essays for a rainy day - Ebook version (2023)

By Michael S. Garmon

A compilation of critical essays written circa 2012, "essays for a rainy day" includes criticism of literary works authored in the Ancient World, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Victorian, and the Modern World eras.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781312563162

Book preview

essays for a rainy day

© 2012 Michael S. Garmon. All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-312-56316-2

Digital Edition (May 2023)

Imprint: Lulu

Dedicated to my dear wife Nancy –

my love, my life.

Contents

Part I. The Ancient World

Essay 1: The Rajasuya in the Sabha Parva

Essay 2: Treeness, Chairness, and Other Weirdness

Essay 3: The Homeric Gods of the Iliad and the Odyssey

Essay 4: Opining on the Aeneid and the Odyssey

Essay 5: The Role of Fate in Homer and Virgil

Essay 6: Friendship, Pride, and Death in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Iliad

Essay 7: Ovid’s Metamorphoses

Part II. The Middle Ages

Essay 8: Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy

Essay 9: The Wanderer

Essay 10: Beroul’s Romance of Tristan

Essay 11: Marie de France and Saint Patrick’s Purgatory

Essay 12: Dante’s Purgatorio

Essay 13: Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess and The Legend of Cleopatra

Part III. The Renaissance

Essay 14: Sir Thomas More’s Utopia

Essay 15: The Defeat of the Spanish Armada

Essay 16: John Donne’s A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

Essay 17: Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince

Essay 18: John Milton’s Paradise Lost

Essay 19: Contrasting Don Quixote and Sancho Panza

Essay 20: Renaissance Humanism: Machiavelli, Montaigne, and Rabelais

Essay 21: A Review of Rabelais’s Gargantua

Essay 22: Concerning the Efficacies of Profit and Loss: A Letter of Response to M. Michel Montaigne

Essay 23: Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus

Essay 24: Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Essay 25: A Short Performance History of The Tempest in the Seventeenth Century

Essay 26: Rene Descartes’ Discourse on the Method

Part IV. The Enlightenment

Essay 27: Natural Law, Morality, Propriety, and Social Community in Pride and Prejudice

Essay 28: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Revisited

Essay 29: Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Essay 30: Kant’s Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals and Metaphysical Principles of Virtue

Essay 31: Ekaterina Dashkova’s The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova

Essay 32: Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions

Essay 33: Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels

Essay 34: The Poetry of William Wordsworth

Part V. 1850-1950: Tolstoy, James, Durkheim, Freud, and Schopenhauer

Essay 35: Tolstoy’s Universal and Eternal Truth as Rendered in the Novel War and Peace

Essay 36: William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience

Essay 37: Emile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life

Essay 38: Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents

Essay 39: Erik Erikson’s Childhood and Society

Essay 40: Arthur Schopenhauer’s Prize Essay On the Freedom of the Will

Part VI. The Nature of Hinduism

Essay 41: The Origins of Hinduism

Essay 42: Ritualism in the Hindu Tradition

Essay 43: The Influence of Vaishnavism on Hinduism

Essay 44: The Meaning of Dharma in Hindu Life

Essay 45: Saivism and Tantrism

Essay 46: Ramakrishna and Vivekananda

Essay 47: Rabindranath Tagore

Essay 48: Shaktism

Essay 49: Radhakrishnan and Bhave

End Notes

List of Works Cited

Part I. The Ancient World

Essay 1: The Rajasuya in the Sabha Parva

Written in Sanskrit, The Mahabharata (Mhb) is estimated to be 100,000 verses in length (Reich 142). Like the Homeric epics the Iliad and the Odyssey, Mahabharata was handed down over many generations before it was finally placed into writing (Reich 142), although the epic continued to evolve well after it was transcribed. One of the more compelling books of The Mahabharata is the Sabha Parva, the second book of the massive epic. The Sabha Parva tells the story of the Dice Game, in which two families of the same heritage, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, come together in a magnificent assembly hall in order to gamble. King Yudhisthira, the head of the Pandava family, initially loses his kingdom and all its wealth, as well as his wife and ultimately even the rights to himself.

