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other; and he should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices
''And thus an American textbook, typical required reading for 10th-grade English students, unknowingly extols some virtues of WabiSabi''
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* [Compassion] (new) ..... 218.186.9.252
* [Communication] (new) ..... 169.145.197.12
* [Wingdings Om] ([diff|phpwiki:?diff=Wingdings%20Om]) ..... 202.156.2.44
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ReleaseNotes
* Full HTML compliance.
* Links at the bottom of pages describing relationships like incoming links from other pages and their hits, outgoing and their hits, and the most popular nearby pages.
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completely overhauled, breaking the page details into columns (for efficiency we
agreed not to put references in a separate table, so it's not completely
series. --Steve Wainstead, mailto:swain@panix.com
Version 1.0 is a near-perfect clone of the Portland Pattern Repository, http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?WikiWikiWeb. In truth, I was using the Wiki script you can download from there as a model; that Wiki lacks a number of features the PPR has, like EditCopy. So in truth PhpWiki is a kind of hybrid of the PPR and the generic Wiki you can get from there (which is written in Perl).
The one caveat of PhpWiki is the allowance of HTML if the line is preceded by a bar (or pipe, which is how I usually say it). (That's a '|'). It was very simple to add, and the idea came from a posting somewhere on the PPR about how AT&T had an internal Wiki clone and used the same technique. The ability to embed HTML is disabled by default for security reasons.
SteveWainstead
Hi. I started building this WikiWikiWeb but many others help me now. I'm at http://www.panix.com/~swain/ .
TestPage
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TextFormattingRules
* You can name the links by providing a name, a bar (|) and then the hyperlink or pagename: [PhpWiki home page | http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net/] - [the front page | FrontPage]
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WabiSabi
2003 May 01 - Email from http://www.leonardkoren.com/ - "I wrote a book in 1994 titled [WABI-SABI: for Artists, Designers,Poets & Philosophers|http://www.leonardkoren.com/lkwa.html] ...In the repeated--ad infinitum--wiki world, you mention my name and put quotation marks around some of the words from my book, but not all..." - I quote all the words...
Since wabi-sabi represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic system, it is difficult to explain precisely in western terms. According to Leonard Koren, wabi-sabi is the most conspicuous and characteristic feature of what we think of as traditional Japanese beauty and it "occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection in the West."
"Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
It is the beauty of things unconventional." (Leonard Book : [WABI-SABI: for Artists, Designers,Poets & Philosophers|http://www.leonardkoren.com/lkwa.html]'s back cover)
* All things are incomplete
* simple" (from the last chapter of Leonard's book [WABI-SABI: for Artists, Designers,Poets & Philosophers|http://www.leonardkoren.com/lkwa.html])
WikiWikiWeb
A WikiWikiWeb is a site where everyone can collaborate on the content. The most well-known and widely used Wiki is the Portland Pattern Repository at http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?WikiWikiWeb.
''In addition to being quick, this site also aspires to Zen ideals generally labeled WabiSabi. Zen finds beauty in the imperfect and ephemeral. When it comes down to it, that's all you need.''
Articles
* [Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming]
* 2002 Jan 09 : [How To Become A Hacker]
* 2002 Jan 07 : [Miraculous Messages from Water]
* [I suffer immensely from loneliness....] (added 2001 August 12)
* [Moving from anger into sadness...] (added 2001 August 12)
* [Could you say something about forgiveness?] (added 2001 August 12)
* [What Makes a House a Home?]
