When I read this, I started to respond, and then I got so caught up in it that I wrote and wrote (you're shocked, I know), and I decided it belonged better in my journal than filling up your comments, so most of it is here.
One thing I don't go into there that this made me think about, was the actual concept of longevity, because it resonated with a shift in perception I had on the fall equinox. I was reciting the mantra from the Upanishad:
Asato ma sad gamaya Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya Mrityor ma amritam gamaya.
It means...well, the first line is the hardest. Lead me from asat to sat. Sat gets translated as 'truth,' 'knowledge', or other things. I don't know Sanskrit and I'm not a scholar, but the best commentaries I've seen say it should just be left untranslated, because no translation will capture it. Perhaps the closest is 'reality', where asat is unreality. But even that falls very short
( ... )
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One thing I don't go into there that this made me think about, was the actual concept of longevity, because it resonated with a shift in perception I had on the fall equinox. I was reciting the mantra from the Upanishad:
Asato ma sad gamaya
Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya
Mrityor ma amritam gamaya.
It means...well, the first line is the hardest. Lead me from asat to sat. Sat gets translated as 'truth,' 'knowledge', or other things. I don't know Sanskrit and I'm not a scholar, but the best commentaries I've seen say it should just be left untranslated, because no translation will capture it. Perhaps the closest is 'reality', where asat is unreality. But even that falls very short ( ... )
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