The Pinchas paradox

Abihu and Nabadh, the two eldest sons of Aaron, the brother of Moses, offered an improper sacrifice to the Lord and were themselves consumed in the flame. They left no offspring.
Pinchas was a grandson of Aaron, but he was not a 'Kohain' (part of the hereditary priesthood, because his father was elevated to the Priesthood after he was born). However, he was raised to the Priesthood by the Lord after he killed Prince Zimri who was co-habiting with the beautiful Kosbi.
Pinchas' action was correct because the Lord approved it even though the Law did not. In other words, by reading the Bible we know that it is algorithmically verifiable that Pinchas acted correctly- because that is what the Text says- yet his action is not algorithmically computable by the Laws revealed in that same text- i.e. there is no process of halachic reasoning that can arrive at the same conclusion.
Thus, at least on one interpretation, it is a paradoxical sort of action- a halachah vein morin kein- a teaching which, if known, prohibits the very action it would otherwise enjoin.
When Pinchas realized the terrible nature of what he had done, according to a mystical interpretation of the Bible, his soul fled him in fear. The Lord then caused the ibbur (entry into his body) of the souls of Nabadh and Abihu who thus became the spiritual progenitors of the Kohain- or Cohens.
Interestingly Pinchas is said to lose this ibbur at a later time for somehow failing to avert the tragedy of Jephthah sacrificing his own daughter as a holocaust to the Lord as a result of a rash vow. In other  words, the Hassidic commentators are making clear that Jephthah's fire sacrifice was not legitimate or ordained by God, just as Abihu and Nabadh had made an improper sacrifice.
The interpretation given by the Zohar, or other mystical sources, may seem bizarre or superstitious to a lot of ordinary Christian people. However there can be no doubt as to the humane message of the Rabbis which we can summarize thus
1) Yes, Abihu and Nabadh did something improper from the ritual point of view. Maybe they'd had too much wine. But their intentions were good and so though they perished in the flesh yet the Lord's mercy was upon their Spirit. They could still serve the Lord- which was their only desire.
Thus, on this interpretation, from the Spiritual point of view, the Cohens- who are their descendants in the direct male line- need not fear that the Lord will judge them too harshly for some small ritual mistake or over hasty halachic decision- i.e. there is no grounds to hold Judaism to be a 'fossil' religion inculcating Kantian 'heteronomy'. On the contrary, the teaching of the Hassidic Sages is that Autonomy, Creativity, unremitting Zeal for Universal Welfare is what is pleasing to the Lord. The nightmare vision of a capricious God who punishes you for an unknown or unintentional crime has no place in our reading of the Old Testament because the keepers and transmitters of that text- who surely know more about it than ordinary people like you and me- have given a far more closely reasoned and hermeneutically rich interpretation which we can all feel to be more in consonance with the promptings of our own humble and heartfelt Faith in our Creator.
2) Political assassination, or Religious persecution or whatever it was that motivated the slaying of Zimri and Kosbi- though perhaps 'necessary' in some sense, is nevertheless very strictly forbidden precisely to those who know of this legal precedent and who might use it to justify fanatical persecution, or even genocide, of other peoples.
The paradoxical halachah here does not have the effect of crashing the whole deontic system, rather it enables it to evolve in a more humane manner. Yet, from the logical point of view, this is a very difficult problem. After all, the Rabbis say if we break one law we break all laws. If we slay one person we slay all humanity. Furthermore, though ignorance of the law can be an excuse, surely knowledge of it can never be so. Yet, there are situations where something which is enjoined is forbidden because it is known to be enjoined. This paradox resolves itself under the gentle guidance of the Rabbis who show that the only way to escape from the quicksand of Legalism is through moral and spiritual evolution- by opening oneself to the ibbur of the self-less tzadikkim. I have written more about this here.
3) The concern shown for the daughter of Jephtah indicates that the truly enlightened person- even if born in barbarous times, when the weaker was enslaved by the stronger- rejects the creed of Male supremacy. It has no place in Religion and Spirituality.

One interesting aspect of the manner in which the Hassidic Sages enrich our reading of the Bible is that, like Umaswati, they formulate the problematic of 'incarnation' (ibbur is actually more like partial incarnation as found in the Mahabharata) as a 'matching problem'. Essentially, a resource is cached in a liminal state- like the Bardo of the Tibetans or the Barzakh of Ibn Arabi- so that it can be drawn upon to resolve paradoxes in a manner that 'climbs the local hill', on the relevant Hermeneutic landscape, so as to grant the reader an expanded Moral and Spiritual horizon.

Emergence, Occassionalism and Reverse Mereology

If Imam Jafar as Sadiq's concept of 'takvin' is understood as Emergence- in what relationship might it stand to the Ghazzali brothers' Occasionalism and causationless poetic aetiology?

Perhaps, in an Occassionalist Universe, Emergence becomes the fundamental intuition, not of Time- for Time, here, is mere heteroclite seriality or jeitzeit juxtaposition- but the Brouwerian 'two-ity' which provides the basis of an acausal Constructivism, a Mereological metric in which, bizarrely, the part exceeds the whole because, every possible emergent in which it might participate becomes its choice sequence and knight's tour of a more ample dimension of freedom in alam al amr, whereas the emergent's  indifference curve between ingredient mixes becomes a constraint upon what amr can express in alam al khalq.

