Holy car!

July 17, 2005 4:23 AM

The Omkara Project "..the word Omkara meaning - ' the vehicle to cross the ocean of life ' Crossing this ocean is the journey that the mortal being must undertake in a lifetime and henceforth encounter the three basic elements of mortality - creation, preservation and destruction."
posted by dhruva (8 comments total)

oops, my karma ran over my dogma.
posted by nickyskye at 6:21 AM on July 17, 2005 [1 favorite]

Auto-enlightenment.
posted by rdone at 7:27 AM on July 17, 2005

Life is a metaphor.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:31 AM on July 17, 2005

Goddamn hippies...
posted by toftflin at 11:11 AM on July 17, 2005

The pun in Omkara, made me wonder about the etymology of the word car: "1301, "wheeled vehicle," from Norm.-Fr. carre, from L. carrum, carrus (pl. carra), orig. "two-wheeled Celtic war chariot," from Gaul. karros, from PIE *krsos, from base *kers- "to run."

People have used their vehicles to proclaim their various religions or cultural backgrounds or speculated about what kind of car would Jesus drive?

Actually I think Amritraj Gupta's Omkara and especially his creative vision are wonderful. It seems to me that it took cojones to make a Hindu car in predominantly islamic Sharjah. I enjoy his intellect and sense of humor in discussing the initial sketches for his project: "The first one uses architecture as an analogy to describe religion and deals with the concepts of planning ones life, destiny and the overall scale of a human soul to a religious belief. The second (my favourite) is a playful interpretation of religion as IKEA furniture - the primary concept being that religion stands at a point today where it has become a necessary feature to add and remove aspects of the belief system that we think is convenient and easy for us to follow - much like IKEA actually."
posted by nickyskye at 12:28 PM on July 17, 2005

A metaphor for the life experience that has some appeal to me:

A school for the blind which educates one to embrace nine sensitivities while grasping for truth in, and celebrating, each moment:
(1) gratitude for freedom; (2) enjoyment of freedom; (3)
recognition of oneness in oneself together with everything; (4) focus upon "anything can happen;" (5) practice of moderation; (6) sacrifice of one's actions; (7) service of friendship; (8) surrender of base desires; and (9) synergy with the will of higher power.

Having said this, I still think it is wrong to try to organize truth, to seek to make anyone a follower of one's insights or to be oneself a follower of any group or person.

Ozzie Maland
San Diego
posted by ozziemaland at 12:30 PM on July 17, 2005

oops, my karma ran over my dogma.

That left me laughing for quite some time, nickyskye.
posted by dhruva at 10:34 PM on July 17, 2005

I can't get the pages to render in Firefox, which is too bad since I like the look of the car on the front page.
posted by OmieWise at 6:38 AM on July 18, 2005