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ABOUT THIS HINGE-PIN: WRITING ACROSS BORDERS AND HEMISPHERES, BETWEEN INDIA AND AUSTRALIA
Posted on February 22, 2016 by Abhithakuchalambal

Although born into a particularly European-Australian family, yet somehow early in life I noticed an Asian affinity in deep attraction to old Chinese cultural heritage, the composed aesthetic of beautiful Eastern objects and both Chinese and Japanese poetry. Lin Yutang was one of the first authors to inspire my adolescence, and the Yi Jing provided the symbols most meaningful to me. Allow me to add an iconic quotation for my growing-up from ancient China, I suspect from the YiJing:

The kings of old

rich in virtue and in harmony with the times

fostered and nourished all things.

They took care of all forms of life

and all forms of culture

and did everything to further them

and at the proper time.

They drew on the spiritual wealth at their commend.

From the loss of my mother in early teenage I never recovered, but even as a young adult I could appreciate the potential power within the pain. As I write, two of her three sisters are dying of cancer and I notice again that such news reveals how despite reality, deep inside, I never recognised their mortality. Perhaps there is some truth in this.

So it wasn’t long before I found The Theosophical Society where at that time all the books that interested me were available and I came to be able to help in the library there after awhile at the same time studying British Analytic Philosophy at Queensland University. One of my mentors in the Philosophy Department advised me never to mention on campus that I actually rub shoulders with Theosophists. At the TS on Wickham Terrace not far from where my mother and I had lived in my beginnings and hence where my earliest memories arose – particularly those seeded within the unused air-raid shelter in the garden where I drew in the dust of the concave walls the furniture of a dream world to house both my wildest and most domesticated phantoms; there at the Theosophical Society I met astrologers, mediums, Indian vegans; my dearest mentor was an ex-Jesuit priest who listened with me to audio-tapes of J.K. Krishnamurtie. It was there that I found the poems of Rumi and Hafiz. My orientation in life sprouted, attracted by the idea of inner light and the beloved.

As a hinge-pin, I also swing between profound and profane – indelible in the contrast between precious Seeds of Being and raunchy, saucy Personal Puppets; it does seem to be within my nature . . . perhaps so simple as to be reflected from the Libra Ascendent, the details are not significant. It is obvious within the dichotomy of my seeming-outer-world also, noticing as I do the rampant gross materialism on both sides of the equator, in these days becoming increasingly permeated with the uprising influence of meditation in each realm. I am a champion of the secular-sacred, you see: a univocal voice.

Somehow, perhaps utilizing unexpected means, I need to enhance balance.

May my efforts ripple a little laughter from the centre to the periphery of the universe.