Smells and Bells

Rama & Sita India is a destination that I would love to travel to. Its rich culture and religious diversity shape much of the country’s ideals, customs, architecture, music, art, etc. Diana Eck, author of “Darsan: Seeing the Divine Images in India” describes India best when she says, “India presents to the visitor an overwhelmingly visual impression. It is beautiful, colorful, sensuous. It is captivating and intriguing, repugnant, and puzzling. It combines the intimacy and familiarity of English four o’clock tea with the dazzling foreignness of caparisoned elephants or vast crowds bathing in the Ganga during an eclipse. India’s display of multi-armed images, its processions and pilgrimages, its beggars and kings, its street life and markets, its diversity of peoples- all appear to the eye in a kaleidoscope of images” (10).  One of Frida Kahlo's Self Portraits I remember being mind blown about our vision when a challenge having to do with the color of a dress was goin...

In this class we have talked a lot about each of the five senses and how they have affected human history and especially human ritual, and the role they can play in symbolizing and communing with the divine. We've talked about how each of our senses work and how the data they give us allow us to perceive and interact with the world at large. How important each of our senses can be on establishing us within a community, whether we are touching our friends or eating with them. And how they can keep us alive, often in ways we don't even realize, such as bitter's function as a poison detector or the fact that a lack of touch can communicate to a baby's system that it lacks protection and that it should conserve its resources and stop growing. Our senses can do some amazing things, and are at the root of sentience. Supposedly the brain originally developed to allow the processing of smell! But our perceptions are built of more than any one of our senses -- they are a...

In my last post, I talked about color and colorblindness, and how color was such a personal experience. That statement got me thinking, because, when it really comes down to it, everything we experience is a personal experience. No one ever feels the same way. We may use the same general terms to attempt to describe our experiences, but in the end only we really know how we feel. Our senses and emotions have a deep connection. Another blog I found from Tufts University states that "what we sense triggers a feeling" which becomes a conceptual association. This could be anything- the blog goes into how seeing a cup of coffee, tasting coffee, hearing a coffee maker, smelling coffee beans can make us feel energized or happy. This happens all around us, though we may not know it. The sun after a long winter, for example. I feel refreshed and excited and energized on that first beautiful morning of spring, and that conceptual association leads me into my day happy. Most of the time...

Yesterday was beautiful. It was warm and sunny and as lovely as any day has been this spring. To take advantage of the weather before the rest of the week was marred by daily rain, I decided to go for a walk. I brought some tinder and some dry wood with me and set out for one of my favorite fire pits -- one that is pretty set back and secluded feeling, especially since the trail is being slowly reclaimed. My plan was to set a small fire and soak in the beautiful sights and sounds of nature. However, I encountered one sight I didn't expect. Right at the entrance to the clearing, maybe 10 feet in front of the fire-pit  was a fresh deer carcass, its black eyes still staring at the trail, at me. I won't supply a picture, of this or any other dead deer, but I think its enough to say that this was a little bit unsettling. It was obviously a fresh kill, a day or two dead, tops. It still had most of its fur and only one large wound. My first reaction was, of course, sadness and a cer...

We all have times when we don't feel like ourselves. I think a lot of seniors are feeling this way right now- anxious, confused, stressed, emotional- the list goes on. Yesterday I woke up feeling strange, almost disconnected from my surroundings. In this weird transitory time, I wasn't surprised, but I was unsure of how to shake this feeling and come back into my body. At lunch, my roommate and I grabbed one of the desserts from the dining hall because it looked appealing. However, upon smelling it and savoring its taste, we came to the conclusion that (like many foods here) it did not taste at all like what it was meant to be. That's when it hit me- focusing on the sensory experience of trying a bite of the dessert brought me back into my body. My mind came down from the cloud that it was on and I felt more in tune with myself. I knew what to do from there. Some people use religion as their primary means of reconnecting with themselves, while at the same time experiencin...