# [The Sad Truth of Today|http://www.carnatic.com/kishore/articles/art_0023.html]
* 2001 Dec 27 : [Ten Things Men Can Do to End Sexism and Male Violence Against Women]
* Bruce Mau - [An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth|http://www.brucemaudesign.com/manifesto/print.html]
* [Guy Kawasaki] - [Big Stones|http://www.garage.com/guy/speeches/paloAlto.shtml]
* [Intermittent Aberrations: Can Mature Companies Innovate?|http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue6_3/doheny/index.html]
* [Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming]
* [Vivekananda on Man's True Spiritual Nature|http://www.angelfire.com/ny2/bass/vivekananda.html]
* [many articles|http://www.angelfire.com/ny2/bass/] at Stanley S. Bass's site
* [Disconnecting the emotions from mother's death]
* [Rediff.com Commentary|http://www.rediff.com/news/commtry.htm]
* [Chris Sheridan]'s [Essays|http://www.youknow.com/chris/essays/index.html]
* [Richard P. Gabriel]'s [Essays|http://www.dreamsongs.com/Essays.html]
* [John Renesch] [Aha! Index|http://www.renesch.com/ahaindx.htm]
* [Stephen R. Covey] : [Knowledge Sharing|http://www.franklincovey.com/foryou/articles/] and [Knowledge Expo|http://www.franklincovey.com/ez/library/]
* [Eric S. Raymond]'s [Random Writings|http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/]
[Cameron Barrett] : [Online Community Technologies and Concepts|http://www.camworld.com/essays/communities.html]
[Cesar Brea] : [Beyond "One-to-One": The Power of Purposeful Communities|http://www.arsdigita.com/learning/whitepapers/beyond-one-to-one]
[The 12 Principles of Collaboration|http://www.mongoosetech.com/realcommunities/12prin.html]
How to survive a Heart attack
__'' Update : 2002 11 19 - HOAX - FALSE - see http://www.snopes.com/toxins/coughcpr.htm ''__
__'' I will not remove this page to make sure people donot use the cached information at Google etc. and come to the wrong conclusion ''__
Let's say it's 6:15 p.m. and you're driving home (alone of
You are only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home;
before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest.
From Health Cares, Rochester General Hospital via Chapter 240snewsletter AND THE BEAT GOES ON ... (reprint from The Mended Hearts, Inc.publication, Heart Response)
__'' Update : 2002 11 19 - HOAX - FALSE - see http://www.snopes.com/toxins/coughcpr.htm ''__
Kishore Balakrishnan
http://www.carnatic.com/kishore/
Womb ([Birth]) > [Breath], [Meditation], [People] , [Travel] , [Charity] , [Enlightenment] , [Days] > Tomb ([Death])
[Kishore Balakrishnan's Weblog|http://www.carnatic.com/karmasaya/sitemap.php]
Personal World Clock
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/personal.html
Newsletters
* [scripting.com|http://www.scripting.com]
* [Sulekha] [*|http://www.sulekha.com]
* [One Minute Wisdom]
* [David Allen's Productivity Principles|http://www.gettingthingsdone.com/productivity_principles.php]
* [Better Future NEWS|http://www.renesch.com/newsletters/Aha_newindex.htm]
Thoughts Worth Thinking
http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/thoughts.html
Consulting
[Consulting Central|http://www.consultingcentral.com/]
Jamie Zawinski
* http://www.jwz.org/cheesegrater/ : ...the only standard I care about complying with is "does it work, or not?" So, it works for me. If it breaks, feel free to keep both pieces...
* There are two kinds of people: those who want to go work for a company to make it successful, and those who want to go work for a successful company. ( my deduction ! after reading [resignation and postmortem|http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html]
Welcome
[Gardenia jasminoides|http://www.streetside.com/plants/floridata/ref/g/gard_j.htm]
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/gardenia_jasminoides.jpg]
* [Steve Yost | http://www.quicktopic.com/blurcircle ]
Sushma Kishore
[TheFestivalMaker|http://www.thefestivalmaker.com]
Karmasaya
An experience in the sense plane sinks into the depths of the subconscious mind. There it becomes a samskara (an impression). The impression of an experience is formed, in the citta, (subconscious mind), at the very moment that the mind experiences it. There is no gap between the present experience and the formation of the samskara in the subconscious mind.
One specific experience leaves one specific samskara and the memory of this specific experience springs from that particular samskara only, which was formed out of that particular experience.
Samskara is also known as 'residual potency'. When all vrttis or thoughts die away, the frame of the mind remains, with the samskaras. This is termed the 'potential mind'. All samskaras co-exist in the mind. Vrttis slowly subside, leaving traces in the mind. These traces are samskaras. From them springs memory.
