comments on "destiny believers" - the faith-based belief systems that have no 'give' in them; new interpretations are vlue-judged peripheralized as 'cults' 'fringe' by the custodians of the 'Good Word" which have 'sin' as a given , contradicting Divine intelligence, grace and mercy etc.

Bottomline: 1. Extract/use relevant Backburner: Get a hold of how/who vetted those translations. Remember: The Moghuls followed the Buddhists during whose time the Macedonians also came a-conquoring. Until about 1600 much that was "Hindoo/Vedic" was lost - Then Mädhavächärya-Säyanächärya & Harihara-Bukkarai set about "picking up the lost pieces" in Vijayanagaram

‘Sûndar,’ the Sanskrit word for beauty

Satyam-Shivam-Sûndaram

Few who drool over today’s ‘Perfect 10s’ pause to look for, or even expect, the other two components of beauty in that person, – truthfulness and goodness.
And few even pause to deconstruct the Sanskrit word for beauty ‘Sûndar’ and really understand that it can only mean ‘Sû + andar’ or, that which is ‘good inside.’

Share this, please, with the young who have the potential of being ‘Sûndar’ without being ‘fair and lovely’. After all, handsome is as handsome does, right!

Remember to look at the words, to hear and break their sounds up. You will often surprise yourself by making connections with Sanskrit that the lexicographers missed.

Etymology Practice

Get interested in words. Find out how they were/are minted and used. Otherwise, your mind can take a beating on the anvil of the skills-hawking wordsmiths. Jargon and bafflegab can devour you.

Here are a dozen ‘resonances’ you can limber up your listening mind with; on the left are English words and on the right are their Sanskrit connections, and below each set, my comments:

1. Person = Prasanna
You can’t be called a person unless you are happy.

2. Service = Sarvasva = Sarva+Sva
You really serve when you keep others before yourself.

3. Mentor = Mantra

4. Government = Gûrû+mantra
This suggests an advisory, rather than a regulatory function of the government. The lexicographers say that the word has Greek roots. That, to me is B.S.

5. Statement = Stûti + mantra
Kind of obvious!

6. Management = Manûj + mantra
Ditto! Here it is the art of persuasion by appealing to their minds.

7. Etymology = Atha + Moolajah
Literally, the Sanskrit words mean, “Here lie the roots”; which is what, the OCD the English word means:
“The historically verifiable sources of the formation of a word and the development of its meaning”.

8. Decoration = Dekhô ré shän
Obvious, no? I owe a friend for this one.

9. Vast Pyramid = Västûparamidam
This one is neat. I used it for the title of a paper that was published in a learned journal that had devoted an issue to pyramids.

10. Market Capitalism = Mär + kät Kapat + Tilism
Ha! that’s the sum and substance of that awful progenitor of MTV, Hollywood, Atom Bomb, Al Quaida and Saddam Hussein and the other evils of yesterday. (Remember Osama and Saddam were all fed and nurtured by the vanguard votary of MC?) I used that as a title of a piece for a Hindi periodical that focuses on finance and economics.

11. Wit = Vita
As a noun, the Sanskrit word isn’t really a compliment. The more curious can research it.

12. Smart = Smärta
Now that one certainly means more than what you think. The Sanskrit word resonates with the one for memory. So unless you have a good memory you are not Smärta, no matter how sharply you dress or what attitude-chip you carry on your shoulder.

Words are the currency of the global mind’s commerce. Remember ‘In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with…?

Understanding means creating accommodative images

Extracts from Rotary Club, Sambalpûr (Main)
February 28, 2003
Guest Speaker: Vyôm Akhil, R.F.A. (1985-86, R.I.D. 3260-5260)
Topic: International Understanding

Friends, ….I have to.. (now).. with you (my thoughts on) the.. nature of Understanding…..:

Given that over a millennia-spanning period, our species has consistently demonstrated that it will unerringly choose to be silly, stupid, selfish, dangerous, vindictive, arrogant, jealous - the list is as long as you wish to stretch it - one may ask why do we need to understand anything at all? The insects and animals - not to mention all that is inanimate - do very well in the surviving-&-thriving game without, apparently, understanding a thing. In fact a saint had gone so far as to say ‘happy and content are those who are not bothered by the conditions and problems of the world’.

