RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Stanzas of Thanksgiving Inspired byWariboko, Milarepa and Abhinavagupta : An Adaptation of Nimi Wariboko : TheAdepoju System of Initiation into World Spiritualities and Philosophies

I still think Toyin Adepoju's interests are better serve in the long run by issue based rather than person based scholarship if he aspires to be a respected scholar. ( he is the first to always talk of mutual respect: well, it starts from self- respect.  

I can understand we all have egos to massage and this is why the Yorùbá civilization is always on its guard with the aphorism 'Ìgbá abá kú làá dèré' (we are elevated to godhead by sculptures only when we die.)  There is no harm in occasional praises dont get me wrong but when you say you want to be organising seminars about a present moderator's scholarship, or a reworking another fellow intellectual in the forum to help massage their egos, the purpose is obvious.  Especially when a lower endowed academic intends to play off one accomplished academic against the other.  Such academics should not fall for the ploy.  It is simply immodest.

I know this is not specifically un- American.  When I first entered graduate school in America I was warned off such antics when my mentor stated that most of his colleagues were looking for ' followers.'  I had been an enduring Derrida scholar before going into the American academy, and to show off my speciality I was sounding off a la Derrida when another mentor commented ' Derridance.'  I got the message.  These were highly skilled Derrida contemporaries who were apprised of all the major critiques of Derrida's work and they could not see why you would leave those who would determine your fate and be singing the praises of an outsider scholar.

Adepoju is better off developing along his own line with his own steam like say Akin Ogundiran who knew the Moderator long before Adepoju could think anything serious about academics.  But I am yet to read on the forum where Ogundiran is organising such seminars.  He is self-respecting of his own abilities. So others take him seriously.  To Adepoju:  This forum is not an American graduate school!

Falola and Wariboko should be allowed to exit the stage before they are turned into Gods.  And that does not mean that they are not respectable scholars.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>

Date: 24/12/2020 03:35 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>, Naija Observer <naijaobserver@googlegroups.com>

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Stanzas of Thanksgiving Inspired byWariboko,  Milarepa and Abhinavagupta : An Adaptation of Nimi Wariboko : TheAdepoju System  of Initiation into World Spiritualities and Philosophies

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                                 Stanzas of Thanksgiving  Inspired by Wariboko, Milarepa and Abhinavagupta

                                                                         An Adaptation of Nimi Wariboko

                                        The Adepoju System of Initiation into World Philosophies and Spiritualities

                                                                            Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                                        Compcros

                                                                Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

                                                   "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

                                                                                          Abstract

A prayer of thanksgiving composed of  quotations from the work of Christian Pentecostal and Kalabari philosopher, theologian and economist Nimi Wariboko, slightly adapted and integrated within which is a quotation from Hindu Tantric Trika theologian and poet Abhinavagupta in stanzas eleven and twelve and an invocation of Tibetan Buddhist poet Jetsun Milarepa in relation to Wariboko in stanzas six and seven.

                                                                                   The Stanzas of Thanksgiving

                                                                      Inspired by Wariboko, Milarepa and Abhinavagupta  

 

                                                      

 

I call upon the infinite circle of the Spirit of God

that grounds all circles.

I call upon those who assist me in writing the book of my life.

 

Circles upon circles!

 

Center of my life am I

a gift

of God, human beings, and nature.

 

I call upon the living, the dead and the unborn

I call upon the distant sounds of the footsteps of coming generations

the not-yet born

I call upon all my teachers, past, present and future

I call upon the entanglements of knowledge, debts of insight and well-wishes

from past, present and future generations

the river whose streams make glad the labor of living

inspiring the lonely habitation of existence.

 

I call upon

the birds of spring and summer

of rainy and dry seasons

delighting me in their singing, chirping, and acrobatic displays

I call upon the trees, their flowers, and their dancing in the wind

adding splendid color, fragrance, and fillip to my imagination and sight

the unity of nature, thinking, and divine ecstasy

in voluptuous embrace.

 

I call upon the sons of fire

the master in his Tibetan cave and the brother in his Boston home

distant in space and time yet present in spirit

remote in space yet close in mind

human yet one with the more than human

human yet reaching to the Ultimate

unified with the holder of the thunderbolt sceptre

piercing through clouds of ignorance to glorious truth

mighty Vajra-Dhara, sublime Dorje-Chang

one with the wielder of the bell

summoning all to the quest to know that at the root of existence

in the unity of that love beyond all yet within all

infinite knowledge beyond understanding

yet filtering into mind.

 

Brother

naked in the cold free of warmth

but within which you are aflame with passion

unclothed before sight of Essence

may I be thus naked facing Reality

aflame in the fire that burns away all that is not Real

my Lord Jetsun,

one with the Abonnema master Nimiwari

in wishing well being on all with such force

that one's mental processes transcend thought.

 

I call upon you all

constructors of symphonies of ideas, actions and sounds

ekstatic patterns

expressive architectures of Unconditional music

form and energy of the original multiple Oneness

in rhythm with the symphony of the universe.

 

I invoke you

where many roads meet

past, present, future

the finite and the infinite

the known, the knowable and the unknowable

contact zone of possibilities

the fragile, fleeting, and slippery site

of new, refreshing insights and lights

the uncanny non-place

birthing the underivably new in history.