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Nonviolence and us
This article appeared as one of two articles on the grimmest of workplace phenomena: homicide in Business Horizons/ March-April 1995.  The full extent of this problem appears subject to some debate, but no one who reads the newspapers or listen to CNN Headlines News escape the conclusion that violence is spilling over from the streets onto the job.  Thus, it seems quite appropriate - doubly so, in view of a forthcoming issue featuring an article from A.T. Kearney's research sizing up India as the "New Asian Tiger" - that we examine the following reflection by Mr. Arun Gandhi, grandson of the Mahatma, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
Modern society is plagued by violence - at home, at work, in the streets, in schools.  In fact anywhere there is, unfortunately, the distinct likelihood of violence breaking out.  So much violence is an indication of our deteriorating human relationships, as well as the stress under which we live and work.
Many of us enjoy living in the "fast lane" because that, we are told, is the road to success.  So we allow our minds to street us at phenomenal speed, oblivious of the danger of crashing.  When we live on the edge day after day we become like taut rubber bands - either we break or we bounce back.  And in either case, the consequence is that we damage or destroy human relationships.  What we must learn now is how to rebuild those relationships and lessen the stress so we can create an atmosphere of harmony around us.
In a pell mell world of profits and the pursuit of success, we must not forget to care about one another. Note that I emphasize the reduction of violence.  The creation of utopian state of absolute harmony is presently beyond human capacity.  The philosophy of nonviolence, as practiced by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, is based on the assumption "we are not governed by logic and, therefore, some violence may be necessary in our lives.  However, if we are progressing towards civilization we should be able to reduce violence to the bare minimum."
American society is, reputedly, build on rugged individualism, which was fine when pioneers came to conquer the land.  But once settled, a society cannot thrive on such individualism.  A nation is as cohesive as its society and the society is as cohesive as the family.  If every member of a family thought only about himself or herself, the "family" would be more like a collection of people grappling for material survival under the same roof.  There would be no love, no cooperation.  When understanding wears thin, relationships begin to fray, and before we know it the fabric we call "family" disintegrates.  The effect of this domestic disaster is reflected today in our workplace and in society.
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/vfamtree2.gif]
Stong relationships can be built only if we shift the focus from the self to the several and begin thinking about others around us. It means sacrificing individualism so that we can give and get strength from each other.
When Gandhi said materialism and morality have an inverse relationship, he did not mean morality only in sexual sense.  He meant it also in the ethical sense.  in our pursuit of material goods and capital gains, we are often prepared to use "any means possible," throwing principles, ethics, and morality overboard.  In other words, we often unhesitantingly indulge in commerce without morality and profits without principles.
In our headlong pursuit of the ideal life, people seem to matter the least[list in the source - what is correct?] - sometimes even our own people.  This sets the stage for much of the violence we experience in our daily lives.  Violence, we must understand, is not always physical.  We practice a great deal of passive violence: greed, selfishness, thoughtlessness, prejudice, bigotry, exploitation, suppression, oppression, hate, anger, and so on.  Building a "family tree" of violence, such as the one shown in the Figure, with passive and physical as the two offspring, is a revealing exercise.  This chart should adorn a wall at home so that all family members could participate in researching each act of passive violence committed.  This is an effective way of recognizing our weaknesses and searching for ways to turn them into strengths.
Passive violence causes anger and anger leads to physical violence.  The lack of physical violence in our homes or neighborhoods should not necessarily be construed as peace and harmony.  The underlying passive violence simmers like a cauldron waiting to erupt into physical violence - which erupts because we are not taught how to deal with the anger generated by the passive violence.  We are repeatedly told, "Get it out of your system," but we are seldom, if ever, shown how to do this effectively.
Using the analogy of electricity, Gandhi, my grandfather, taught me about anger when I was 13 years old.  He said that anger can be as deadly as electricity if we abuse it, or just as useful if treated with respect and intelligence.  He suggested that I keep an "anger journal" into which I should pour my anger without inhibition, then read it periodically to find ways of improving.  A life that is not periodically examined, after all, is a life not worth living.  Gandhi said that the cardinal principles of my life should be: Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you.  This helped me find ways to deal with my anger positively.  The journal also provided me with a written record of my emotions so that weeks, months, or even years later I could study the changes that did or did not take place in me.  It taught me how to become selfless and think about others while thinking about myself.
