This is part two of the adventures in Advaita Vedanta... will you travel with me a while?


Whispering Wednesday

Hari OM

Yesterday you were introduced to a book titled Kindle Life. I was struck by the word kindle. To light, to inflame, to excite... we associate it mostly with fire but it can certainly be applied to rousing interest or emotion. This may be why a certain e-reader carries this as its name... to ignite the imagination, to inspire knowledge through the words it contains.

Personally, I find it difficult to think of this word without the associated descriptor of kindling - the small twigs or other combustible material that is required before any fire can be started. Is this the part the words play when we are learning from a text? Or what about the part we play in it - is our interest, our desire to absorb new knowledge also part of the kindling? Are our mind and the words the twigs and leaves and cast-off wool or paper that easily catch a flame and bring it into full burn? Then, with a fire, once it is alight, sparks arise and glow brightly - are we those sparks, emblazoned from the heat of our new understanding and burning with the desire to learn even more, thus returning to the fire to be 'burned' further?

Ah... see how this imagination has been kindled?!!

Photo by Hans Isaacson on Unsplash


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