RE: Astrology, Omar Khayyam, and Yogananda
ORIGINAL: Sacredstar
You provided a lovely explanation about the wine perhaps you would be willing to do the same about the women?
The feminine in his poetry is allegorical if it occurs; as for his actual personal life, I wouldn't presume to know as he's been dead a thousand years and I don't know him on speaking terms as you do.
V 😉
RE: Astrology, Omar Khayyam, and Yogananda
I love the tounge in cheek humour intertwined with the more serious stuff in this thread.. Perhaps Omar is guiding both of you:D
LOL As i wrote Intertwined some one shouted Did some one say Wine!?:D
love & Hugs Maria
RE: Astrology, Omar Khayyam, and Yogananda
Furthermore I knew nothing of Omar or his past prior to him arriving in my life on my Reiki Masters training course. It was only after he introduced himself, came again and briefed me how to call him that I then purchased a copy of the Rubaiyat and carried out research on the internet to discover who this man was in depth and breadth.
Perhaps you would like to give us further insight on these passages especially the words 'gin and sober'.
LVII
Oh, Thou, who didst with pitfall and with Gin
beset the road I was to wander in.
Thou wilt not with predestination round enmesh me, and impute my fall to sin?
LXX
Indeed, indeed, repentance oft before
I swore - but was I sober when I swore?
And then and hen came Spring, and Rose-in-hand
My thread -bare penitence apieces tore.
LXIX
Indeed the Idols I have loved so long
have done my credit in
Mens eye much wrong:
Have drowned my honour in a shallow cup,
and sold my reputation for a song.
being love
kim xx
RE: Astrology, Omar Khayyam, and Yogananda
To back-track, I began the thread on the subject of astrology and OK's take on it. However it is all the same interesting to understand the allegory within the poems. I haven't time to go into the required detail for three whole quatrains! So a few examples?
It's been realised for a long as I wrote that the poems are allegory. In fact most poetry is. The word 'gin' doesn't literally mean that OK drank gin! 😀 I doubt they even had such a drink - that's the 19th century English translator at work.
'Pitfall' and 'gin' means sense pleasures, and the 'Thou' he is talking to is his error-strewn Ego. The Ego has in past lives, and even in this one, led himm into taking his attention from the Divinity and the Path. This has triggered karmic ties ('Predestination'); but he's not going to buy into the Ego and allow that karma to act with impunity. He affirms that this is the way of the psuedo-soul (sense pleasures) but he won't stay caught up in the ways of the world.
On LXX Yogananda has 'But I was sober when I swore' as 'But now I think I was only momentarily intoxicated with the short-lived inebrient of repentance and remorse.'
Poetry is usually allegorical or symbolic. OK's certainly is. Wine, grape, gin, etc are used here to indicate such things as either the bliss of Union in meditation, or intoxication with the maya and sense-pleasures he renounces. The context is in the quatrain.
If the point is that you are taking the words literally, you are amazingly buying into an interpreter's error of one and a half centuries ago, since FitzGerald had no spiritual insights at all.
RE: Astrology, Omar Khayyam, and Yogananda
LOL, I was just at work but the line was in my head, "But I was sober when I swore". I'd hardly really even gotten my head around to see how that must look to someone who takes Khayyam's poetry literally!
"But I was sober when I swore" as meaning, "I said b** * In Persian, and I hadn't even had a drink at the time."
No!:D No!:D No!:D - this is poetry, the words are symbols for deeper meanings! It isn't a literal diary of what he got up to during the day.:D
V