Violence, anywhere, in any form, is reprehensible - especially at home and in the workplace, because this means we are committing violence against people we are expected to love, honor, and respect.  If we do not hesitate to violate the people closet to, why would we hesitate to harm those we don't know?  Salvation lies in changing the self before we attempt to change the society.  To quote my grandfather: "We must be the change we wish to see."
Ganesha Chaturthi
Lord Ganesha is the elephant-headed God. He is worshipped first in any prayers. His Names are repeated first before any auspicious work is begun, before any kind of worship is begun. He is the Lord of power and wisdom. He is the eldest son of Lord Shiva and the elder brother of Skanda or Kartikeya. He is the energy of Lord Shiva and so He is called the son of Shankar and Umadevi. By worshipping Lord Ganesha mothers hope to earn for their sons the sterling virtues of Ganesha.
Once upon a time, the Goddess Gauri (consort of Lord Shiva), while bathing, created Ganesha as a pure white being out of the mud of Her Body and placed Him at the entrance of the house. She told Him not to allow anyone to enter while she went inside for a bath. Lord Shiva Himself was returning home quite thirsty and was stopped by Ganesha at the gate. Shiva became angry and cut off Ganesha’s head as He thought Ganesha was an outsider.
Common Names of Lord Ganesha:
Dhoomraketu, Sumukha, Ekadantha, Gajakarnaka, Lambodara, Vignaraja, Ganadhyaksha, Phalachandra, Gajanana, Vinayaka, Vakratunda, Siddhivinayaka, Surpakarna, Heramba, Skandapurvaja, Kapila and Vigneshwara. He is also known by many as Maha-Ganapathi.
Lord Ganesha is an embodiment of wisdom and bliss. He is the Lord of Brahmacharins. He is foremost amongst the celibates. He has as his vehicle a small mouse. He is the presiding Deity of the Muladhara Chakra, the psychic centre in the body in which the Kundalini Shakti resides.
The significance of riding on a mouse is the complete conquest over egoism. The holding of the ankusha represents His rulership of the world. It is the emblem of divine Royalty.
Ganesha is the first God. Riding on a mouse, one of nature’s smallest creatures and having the head of an elephant, the biggest of all animals, denotes that Ganesha is the creator of all creatures. Elephants are very wise animals; this indicates that Lord Ganesha is an embodiment of wisdom. It also denotes the process of evolution—the mouse gradually evolves into an elephant and finally becomes a man. This is why Ganesha has a human body, an elephant’s head and a mouse as His vehicle. This is the symbolic philosophy of His form.
He is very fond of sweet pudding or balls of rice flour with a sweet core. On one of His birthdays He was going around house to house accepting the offerings of sweet puddings. Having eaten a good number of these, He set out moving on His mouse at night. Suddenly the mouse stumbled—it had seen a snake and became frightened—with the result that Ganesha fell down. His stomach burst open and all the sweet puddings came out. But Ganesha stuffed them back into His stomach and, catching hold of the snake, tied it around His belly.
Seeing all this, the moon in the sky had a hearty laugh. This unseemly behaviour of the moon annoyed Him immensely and so he pulled out one of His tusks and hurled it against the moon, and cursed that no one should look at the moon on the Ganesh Chaturthi day. If anyone does, he will surely earn a bad name, censure or ill-repute. However, if by mistake someone does happen to look at the moon on this day, then the only way he can be freed from the curse is by repeating or listening to the story of how Lord Krishna cleared His character regarding the Syamantaka jewel. This story is quoted in the Srimad Bhagavatam.
Once Ganesha & His brother Lord Subramanya had a dispute. The matter was referred to Lord Shiva for final decision. Shiva decided that whoever would make a tour of the whole world and come back first to the starting point had the right to be the elder. Subramanya flew off at once on his vehicle, the peacock, to make a circuit of the world. But the wise Ganesha went, in loving worshipfulness, around His divine parents and asked for the prize of His victory.
