Category Archives: Metaphysics

BOOKS: “Four Quartets” by T. S. Eliot

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Four QuartetsFour Quartets by T.S. Eliot
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Available online

Four Quartets is a collection of four long poems by T.S. Eliot, written over several years before and during the Second World War. The poems are: “Burnt Norton,” “East Coker,” “The Dry Salvages,” and “Little Gidding.” They share a theme of metaphysical inquiry, particularly regarding time and man’s relation therewith. The book came out about five years before Eliot won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and was the last of his major poetry collections, and so it reflects a mature phase of his poetry writing.

I loved this collection, which combines food for thought with beautiful turn of phrase. As far as I could see, most of the disgruntlement with the collection had to do with Eliot’s religious / spiritual references, which offended the sensibilities of some of the most stridently atheist / agnostic individuals in the poetic community. Besides reflecting his own Christian worldview, Eliot had clearly been moved by reading the Bhagavad Gita and makes a number of references to Krishna.

Four Quartets is a pleasant read and I’d highly recommend it for poetry readers.

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PROMPT: Question Reality

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Daily writing prompt
What’s a moment that made you question reality?
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I have them all the time. When I was actively working on lucid dreaming / dream yoga, I was particularly attuned to them (as the practice necessitates.) The most common instance is when one sees something in one’s environs that one has never noticed before. It would happen all the time when I was living in Bangalore because it was such a visually chaotic and rapidly changing place that I could walk down a street ten times and not notice an unusual sign or building facade, and then — POW! — the moment I saw it I was in utter disbelief that it could have been their all the time.

I haven’t discounted (nor accepted) the simulation hypothesis, and I suspect whatever the world is, it’s not precisely any of the things we’ve thought it to be.

Illusory [Free Verse]

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Photograph of miniature rabbit sculptures at Fo Guang Shan, near Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
Nothing is what it seems,
     or as it feels it should be.

The world is full of
     smoke & mirrors --
          neither here nor there...

And yet everywhere... 
      & everywhen.

PROMPT: Greatest Gift

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Daily writing prompt
What is the greatest gift someone could give you?
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The capacity to decrease entropy in an isolated system.

PROMPT: Time

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Do you need time?

I suppose I do. Without it, instead of life being one thing after the other, it would be everything all at once. The latter seems chaotic. But maybe one could get used to being timeless. I have no basis for comparison. I’ve always been just in time. Come to think of it, it would be nice not to have to conjugate verbs.

PROMPT: 10 Things

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List 10 things you know to be absolutely certain.

1.) Nothing is permanent.

2.) The world is not what it seems.

3.) One’s subjective experience is not determined by the state of the world.

4.) Nobody grasps enough truth to be intolerant.

5.) Uncertainty is the root of all fear.

6.) Fear is the root of all hatred.

7.) Hatred is a subjective experience (See #3.) Also, uncertainty is the root of all hatred (by the transitive property,) hence the benefit of travel.

8.) Any who: a.) has suffered a string of hardships; b.) allows themselves to believe that some “other” is wholly responsible for said hardships; and c.) who lacks a sufficient sense of self-empowerment to avoid surrendering entirely to a group identity can (and likely will) become a Nazi (or the equivalent of their day.)

9.) No one can predict the future. [Regardless of how much we all love to try. (See #5.)]

10.) Entropy increases (ultimately, in a closed system.)

NOTE: I remain ready to abandon any certainty in the face of better information.

PROMPT: Decision

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Daily writing prompt
Describe a decision you made in the past that helped you learn or grow.
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To surrender to my ignorance. If one can never know exactly what game one is playing, it becomes much easier to avoid getting worked up about whether one is playing it right or whether one will “win” or not.

Evolution [Free Verse]

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Anywhere copies are made, 
   but copies aren't exact,
      selection will take place.

Some erroneous copies will 
    be more beloved than others.
      Some errors will propagate.
      Some errors will die out.

Thus is language,
   thus is chemistry,
   and thus is life.

Raising Chaos [Free Verse]

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Raise chaos:
   That's the job of intelligent life,
      to make nice & orderly things
      so they can crack and shatter
      and eventually end up pulverized
      to dust --
   A fine, granular dust that will blow
      across the universe.

First, the bowl must be made:
   Some potter must shape and glaze
      and fire it with care,
   Turning sandwiches into art... 
      and waste heat --
         entropy slow and fast.

All so someone can crack or chip it
   (with ease and lack of intention,)
   starting it on a path to being sand
   grains a world away.

The Cave [Free Verse]

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Jagged window 
   on the world:
 All light and sound
   deadened,
   but from one opening --
 The cave mouth.

From behind
   nothing stirs,
      nothing glows,
   shadows are subsumed
      by shadow.

 Eyes and mind
   frame the cave mouth,
   making the mind
      a cave within a cave:
         layered silence
         layered remoteness,
      and all input of a single,
         common source.

How many caves deep might
   this thing go?