In this sense, then, the glory of the Ghazal is its reverse mereology or, salva veritae, reverse Tzimtzum; its turning of theodicy on its head- not justifying God's ways to Man, but making Man, making haecceity, interesting to God and inflationarily expanding the scope of His amr. 
But only apparently. Hence its pathos. Which actually makes it kinda cool.

Is Paninian Sanskrit occassionalist?

I guess most people have a sort of vague notion that Classical Skt derives all words from verbs and thus has a default, real time, efficient cause, Mimamsa. But is this really the case?
Prof. Matilal emphasized the quite separate tradition of Shatkatayana who has a pretty early date when, presumably, the ritualist aspect would have been more prominent rather than Skt as an ars dictaminis.
However, Paninian Skt was particularly valuable to savants expounding non-common sense ontologies.
Occassionalism, Nihilsm, reverse Mereology- the list is endless.
How does this affect its principle of compositionality?
For occassionalim, nothing acts upon anything else- verbs refer not to actions to be described but illusions to be denied. What sort of poetic aetiology and canons of taste would this give rise to? Passive constructions informed by nirukta eymology tend to highlight not actions but menus of choice and by so doing shift the focus of attention to higher order intentions which can't be embodied or anthropomorphized except by doing nothing else and, that too,  only doing it to point to its own project as failure.
In this sense, Paninian Skt- itself the fruit of the Nirukta tradition- becomes the ideal language for occassionalism as anti derivative of any non common sense Ontology. An ironic outcome, surely,  for a 'totalitarianism of the verb', though I suppose, its practice may have been viewed as the dual of something else which really did address  the realm where blizzarding verbs are the ineffable Noun's cloud of unknowing.

Heidegger and Hindu hermeneutics

Western hermeneutics has its origin in the interpretation of oracles and prophesies as well as the elaboration of a universal legal code.
In other words it's fucked in the head and doomed to fail.
Central to this project was the notion of a specifically rationalist Univocity of Being transparently immanent in a Teleological Historicism.
Thus, Relativism and Palingnesia represent a scandal- 'a stumbling block'- of an unprecedented kind for Western thought.
While Europe enjoyed World mastery- relativism could be subsumed under the notion of a hierarchy of Development with the Europeans at the top.
The First World War changed all that. Europe became provincial. Clio, the muse of History, turned out to be a flighty piece. History was no longer what was made in Europe, rather Europe had become History's Twilight home. The owl of Minerva had taken flight with a vengeance.
This did not mean that German professors quit their ambition to be the silliest creatures in Creation and so, with Heidegger, the 'hermeneutic circle', the practice of interpretation, is given a new horizon- that of explicating Being itself in a manner that could be described as caring for Being- becoming, so to speak, its shepherd.
This was at a period where the proposal for a Logic without Ontology, a Scientific Method which simply relegated Metaphysics to the realm of nonsense, appeared utterly compelling.
But there was a further factor at work. A deep disappointment with History itself. Neither the Whig interpretation of History, nor the Germanic telos of Geist, could explain the fact starring everyone in the face-viz. Europe had been eclipsed. The future belonged to vast barbaric nations who had no need for a National 'Bildungsburgertum'- a bourgeoisie of education defined by and dedicated to a (Chauvinist) Spiritualised conception of Culture- rather, the Americans stressed 'know-how', neutral with respect to class, creed or even colour, while the Soviets went a step further dedicating themselves to the Electrification of village communes so as to permit the 'withering away of the State'- the ultimate heresy for not just the Hegelian but even the Weberian. (The nonsense that the State ever had, or can ever have, the monopoly of legitimate violence or coercion is Weberian).
This was a barbarism because it was History without heroes, Technology kicking Poetry to the curb, vast mass movements indifferent to the Passion of both Christ and Kaiser. Not only would modern life no longer have a vantage point from which it could be judged (Weber's complaint) but Being itself, crouched outside the Professors' hermeneutic circle, had turned savage and hostile.
The repair of History, the ransoming of Time- not by the method of Kabbalahistic Tikkun, or the glass bead game of manipulating the Lullian zairja, nor by Rilke's angels or some Madchen's abortions- now hinged on befriending Being, or at least appearing to have done so, for Platonic 'participation' was now a property of the mobs and the masses.
Heidegger, at least, was consistent. He hailed Hitler as the prayed for Hero, genuflected to Holderlin and quietly wrote crap for the rest of his days. He was no fool. At least he spotted that Celan was mentally ill. He didn't do anything about it, of course. Still- the guy wasn't stupid.

It is only in the last thirty years that disciples of Gadamer have started vomiting on Indian hermeneutics. No question, they are smarter and less shite than Lacanian vomitasters and a million times better than our own J.N.U shitheads- still, it might be worth thinking a little about how Heidi could fuck up Hinduism and who might want to aid and abet the process.
Bottom line- Gadamerian hermeneutics is fucked in the head coz only stupid people are attracted to the arrant nonsense of the Phenomenological project (the thing is as dead as Ptolemy) and stupid people say stupid things even about interesting texts.
In any case, they can't do apoorvata- not they aren't saying new stuff, it's just they don't understand the old stuff, so it's like randomly new.
Could you have a meaningful phenomenology- i.e. with apoorvata? No, for the same reason that you can't have a structuralism that says anything interesting. That, at any rate is what is indicated not merely empirically but by 'practical reason'.

Auberginian philosophy

"All philosophy is radically Auberginian when considered as not just emanating from but defining the aubergine- especially in those moments before it is cut up for the purpose of cooking baingan ki barta or Imam bayildi"

Words to live by.

Strangely this formula only works for kathrika. Why not okra?