A barrel of oil every 4.5 seconds

The government & BP just upped their estimate of the spill-- from 5,000 barrels of oil a day. Now they say between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels of oil are escaping each day. In the worst-case, that's 13.194 barrels per minute, or a barrel of oil every four and a half seconds.

A barrel of oil is 42 gallons. So that's 554 gallons of oil every minute, or a little over 9 gallons per second. And to think they hope to use good old-fashioned mud (their "top-kill" strategy) to clog a leak that looks like a fire hose even a mile below sea-level, where the sea-pressure is 2,000 pounds per square inch. Some have speculated that the leak must be gushing at around 4,000 pounds per square inch to overcome that kind of downward pressure.

In more earthly terms, that's roughly enough pressure that if the oil was spewing from a manhole cover or fire hose, the force could overturn a 70-ton bulldozer.

Buddhist Ars Poetica

For my final Sanskrit essay, I translated some poetic verses written by Buddhist monks. The larger collection these verses are a tiny part of were compiled by the monk Vidyakara sometime in the 11th century. He brought together some 1,700 verses into his 'Treasury'. Most of the more exciting poems are written about Shiva and Vishnu, Buddhism not being known for its aesthetic. But I prefer the Buddhist verses, which when you scratch the surface have a great deal of wisdom...
The first translation is my own, while the second, in italics, belongs to Daniel Ingalls.

Verse 1:

namo buddhāya
nānā kavīndra vacanāni mahoharāni samkhyāvatām paramakanthavibhūsanāni ākampakāni śirasaś ca mahākavīnām teṣām samuccayam anargham aham vidhāsye


Salutations to the Buddha!
He will promote a diverse number
Of insightful utterances of great poets;
Like great garlands adorning the greatest throats,
Making poets nod their heads
At the priceless collection [of verse].


I shall make up a priceless store
Of charming words by sundry master poets,
Such as have ornamented expert throats
And made great poets nod in approbation.

~ Vidyākara


* confusingly, I found “samkhyāvatām” to be a compound comprised of “samkhyā” (number) and “avatām” (imp. sg. 3 pers. of av- promote or protect). Though Ingalls renders avatām in the first person, as “I shall make up”-- it seemed prudent to stick with the third person, both because of verb form and the fact that it follows the salutation “namo buddhāya” to the Buddha, and thereby most likely asserts that “he shall promote” these verses, rather than the compiler of the verses, Vidyākara himself.



Verse 4:

kāmakrodhau dvayam api padam pratyanīkam vaśitve
hatvānangam kim iva hi ruṣa sādhitam tryambakena
yas tu kṣāntyā śamayati śatam manmathādyān arātīn
kalyānam vo diśatu sa munigrāmanīr arkabandu
Samghaśriyaḥ


Love and Rage; both traits arrayed
Against self-discipline.
What, indeed, did Shiva achieve
By killing Cupid from fury?

May the one who calmed Kama
And the hundred enemies, through restraint,
Manifest your well-being.
The Buddha-- that chief of saints--
Friend of [radiant] Surya.


Love and anger both are states
Hostile to self-control.
What then did Shiva hope to gain
By slaying Love in anger?
Rather may he who by forbearance
Quelled Love together with a hundred foes,
That chief of saints, the Buddha,
Point you to your welfare.

~ Samghaśrī


Verse 6:

śāstā samastabhuvanam bhagavān apāyāt
pāyād apāstatimiro mihiropameyaḥ samsārabhittibhiduro bhavakandakandukandarpadarpadalanavyasanī munīdrahḥ
vasukalpasya


May the Blessed Master
Save the compounded world from calamity,
Like the sun discards darkness.
Smasher of Samsāra’s walls, an Indra among Saints,
Crusher of imperious Love--
That furnace for the bulbs of birth.


May the blessed teacher save the world from grief,
Who like the sun dispels all darkness,
Breaker of transmigration’s ramparts,
Prince of saints, destroyer
Of that skillet for the bulbs of life, proud Love.

~ Vasukalpa


Verse 11:

pāyād vah samayah sa mārajayino vandhyāyitāstrotkaraḥ
āsīd adbhutamauliratnamilitām vyāttānanaccāyikām
ālokyātmana eva mārasubhataḥ paryastadhairyodayaḥ
śrīpārśvavarmaṇa


May you attain to the Buddha,
Who sterilized Māra’s weapons at the triumphant moment;
When, from rage, Māra, who would swallow up the great head,
Was met with a wondrous jewel [of the crown], and saw himself,
In wide-open-mouthed reflection
-- Wherefore his courage vanished.


