A University Inspiration

Our very own East Mall Fountain

Ninth grade signaled a new beginning. I was beginning high school and I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know where I was going or where I wanted to go. Being a freshman entails uncertainty. By the time I was a senior I had come close to the end of my high school route and was comfortable with it. Here I am at the University of Texas’ starting line and I’m, well, uncertain again.

Plan II is just the place for me. I don’t know which particular subjects draw me most, but I know that I love my love for whichever subjects those might be. I am a passionate explorer. I bring my curiosity to the University so that it may be formed. Standing on a ledge, I ask the University to guide my in my next steps. Is Plan II an adjective? My life is so Plan II. I think it works. I am undecided in my direction but decidedly decided in my wanders. So the University should be a sanctuary for my wondering and a guide for my journey.

A university should be inspiring. Students on campus should be in awe. When I get caught up in the daily grind I forget how awesome my circumstances are. When I am mired in my books I forget where I am. But then I’ll overhear an intriguing discussion or I’ll take a breath and step out onto the sun deck. And I will be awed. There is so much that has gone before me. There is so much that I don’t know. The knowledge of my professors is generally astounding and they’ll be the first to admit how much is beyond even them. Occasionally, I burst out laughing when I remember that nobody “seem[s] to know much of anything really” (Varnum 343G). I remember the Mystery. If you look, you can find it everywhere on campus.

I want to be inspired in a direction. A university should provide direction even if wandering is its pursuit or intellectual edification is, as Newman posits, an end in and of itself. Children who leave home are in search of many things and they should find support “to seek the truth” in “the spirit that nothing is impossible” (Speck 298). University life is never static but constantly fluctuating. Learning is a gradual process of "successive combinations converging, one and all, to the true centre" (Newman 311). It is Hegel's dialectic of progress culminating in a synthesis of intellect. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “genius” as “the tutelary god or attendant spirit allotted to every person at his birth, to govern his fortunes and determine his character.” Michael Meade speaks of learning as the process of leading out this unique genius from within. True education is not scripted; it is the development and cultivation of a genius already within each and every one of us. “Pouring… forth… the zeal of enthusiasm,” (Newman 314) a university has the power to provide true education.

A university should inspire with beauty. Elegant architecture is an outstanding feature of most premier institutions of higher education. On a hot day I avoid campus’ bald patches at all cost and seek the shade cast by sprawling live oaks. Trees save this campus. Beauty engenders wonder and respect. Though maybe not as grand as Newman’s companion would have liked, the University of Texas has “water, springs or wells, woods and pleasant fields… enough to invite students to stay and abide there” (Newman 316). The fountain on the East Mall revitalizes me Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays as I walk past it on the way to logic class. On the way back from the music building I pause and wonder at Martin Luther King Jr’s towering fortitude. Graceful live oaks, arching fountains, and the statues sanctify campus. Beauty makes a place feel protected. Standing securely in beauty helps you to “stand outside yourself and describe what you see” (Varnum 343G). A university should inspire the individual to expand beyond himself.

So I do know what I want from the next four years. I want to find beauty. I want to be inspired. I want to grow beyond that which I currently am. I want to wander, to live Plan IIly (that’s an adverb). I want my education to be made of these things as I enjoy the process of bearing forth my own inner genius.

DB 3: Grapefruit Boats: Is Childhood Hell?

