As for the incidental characters themselves:
I was raised by devout Catholic parents, giving me a strong impetus toward religious thought. At the age of twenty, I joined a Gaudiya-Vaishnava monastery in West Virginia, where I studied Vedic literature and its commentaries, learned to read Sanskrit, practiced vows of austerity, took diksha-initiation from my beloved spiritual master, Srila Acaryadeva, learned to focus my values, mind, and intelligence by way of mantra meditation, and learned the art of compassion by relating to others in a spiritual dialectic, asking questions and teaching what I had learned.
More recently, I have graduated from UCSB, with a BA in the major of philosophy. While UCSB's philosophy department specializes in analytics, I am currently exploring with great enthusiasm and inspiration the writings of continental thinkers, in particular, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Kirkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Derrida.
I am, currently interested in metaphysics, with a particular interest in reducing all language back to a temporo-ontology (very much in line with Heidegger's project). While this may seem to many counter-productive to my character as a Vaishnava (a devotee of the eternal couple, Radha-Krishna), I am convinced otherwise; mainly, because Time is Itself the form of God in this world (Kalo 'smi, loka-kshaya-krit="Time I am, destruction maker of worlds," Bh.G.)
I am also, for the time being, engaged in pushing further, the insights of the above philosophers, by synthesizing their thinking with Gaudiya Vaishnava ontological thinking (acintya-bhedabheda-tattva) in order to bring about a comprehensive and perhaps final ontological platform from which the world can be clearly seen in its fully ordered character (a tall order, no doubt). This involves a delimiting critique of contemporary analytic logic, particularly focused on the problematizing of Leibniz's principle of non-contradiction. It also involves the resolution of monism to dualism, which might better be called, 'displaying the harmonic between identity and difference'.
On the foundation provided by the previous two projects, I plan to outline and display a sublime aesthetic, one that can provide a solid foundation for normative and metaethical concerns, and can counter post-modern trends toward undermining classical aesthetic developments, giving the ancient forms new life. (All this requires that I pursue a post-graduate degree in Fine Arts, Religious Studies, Theology, or Philosophy; very likely a least one Ph.D.).
This latter potential harmonizes rather well with my the two main branches of my own artistic endeavors, that of synthesizing South Asian iconography with neoclassical, rennaisance, and baroque techniques, a good part of which one can see if they examine my posted images--as well as that of synthesizing South Asian sacred poetry with the literary forms of Western poets, philosophers, and religious thinkers.
All the above constitutes a major part of my life's project, although all this is, in one sense, still quite external. That project itself is merely the expression of my far greater and truly final project, that of acquiring unadulterated Krishna-Prema in the mood of the gopis, or transcendental, exuberant love for the All-attractive Supreme Personality of Godhead, the very form of Eternity, Wisdom, and Bliss.
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