Despite the loss, Yudhisthira’s throne, wealth, and family are graciously returned to him by the blind King Dhrtarastra. Convinced by his son that the Pandavas will be inclined to seek vengeance following a series of adverse events that have occurred following the initial dice game, Dhrtarastra agrees to hold a final match where a single roll of the dice will determine which of the two families will be forced into twelve years of exile. Yudhisthira returns, and for a second time, he fatefully rolls the dice – again, Dhrtarastra loses.

It is the purpose of this essay is to recount events of the Dice Game, and to discuss how the dice game is itself a central part of the annual Vedic tradition that is subverted by the kings of two families – with disastrous results. In this context, the role of dharma, fate, human initiative, and destiny will be emphasized as key forces that come together to decide the final outcome of the dice games – a disastrous outcome that will have import for the remainder of the epic.

The Sabha Parva, or the Dice Game, begins with the Pandavas’ building of a large and elegant assembly hall in the city of Indraprastha. King Yudhisthira of the Pandavas invites King Duryodhana of the Kauravas to a rajasuya sacrifice that takes place in the new assembly hall. After the guests have gone home, Duryodhana carefully examines the hall with Sakuni. As he is leisurely roaming throughout the assembly hall, Duryodhana sees schemes of celestial wonder – fixtures never before seen in his home city of Hastinapura (Mhb 121). As Duryodhana approaches a crystal floor, he is fooled into believing the floor to be water, and he raises his garments. But when he comes upon a pond that has been adorned with crystalline lotuses, but that appears to be a floor, he falls into the pond fully clothed. Seeing him fall into the water, the servants laugh hysterically. Angry and humiliated, Duryodhana walks into a closed crystal door (believing the door to have been open). Deceived once again by the design of the palace, a furious Duryodhana leaves the assembly hall for Hastinapura (Mhb 121).

Consumed with jealousy over Yudhisthira’s good fortune, Duryodhana speaks of his wrath to Sakuni: I am so full of resentment that I burn day and night (Mhb 122). Duryodhana threatens to commit suicide: I shall enter fire, or swallow poison, or drown myself, for I cannot live so! What man of mettle in this world could bear to see his rivals prosper and himself fail? (Mhb 122). Bemoaning his luck, Duryodhana complains that he could never have such great fortune himself. Further, he says that fate is supreme human effort vain (Mhb 122). Sakuni responds that Duryodhana should not be angry with the Pandavas, asking him what grounds he has for his grief and anger, further stating that while the Pandavas cannot be defeated even by the gods, there is one means of ensuring Yudhisthira’s defeat – and that is to take advantage of Yudhisthira’s love for gambling. Sakuni explains that although Yudhisthira is fond of gambling, he does not know how to gamble well; moreover, if Yudhisthira is challenged, he will not be able to refuse (Mhb 124).

Sakuni approaches King Dhrtarastra, telling him that Duryodhana is downcast and anxious (Mhb 124). King Dhrtarastra asks Duryodhana why he is downcast, and Duryodhana explains that he can no longer feel pleasure because he has been a witness to Yudhisthira’s fortune. Duryodhana then proceeds to itemize the assets and the treasures owned all over the world by Yudhisthira, including one particular drinking vessel which has been cast from a thousand pieces of god and adorned with many jewels (Mhb 125). Duryodhana further tells his father that many kings have been denied entrance to Yudhisthira’s great assembly hall, despite their bearing expensive gifts.

When Dhrtarastra asserts that he will act only on the advisement of his minister, Vidura, Duryodhana threatens to commit suicide: When I am dead, King, enjoy yourself with Vidura; for you will rule the earth – what need will you have of me? (Mhb 126). Torn between his knowledge of the evils of gambling and the love he has for his son, Dhrtarastra accedes to Duryodhana out of putrasnehad, or love for one’s male child (Hill 294), and requests that a great hall be built for the gambling game – the hall is to be covered in jewels and thousands of pillars and doors. Hearing of Dhrtarastra’s decision, the wise half-brother Vidura asks the king to reconsider, as gambling will only result in greater discord between the Pandavas and the Kauravas.