How to make a gutter-boat: Halve a grapefruit, placing each piece within reach of a ravenous five-year-old. Stand a safe distance away and watch as the juices spray, the laughter ascends, and the fruits diminish. Prepare a scraping tool so that once all the meat has been removed, you can scrape out the remaining pith. While scraping, provide each child a stick of chewing gum, off-brand is OK. Once thoroughly gummy, press each chewed wad into the center of the bottom of the grapefruit. Construct flags by adhering a small paper triangle with tape to a toothpick (colored is preferable). Insert the flag into the gum so that it pierces the peel of the grapefruit beneath. You’re ready to go! Now just wait for heavy rain to fill the gutters in the street, and you’ll be amazed by the speed and agility of your handcrafted vessel.
That is one of the most vivid memories of my youth: my best friend and I learning the art of fruit-craft construction.
As we grow older, we continue to learn more about ourselves and the world we inhabit. As T.S. Eliot says, we do not read widely to accumulate a vast store of knowledge, but rather to absorb the perspectives of others for a time, glean what is of value to us, and cast the rest aside. Knowledge (of self) is not a stack of books in the brain, but a single collage of the effects of these interactions. In this way, I am “my one-year-old-self all the way up to my eighteen-year-old self” (Hannah Chesser). I think it’s dangerous, however, if childhood is over-romanticized. It is good if we gain from past experiences, but not if we try to return to them or try to relive them as our present.
Children are beautiful. Their way of being seems so pure to us from up above. Once, when I sitting on a small beach off the coast of Ireland, I saw a clan of young children playing together. They were buck naked, racing each other to the water’s edge. The proper racing stance for this activity is (apparently) on all fours: bend over with your butt as high as high in the air as you can stick it, dig your face into the sand, and you’re ready to go. Proceed by driving your legs into the earth behind you and digging a trench to mark your path – your face is the shovel. The children seemed so gleeful. What could possibly be better than a veritable “sandwich” with a side of mucus-grit caked nose and burning eyes?
But of course none of these children thought to stop in the middle of their game and ask, “Am I happy?” This is outside of the immediacy of their experience. The capacity to witness, to live with equanimity and to experience without attachment, is not a capacity young children have. “If you are standing by a river and a leaf floats by, you have your choice of following the leaf with your eye or keeping your attention fixed in front of you” (Dass, 148). Not only is a child going to be distracted by the leaf, he’s going to whoop! and jump in after it. “The Witness, however, is not passive, complacent, or indifferent. Indeed, while it’s not attached to a particular outcome” (Dass, 147), the Witness is able to live more fully in the moment because it is “focused essentially on what is” (Dass, 152). The child is not experiencing in this way. He has yet differentiated himself from the objects around him. In fact, the child is exclusively identified with those objects that surround him.
So must you be aware that you are happy in order to be so? Mill “thought” (past tense emphasized) that if you “ask yourself whether you are happy… you cease to be so” (Mill, 694). I do not believe that “ignorance truly is bliss” (Christy Krawietz), and “I do not want to be a child again” (Hannah Chesser). Youthful naiveté cannot be the peak of a human life. Life is not six years of “sugar icing and doughy goodness” (centerstagechicago.com/restaurants/ articles/southport-sweets.html) followed by seven decades so “unseasoned that they were like stale bread or card board” (newyork.citysearch.com/review/7169157). It is easy to grasp for what we do not have; it is much harder – yet much more fulfilling – to realize what we do have and to be grateful for it. Retaining childlike characteristics – yes, absolutely, that’s wonderful. But retaining childhood? We had better be careful of what we ask for.
As with most people, I do not recollect a specific instance that demarcates the edge between childhood and whatever comes after that. I remember feelings of being somehow different from people around me. Fifth grade seems to be a year when I began to realize that I felt differently about things than others did. I no longer agreed with all the beliefs of my friends. Differentiation can be a painful process. No longer absorbed in our surroundings, we strike out on our own and begin to carve our own paths. Like Bryan’s Lincoln log hours, my alone time allowed me to ponder and reflect. Becoming conscious of myself was not easy, but it is inevitable and is part of the great chain of development to true bliss. Many a romantic has claimed that youth is Heaven, and that quickly thereafter we are cast from the Garden. But bliss emanates from a state of great awareness, not of ignorance. Ken Wilber summarizes this by saying that Heaven is found with cosmic consciousness. Human beings progress through various stages of consciousness. As children we are not even self-conscious; we are unself-conscious and therefore in a state of unconscious Hell. But our awareness grows. We become conscious, aware of the Hell that surrounds us. So we move to conscious Hell, which is why so many people at this stage wish to return to the prior state of ignorance. If, however, we can continue to deepen our awareness, we come to a place of conscious Heaven (unconscious Heaven is not even possible – consciousness is a prerequisite for Heaven). With our pockets full of our past we shall travel, but it is forward we must go.
It is interesting to note a couple things that Cobb pushes in “The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood.” She emphasizes the value of retaining child-like values, especially those of middle age childhood. But she ends the article by insisting that we be wary of “a dangerous trend toward neurotic self-interest.” There is a funny intersection between these two points. The child that possesses sought after intelligences is also highly self-absorbed. Most children are not developed enough to take on the perspectives of others; they are narcissistic. So I think it is important to realize that while there are desirable qualities that children (from our point of view) happen to possess, being as a child is not to be striven for. There is a balance and it incorporates one, two, three, four… all the way to eighteen and beyond.