On the Ganesh Chaturthi day, meditate on the stories connected with Lord Ganesha early in the morning, during the Brahmamuhurta period. Then, after taking a bath, go to the temple and do the prayers of Lord Ganesha. Offer Him some coconut and sweet pudding. Pray with faith and devotion that He may remove all the obstacles that you experience on the spiritual path. Worship Him at home, too. You can get the assistance of a pundit. Have an image of Lord Ganesha in your house. Feel His Presence in it.
   Om shuklambaradharam vishnum
   Om boohu, Om bhuvaha, Oghum suvaha,
   Om mahaha, Om janaha, Oghum satyam, Om tat sa vithurvarenyam,
   Bhargo devasya dhimahi, dheeyo yonah pracho dayathu. Om aphaha,
Take some flowers and rice (akshata) in your hands and chant :
   Om gananaanthva ganapathing havaa mahey,
   Seedha saadanam. Om mahaganapathayey namaha.
Akshata - offer some akshata (rice) and chant.
Pushpam - offer some flowers and chant :
Om sumukhaya namaha
Om ekadantaaya namaha
Om kapilaaya namaha
Om gajakarnakaaya namaha
Om lambodaraaya namaha
Om vikataaya namaha
Om vignaraajaya namaha
Om vinayakaaya namaha
Om dhuma ketavey namaha
Om ganadyakshaaya namaha
Om faalachandraya namaha
Om gajananaaya namaha
Om vakratundaaya namaha
Om shoorpa karnaaya namaha
Om Heyrambaaya namaha
Om skandapoorvajaaya namaha
Om moola prakrutayey namaha
Om kshetra paalaya namaha
Om gurubhyo namaha
Om siddhi vinayaka swaminey namaha
Dhoop : Light two agarbattis and show it to the Lord accompanied by the ringing of the             bell and chat.
Deepam: (Optional) If you have lit a small accompanying lamp, show it to the Lord               accompanied by ringing of bell. If not, just continue with agarbathi and say :
   Om bhur bhuvasuvaha, tat sa vithur varenyam,
   Om Pranaaya swaha
   Om Apaanaya swaha
   Om Vyaanaya swaha
   Om Udaanaya swaha
   Om Samaanaya swaha
   Om brahmaney swaha
   Om maha Ganapataye namahe, Kadali phaladhikam nivey dayami
Light the Aarti (camphor) and show it to the Lord accompanied by ringing of the bell and the following mantra.
Source:http://www.vishuji.com/ganpooja.htm
Festivals
* [Karadaiyan Nombhu]
* [Vesak Day|http://www.regit.com/spore/festival/vesak.htm]
Hair
[Ayurvedic Remedies for Hair Loss|http://www.holistic-online.com/Remedies/Hair/hair_loss_ayurveda.htm]
[OurKarnataka.com - Beauty Tips for Beautiful Hair (Ayurveda)|http://www.ourkarnataka.com/Articles/yoga/hair_style.htm]
Religion
[Swami Sivananda] : ESSENCE OF RELIGIONS: While conversing with some of his disciples, the
the body and feels that he includes the legs, hands, stomach, etc., so
* http://www.vishuji.com/
[Rabbi Hillel] was asked to provide the essence of the [Torah] and he said "That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary."
Likewise... I want to collect the essence from other religions... Do you have any ? do send it !
From [Stephen Palmer]
This is the first and greatest commandment.
All the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments. "
Sandhyavandanam
[http://www.carnatic.com/images/sandhy.png]
2005-05-24 : [vishuji.com: Sandhyavandanam|http://www.vishuji.com/sandhya_vandanam.htm] lists all the steps - very good
Book available from [Sri Thillasthanam Swamy Kainkarya Sabha|http://thillasthanamsabha.freehosting.net/] for Rs 35 (in India) or USD 5 (outside India)
[http://www.carnatic.com/images/gayatrimantra.jpg]
(source : http://www.angelfire.com/me2/sutras/ssrs.html)
Next comes Pranayama, i. e. Control of Prana.
