Think Probabilistic

India is decorated with so many towering mystical saint-poets who have expressed profound spiritual experiences through poetry, music, and dance over three thousand years. What is not widely known is that not all of them have been men. Amongst the many female saint-poets who have journeyed across this ancient land, two towering figures stand out for their unique blend of spirituality and sensuality—Āṇḍāl from Tamil Nadu and Akkamahādevī from Karnataka. Both of these female saint-poets transcended the boundaries of gender, caste, and conventional norms to not only become icons of devotion but whose compositions are still revered across modern India, almost daily, in the yearning hearts of hundreds of millions.

The universe is described in Indian thought as an energy that has manifested into a grand theater of the mesmerizing cosmos, shining with the brilliance of countless suns and moons casting their luminescence upon this world. Witnessing this grand illusory play and striving to move from the unreal to the real is the heart of yogic philosophy. The Śrī Rudram is one of the most ancient and unremitting chants in Sanskrit from the Vedic age, still recited all over India and passed on from generation to generation stretching back almost 3,600 years. It is a lyrical composition rich in elaborate rhythmic cadences and melodious intonations.

The fabric of time, cyclical in nature and upon which memories are woven with intricate detail, winds, and unwinds the karmic ledger — the metaphysical diary that records every action, gross, subtle, and causal. Bound by the rope of all activities resulting from action, life spins round and round like a wheel, experiencing a spectrum of suffering or bliss as dictated by what was already written and what continues to be written in the karmic ledger. The predicament of how to sever the bonds of that rope, to be unbound to the vicissitudes of the mind and body in the earnest and elusive quest for absolute emancipation, is the aim of all yogic practice.

The ancient south Indian city of Madurai, shimmering like a polestar in the divine firmament and inspiring an eternally compounding repository of knowledge, music, and art from time immemorial, reverberates with pristine generative energy. For more than two and half thousand years, this celestial land has woven the study of the self, carnatic music, and art into a tapestry of the most ancient spirituality, defying definitive description by even the most erudite of scholars, and transcending material concern & transient emotion. A beacon of resplendent temples, to take a walk inside this city is to immerse the self in a universe parameterized by the deepest of aesthetic emotions and sublime bliss, igniting the subtle consciousness and be transported into an abode of supreme peace.

The immeasurable gift of music, inspiring and soothing in its emotive content, woven around the fabric of devotion: the ancient and glorious tradition of carnātic music, while defying definitive descriptions even by the most erudite of scholars, is perhaps closer to the meloexpression of aesthetic emotion or bhāva than to a rigid, inviolable musical structure. Inseparable from the concept of bhakti bhāva or fervent devotion to the supreme reality of the cosmic race, carnātic music has been enriched for thousands of years by gifted saintly composers, preserved and nurtured by a quality of selfless dedication that has transcended material concern and transient emotion.

The sagacious Joost Bonsen once tried to outline his theory of multiplexing ideas, a chapter in his vast treasure-trove of constructs on engineering creativity in my first year at MIT. I found his elucidation to be coherent, almost like an Occam’s razor. But as with most constructs in life, what we deem fathomable in theory are but a train of shadows in practice. The vagaries of the real world, with its messiness and its formidable distribution of noise give us a dose of reality at best and encumber our optimism at their worst. I wanted to completely imbue Joost’s advice into my thoughts, but I found it too daring.

My dear Dustin, I don’t know what has happened to this world, and why things work the way the do. While my spirit is broken, and my heart bleeds,  I still feel your your friendship and your warmth.

When I first arrived at MIT, I didn’t know what to expect and was nervous about many things. You welcomed me like an old friend, and made me feel at home. I remember talking about 6.864, and how Barzilay had just announced that EMNLP was happening in Stata that year. We attended the conference together. It is then that I realized that you were a most unusual chap.