Anirvacaniya. Rhymes with HEY•BEER•SCOTCH•PAPAYA. There ought to be a dot beneath the "C" to indicate that it's a Sanskrit "ch", but I don't like messing around with Unicode characters. You could also spell it "anirvachaniya". If you think the "nirva" is related to the word "nirvana", you're on the right track unless you're picturing Kurt Cobain.
If you already know what it means you probably won't like the definition I'm about to give, but it's not as though it'd be the first time a Vedic principle has been improperly Westernized. For the purposes of this blog, anirvacaniya means indescribable or ineffable in a special way. That is, it refers to phenomena that are neither SAT (real) nor ASAT (unreal) and are therefore impossible for us to put into words in a satisfying way.
I bet you think I can't give an example of something that's neither real nor unreal, but I happen to be writing this on a Friday so a good example comes to mind immediately. You know how Fridays somehow feel different from Mondays or Sundays? I hope you do because that's my example. And because that feeling is anirvacaniya I can't explain it any better than to name it and trust that you have experienced it too. If not, no amount of writing about it will accomplish anything except convince you that I have experienced a thing...and for all you know I could just be a good liar.
Contrast this to phenomena like gravity. I can SHOW you gravity - at least gravity's effects. And then you can go off and show others, confident that you're doing as good a job as I did. And you can go on to investigate it on your own and soon know more about it than I do. You can't do that with the feeling that Friday evokes. Sure, you could interview everyone you know and amass a lot of anecdotal evidence, but in the end you'd be no closer to having experienced the phenomenon.
Isn't that the same for ALL subjective experience? Wouldn't that make everything you experience anirvacaniya? Consider this: To some people the herb cilantro tastes pleasant but to others it tastes like soap. That is a matter of subjective experience, and would seem to fall under the rule "de gustibus non est disputandum" ("there is no arguing about flavors"). But at least we can fall back on the power of analogy in such cases. Cilantro tastes LIKE something: soap. If I want to know what certain people perceive when they taste cilantro all I have to do is lick a bar of soap. Maybe there are some soaps that are a closer match than others. I can eventually recreate someone else's subjective experience. That is why not all subjective experience is anirvacaniya.
Granted, I'd have to conduct the soap-licking experiment personally, I couldn't just know what the taste is by hearing the words "tastes like soap". If I were already a connoisseur of soap-licking, all I'd have to be told is, "tastes like Lifebuoy with a lingering aftertaste of Irish Spring" and I could imagine the flavor immediately. Still, imagining guided by a description isn't the same as understanding something just from the words, the way you would with the definition, "a chair is any piece of furniture designed to raise one's backside off the floor". Imagining is as much a willful act as licking soap, just less physical.
So what makes the feel of a Friday anirvacaniya when the soapy flavor of cilantro isn't? The possibility of describing it directly, without having to rely entirely on the reader's own experience. Note that analogy has to rely PARTIALLY on experience - you have to have either tasted soap before or be willing to do so in the future. Can the same be said of the "normal", non-soapy flavor of cilantro that most people taste? Maybe, if it is entirely inexpressible through analogy...but not many flavors don't taste similar to something else. Anirvacaniya phenomena have no analogs; you either "get it" right away or you probably never will.
If I'm making it sound as though the writer's skill with poetic description is a factor, that's true to some extent. Many things can SEEM anirvacaniya simply because the writer hasn't found the RIGHT words, not because such words are impossible. And it's also important to remember that some languages not only don't have words for some phenomena (e.g., English has "envy" and "pity", but not "Schadenfreude") but also lack a cultural framework to express certain concepts. "Anirvacaniya" itself seems like an anirvacaniya idea in English. It isn't, however, because the potential exists to convey it in words. Eight paragraphs worth so far.
Why even have such an adjective? Doesn't it refer only to weird abstract things that don't really matter in everyday life? That depends whether you think the feeling of a Friday is weird and abstract. I don't. My own life is full of experiences that I can only allude to and hope they inspire recognition among readers. I think they're important things, at least in the sense that they have a powerful effect on determining my behavior. I suspect that such things also affect other people's behavior. I have yet to meet anyone who acts strictly on rational motivations, even if you include the basic emotions as rational. Mood pervades our lives in subtle ways and I fear that we acknowledge it too rarely, often only when it is harmful or distressing.
One of the goals of this blog is to promote discussion of such topics. Because they are anirvacaniya they cannot be understood definitively, but I think it's more important to simply become comfortable discussing such things and get into the habit of acknowledging them.