Om Bhuh / Om Bhuvah / Om Suvaha / Om Mahah / Om Janah / Om Tapah / Om Satyam / Om Tat Saviturvarenyam Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi / Dhiyo yo Nah Prachodayat / Om Apo Jyoti-rasomritam Brahma Bhurbhuvassuvarom.
Apohishta mayo bhuvah / ta na oorje dadhatana maheranaya chakshase / yo vah sivatamorasah / Tasya bhajayateha nah / Usateeriya Matarah / Tasma arangamama vah yasya kshayayajinvatha / Apo janayatha cha nah / Om Bhurbhuvos suvah.
With the second finger of the right hand write the letter Om on Water and uttering the word Sri kesavaya namah touch the centre of the brows with that very finger.
With the first seven mantras sprinkle water on the head with the second finger. Reciting the eighth Mantra touch ,the feet with the second finger. Reciting the ninth mantra sprinkle water again on the head. Then repeating the mantra - Om Bhurbhuvassuvah make a circuit of your head.
Om bhurbhuvassuvah / Tat Saviturvarenyam bhargo devasya dhimahi / dhiyo yo nah prachodayaat //
Pranayamamah // Om bhuh + bhurbhuvassuvarom Arghyam / Om bhurbhuvassuvah + dhiyo yo nah prachodayaat Om bhurbhuvasvah //
Then Pranayama should be done and then the Prayaschittarghya must be poured afterwards uttering, Om bhurbhuvassuvah.
Adityam tarpayami/ Somam tarpayami / Angarakam tarpayami / Budham tarpayami / Brihaspatim tarpayami /Sukram tarpayami /Sanaischaram tarpayami / Rahum tarpayami / Ketum tarpayami
Om bhu + Bhurbhuvassuvarom // (Pranayamah)
Aayaatu Varada Devi Aksharam Brahmasammitam/ Gayatri Chhandasam Mataridam Brahma Juhaswa Nah/ Ojosi Sahosi Balamasi Bhrajosi Devanam Dhama Namasi viswamasi viswayuh sarvamasi sarvayu-rabhibhoorom Gayatri mavahayami Savitrimavahayami
Om
Praatah Sandhya, (Aditya), (Saayam Sandhya) Upasthanam karishye // Uttame shikhare Devi bhoomyaam parvata-moordhani /
Praachyai Dise Namah // Dakshinaayai Dise Namah / Prateechyai Dise Namah // Udeechyai Dise Namah // Oordhwaaya Namah // Adharaaya Namah // Antarikshaaya Namah Bhoomyai Namah Brahmane Namah // Vishnave Namah // Mrityave Namah
Beginning from the quarter facing which the japa was done, the four quarters are saluted as well as the upper side and lower side and the middle portion and the Gods or the quarters, and afterwards the earth and the three Gods Brahma, Vishnu and, Siva.
Oudumbaraaya Dadhnaaya Neelaaya parameshtine // Vrikodaraaya Chitraaya Chitragupaaya Vai Namah // Chitraguptaaya Vai Nama Om Nama Iti //
Ritagum Satyam Param Brahma Purusham Krishna-pingalam // Oorddhwaretam Viroopaksham Viswaroopaya Vai Namo Namah // Viswaroopaaya Vai Namo Nama Om Nama Iti //
Kaayena Vaacha Manasendriyairvaa Budhyaatmana Vaa Prakriteh Swabhaavaat // Karomi Yadyat Sakalam Parasmai Naraayanaayeti samarpayaami //.
* http://members.tripod.com/~sriramanujar/sandhya.html
* http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4240/upanayana.html
Index
* [First Knight], [Blast from the past]
* Tomorrow or the next life - which comes first, we never know.