 

May my soul find deep peace at this frontier

the edge of knowledge

that is always approaching and withdrawing approach.

 

May my heart

the core of my being

which is the core of all beings

the innermost awareness

that animates all manifestation

shine forth

the product of the exuberance of emotion

due to the mating of my father and mother

embodying the bliss of the ultimate

one with the state of absolute potential

made manifest in the fusion of these two

my father as Shiva

the foundation of being complete in himself

whose zest in creativity is manifest in her

my mother, as Shakti

the universal Divine Energy

which expresses its stamina in ever fresh creativity

radiant in ever new genesis

my mother 

whose greatest joy was in my birth

and my father 

when both were all embracing in their union.

 

 May my heart

 which is the emission of vibrance from the couple

and therefore  full of the supreme nectar

shine

expand

as the totality of the bliss of the Absolute.

The working

the unworking

and the reworking.

 

Bringing to completion

creating incompletion

reaching for infinite truth beyond tradition.

 

Notes

What you feed your mind with is perhaps more important than what you feed your body on, although fulfillment for both in balance  is vital.

Everyday is a challenge of opportunity, for creativity or destruction, for fulfillment or unfulfillment, for hope or despair. 

How may one prepare oneself for the day by lifting the mind to  levels of sensitivity to one's highest potential?

A potential related in Buddhism to  alaya-vijnana, the ''store'' that harbours all one's possibilities.

The room within the self that embraces the cosmos, as depicted in the Indian Upanishads.

The space that opens out into the intersection between the self made up of our biological and social existence and the self described as embodying our ultimate potential beyond space and time, the rhythm between ori lasan,the biological head and ori inu, the inward head, as understood in Yoruba origin Orisa cosmology.

The oscillation  between So, the totality of possibilities, and so, the expression of this totality in our lives, as understood in Kalabari thought.

I do this by beginning my day through looking inward in silence, acknowledging the miracle of my existence and the fact that I am aware of that existence. 

I give thanks for that miracle and ask for guidance to make the most of it.

At critical times, I return to that inward space, and dialogue with my deepest self about how to see and respond to situations.

I then proceed, at the beginning of the day, to do something inspiring, often composing a piece of writing.

Recently, I have followed the meditation by reading the  prayer of thanksgiving below before doing anything else.

The prayer is a  poem  composed by myself from the work of the contemporary Nigerian-American Christian Pentecostal and Kalabari philosopher, theologian and economist Nimi Wariboko,  complemented by a quotation from  10th century Kashmiri Hindu Tantric and Trika theologian and poet  Abhinavagupta and an invocation of 12th century Tibetan Buddhist Kargyutpa theologian and poet Jetsun Milarepa.

These three masters of the spiritual life are  adepts in the art of thanksgiving, superb expressers of their visions, wizards of poetic language as a medium for the unity of abstract, ultimate  beauty and the daily engagements of human life.

Wariboko, through the acknowledgements pages of his books, from which most of the poem is quoted or adapted, Milarepa in his poetry and Abhinavagupta in the opening lines of his books on the thought of the Trika school of Hindu Tantrism to which he belongs, such as Tantraloka, Light on the Tantras and Paratrisika-Vivarana, translated by Jaideva Singh as The Secret of Tantric Mysticism.

The prayer lifts my mind to a lofty level, above clouds and mountain peaks, evoking ultimate ascents of aspiration, from which the lines that form the poem were written, enabling me share in the world of masters of the spiritual and philosophical life, in rhythm with the most sublime aspirations ever conceived, empowering my sense of the value of existence, and of my own purpose in existing, stoking the blaze of aspiration burning within me.

I shall follow up this piece with a publication, with his permission,  of the selections from Wariboko's acknowledgements pages that inspired this work as well as with a detailed  interpretation of the poem.

All stanzas, except stanzas 6,7, 12 and 13  are quotations from Wariboko, at times slightly adapted, with a few interjections by myself.

Stanzas 6 and 7 are completely my own constructs while stanzas 12 and 13 are Abhinavagupta's lines, presented through integrating various translations, such as Jaideva Singh's of Abhinavagupta's Paratrisika, Mark Dyzkowski, Christopher Wallis, Roger-Orphé Jeanty of his Tantraloka, Bettina Baumer's discussion of the sequence of passages in various books in Abhinavagupta's Hermeneutics of the Absolute and Alexis Sanderson's comprehensive analysis of the meaning of those lines within the religious tradition to which Abhinavagupta belongs in ''A Commentary on the Opening Lines of the Tantrasara of Abhinvavagupta.''

This essay is part of a series on Wariboko's acknowledgements pages, itself part of my ongoing work on Wariboko. The Wariboko project itself is part of a complex of engagements with various bodies of knowledge across disciplines and cultures which I am integrating as the ''Adepoju System of Initiation into African, Asian and Western Philosophies and Spiritualities,'' which I have introduced in the linked poem of that title and which is explained in detail in a later publication as a small book.

The first essay on Wariboko's acknowledgements pages, "The Poetics of Philosophy :Part 1: Nimi Wariboko's Circles of Being and Becoming," and my Wariboko work in general are  at the blog Exploring Nimi Wariboko and linked at the Facebook page of the same title.

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