Sanātana mood

The Sanskrit notion of Sanātana as a poetical obsession has been the trigger and the vehicle of my journeys. They were like double wanderings: a contemplative walk through consciousness, dreams and memories - the 'inside world', and long explorative wanderings through wild Himalayan forests, Indian cities and villages, cultural events, homes, temples and libraries, revisiting social and religious rituals - the 'outside world'. Glimpses of the joureys: a selection of images from my walk to the source of Ganges, the solitary path, a talk, a journal. As a follow-up, time was my next artistic destination.

My heart melted hundreds of times during brief encounters with unexpected warm smiles and open gazes, as if strangers would gesture Namaste! with their eyes, not knowing if I'd undersand that word, the meaning of it. Their soul saluted mine.

Sanātana Dharma stands at the core of what is called right vision, the fundation of right action in Vedic and Buddhist traditions. Some of the core notions addressed by these traditions are satya (truth), vidya (wisdom), buddhi (intelligence) as latent, intrinsic qualities of every form of life, where life is a manifestation of the highest principle of existence. At an individual level, we speak of svadharma, which is contained in svabhava, where sva stands for own/personal and bhava means seed. This comes to life as vak (the first born of rta), which means word and comes close to the inital logos of the Christian tradition. One verse of the Dhammapada explicitly refers to Sanātana Dharma: "Na hi verena verani sammantidha kudacanam; averena ca sammanti. Esa dhammo sanantano". This translates from Pali more or less like: "Hatred is, indeed, never appeased by hatred in this world. It is appeased only by the cessation of hatred. This is an ancient law".