During a previous visit to your Club, I had spoken of the stage-related origins of the word “Understanding”. Someone had to stand under the stage and hand up the props, such as a bouquet, to a Romeo who would use it then as a love-vehicle and give it to the actress playing Juliet. The word originally meant, “to be supportive”. That is not the same as “being wise and full of insights.”

Understanding is a first but not the final step towards an accommodative, mutually beneficial sustainable co-existence. Without this goal at the end, an ocean full of understanding cannot, with any reliable degree of certainty, prevent aggression and attack, cruelty, violence, destruction and tragedy.

Resolving existing conflicts is laudable and that is what negotiators skilled in the use of facts and their effective communication try to do. But this heroic act is akin to performing a life-saving surgery on an old and malignant tumor that has brought the body to the verge of death. To this extent conflict-resolution is the next thankless step in the vocabulary of crisis management. Frequently, the high-pressured process of resolving conflicts, reasonable dialogue has to be set aside because there are deadlines to meet and innocent lives might be lost. Often negotiators have to go into what I call the deal-making mode.

Friends, it is obvious that understanding is multidimensional. From an individual wrestling with the essential nature of Being and Becoming, to a group that may be as small as a nuclear, or, even a single-parent family of two, or a tribe, a community, a village, a region, a nation, all the way up to the global level of international understanding, there are events and on-going processes that first need an understanding and then a comfortable accommodation. Beyond the international, we need understandings and accommodation with nature and our physical space - with those creatures, whether plant, insect or animal. And this needs to occur both at the local as well as global level. But as we explore outwards from this planet, there are understandings that challenge our notions of time and space, of the meaning of life and intelligence. Called by the National Geographic Society in 1976 to look at the future, the late R. Buckminster Fuller observed that after having traveled 39 times around the world and actually feeling it to be a tiny planet of a tiny star, he was convinced no one out there in the Universe was dying to know who would be the next president of the United States.

We can also appreciate the fact that partial understandings in one domain affect the processes in the other. That, at every level, there has to be a good fit to build upon. In some respects the nature of understanding is like those in fractals. For instance, there is the oft-quoted Sanskrit aphorism, “Yathä-piñdé tathä-brahmäñdé”. One can looslely translate this to say, ‘as the point, so the Universe.’

Today, understanding is when you say, “I see!” or “I got it!” or even more colloquially “Bingo!” or, Jackpot!” Clearly, this is more than being supportive. It means to be able to figure out something, to know its nuts and bolts, its P’s and Q’s. …Therefore, we revert to the intent of the original Sanskrit word, “Antarsthäna”. For what is really occurring when you understand something today is a mental process.

But how does the human - perhaps all mammalian - mind process information, most of which comes to it through the sense of sound? Even the horizon, be it noted, is limited to line of sight vision. It is for this reason that our sound-sensory apparatus switches on during gestation, long before we are born to this earth. One can say that our ears have a head start!1

What exactly happens when we receive sounds from the outside? Brain scans now confirm that our visual cortex is stimulated and our minds use the sound to create an internal image of the event.

It is this image that predominates the one we receive from our eyes. We even say of a prejudiced person as one, whose vision is colored, thereby implying that the internal image he has, overpowers the evidence of his own physical eyes.

At this point, to limit my exposition, I shall revert to Sanskrit words, “Chitta” or the active part of the mind, “Chétanä” or the state of consciousness, and “Chitra” or an image, usually internally formed in the active part of our mind; for the one visible on the retina Sanskrit has the “Drishya”.

I have a confirmation of sorts. Don’t people who understand something say, “I see” without really meaning that they are sighted and not blind?

I am, therefore, suggesting to you something that may not have been submitted to anyone anywhere:

Understanding means creating accommodative images.

I use the word “accommodative” with reason. Quarrels occur when our images are not in agreement. We have the famous and well-known story of the six blind men who were using their sense of touch to figure out what an elephant was. And each had an image that did not agree with those of the others.

Friends, I now have to use two phrases to explain my next point. We have this ‘Image-based understanding” and we, the educated and the influenced, find we also try, unsuccessfully, to often substitute it with what I would call ‘A word-based understanding’.

Here, when I say ‘word-based’, I mean those words that do not create an image for one reason or another, like the abuse, or overuse of available of visual technologies. Most words - especially long speeches are so boring, listeners fall asleep. …..

Opposed to a word-based understanding, I bring an example of an image-based understanding in the shape of a small visual - a chart - that I like to call “Humankind’s Price of Fear and what can be done if we reduced it just by 25%….” (this is posted elsewhere on this site).