! Categories: [2009|http://www.carnatic.com/karmasaya/index.php?category=2009],
[2008|http://www.carnatic.com/karmasaya/index.php?category=2008],
[2007|http://www.carnatic.com/karmasaya/index.php?category=2007],
[2006|http://www.carnatic.com/karmasaya/index.php?category=2006],
[2005|http://www.carnatic.com/karmasaya/index.php?category=2005], [2004|http://www.carnatic.com/karmasaya/index.php?category=2004], [2003|http://www.carnatic.com/karmasaya/index.php?category=2003], [2002|http://www.carnatic.com/karmasaya/index.php?category=2002], [2001|http://www.carnatic.com/karmasaya/index.php?category=2001], [2000|http://www.carnatic.com/karmasaya/index.php?category=2000],
[2000|http://www.carnatic.com/karmasaya/index.php?category=1999],
[2000|http://www.carnatic.com/karmasaya/index.php?category=1971]
* [Tom Robbins] : To travel is to live. To live is to travel.
![Companies]
![Computers], [Cool Tools]
|<!-- [http://www.carnatic.com/images/aum.gif] -->
|<!-- [http://www.carnatic.com/images/fscn.gif] for all -->
20021230
DEVI AND DEVIL!: The Master ([Swami Sivananda]) was returning to his room from the office.
He remarked to the disciples and devotees accompanying him, "A woman
commands, who does Kirtan and trains her children also in leading a
religious life, is certainly a Devi (Goddess). But the woman who is
not carry out his commands, who stands in the way of his spiritual
Garden
[Gardenia jasminoides|http://www.streetside.com/plants/floridata/ref/g/gard_j.htm]
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/gardenia_jasminoides.jpg]
RAQ
[http://static.userland.com/images/surprise/questions.gif]
* Q: [What Makes a House a Home?]
* [Zen] vt. To figure out something by meditation or by a sudden flash of enlightenment. Originally applied to bugs, but occasionally applied to problems of life in general. "How'd you figure out the buffer allocation problem?" "Oh, I zenned it."
* [Mira Art]'s [RAQ|http://surprise.editthispage.com/raqs]
* [Veronica Lynne]'s [Ponderings|http://wannawrite.editthispage.com/questions]
* [Alan Cohen]'s [Frequently Asked Questions|http://www.alancohen.com/html/mostpopularQ&A.html]
Books
[http://static.userland.com/images/kishore/2candles.gif]
"To read well, that is to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise," Henry David Thoreau writes in Walden. "A written word is choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself."
2009 09 24 Thu via http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/09/23.html
|<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1430219483/carnaticcom"><img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1430219483.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" border="0" alt="Coders at work" hspace="3" vspace="3"/></a>
|<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0307266303/carnaticcom"><img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0307266303.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" border="0" alt="Born to Run" hspace="3" vspace="3"/></a>
|<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0007161484/carnaticcom"><img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0007161484.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" border="0" alt="Osho : The ABC of Enlightenment" hspace="3" vspace="3"/></a>
|<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/157062318X/carnaticcom"><img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/157062318X.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" border="0" alt="Georg Feuerstein : Teachings of Yoga" hspace="3" vspace="3"/></a>
Daniel P. Goleman : [The Meditative Mind: Varieties of Meditative Experience|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0874778336/carnaticcom]
[Andrew Cohen] : [Who Am I? and How Shall I Live?|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1883929245/carnaticcom] : ...The heart of the spiritual life ultimately consists of two fundamental experiences: [meditation] and [contemplation]...