May that victorious moment of the Buddha save you
When the soldier Māra, weapons rendered impotent,
Screwed up his courage to that pitch
Where, angry, he would swallow up the sacred head,
But then within a jewel of the wondrous crown
Did see his own wide-open-mouthed reflection,
At sight of which his courage failed.

~ Srī Pāśavarman

















Buddhist Ars Poetica: Refuting the Pull of the Sensuous in Sanskrit Poetry

Buddhist poetry is a curious phenomenon. For a religion so intrinsically averse to sensuous delights, the poetic mode of expression seems improper. Indeed, in verse 4, the Buddha’s equanimity is contrasted with Shiva‘s passion. Shiva is probably the most depicted character in all of Sanskrit poetry, revered for his extremes of ascetic self-abnegation and sensual indulgence.
Kalidasa’s Kumārasambhava captures this tension between Shiva’s ascetic devotion and the call of the gods’ to procure a gifted warrior son from powerful Shiva; a child who would be capable of destroying the demon Taraka. The gods’ plan ends disastrously once Kama, the god of Love, has hastily snuck up to Shiva, to pierce him with the arrow of Love. The usual snares of sensual desire won’t work on a god so devoted to renunciation, and Shiva, aroused from his dormancy, incinerates Kama with a glance from his fiery third-eye. Instead of being lured by a trick of the gods, Shiva requires the incredible ascetic efforts of Parvati, who matched or exceeded Shiva’s own, to both impress and require him to reenter the stream of samsara, delighting in erotic union with Parvati, and finally providing the gods with a much-desired warrior-prince.
Shiva is typically portrayed very physically, as the “god of tangled locks“ who can cause mountains to sway at his “dance of madness in the full moon twilight“ (Ingalls 64). Shiva is said to have fantastic dreadlocks, made of “matted hair… its color bending with the lightning flame that flashes from the hollow of his forehead-eye, its heavy locks encircled by the winding tendrils of his snakes” (Ingalls 63). In addition to his bodily description and very sensual, ecstatic practice of dance, Shiva is also depicted in sexual union with goddesses and human females. In Vidyākara’s collection of Shaivite verse, Shiva is seen as virtually insatiable sexually, even after long years of challenging ascetic practice, he ravishes Parvati for days on end, causing her to have “a fragment of her bracelet broken in love’s exercise” (Ingalls 63).
Elsewhere, after the killing of Kama, Shiva is said to be “wet-eyed with pity, and lets the bow fall from his hand” (Ingalls 65). Presumably, this refers to Shiva’s willingness to abandon his ascetic practice to reenter the world through the emotions of pity, remorse, and perhaps, compassion. Most bizarre, however, is his willingness to forfeit his ascetic self-containment to indulge in an epic and erotic task of lovemaking with Parvati. This type of sacrifice, even for the gods themselves, the Buddha would probably look upon as dangerous in its furtherance of sensual desire and thus the samsaric cycles which shackle both men and gods.
While Shiva is often seen as more austere than the Buddha, who famously resided in the Middle Way, preaching a mean between self-mortifying asceticism and hedonic self-indulgence, Shiva is somehow capable of a sort of superhuman transit between these extremes. Thus, Shiva-- in all of his tensions, indulgences and negations, and feats both physical and metaphysical-- becomes the perfect subject for poets interested in plumbing the depths of the human condition-- the nature and responsibility of spiritual power, relationships between divinity and humanity, tensions between sensual pleasures, earthly and heavenly duties, and spiritual union; and ultimately, this type of poet aims at capturing the mystical union of sensuality with divinity.
This is why the contrast between Shiva and the Buddha in the fourth verse is so important. The author, Samghaśrī, draws a sharp distinction, showing an antagonism between self-discipline and the passions-- love and rage (both of which could be reworked within the Buddhist paradigm as attachment/craving and aversion/hatred). To say that “Love and Rage” are traits ‘arrayed’ or ‘massed’ against self-discipline, is to compare them to an invading army, intent on disrupting a more primary, peaceful order.
In destroying Kama out of anger, Shiva is shown as emotionally fallible and thereby not quite the exemplar of ascetic self-discipline which the devotional literature asserts. The author poses this insight as a question to the readers, indirectly asking them which figure they ought to reasonably follow-- Shiva or Buddha. The question is followed by an answer made in the form of a request-- of a benediction from the Buddha, who, “calmed Kama and the hundred enemies through restraint”--- rather than through defiance, anger, or aversion. Indeed, those emotional responses would be a few of the ‘hundred enemies’ the Buddha, and presumably Shiva, sought to overcome. The poem points to the greater question, what good is it to overcome one passion or set of passions, by indulging in another passion? To the Buddha, giving victory to lust is not substantially different from giving it to anger or fear. Indeed, choosing anger to combat lust is to be trapped within the very cycle one proposes to escape. These passions are all equally enemies of the ascetic or the bhikkhu, whose ultimate goal is, if not total self-transcendence, at least self-control.
