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...

Sometime in April, we discussed sight in Hinduism, specifically, darsan. Diane Eck’s book, Darsan, helped us understand the divine image in India, how sight embodies the holy experience.  Although I learned that we have the potential to smell infinite scents, 70% of our body’s sensory receptors are in our eyes. I think sight is so overwhelming that it acts as the bridge to connect all of our sensations together, to understand scent comes from objects and instruments produce sound. Being able to observe the world is the way we begin to understand.  It’s difficult to overstate the importance of sight in our everyday lives, I am able to type this reflection by seeing my words. How is sight used in ritual? I think sight is the primary sense used in orienting ourselves in a setting. You use your sight to determine what is reality and what is illusion. In this sense, it can be difficult in Western contexts to know when you’ve “found God” in a visual sense, as well as an emb...

Today wasn't my first time "doing" miracle berries. While abroad last year, studying food security, we spent a class discussing sugar, obesity and the relationship between the two. As part of the class we had miracle berries and tried apples, lemons and limes, just like today. We were talking about how the miracle berry and its chemical components could be used in food and how that would be beneficial. By incorporating the berry into other foods that we eat, we could make them taste sweeter, and more enjoyable, without actually adding sugar or other sweeteners which can be harmful to our health. The way we used the miracle berry then was in a social/health context, so I tried thinking about how that could overlap with our religious context that we discussed today. We discussed how by using the miracle berry we were changing the food to taste differently and better (sweeter). That relates to how we understand God as being good. It then becomes a question of "is Go...

Everyone's perception of the world is different. We know this, but it can be easy to forget sometimes. I was reminded of just how different our realities are today by my roommate during our trip to the art gallery. As a side bar, the first thing I thought of was The Deepest Touch, and the discussion of the cultural shift away from handling museum artifacts, and towards the visual experience of the art. Some of the pieces were clearly texturized, but I could only look at them from a distance, instead of connecting with the art on a physical level. Despite this, the visual experience was beautiful. I was stunned by the creativity of my peers and the sheer talent around me. The exhibits were beautiful and thought provoking, and you all should go. Anyways, my roommate and I were looking at one of the pieces, and there were people in front of us, so we were hanging back a little. I was curious as to what the motivation of the piece was, so I was reading the write up next to it. All ...

I spend a fair amount of time on the New York Times website. Its just a fact at this point. Instead of Buzzfeed, which I have previously been addicted to, I spend large quantities of time reading obscure Op-Ed articles. Imagine my surprise when I found and article that actually quotes Constance Classen, the author of The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch , although this article focuses on smell. Sensory perception is extremely dependent on culture. English speaking cultures are astonishingly poor at naming odors, a fact that has been agreed upon for the past thirty years. Smells like cinnamon, lemon, and rose are tough for Americans to name, while colors are extremely easy to distinguish between. However, when researchers visited foraging tribes on the Malay Peninsula, they collected different results. These individuals were nearly as good at identifying smells as they were at identifying sights. This reminded me of JBK and Betsey Dyer's article that we read earlier in...