Holy is as holy does

“Holy is as holy does” in lay terms is a paradigm that sums up the quest for higher understanding for the common man. What makes a common man uncommon? His quest to perceive what is not perceptible to the naked eye. He or she is someone who embarks on a journey to unravel the layers of phenomenon to gather awareness of the underlying principle. Since the ultimate understanding has differed historically, it is essentially the journey and not the destination that distinguishes the holy soul.



Aware and Awake I



Aware and Awake II



Aware and Awake  is a depiction of a being ready to experience, ready to defy gravity, ready to embrace an understanding.



Sanctity



Sanctity is an installation of a pair of hands clad in sterilized physician’s gloves grasping on to prayer beads. These hands rest on a pedestal wrapped in bright yellow caution tapes. While every system that involves the masses need to operate with many little checks and balances, “sterility” is often mistaken for “purity”. While purity is essential for clarity, sterility is divorced from the principle of life.




Dalai Lama

 

The Dalai Lama has been in exile for the past few years in India to escape the Chinese attacks on Tibetan monks. He is still at large, sharing his wisdom with the world! His words are cherished at Stanford University as much as they are by the poor mountain dwellers of the Himalayas.

Singularity and Multiplicity: Historically there has been much bloodshed over the supremacy of the “ultimate understanding”. The bloodshed continues today. The journey for the quest is being judged or disregarded. Multiplicity and singularity: a symbiotic relationship. Singularity is even discernable because of the existence or understanding of multiplicity and what is multiplicity but a collection of singular elements?



The Holy Men



Holy Men: The paradox of the situation and the consequent reason for the bloodshed is that the journey in essence cannot be shared. Folks like Kant would assert that the interaction between the “noumenon” and “phenomenon” creates reality, hence an individual understanding remains so, individual. Humans cannot, according to Kant, know things-in-themselves, only things as we experience them. The layman would say, “Holy is as holy does” and thus the holy man tries to share his understanding. His process of arriving at the conclusion largely remains open to debate. Holy Men is a depiction of Naga sadhus of India, smoking pot, buck-naked with cinder smeared all over the body. His understanding of the “ultimate truth” therefore is likely to differ from the law abiding gentry who do the daily grind of 9-5 and raise children grow old removed from the “underlying principle” for the most part. If the holy bear the cross, so do the layman, since once again, “Holy is as holy does”!