The sixth verse, by Vasukalpa, is an invocation of the Buddha’s aid. It is a prayer and a blessing, to “save the compounded world from calamity.” The compounded world is the world of samsaric phenomena, which are viewed as entirely contingent and therefore empty; every existent thing being conditioned upon some other cause. The calamity referred to must be the ugly reality of the first noble truth-- that all life is subject to dukkha (suffering, or more accurately, dissatisfaction). An interesting image follows, common to the Theravadin and Mahayana tradition, that the Buddha will act like the sun discarding darkness, or like a lamp illuminating a darkened room. But the violent epithets used to describe the Buddha as the, “smasher of samsara’s walls” and “crusher of imperious Love,” contrasts sharply with the sense of the Buddha we saw in verse 4, wherein he transcended samsara and the three poisons through a deeply felt equanimity. Here, however, samsara is viewed quite cynically as a punishing, “furnace for the bulbs of birth,” indicating that this poem is probably written from a Theravadin perspective. In this poem, we are shown the necessity of a very powerful, deity-like Buddha-- an almost Christ-like, vengeful figure who casts away evil-- who not only overcomes the chains of Samsara, but destroys those fetters for all of creation.
The final verse is another benediction, asking the reader to reach the Buddha‘s heights via the inspiration of the Buddha‘s attainment. The attainment is considered a great victory over the forces which Māra has marshaled against disillusionment and total cessation. The scene alluded to is just prior to the Buddha’s enlightenment, when Māra, frustrated by the failure to provoke fear or lust in the Buddha through repeated attacks by his demon-armies and seductions by his demon-daughters, mounts an elephant in his terrible form and attempts to swallow up the Buddha. Upon seeing his own terrifying, monstrous form reflected back from Buddha‘s jeweled crown, Māra loses his confidence, perhaps intimidated by the Buddha’s supremely confident equanimity.
The poem seems to be saying that if Māra, the representation and protector of all that is illusory, is unable to provoke fear or desire in the Buddha, then neither he nor the illusion he maintains, any longer have any power over keeping the Buddha chained to cyclic existence. Māra therefore recoils in the face of the understanding that his terrifying, albeit illusory, nature is reflected as ultimately hollow in the jewels of the Buddha’s crown. Powerless, Māra recedes from the Buddha’s presence, perhaps as a barking dog would, upon realizing that there was no longer anyone to hear its bluster.
I believe that these Buddhist verses, though relying on an aesthetic medium in poetry, are meant to point us away from consideration of the beauty of the forms which poets like Kalidasa have mastered, and instead reorient us to the wisdom of the path of the renunciant. By highlighting the strange compromises in the lives of Brahmins depicted throughout Sanskrit literature, and particularly in the case of that exemplar of Brahmanism, Shiva, these poems partly articulate the Middle Way through an understanding of the dangers of going to extremes. It can be further inferred that such extremes are engendered by the poetry of such masters as Kalidasa, who are infatuated by the worldly indulgences and excesses of gods such as Shiva. In the end, I imagine that though Māra is more often invoked, the inclusion of Shiva in contrast to the Buddha shows an urge to confront the older gods with an image of the new renunciant-- and furthermore to lump those gods together with the figure of Māra. As several sutras in the Pali cannon will attest, even gods high in the Hindu pantheon, such as Brahma and Indra, are viewed as subject to samsara-- meaning impermanence, dissatisfaction induced by attachment and craving, and ultimately, an attachment an illusory self-- and therefore abide in some degree of delusion. The Buddha thus is revealed in contradistinction as truly the Tathagata-- the “thus gone one” and the “thus come one”-- who has transcended all of Samsara’s traps, and returned to human existence only for our benefit. Extrapolating upon the notion of expedient means from the Mahayana tradition, we find that even poetry, an aesthetic, somewhat indulgent form, can be used as a vehicle to convey this wisdom to those who would otherwise fail to encounter or understand it.