light-enables-creation

ashish

I am getting started on using Zettelkasten. Here is one of my zettels, the purpose here is to capture concepts in Indian philosophy and discover connections. I look forward to your critiques/feedback:

In Indian philosophy, light can be understood as both physical and metaphysical. 

Prakasha refers to manifested light. There are three types: 
* ordinary fire (_jada agni_), 
* sunlight (_saura agni_), 
* lightning (_vaidyuta agni_).

The original spiritual light is _jyoti_. 

How does physical light interface with the metaphysical?
* Physical light sustains life on Earth, for example, sunlight provides energy through photosynthesis. 
* [[Prometheus stole fire and was punished for giving power to humans]]
* Light enables creation, as consciousness is the first element required.  
* Light is involved in metaphysical visions too:
1._Krishna_ grants _Arjuna_ a glimpse of his effulgent divine form, which _Sanjay_ also perceives through inner sight. 
2. The _Nachiketa_ and _Yama_ story conveys spiritual light's ability to illuminate the knowledge of death and immortality.

Source: link

GeoEng51

@ashish said:
I am getting started on using Zettelkasten. Here is one of my zettels, the purpose here is to capture concepts in Indian philosophy and discover connections. I look forward to your critiques/feedback:

If this is your first time on the forum - welcome!!

I liked what you have done with this zettel, although you have picked a very large topic for one zettel. I think you will find there are multiple ideas under this topic. As you develop your ideas, you may find that you want to split this zettel up, or perhaps you might turn this zettel into a structure note, leading to 5 or 10 other zettels, each focused on just one idea.

As a matter of interest, you designate some special terms with leading and trailing underscores, which designate italics font for the intervening text in Markdown. However, is there another reason why you have chosen that particular format? Just curious.

ashish

@GeoEng51 Thank you for the thoughtful feedback on my zettel. I appreciate you taking the time to provide constructive comments.

You make an excellent point that this zettel covers a broad topic area. As I continue studying this field, I find myself diverging into many interconnected sub-topics. My intention is for this zettel to serve as a starting point that can be split into more focused notes later. I do not expect this for all concepts that are currently listed, but those where the idea develops further. So yes, your suggestion to break this into 5-10 separate, concentrated zettels on individual ideas is wise advice.

The italicized terms are Sanskrit words and phrases often with no accurate transliteration. Using underscores allows me to quickly designate these terms. I have tried converting them into structured notes. But such notes become crowded and confusing. For now, most of my zettels remain an expansive brainstorm

Sascha

Welcome aboard!

In case you missed this post, there are seven examples of how I'd work on notes. The common theme is to go deep into the material. If a note contains on individual idea the development of the note shows your development of the idea.

I agree 100% with @GeoEng51. Most likely, this note will develop into a structure note. I'd treat it as such already.

ashish

@Sascha said: The common theme is to go deep into the material. If a note contains on individual idea the development of the note shows your development of the idea.

Thanks very much for the welcome, and for picking up the conversation. I had not read this post and this looks quite relevant to my context.

I agree 100% with @GeoEng51. Most likely, this note will develop into a structure note. I'd treat it as such already.

Indeed. As I reflected on the exchange, I can see it better as a structure note. This also eases some tension I had in growing the note as different facets are being added. Now I have some homework to do

This has been a very insightful exchange. I will update the thread in the coming days as I progress.

ashish

After some iterations, I rewrote the Zettel

And the structured note

This will go through further iterations as I develop the idea further. The process helped me look for the central idea - why light is an important symbol in spirituality. The structure note gave me a place to park various other ideas that came along and I did not want to forget them.

Thanks again for the direction, I am now enjoying working on this!

Sascha

I think the next step is to accumulate until you need more structure and then work on that structure as a representation of your understanding of this topic.

chrisaldrich

This looks like the sort of structure note I might often make as I am a day or two into a literature review for a new area. It definitely helps to scaffold new ideas and identify specific areas which I may want to delve into more specifically. It's definitely been useful for me to begin linking things into other portions of my ZK to find areas of overlap with these new areas, so it's great to see you doing that with your Prometheus note already.

Coming from the science area you may want to look at cells or animals with autofluorescence or areas like green fluorescent protein (GFP) if that is of interest in the area of creatures which produce their own light.

Sascha

You might look into Jack Kruse's work. He did a lot on light frequencies and its effect on the body.

ashish

@chrisaldrich said:
This looks like the sort of structure note I might often make as I am a day or two into a literature review for a new area. It definitely helps to scaffold new ideas and identify specific areas which I may want to delve into more specifically.

I appreciate you affirming my approach! I just started with structure notes, and I am finding these are helpful for me in orienting myself when exploring new concepts. This became my guide post to revisit later.

It's definitely been useful for me to begin linking things into other portions of my ZK to find areas of overlap with these new areas, so it's great to see you doing that with your Prometheus note already.

Making connections across ideas is so illuminating. As you may have noticed, my primary interest is Indian philosophy, but I'm always fascinated to uncover parallels with other schools of thought.

Coming from the science area you may want to look at cells or animals with autofluorescence or areas like green fluorescent protein (GFP) if that is of interest in the area of creatures which produce their own light.

What an intriguing suggestion! I had not considered exploring that angle, but it could offer some fascinating insights relevant to my notes.

ashish

I continue sharing the notes as they develop.

Structure note:

I made note of additional ideas in square brackets. I will keep these as such for now and if there are other connections that emerge, I can develop them as zettels.

Zettels and buffer notes:
1

2

3

4

5

6

7

GeoEng51

@ashish Your development of structural notes and zettels is proceeding well - congratulations on digging in and trying both out. I like the Summary-Content-Source manner in which you organize your zettels - many others on the forum have developed similar approaches.

ashish

@GeoEng51 Thank you.

I like the Summary-Content-Source manner in which you organize your zettels - many others on the forum have developed similar approaches.

I also added a new section called Research Interest (taken from @Sascha 's examples) to remind me of the context for making the note. The backlinks by themselves may not be as well understood by my future self.
I am now trying to focus on improving the content quality.