Dhrtarastra’s response is that the gods will favor the Kauravas, because the gambling games have been foreordained. In other words, Dhrtarastra elects to fall back on fate as the reason that he has now been confronted with making the choice, and his reliance on fate is a prescription for inaction and avoidance of responsibility (Hill 294). Despite the clear disdain for his son’s proposal, and even fearing that the dice games will result in conflict (Hill 294), Dhrtarastra announces that there will likely be no misconduct at fate’s decree…fate is supreme to bring this about! (italics added) (Mhb 127). Dhrtarastra orders Vidura to summon Yudhisthira to the games, even while Vidura has voiced his clear disagreement against them. Vidura thinks to himself: All is lost! (Mhb 127).

Vidura travels to Indraprastha as ordered by King Dhrtarastra. Noting Vidura’s sadness, Yudhisthira asks Vidura what has transpired. Vidura responds that everyone in Hastinapura is well, but that King Dhrtarastra would like Yudhisthira’s presence at a gambling match in a hall which matches your own hall in loveliness! (Mhb 129). Dhrtarastra’s immediate response is that if the brothers of Hastinapura and Indraprastha gamble, there will be conflict. He asks the wise Vidura for his impression, to which Vidura responds gambling brings disaster (Mhb 129). Vidura further responds that he has attempted to prevent a gambling meeting, but Dhrtarastra has disagreed, and has therefore sent him to make the request. Yudhisthira acknowledges that Vidura is himself an excellent gambler – and with his knowledge, Vidura is asking that the games not take place; moreover, Yudhisthira acknowledges that the most dangerous cheats are assembled there [in Hastinapura] (Mhb 129).

At the same time, Yudhisthira apparently cannot refuse to attend the gambling games, saying: This whole world is under the sway of what fate ordains (italics added), and today I have no option but to gamble against cheats (Mhb 129). Yudhisthira orders that plans be made immediately for the journey to Hastinapura. Human destiny, or daiva, is widely referred to throughout the Sabha Parva. Yudhisthira falls back on daiva as a means of rationalizing his attendance at the dice games, instead of blaming what is a likely compulsion he has for gambling.

Long argues that Yudhisthira knows that his attendance at the dice games will bring his family to ruin (45). When his aide Sanjaya later prophesies the fall of the Kauravas because of the evils they had committed during the dice games, Dhrtarastra responds that it is the gods – and not human deeds – that bring evil upon human beings (45). In this context, Yudhisthira says to his followers: Fate robs us of wisdom as a sudden glare robs us of sight; man is bound as if by snares, and follows the dictate of destiny! (italics added) (Mhb 130). It is noteworthy that up to this point in the storyline, both Dhrtarastra and Yudhisthira have paid no heed to the various warnings that have been issued to avoid the dice games; alternatively, both have left the outcome of the dice games to the dictate of destiny (Mhb 130).

Paradoxically, Yudhisthira has decided to attend the dice games, and yet he is referred to in Sabha Parva as the lord of dharma (Mhb 129). The use of the word dharma is partially meant to imply that Yudhisthira deems that his attendance at the gambling games is compelled by his sense of religious duty, or perhaps by some higher order that originates within the cosmos. The concept of dharma is extraordinarily difficult to define, although dharma generally connotes what is transcendently good or right to do or be (Fitzgerald 673); dharma is also used as a reference to the universal law that is believed to govern everything that existed even before the creation (Klostermeir 7).

Dharma can signify the essential nature and the development of one’s being, piety, and the laws of morality and righteousness (Paramahamsa 1). The notion of dharma may also imply certain rights and responsibilities into which people have been born; in certain contexts, dharma represents one’s religious duties (Bhaskarananda 2). Consequently, one might interpret Yudhisthira’s decision to attend the games as one which is being driven by some ambiguous otherworldly sense or by his sense of pious responsibility.

