Richard’s Pali Studies

## Akasha and the Polar Star

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RICHARD: The following online photo image (enhanced for effect) graphically demonstrates the “non-revolving centre” of the twenty-first century polestar constellation (currently Polaris in the constellation of Ursa Minor). Viz.:

Universe Today, Elizabeth Howell (https://www.universetoday.com/45775/famous-stars)
Image by Bob King (https://www.universetoday.com/author/bob-king/page/26/)

In his 1984 translation of the “Bhagavad Gita” Mr. Winthrop Sargeant (1903-1986) – a Sanskrit translator of considerable repute amongst scholars in the field – noted how the Sanskrit root “√kha” (upon which the Pāli word “ākāsa” is based) also referred to the non-revolving space, the axle-hole, at the centre of a cartwheel. Viz.:

> • [Mr. Winthrop Sargeant]: “It is perhaps amusing to note the etymology of the words “sukha” (pleasure, comfort, bliss) and “duḥkha” (misery, unhappiness, pain). The ancient Aryans who brought the Sanskrit language to India were a nomadic, horse-breeding and cattle-breeding people who travelled in horse-drawn or ox-drawn vehicles. Both “su” and “dus” are prefixes indicating good or bad. The word “kha”, in later Sanskrit meaning “sky”, “ether”, or “space”, was originally the word for “hole”, particularly an axle-hole of one of the Aryan’s vehicles. Thus “sukha” (a Bahuvrihi compound meant, originally, “having a good axle-hole”, while “duḥkha” meant “having a poor axle-hole”, leading to discomfort”. ~ (from page 303) ‘Footnote’, “The Bhagavad Gita”, by Winthrop Sargeant (1903-1986), Translated from Sanskrit; 2009, Excelsior Edition, State University of New York Press, Albany; previously published 1984).

The following is what Ms. Dani Rhys (the chief editor of the ‘Symbol Sage’ website who holds a Masters degree in Linguistics and Education) has to say about the polestar. Viz.:

> ▪ [Ms. Dani Rhys]: “Ancient navigators observed that all the stars in the sky seem to circle around the North Star, which was known to ancient Greeks as Kynosoura, meaning dog’s tail. Polaris belongs to the constellation of Ursa Minor, which consists of stars that make up the Little Dipper. It marks the end of the handle of the Little Dipper, whose stars are much fainter compared to those of the Big Dipper. The North Star seems to be the centre of the star field, associating it with constancy. Even though it does move a little in the night sky, it has been used as a metaphor for constancy in several poems and song lyrics. By the seventeenth century, the North Star was used figuratively for anything that was the focus of attention. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the title character states, “But I am constant as the Northern Star, of whose true fixed and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament”. However, modern discoveries reveal that the North Star isn’t as constant as it seems, so it can sometimes represent the opposite. In modern astronomical terms, Caesar was basically saying that he was an unstable person. Polaris hasn’t been the only North Star – and thousands of years from now, other stars will take its place – because the Earth is like a spinning top or coin that moves along large circles in the sky over a period of 25,770 years. In astronomy, this celestial phenomenon is called axial precession. The planet rotates on its axis, but the axis itself is also slowly moving in its own circle due to the gravitational influence of the Sun, Moon and planets. It only means that the North Pole will be aligned toward various stars over time – and different stars will serve as a North Star. The phenomenon was discovered by Greek astronomer Hipparchus in 129 BCE, after he noticed different star positions compared to the earlier records written by the Babylonians. In fact, the ancient Egyptians in the Old Kingdom saw the star Thuban in the constellation Draco as their North Star, instead of Polaris. Around 400 BCE, at the time of Plato, the much brighter Beta Ursae Minoris (Kochab[†] was the North Star. Polaris seems to have been first charted by astronomer Claudius Ptolemy in 169 CE. In about 3,000 years, the star Gamma Cephei will be the new North Star. Around the year 14,000 CE, the North Pole will point to the star Vega in the constellation Lyra, which would be the North Star of our future descendants. Polaris will once again become the North Star after 26,000 more years!” (https://symbolsage.com/the-north-star-meaning-symbolism/}.

> > [†]Kochab, a ‘red’ giant star, has reached a state in its evolution where the outer envelope has expanded to forty-two times the radius of the Sun and is a hundred-and-thirty times more luminous – its enlarged atmosphere is actually radiating three-hundred-and-ninety times as much light from its outer atmosphere as the Sun, but through a surface more than seventeen-hundred times larger than the Sun’s surface area, hence at a lower effective temperature – and this relatively low heat gives the star the typical orange-hued glow of a K-type star. (Most stars are currently classified under the Morgan-Keenan system using the letters O, B, A, F, G, K, and M, a sequence from the hottest, O-type, to the coolest, M-type. The Sun is a G-type star. The sequence has been expanded for other stars and star-like objects that do not fit in the classical system, such as C-type, for stars having more carbon than oxygen in their atmospheres, D-type, for white dwarfs, and S-type, for a cool giant with approximately equal quantities of carbon and oxygen in its atmosphere. In most stars, such as M-type giants, the atmosphere is richer in oxygen than carbon and they are referred to as oxygen-rich stars). {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_classification}.

All the above is of assistance in indicating whereabouts the “first jhāna” [“pathamaṃ jhānam”] of those four metempirical realms – namely “ākāsānañcāyatana” (from ākāsa + anañca + ayatana) – were located according to the religieux of the time (such as Mr. Aḷāra Kālāma and Mr. Uddaka Rāmaputta who coached the unawakened/ unenlightened Mr. Siddhattho Gotama in such introversive trance-state and/or mystical self-absorption practices). Now, the key Pāli word “dukkha” is a compound word [‘du’ + ‘kha’] where, etymologically, the ‘du-’ prefix (an antithetic affix, generally opposed to the ‘su-’ prefix, such as in “sukha”) has connotations of “asunder, apart, away from”, and the ‘-kha’ syllable/ ending, which functions also as root [‘√kha’], has the meaning “ākāsa”. Thus what the word “dukkha” denotes, fundamentally, is that abiding in the world of ‘saṁsāra’ is to be asunder, apart or away from ‘kha’ (“ākāsa”).

Consequently, it is not for nothing that the first ethereal or empyreal “brahmā dimension”, which the youthful Mr. Siddhattho Gotama entered spontaneously while attending an annual ploughing festival in his childhood – the first ‘arūpa samāpatti’ of the ascending abodes [“anupubbavihārā”], those introversive and/ or mystical self-absorption trance-states, accessible via the eighth-stage ‘sammā-samadhi’ of the octonary patrician way [“ariya aṭṭhangika magga”], which is the religieux’ or mystics’ contemplative or meditative interface betwixt the physical world and the metaphysical world – is known in Pali as “ākāsānañcāyatana”, or the “boundless aetheric plane, luminous and/or lustrous all throughout” (as in “lit. shining forth” according to the etymology of “ākāsa” in the Pāli Text Society’s Pāli-English Dictionary), as that is the region and/or sphere and/or realm and/or dimension and/or world, etcetera, where ‘dukkha’ ceases.

To wit: at the non-revolving centre of the polestar constellation (for Mr. Gotama the Sakyan it was the orange-hued glow of Kochab in the Beta Ursae Minoris constellation whereas for the ancient rishis who formulated the “Nāsadīya Sūkta” it was Thuban in the constellation of Draco) no matter which star it may or may not be in whichever constellation during its 25,770 years of the planet earth’s axial precession! Hence what Mr. Gotama the Sakyan 'rediscovered’ was in fact a different place and region than for the ancient rishis.

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