Conversation between the father and the English professor
The professor and Sadashiv had been talking a long while by the window, discussing the roots of words in the two languages, the erasure of Latin over the years, the correspondences between Latin and Sanskrit, what Latin might have meant once, what Sanskrit still contained since it was in use..
The light from the window had crossed the room in a moving arc. A cloud had hung a long while framed by the window and framing the two discussants. It also moved, towards the edge of the window frame and left the room.
Sadashiv: The way to understanding the meaning 'behind' the verses in the Vedas is perhaps to look at the way in which we read those words. When we read, 'What does happen? Something that can hardly be identified with that black mark on a piece of paper, nor yet with its meanings as given in a dictionary- which after all would just be more black marks. Yet something does happen. And it's something that changes every time we read that word. How can we, then, find a definition for something that is ever-changing and what's more has no boundaries? Where does it end, for example, within our minds, that word 'black' we just read? At what point can we claim that we are no longer subject to the reverberation of that word 'black'? That reading, which took but an instant, may have infiltrated all other words, all the other silent waves that dwell within us. Perhaps we will never be able to disentangle it again. It's as if it had been lost in a foreign territory. But what is this land one speaks of as unknown, yet locked away within us? Indeed, it might just as well be outside us, given that we will never set foot there. We can describe it any number of ways- and all, once again, will confer a certain coloring, as if we were eager to grant the place a meaning even before knowing whether it has a meaning or not. For the territory where meanings arise and ie hidden may well turn out to be meaningless. A notion that frightens and embarrasses us all, but that we ought to cherish, because-down there where definitions cannot hold- everything is, above all else, uncertain. Indeed it's salutary that it should be percieved as such. But let's try to see what happens when we are obliged to recognise(and not to define) the existence of that. When does this happen? When we wake up. Awakening: it is the only physiological phenomenon that has to do with that. I will add but one further remark; try to think of a second awakening: of an awakening that happens within our being awake, that is not simply added to that wakefulness but multiplies it, by a quality n, whose value we shall never be able to establish. I don't know if that's how it was for you. But such, for us, was thought. Such is thought. "
Excerpted from Roberto Calasso's Ka
