Happy Birthday Omar

Hakim Omar Khayyam was born at sunrise on Wednesday May 18 in the year 1048 C.E. at Nishapur. As befitting a sage who mastered astronomy and reformed the calendar, it took a detailed analysis of the stellar and planetary positions described in the horoscope cast at his birth to arrive at this information. This analysis was only accomplished in the twentieth century. Prior to this time even the exact year of Omar’s birth remained in doubt. Details of the analysis as well as an astrological life sketch based on this horoscope are presented in “The Nectar of Grace: ‘Omar Khayyam’s Life and Works” by Swami Govinda Tirtha published in Kitabistan, Allahabad, India by the Government Central Press, Hyderabad-Dn. in 1941. This beautiful labor of love is by far the most comprehensive treatment of the life and works of Omar Khayyam that I have ever come across. This unique and valuable resource is little known in the United States and is difficult to locate.

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Omar is primarily known in the West today for his poetry; usually Edward FitzGerald’s 1859 presentation (rather than translation) which introduced the Rubaiyat to the English speaking world. However, such was the not at all the case during his lifetime. Not until two centuries after Omar’s death did a few quatrains appear under his name. He was known in his own time as a sage, scholar, Hakim (wise man) who had mastered virtually all branches of knowledge of his time – astronomy, astrology, mathematics, medicine, physics, philosophy, religion, jurisprudence - am I leaving anything out? He was a pioneer of free expression, deplored hypocrisy, most certainly was not a drunkard or libertine, and is reported to have had a truly astounding memory!

I sent my soul into the invisible,

Some letter of that after life to spell.

And by and by my soul returned to me

And answered, I myself am heaven and hell.

Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky

I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry,

"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup

Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry."

~ verses from the Rubaiyat

Omar’s revision of the calendar in 1079 C.E. to yield the Jalaali calendar (named after Jalaal-ol-Din Malek -shaah-e Saljuqi, the ruler who commissioned the calendar revision and was Omar’s patron) is accurate to one day in 3770 years, which is superior to the Julian calendar, and was only approached by the Gregorian calendar which we use today. The Gregorian calendar is named after Pope Gregory XIII who introduced the latest changes in 1582 C.E., over 500 years after Omar’s work. The Jalaali calender is a very natural solar calendar based on the spring eqinox as the start of the new year (Norooz). If the exact time of the spring equinox event (Saal-Tahveel) occurs before midday Teheran time that day is 1 Farvardin (new year), otherwise the following day is 1 Farvardin and the preceding month of Esfand is extended by one day.

In mathematics, Omar developed means of solving cubic equations (he identified 13 distinct cases) using an ingenious selection of conic sections. He demonstrated cubic equations that have two solutions, but did not seem to realize that a cubic can have three solutions. He discoursed on the significance of Euclid’s controversial 5thpostulate (the parallel postulate), although he did not grasp that this postulate can be both true and not true – each assumption leading to a valid (i.e. fully consistent) geometry. Omar also seems to have been the first to develop the binomial theorem and determine the binomial coefficients for the case where the exponent is a positive integer.

After a long life filled with accomplishments, honors, and disappointments too, Omar died in Nishapur on Thursday March 23, 1122 C.E. (12 Moharram, 516 AH) at the age of 73. Some references give the year of Omar’s death as 1131 C.E.; however, I’m going to follow Tirtha on this one because I find a depth in his research generally unmatched by others. Omar never married and insofar as we know had no children.

~ Donn A. Allen

What is sorrow for?

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What is sorrow for? It is a storehouse

Where we store wheat, barleey, corn and tears.

We step to the door on a round stone,

And the storehouse feeds all the birds of sorrow.

And I say to myself: Will you have

Sorrow at last? Go on, be cheerful in autumn,

Be stoic, yes, be tranquil, calm;

Or in the valley of sorrows spread your wings.

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~ Robert Bly, from:  'Turkish Pears In August' (2007)

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The Hermit at Dawn

Early in the morning the hermit wakes, hearing

The roots of the fir tree stir beneath his floor.

Someone is there. that strength buried

In earth carries up the summer world. When

A man loves a woman, he nourishes her.

Dancers strew the lawn with the light of their feet.

When a woman loves the earth, she nourishes it.

Earth nourishes what no one can see.

~  Robert Bly 
from Turkish Pears In August (2007)

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If I'm a theologian

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If I'm a theologian 

I am one to the extent I have learned to duck

when the small, haughty doctrines fly overhead,

dropping their loads of whitewash at random

 on the faces of those who look toward Heaven.
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Look down, look down, and save your soul

by honester dirt, that receives with a lordly

indifference this off-fall of the air.

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~  Wendell Berry

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in the heart of every creature

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The all-knowing Self was never born,

nor will it die. Beyond cause and effect,

This Self is eternal and immutable.

When the body dies, the Self does not die…

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Hidden in the heart of every creature

Exists the Self, subtler that the subtlest,

Greater than the greatest…

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The Self cannot be known through study,

…nor through the intellect,

nor through discourses about it.

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~  Katha Upanishad

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The piece is not actually silent

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The piece is not actually silent 

[there will never be silence until death comes which never comes];

 it is full of sound,

 but sounds which I do not think of beforehand, 

which I hear for the first time the same time others hear. 

What we hear is determined by our own emptiness, 

our own receptivity; 

we receive to the extent we are empty to do so.

 If one is full, 

or in the course of its performance becomes full of an idea[...], then it is just that.