In the Mahabharata, dharma is again defined in a variety of ways. The term is found throughout the Mahabharata in numerous and differing contexts, giving dharma initially indistinct ranges of nuances and colorings (Fitzgerald 672). Moreover, the concept dharma is often invoked in the Mahabharata as a means of extolling a person’s sense of morality, virtuousness of character, or uprightness in behavior (Fitzgerald 672). Dharma is consequently an ambiguous concept that is generally deemed to refer to the ethical nature of one’s conduct, and to the exercise of duty toward the human community or to the extent to which an individual has a reverential attitude toward the orders of life (Hacker 480). Paramahamsa says that dharma is the essential nature of an individual, and that dharma encompasses man’s duty, how he ought to live, how he ought to believe, and what he ought to do about his beliefs (1).

Dharma is also suggestive of the Indian caste system, in the sense that the essence of a person’s life is dependent upon the caste into which he or she has been born (Hacker 482). For instance, the dharma of one who has been born into the Vaisya caste is to grow crops and raise animals; the dharma of the Ksatriya caste is to rule over others (Hacker 483). In the Hindu tradition, kings are thought to embody dharma, and they are thought to govern using its essence (Bowley 3).

Yudhisthira, however, loses his kingdom, his wife, and even ownership over himself because he fails to rule in accordance with dharma. Consequently, his failure to act in accordance with dharma results in Yudhisthira’s decision to attend the dice match, a decision that result with disastrous consequences for his rulership. Not only does Yudhisthira lose all of his possessions in the initial dice games, but he (implausibly) returns to a second dice match even after he has been granted a reprieve following the astonishing losses suffered in the first dice games. The price he pays is that he and his family face exile for many years – ostensibly because he failed to live according to the laws of dharma. Yudhisthira’s gambling losses lead to one of the most unfortunate and yet one of the most intriguing aspects of the Sabha Parva or Dice Game, and this relates to the nature of the game itself.

When Yudhisthira arrives to the games, he surprisingly conveys his belief to Sakuni that gambling is deceit, it is evil (Mhb 131). Yudhisthira then asks Sakuni why he (Sakuni) praises gambling. Sakuni not only seems to suggest that one must have wisdom in order to be successful in dice gaming, but that the insight and judgment required is a positive trait – even when used in such questionable pursuits as gambling: Accordingly, Sakuni responds that successful dice gaming requires an understanding of the ways of deception, as well as an intelligence that enables control of the dice. Yudhisthira responds that if he is challenged to gamble, he will not refuse, as such a challenge will have been rooted in fate: Fate is mighty, O king, and I am under the control of its ordinance (italics added) (Mhb 131).

Duryodhana requests that Sakuni gamble on his behalf. When Sakuni wins the first game, Yudhisthira claims that Sakuni has won by cheating; however, Yudhisthira continues to gamble wagering thousands upon thousands! (Mhb 132). As he becomes swept up in the dice games, Yudhisthira initially wagers (and loses) the chariot in which he rode to Hastinapura, followed by a wager of one thousand elephants, a hundred thousand slave girls, thousands of male slaves, tens of thousands of additional chariots, and four hundred treasure chests – all are won by Sakuni through deceitful means. In an ominous prophecy, the wise Vidura again warns King Dhrtarastra that the dice games will bring about evil: Gambling is the root of dissension; it has for its consequence discord and mighty war (Mhb 135). Losing his wagers of Arjuna and Bhishma, Yudhisthira wagers himself. Losing possession of himself, Yudhisthira then wagers his queen. Again, Yudhisthira loses.

