Be Alert, Garbanzos May 28, 2008
Posted by carpebanana in : Ramblings , trackbackMiss Language kindly snapped this photo for me:
She knows me well.
First semester in college brought a World Religions course. Let me explain my general learning style (I suspect there is a name for it somewhere). I kind of get a feel for the material, for the philosophy that undergirds it, for the people that espouse it, for the kind of language they use. Then instead of memorizing a bunch of facts, I just put myself into their mindset and make it up. It works great on things like essay answers in philosophy courses, not so well on a history test where they actually expect you to know particular names and dates, and not at all on geography tests.
So. Back to World Religions. Here I was studying the tenets of Indian religion and trying to wrap my Calvinist brains around the desire for nirvana, which seems like a kind of cloudy nothingness, and trying to learn the vocabulary while eating dinner. The vocabulary included Moksha (defined here by Wikipedia as liberation from samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth and all of the suffering and limitation of worldly existence. In Hindu philosophy, it is seen as a transcendence of phenomenal being, a state of higher consciousness, in which matter, energy, time, space, causation (karma) and the other features of empirical reality are understood as maya. Liberation is to Indian religions as salvation is to Christianity.)
At this point in my thinking, a garbanzo bean rolled off my roomie’s salad. She commented that it committed suicide. I stomped on it and screamed, “Moksha!” to encourage it on its way to nirvana.
I wonder if the driver of the car is seeking release from the limitations of worldly existence. Or just lost.
Comments»
That is amazing! I had no idea that anyone else tried to learn the same way.
But…like it not, my teachers like it not….so I shall have to learn to learn like everyone else does. 
My sister and I were eating in a restaurant one time, and a garbanzo bean rolled off her salad. A waitress came by and stepped on the bean almost immediately, and the bean stuck to the design on the bottom of the shoe.
Little did I realize it was pursuing moksha. The things I learn.
Now see, you tell this story and all I could think of was Pythagoras. Pythagoras wouldn’t eat beans because of their resemblance to a human fetus. He was killed by soldiers because he wouldn’t cross a beanfield to get away for fear of stepping on them.
I guess he didn’t know about Moksha.
Peace and Laughter!