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~ John Cage, responding to a detractor of 4'33", recalled by Christian Wolff

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reblogged from: http://crowwithnomouth-jesse.blogspot.com/

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a far green country

Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, 
and went aboard; and the sails were drawn up, 
and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped down
 the long grey firth; and the light of the glass 
of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost.

 And the ship went out into the High Sea 
and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain 
Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound
 of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him
 that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain
 turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, 
and he beheld white shores and beyond them
 a far green country under a swift sunrise.

But to Sam the evening deepened to darkness 
as he stood at the Haven; and as he looked
 at the grey sea he saw only a shadow
 on the waters that was soon lost in the West.

~  J.R.R. Tolkien 
from: 'The Lord of the Rings'

It is not skill

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It is not skill, knowledge, intellect,
good luck or bad, but choosing
to feel the strange notes
of our wildness,
for there is not nothingness
despite the easy magic
of despair.

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~  Terrance Keenan

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question and answer

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question and answer
beginning and end
post and comment
fits and starts
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these all dissolve
beautifully into one
(a one with no parts)
when we let go
of our heads
and enter our hearts

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~ Benjamin Dean

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the grip of life

Say "death" and the whole room freezes--
even the couches stop moving,
even the lamps.
Like a squirrel suddenly aware it is being looked at.

Say the word continuously,
and things begin to go forward.
Your life takes on
the jerky texture of an old film strip.

Continue saying it, hold it moment after moment inside the mouth,
it becomes another syllable.
A shopping mall swirls around the corpse of a beetle.

Death is voracious, it swallows all the living.
Life is voracious, it swallows all the dead.
neither is ever satisfied, neither is ever filled,
each swallows and swallows the world.

The grip of life is as strong as the grip of death.

(but the vanished, the vanished beloved, o where?)



~ Jane Hirshfield

Unto our very selves we are abridged

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Whether we write or speak or do but look 

We are ever unapparent. What we are 

Cannot be transfused into word or book. 

Our soul from us is infinitely far. 

However much we give our thoughts the will 

To be our soul and gesture it abroad, 

Our hearts are incommunicable still. 

In what we show ourselves we are ignored. 

The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged 

By any skill of thought or trick of seeming. 

Unto our very selves we are abridged 

When we would utter to our thought our being. 

We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams, 

And each to each other dreams of others’ dreams.

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~ Fernando Pessoa 

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A Letter (to Ed McClanahan)

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Dear Ed,

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I dreamed that you and I were sent to Hell.

The place we went to was not fiery

or cold, was not Dante's Hell or Milton's,

but was, even so, as true a Hell as any.

It was a place unalterably public

in which crowds of people were rushing

in weary frenzy this way and that,

as when classes change in a university

or at quitting time in a city street,

except that this place was wider far

than we could see, and the crowd as large 

as the place.  In that crowd every one

was alone.  Every one was hurrying.

Nobody was sitting down.  Nobody

was standing around.  All were rushing

so uniformly frantic, that to average them

would have stood them still.  It was a place 

deeply disturbed.  We thought, you and I,

that we might get across and come out

on the other side, if we stayed together,

only if we stayed together.  The other side

would be a clear day in a place we would know.

We joined hands and hurried along,

snatching each other through small openings 

in the throng.  But the place was full

of dire distractions, dire satisfactions.

We were torn apart, and I found you 

breakfasting upon a huge fried egg.

I snatched you away: "Ed! Come on!"

And then, still susceptible, I met

a lady whose luster no hell could dim.

She took all my thought.  But then,

in the midst of my delight, my fear

returned: "Oh! Damn it all! Where's Ed?"

I fled, searching, and found you again.

We went on together.  How this ended

I do not know.  I woke before it could end.

But, old friend, I want to tell you

how fine it was, what a durable

nucleus of joy it gave my fright

to force that horrid way with you, how

heavenly, let us say, in spite of Hell.

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P.S.

Do you want to know shy

you were distracted by an egg, and I

by a beautiful lady?  That's Hell.

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~ Wendell Berry

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The body is a single creature

God, how I hate names

of the body's chemicals and anatomy,

the frore and glum department

of its parts, each alone in the scattering

of the experts of Babel.

The body

is a single creature, whole

its life is one, never less that one, or more,

so is its world, and so

are two bodies in their love for one another

one.  In ignorance of this

we talk ourselves to death.

~  Wendell Berry

The abyss of no-meaning

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The abyss of no-meaning-what

can prevail against it?  Love

for the water in its standing

fall through the hill's wrist

from the town down to the river.

There is no love but this,

and it extends from Heaven

to the land destroyed,

to the hurt man in his cage,

to the dead man in his grave.

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~ Wendell Berry

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Sorrows of the Moon

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Tonight the moon dreams in a deeper languidness,
And, like a beauty on her cushions, lies at rest;
While drifting off to sleep, a tentative caress
Seeks, with a gentle hand, the contour of her breast;
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As on a crest above her silken avalanche,
Dying, she yields herself to an unending swoon,
And sees a pallid vision everywhere she’d glance,
In the azure sky where blossoms have been strewn.
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When sometime, in her weariness, upon her sphere
She might permit herself to sheda furtive tear,
A poet of great piety, a foe of sleep,
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Catches in the hollow of his hand that tear,
An opal fragment, iridescent as a star;
Within his heart, far from the sun, it’s buried deep.
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~  Charles Baudelaire 
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