Duryodhana orders that Queen Draupadi shall sweep the house, and then hurry away to enjoy her life with our other slave girls! (Mhb 140). When she is summoned, Draupadi asks the Kauravas how King Yudhisthira could have had the right to wager her when Yudhisthira had already wagered and lost himself. In response, Prince Duhsasana drags Queen Draupadi into the hall by her hair, and tearing her garment halfway off, insults her by displaying her during the time of her menstrual cycle. Saying that the limits of dharma have been breached, Draupadi begs the persons gathered in the assembly hall: Take no notice of this savage violation of dharma! (Mhb 144).

One of Draupadi’s husbands, Bhishma, insists that Yudhisthira had exercised his free choice as to whether he would gamble. Bhishma then derides Yudhisthira for losing his kingdom, upon which Arjuna admonishes Bhishma, telling him that the Kauravas must have destroyed your respect for dharma…Practice highest dharma (Mhb 145). Duhsasana attempts to forcibly remove Draupadi’s garment; however, Draupadi invokes the aid of Krishna, and each time Duhsasana attempts to remove the garment from her body, another garment appears.

Enraged at the vile treatment of his wife, Bhishma vows that he will one day open the breast of this wicked sinner [Duhsasana]…and drink his blood (Mhb 148). Draupadi again asks the question of whether Yudhisthira could have had the right to wager Draupadi following the loss of Yudhisthira’s rights to himself. In response to Draupadi’s challenge, Duryodhana exposes his thigh to Draupadi in a gesture of insult, ordering Yudhisthira to answer the question. However, before Yudhisthira can respond, the loud howling of a jackal can be heard coming from a nearby chamber. Vidura, a Kaurava who is expert in the ways of dharma, interprets the omen for the king: Dull-witted Duryodhana, you have brought down destruction upon yourself for speaking discourteously in the assembly to a woman belonging to these bull-like Kurus, and especially to Draupadi, their lawful wife! (Mhb 153).

Frightened, and honoring Queen Draupadi’s devotion to dharma, the wise King Dhrtarastra grants Draupadi a boon – which she uses to free Yudhisthira from slavery. After being offered a second boon, Draupadi requests the freedom of Bhishma, Arjuna, Nakala, and Sahadeva. When Dhrtarastra offers Draupadi a third boon, Draupadi declines, responding that only a king could be worthy of a third boon. However, Dhrtarastra returns all of Yudhisthira’s wealth, and the Pandavas are allowed to return to their city of Indraprastha.

His newly accumulated wealth returned to the Pandavas, Duryodhana visits King Dhrtarastra, warning that the Pandavas are bitter following events of the first dice game, and that they are planning to destroy the Kauravas. Because war between the two families is now seemingly inevitable, Duryodhana insists that there should be one final roll of the dice, and that the loser should be condemned to exile in the forest (such a final roll of the dice would avert a war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas by casting one of the families into a lengthy period of exile; moreover, a single roll of the dice is also presumed to give an equal chance of a favorable outcome to both families). In a strangely implausible turn of events, Yudhisthira assents to a final game of dice.

As the Pandavas enter the assembly hall, they sit at their ease to resume gambling, to destroy the whole world, for they were under fates’ oppression (Mhb 158). Again, Yudhisthira reflects on his dharma, telling Sakuni: How could a king such as I, maintaining my dharma, refuse when challenged? Sakuni, I shall gamble with you! (Mhb 159). Once again, Yudhisthira loses everything. Holding to the path of their dharma, the Pandavas are condemned to a twelve-year exile in the forest. The thirteenth year is to be spent in an unknown place, and the Pandavas are to be clad in antelope skins, so that they are unrecognizable. Should the identity of the Pandavas be given away, they would be condemned to spend an additional twelve years in exile. Prior to their exile, the Pandava brothers portend of a great battle. Queen Draupadi leaves the hall stained and disheveled, in token that in the fourteenth year the wives of her enemies would grieve over their slain menfolk (Mhb 162-163). Dhaumya sings hymns for the dead. Narada, a great seer, prophesies that in the fourteenth year – as the Pandavas are freed from exile – the Kauravas are doomed to perish. Samjaya, an aide to King Dhrtarastra, tells the king that he (Dhrtarastra) is himself to blame for the coming destruction. Dhrtarastra responds that fate and those who insulted Queen Draupadi are to blame.