Extra Credit DB: Krishn Janmashtmi

The first thing you should expect to see when walking into a Hindu temple: electric, flashing palm trees. But don’t worry, they’re only one garish detail the temple’s publicists have decided to adopt. If the space no longer feels sanctified, let your eyes move on. Once you’ve accepted the psychedelic coconut palms, you’ll notice their serene backdrop: an absolutely stunning, handcrafted, eight-foot video projection screen. In truth, it reads just like stained glass, only with more channels. “No Show” flashes in the corner of the screen. That must have been how Krishn devotees felt prior to the presence of multimedia in the ashram. “No Show. No Show.” Well, now there’s no reason to look for a show anywhere else.
“Oh, but my eyes. They were not meant to see this within these majestic walls!” Just close them. It’ll be OK. Your senses will soon become calm again. Drop your eyelids, unclench your hands, and let the soothing tones of the loudspeaker drip into your ears. “Excellent news,” says a voice much larger than the woman from which it comes. “Dish network is now broadcasting your daily prayer not only in the morning, but in the evening too. TV-Asia now delivers a double dose of the daily devotion your life so sorely needs.” Enlightenment speeding across the airwaves faster than I can think, and it’s only $39.95 a month. Sign me up!
Time sure does change things. I still hold on to the image of a “religious” temple devoted to austerity in utility and atmosphere. And I’m sure there are still ashrams that are little different from what they would have been two thousand years ago. One near Houston is prided for its traditional mode of craftsmanship and classical appearance. Indeed, it’s stunning. But even there the columns are lined with fiber-optic cables for recording special events. It’s living in the twenty-first century.
It is really healthy for me to see these seemingly antithetical ideals integrated. It warms me to the developing world. After all, what makes a slab of granite more holy than a silicon chip? Why is parchment consecrated and a palm pilot denigrated? Well I know, in general, there is reason for this. All things are equally divine in an absolute sense; all things radiate from the divine ground. But all of this radiated divinity manifests into a relative plain. We imbue the objects around us, and the feelings and thoughts flowing through us, with intentions. A stone slab chiseled with spiritual metaphors carries intentions other than those possessed by a sterile computer part to be sold to a multinational software conglomerate. The process of creation crafts an energy that lingers in the product. But I am always amazed when a sterile computer part is incorporated into a totally human (beyond human?) service of worship. The twenty-first century has altered all that it embraces. It is only practical, yet in many ways necessary, that Hindu ceremony accommodates and grows with these changes.
I missed dinner, but I did wander the grounds and see the Indian architecture. A lotus-shaped, aqua pool lies at the foot of the main phallus-like temple. There are light blue columns that remind me of the Parthenon. Many of the brightly painted surfaces look plastic, like a diorama in the corner of the “India Wing” of a museum. The food was what I imagine to be traditional fare, served on traditional Styrofoam trays. (I stuck to my Styrofoam cup of water poured from a large Igloo thermos. The people and the dress are beautiful. The greens and yellows of their fabrics are as rich and complex as the odors of the food. I cannot even picture a Christian congregation in its most joyous celebration with such variety and color.
After the Janmashtmi celebration, I walk outside, stepping between the many shoes of many sizes that the devotees have left near the entrance. I find my own sandals in the bottom cubby of the shoe rack. Watching the dancers inside, the thing that stood out to me the most was the controlled elegance of their hands and feet. I try to slither my hands as they did. I think it’ll take some practice. But what a beautiful night. The stars are out and it is dark. And in my head I hear the ringing of a loudspeaker: “Don’t forget to tune to TV-Asia so that you may have a moment of peace before the long drive to work in a Western world of the twenty-first century.”

