If I had not seen clouds before
would this not have been the most magical sight ever ?
it was,
at the moment that the picture was clicked, randomly
was the first time I ever saw clouds
and was overwhelmed,
If I had not seen clouds before
would this not have been the most magical sight ever ?
it was,
at the moment that the picture was clicked, randomly
was the first time I ever saw clouds
and was overwhelmed,
in the moment
Very significant
Welcome Back
allow me to break the silence in the picture with hopefully more silence.
are you the cloud
which worries about its shape
or the sky
in which they all appear
you watch them form and float by
knowing very well
they are many, though
each unique
but surely illusory
all appearing within you
you, the changeless,
the formless,
the One that does not judge
the cloud that passes by
does not cling to a favourite.
who are you?
From the window of an aircraft?
Quite magical, really! 🙂
Enjoy surfing through these dancing waves….truly breathtaking, magical moments of photography!
http://www.treehugger.com/galleries/2009/03/the-most-beautiful-waves-ever.php
Why did the epics get so perfectly assimilated into the oral tradition?
To answer this one must go back in history to the Vedic period. The earliest known literary work in India is the rkveda (or Rigveda as it is pronounced). This veda is considered to have no author, apaurusheya, as if it was whispered into the ears of the vedic visionaries by gods and goddesses. Its verse represents the sensibility of the earliest Arya tribes who settled in India. Their compositions speak of man’s primordial relation with Nature and its mysteries. These verses were handed down generations orally. In fact, they were composed in such a
manner that they could be easily committed to memory and used in invoking appropriate natural power. The manner of composition of the Veda determined the nature of prosody in India. Some of the metres used in vedic poetry are still in use and they have been used throughout the
span of 3,500 years since creation.
The musical element in the vedic verses was so over-powering that the verses were seen as being vested with extraordinary magical powers.
Having acquired this special spiritual status, the verses acquired a hold over the imagination which the turbulent social history of India has not been able to shake off. In course of time, the schools that taught vedic sciences developed special methods of memorising the
verses. Books were written about the ways in which the oral purity of the mantras could be preserved. To this day, the vedic verses are transmitted orally and there are scholars who can recite the entire body of this ancient poetry without the slightest change of a syllable, and
exactly in the original oral form. Rarely has any other oral tradition of poetry been so venerated and so well preserved as the vedic tradition. It was because the tradition was already well established when the epics were composed that the epics too were committed to the oral tradition. In the mantra tradition, orality was employed to preserve the purity of the sacred and in the suta tradition it was used to achieve effectiveness of communication. In either case, the oral tradition was privileged over the written form.
Though poetry is easier to remember than prose, the oral tradition in Indian literature was by no means confined only to poetic literature.
Indian story telling has been moulded to suit orality from the very beginning of narrative fiction in India. The stories in the Kathasaritasagara and the Jataka stories reveal that they are structured for oral transmission by wandering minstrels. The stories themselves are
never without the motif of a long journey; they are stories that travelled and gathered more stories around them on the way. They are stories in which the plot moves from one character to another, one life to another, and one place to another all quite effortlessly. They were
never constricted by the ideas of unity of place, time and theme. The were stories to be told and retold, flexible in plot and accessible to audiences varying in social, religious and ethical persuasions. The
well-defined conventions of gestures and the over-simplified story structure were favoured by Bharata, which indicates that there had been before him a long tradition of folk performances. Of course, in the course of time, dramatic texts were produced by Shudraka, Kalidasa,
Bhavabhuti and Sri Harsha. But never was a play written in ancient India which did not make use of folk elements and folk dialects. On the other
hand, the folk forms of drama in India freely drew upon elite conventions, theology, philosophy and poetry. These forms continue to survive in most languages. The Kannada language has the Yakshagana theatre, the Gujarati language has the Bhavai theatre and the Marathi
languages has the Tamasha theatre. These are by no means primitive forms of drama. They are extremely sophisticated in technique and performance. Western dramatists and thinkers like Antonin Artaud and Bertolt Brecht
have been attracted by the techniques of combining mimesis and semiosis
developed by Indian folk theatre. These regional forms do not have a fixed and written text to support the performance. They are spontaneous and depend on improvisation by the actors. And for that reason, when
compared to plays with written texts, they are closer to the audiences.
In Maharashtra, millions from all walks of life go on a pilgrimage twice every year to Pandharpur a temple-town. As they travel, they sing the poems composed by Dnyaneshwarea (13th Century), Eknath (15th Century) and Tukaram (17th Century). The entire body of songs consists of
hundreds of the medieval poems learnt orally. Similarly, the poems of Mira, Nanak and Kabir are learnt orally and sung by millions of Indians to this day. These poems are so intricately entwined with the consciousness of the masses that they can hardly be separated from the
thought processes. Though meant for the masses, and dominated by music that made the lines and verses easy to remember, medieval bhakti poetry
had an amazing range and depth of philosophic, social and moral concerns.
It was a poetry oral in practice but of a remarkable aesthetic sophistication and philosophic maturity. Besides, it was poetry that brought about social integration as all great literature does. It cut across the barriers of caste, religion, gender and age. And, finally, it performed the valuable task of bringing the heritage of ancient Indian
culture to modern India. The use of paper for writing had become common practice during the 17th Century. Poets, chroniclers and story tellers were encouraged to write in decorated books so that they could get royal patronage. During this century and the next, a process of canon-building began in Indian literature, a process by which the written work was considered more valuable than an oral composition. The force behind this new canon building was Islam which thought the written word as sacred.
Calligraphy became a precious art and book-making became common practice. Hence, the transition from calligraphy to printing was extremely smooth, taking place during the 19th Century.
But when I took my first picture of the clouds I was infact disappointed.
All those childhood imaginations of how Gods and Angels resided in there and descended down to the Earth to help us lesser human beings, came down with a thud.
Here I was, just like the Angels,floating through those magical clouds and there was nothing mystical about them, anymore.
To be able to see.
Isn’t that most amazing?
Poignant.
To wait and watch?
Talking about clouds- I see dark rain clouds every evening. but alas… elusive monsoons:(- want to be surrounded by monsoon magic! soon soon!!:)
thank you for sharing this, it’s a feeling of awe and wonder each time i fly..
I over recall the mail is gifted and on the point. This send really helped me in my assignment.