Some might rightly argue that fate is not to blame for the Pandava tragedy, because a key factor in the determination of human destiny is that of karma. While the word karma means action, the doctrine of Karmavada signifies that all good actions produce good outcomes, and all evil actions produce bad outcomes (Bhaskarananda 79). In Sanskrit, the effects of works are considered to be karmaphala, where karma means work and phala means fruit – thus, karmaphala signifies the product or outcome of good and bad deeds (Bhaskarananda 79), and is considered to be a karmic force, in which good deeds return goodness to the doer, and evil deed return evil to the doer. As the giver of karma, God is not responsible for what humans do, but he ensures that every human being receives his own karmaphala, and not that of other humans (Bhaskarananda 79). This belief is made clear throughout The Mahabharata, in the sense that humans’ karmaphala is also said to return to individuals as a result of their acts (Long 42). In this context then, human action has considerable influence on human destiny.

As Yudhisthira grieves over his numerous losses, a comforter (perhaps a deity) counsels him that his family’s misfortune is a consequence of karmaphala, and that he should not spend excessive time grieving, but that he should instead spend his time in productive ways (Long 50). In his exile, Yudhisthira comes to understand that events do not arise for no reason – they arise out of an organized set of cosmogonical rules. Good or bad, consequences arise in strict accord with the eternal principle of universal order (dharma or karma) (Long 51).

The dice game played by Yudhisthira and Sakuni was very likely patterned after the rajasuya, an ancient Vedic ceremonial rite which was purposed for the dedication of a king (Austin 288; Bowley 7). The role of the dice game was to bring the ceremony to its ending (Rester 2). Yudhisthira’s choice to attend the dice games may not have been merely a means of his pursuing a fondness for gambling, but may instead represent his submission to an obligation imposed by the requirements of the sacred rite in which he is a participant (Bowley 7). It is the rajasuya rite that is responsible for Yudhisthira’s right to claim the throne upon which he rules.

In the dice games bringing the rajasuya to its conclusion, the king was always victorious – that is, in contrast to the the dice games played by the Pandavas and Kauravas, the purpose of the dice game following the rajasuya was that of reconfirming the king’s mediating role between the earth and the cosmos (Bowley 6). The structure of the dice game included the use of five dice; four of the dice represented the four directional points of the compass: askanda, treta, krta, and dvapara, (north, south, east, and west, respectively). A fifth die, or kali, represented the zenith of the pyramid, and symbolized the elevated position of the king, as reflected in the following diagram.

In this process, therefore, the king was figuratively reborn in both the middle of the cosmos and at the height of its zenith (Handelman and Shulman 62). The dice game was played by members of each of the four varnas, or castes, as described previously: the Brahmins (scholars and clergy), the Ksatriyas (warriors and administrators), the Vaisyas (craftsmen, merchants, and agriculturists), and the Shudras (laborers and servants) (Klostermaier 38-39). The widely accepted theory is that the rajasuya’s dice game was a cosmogonical rite intended to bring about the recreation of the universe and the birth of the king (Heesterman 157). Thus, the ritual was purposed as a symbolic creation and recreation of social and cosmic order (Rester 2) – the ritual was an imperative, it was an act of liturgical consecration. Heesterman has suggested that the five dice were also intended as a representation of the powers of the cosmos: the sun, moon, fire, wind, and water; and those of the king’s physical self: breath, voice, eye, ear, and thought (155).

What is important here is that the king did not participate in the dice games (Heesterman 157), as gambling was viewed as a vice (Rester 6). Rather, the player who won a round always gave the dice to the king (Handelman and Shulman 62). In this context, the king assumed the perspective as higher overseer of the game – and was as a result of the games validated as the overseer over the whole of the cosmos. That the king never entered the game also meant that he could never lose. And that gambling was considered to be a vice by both kings of The Mahabharata is made exceedingly clear in the Sabha Parva – Yudhisthira tells Sakuni: Gambling is deceit, it is evil (Mhb 131); Dhrtarastra, despite his own reservations and the ominous warnings of his advisers, falls victim to putrasnehad (his love for his son Duryodhana), and avoids making a decision countering Duryodhana’s wishes, casting the outcome to fate.

