"Neti-Neti" [by Nina Kossman]

NETI NETI

There once lived a woman who said only four syllables in her entire life, and those four syllables were "neti neti". When she was a child, and her parents wanted to buy her toys, they asked her which toy she wanted - this one or that one, and all she said was her usual "neti neti", which means "neither this nor that", so her parents didn't buy her any toys. When she became a young lady, and young men wanted to go out with her, she said to each and all of them her usual "neti neti" ("neither this nor that"), and they promptly stopped calling her, and she was left alone for the rest of her life. She became known for her skills in programming, but when companies wanted to hire her, she said her usual neti neti and remained jobless. She grew old, and death came to take her away but she said neti neti to death just as she did to everyone else, and death retreated. "Neti neti" is a Sanskrit formula found in the Upanishads and Avadhuta Gita, and it is used in the Vedic tradition of negation, i.e. to negate identification with all things and objects of consciousness, including body, name, form, thoughts, senses, i.e. to negate Anatman (Not-Self) until nothing remains but Atman, the true "I". How did that little girl know the teachings of the Upanishads remains a mystery.

Nina Kossman is a Moscow-born bilingual writer, poet, translator of Russian poetry, painter, and playwright. Among her published works are three books of poems in Russian and in English, two volumes of translations of Marina Tsvetaeva’s poems, two books of short stories, an anthology she put together for Oxford University Press, several plays, and a novel.

Comments

[David Sugarman]

Thank you for the above, and a name that until now was unknown to me.

[Vlad Pryakhin]

Thanks. I really liked the style in which it's written

[Lou Robinson]

Love.

[Carolyne Wright]

This piece is haunting and resonant, in the style of a fable. Though the woman of four syllables has evaded death, her fate seems unresolved.

I remember in the Humanities Program at Seattle U, when we studied the Upanishads, one of our classmates was very taken with this phrase, which opened such vistas of thought and spirit to all of us. He used to recite the phrase in a super-basso voice, almost too low for our hearing, with an air of great solemnity. It was a bit chilling, but also funny -- but we weren't sure if he was being humorous. He later left the program and enlisted in the Navy; we heard that he was on carriers off the coast of Vietnam, but never heard more. "Neti - Neti" had captured his imagination for reasons beyond our understanding.

Thanks for this piece, Nina Kossman!