The Suns of Poetry

For some, poetry aims highly at several things. As an art form it uses language in new and creative ways to express ideas and emotions; it creates its own vocabulary for expression of some of our deepest thoughts and feelings. The poet is, in the words of Indian teacher and mystic, Sri Aurobindo, the result of the harmonizing of
"five perennial powers: truth, beauty, joy, life and spirit." The one he terms, the "poet-seer" is someone who "sees differently, who thinks in another way... the poet shows us truth within its power of beauty, in its symbol or image, reveals it to us..."

Poets seek to illumine, to amplify or lift up in words, images and symbols in the way the visual artist does with his drawings or designs. For Aurobindo the term life carries further meaning than its base, scientific sense. In its use, Aurobindo means to signify "the life of feelings and passions. The inner life, which is infinite." Poets as seers and sages are gifted with the ability to perceive and elucidate upon those facets of living which many feel but can derive no words for meaning. The poet is much loved for the giving of words to otherwise unexpressed longings of ones' heart. Poetry then is the heart of the heart. Sri Aurobindo makes this clear when he writes about matters of truth, beauty and joy:

 Because Thou Art

Because Thou art All-beauty and All-bliss,

My soul blind and enamored yearns for Thee; 

It bears Thy mystic touch in all that is 

And thrills with the burden of that ecstasy. 

Behind all eyes I meet Thy secret gaze 

And in each voice I hear Thy magic tune: 

Thy sweetness haunts my heart through Nature's ways;

 Nowhere it beats now from Thy snare immune. 

It loves Thy body in all living things; 

Thy joy is there in every leaf and stone: 

The moments bring Thee on their fiery wings; 

Sight's endless artistry is Thou alone
Time voyages with Thee upon its prow
And all the future's passionate hope is Thou.

--Sri Aurobindo

The complete Works of Sri Aurobindo 


 

Questioning, the Piety of Thinking

"For questioning is the piety of thinking."  --Martin Heidegger, 20th century Existentialist philosopher

In the mind of philosopher, Martin Heidegger, questioning was not anything without thinking. Thus in his view, a questioner is not a dissenter; rather they are listening. All questioning, he believed, gets started from initial listening, that which precedes and guides the questioner. Following this point, Heidegger delves into the spiritual, the pious, the holy. His thoughts concerns the piety of thinking itself.

Bringing the mind of Heidegger into the realm of the beginner, James C. Hart, along with some 25 others  translate the philosopher's work from his native German into English, or give knowledgeable commentary in their book, The Piety of Thinking. 
What, Heidegger pondered, does it mean to objectify?
He saw this social phenomenon in regarding living things as objects; objectifying them for use, as a thing.
What does it mean to think? 
In his view, thinking in some instances is not objectifying; it's instead an expression of a being which wills itself to be. For example, if all thinking were objective, then the creation  of art would be meaningless because it derives from personal thought which 'shows itself' in the work. 
Thus it is non-objective. On the other hand, we, by this view, can accept that thinking about the natural world and the sciences engages in objectivity. 
Thinking is "whatever shows itself however it shows itself."
It is the opposite of hiding, concealment.

Heidegger also then concerns himself with the meaning of speaking. What does it mean to speak? He asks all these deceptively simple questions and arrives at some startling answers. In speaking Heidegger insists one might use words as a tool to enforce the manipulation of others by words; one also may use words as humans do to "open up the world for them, to make a dwelling place in the world."

Finally another question Heidegger poses is that of thinking as a form of speaking. "Is all thinking a form of speaking and is all speaking a form of thinking? What does it mean to 'talk to yourself?" And he warns as early as the 1920s that scientific ways of thinking, objective speaking, threatens to overwhelm all other imaging in the world today. There are in his mind different needs in speaking and thinking, a piety of thinking for Heidegger is perhaps 'compliant to the covering and uncovering of truth.'