Roll Model DB 2 Sep 5

Experience kneads the dough of life. In youth, we are raw, workable material. Our environment, our culture and society, and our evolving innate selves collide with and impact one another in a continuous process of development. As an individual is pummeled (or caressed) by his circumstances, he takes shape. Sometimes he becomes a snug fit, sometimes one that is all rough around the edges and finds its space in the margins as many artists do. Some influences are consciously selected by individuals and you feel like “the master of your own destiny” (Charlotte Beall); others are matters of necessity or force. Some, like the structure of our language or of male-females interaction, are simply so engulfing that they are not easily discerned. I find my mother to be the most influential person in my life. Her individual presence has impacted me directly, but she has also formed the circumstances, the culture, in which I have grown up, and so helped craft the tools that I use daily by living in this world.
Children are young and mushy, like oatmeal. Many children look for someone (like Logan) to “LEAD US TO THE PROMISED LAND..!” (Prof. Bump) because without the critical mass of experience, a child has no real form or direction. I would qualify that by saying that each individual does have a deep inner core that persists throughout life and that does not rely utterly on external conditioning. Like an atom – that’s the image I get – like some compassionate, evolving atomic particle (see homemade graphic).
The inchoate atom (I’m creating my own vision of what the human-atom is) has at its core a nebulous mass of raw material. It has not yet solidified into a nucleus (though the material is there) and there are not yet many electrons (which will represent experience) in its orbit. The young, yet-to-be-molded glob waits to be spun. Indeed, that is just how I have felt during this past week and a half in Austin, like I’ve been spun. Like a magnet, the youthful nucleus is attracted to a denser, more fully formed atom. This atom is “on the brink of a great change” and “will never be the same again” (Charlotte Beall). It draws the electron-knowledge, of which the elder particle has much, into its own field, “vacuuming [it] up into [its] knowledge box” (975). Sub-atomic particles are flung off as readily as they are absorbed, and occasionally, if one is just the right fit, it sticks. As electron-experiences gather, they add mass and momentum to the orbital rotations, spinning the nucleus faster and faster until it begins to become dense solidified. Eventually the effects of new particles embedding and old ones departing lessens. Enough experiences have accumulated that the exchange of only a couple does not alter the revolving rhythm.
“At any given moment in life, it’s very hard to see a pattern to” (990) the maelstrom of influences that sculpt an individual life, but in hindsight a thread is strung through it all. It is very lucky that experience-particles are in no short supply (if my metaphor plays out scientifically – and I believe it will – “this works out to be just under 10^81” (http://pages.prodigy.net/jhonig/bignum/qauniver.html), a perfect correlate to one estimate of the number of atoms in the universe) because “no one person has a lock on the right way or only way of doing things” (989). Formative instances are often no logically linked in the mind as it experiences them. It can require a rest stop in the future for the order of train stations in the past to make sense. Why is it the awakening “the next morning in the furrow of a plowed field” (953) that the “senses still recall?” (952). Tom Jones will never smell freshly churned earth without feeling the sensation of that morning after.
My mother has not smelled the world for me, and I do not live by the food she puts into her mouth. But she has in so many ways conditioned the way I interpret these first hand experiences. I cannot perceive blue headbands without relating them back to the one my mother used to wear; lilies smell like our house; and I do not relate to other people independently of the way my mother related to her son. Though “role models should not be expected to change the world” (Ryan Edwards) [italics mine], they do change our world. My mother certainly changed mine.