The sacrosanct essence of the dice game as the conclusion of the rajasuya goes unheeded, and the two kings – Yudhisthira and Dhrtarastra – proceed forward with the games, Yudhisthira participating actively. His compulsion overtaking him, Yudhisthira is incapable of loosening its evil grip. Having had lost his kingdom and all its possessions, his wife, and even his claim to himself in a game of dice gone horribly wrong, the dice game takes on an ever more dreadful significance, as the attendees in the hall watch Yudhisthira lose his wealth, his freedom, his kingship, and his integrity. Rester summarizes the unfolding events most ominously, saying: If the king doesn't actually play, the king cannot lose, and the prescribed social and cosmic order will remain intact (7). Rester notes that Yudhisthira's participation changes the ritualistic purpose of the game from one in which the outcome is certain (i.e., the continuation of the king’s rule is ceremoniously sanctioned) to one in which the outcome is unknowable (7).

It should be added that the outcome of the ritual is by design an assurance that the security of the king’s governing role will be continued. The outcome of the Sabha Parva's dice game, however, catapults us into a world of spontaneity, danger, and violence, in which only destruction is assured (Rester 10). The cosmic and social orders have been turned into chaos, and Yudhisthira's own blood is spilled by the dice: the rajasuya sacrificer has become the sacrificed (Rester 7); indeed, Yudhisthira’s participation in the dice games has changed the conditions in which he is guaranteed to win – he has defiled the sacred rite: [The dice games] open gaps in the dense interconnectivity of the cosmos. Higher-order figures (including the greatest of deities) lose their total knowledge of holism when they enter models of their own cosmos – that is, when they enter games as players (Handelman and Shulman 61).

At the beginning of the Sabha Parva, everything is going well for King Yudhisthira; his regard for dharma and his karmaphala have blessed him with massive wealth, and peaceful and harmonious rule. Yet, things change suddenly – and drastically. Even rulers are subject to rules. They must submit to the order of the cosmos. Yudhisthira violates the rules of the cosmogonical order. Caught up in a dangerous game of dice, his human passion causes him to ignore his dharma. Yudhisthira not only contravenes himself and his rulership, but he abuses the trust of his brothers, his wife, and his kingdom. Moreover, he abuses all that is held sacred, and thus, the end result of the dice games is one of chaos and destruction. Once an artifact held glorious in a revered tradition in which the king is reborn and his rulership is revalidated, the dice have corrupted everything that is good.

Beyond a lengthy exile of the Pandavas, the dice games will set into motion a horrible war between the families, spilling the blood of endless numbers of innocent victims. The likeness of the dice games and the ensuing bloodletting is ominously expressed in the the Mahabharata: That dangerous and inhospitable gambling den on the battlefield, where the carpet for the dicing has been spread out with the bodies of men, elephants, and horses, and the dice rolled with the arrows, spears, clubs, swords, and javelins – what slow-witted warrior gamblers entered that den to gamble for the fearful stakes of their lives (Van Buitenen 45). If a lesson has been learned, then it need not be stated in different terms. But thousands of years later, the lesson has still not been learned – and so we continue to admonish one another that we shall reap all that we sow.

Essay 2: Treeness, Chairness, and Other Weirdness

In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, we are asked to imagine a cave in which several prisoners are chained in a manner that they can only face forward. All they are able to see is a wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners, there is a fire. Objects moving in front of the fire and behind the prisoners cast shadows on the wall. The prisoners cannot see any real objects other than the images cast on to the wall, and therefore, the shadows they see on the wall are their reality – the shadows are all they know. Plato characterizes these shadows as "men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and