[Radha Burnier] : [no other path to go|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/8170592763/carnaticcom]
[Chop Wood, Carry Water|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0874772095/carnaticcom]: A Guide to Finding Spiritual Fulfillment in Everyday Life
!Recommended
Jiddu Krishnamurti : [Think on these things|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060916095/carnaticcom]
|<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060916095/ref=nosim/carnaticcom"><img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0060916095.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" border="0" alt="Jiddu Krishnamurti : Think on these things" hspace="3" vspace="3"/></a>
Penelope Trunk : [Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0446578649/ref=nosim/carnaticcom]
|<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0446578649/ref=nosim/carnaticcom"><img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0446578649.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" border="0" alt="Penelope Trunk: Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success" hspace="3" vspace="3"/></a>
Scott Berkun : [The Myths of Innovation|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596527055/ref=nosim/carnaticcom]
|<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596527055/ref=nosim/carnaticcom"><img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0596527055.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" border="0" alt="Scott Berkun: The Myths of Innovation" hspace="3" vspace="3"/></a>
Scott Berkun : [The Art of Project Management|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596007868/ref=nosim/carnaticcom]
|<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596007868/ref=nosim/carnaticcom"><img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0596007868.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" border="0" alt="Scott Berkun: The Art of Project Management" hspace="3" vspace="3"/></a>
[Mortimer Jerome Adler] : "In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you." (source : [Favorite Books & Reading Quotations|http://quotations.about.com/library/db/bltop_books.htm] )
* [Erich Fromm]'s [To Have or To Be]
* [The Science of Reincarnation|http://www.mantra-meditation.com/science-of-reincarnation.html]
* [The Path: One Man's Quest on the Only Path There Is|http://www.crystalclarity.com/kriyananda/Table/table.html] by J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda)
* [From Science to God] by [Peter Russell]
* [Free Acne Book|http://www.FreeAcneBook.com] titled: "No More Cellulite, No More Acne, No More Overweight" by Wai Genriiu (in PDF format)
* [The Cluetrain Manifesto|http://www.searls.com/cluetrain/index.html]
* [Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs|http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html]
* [One Minute Wisdom]
* [I Am That|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0893860220/carnaticcom], [Pointers from Nisargadatta Maharaj|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0893860336/carnaticcom] (via [Nisargadatta|http://users.pandora.be/ananda/ngdt.htm])
* [100 Best Spiritual Books of the Twentieth Century|http://www.spiritualityhealth.com/newsh/items/review-feature/item_6545.html]
* Craig's [BookNotes|http://booknotes.weblogs.com/] : Books, libraries, preservation, digital convergence, music, politics
* [Joel Spolsky] : I really want to hear what people think is the SINGLE best book on "painless software management." - [votes|http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=934]
* [Ed Yourdon]'s [Virtual Book Store|http://www.yourdon.com/books/coolbooks/coolbooks.html]
* [The Atlantic Systems Guild]'s Recommended [Books|http://www.systemsguild.com/GuildSite/Guild/Books.html]
[Kirtan] [Ancient Medicine for Modern Man|http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/1148/k.html]
I would like to hear from you... What is _the_ one book that changed your life ?
[Google-Friends Newsletter for April 2003|http://www.google.com/googlefriends/moreapr03.html#wait] : Based on a real but utterly unscientific sample of books lying open on Googler desks:
* Information Rules: A strategic guide to the network economy (Carl Shapiro)
People
[your people|http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/09/07/your_people.html] ?
[150 friends|http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/10/the-penalty-for-violating-dunbars-law.html] ?
Apart from Friends & Family, following are people I like to be around... people's [weblog]s and websites !
[Patrick Combs]
[The fast 50|http://www.fastcompany.com/fast50_02/]
[Dr. N H Athreya|http://www.goodnewsindia.com/enthusiasts/enthusiasts_comments.php?id=79_0_6_0_C] : A pioneer advocate of excellence
* [Patrick Combs]
* [Brahmatirtha das PDA|http://www.iskconworldwide.com/]
* [Mira Art|http://surprise.editthispage.com/] : [The real war takes place in our heads|http://surprise.editthispage.com/2001/09/23]
* [Deepak Jayaraman]'s [photos|http://www.sulekha.com/photosrchresult.asp?authid=11122&srch=authorsearch]
* [Rebecca Blood] believes that "everyone can choose how they respond - one person can make a difference; each person does make a difference - love can transform hate and indifference - everyone deserves food, a home, education, safety, and a healthy world"
* [Tom Peters|http://www.tompeters.com/] : [slides|http://www.tompeters.com/slides/] ( the (rare) red meat section ! )
* [Computers Pioneers|http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/History/Pioneers/]
* The Computer Museum History Center's [Hall of Fellows|http://www.computerhistory.org/exhibits/hall_of_fellows/]
* Fast Company's [Who's Fast 2002|http://www.fastcompany.com/online/52/wf_intro.html] : ...Ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Our fourth-annual Who's Fast issue arrives at a time when our feelings about work, life, business, and purpose need thoughtful recalibration...
* [Computerworld's Premier 100|http://www.idg.net/ic_784761_4394_1-1681.html] : ...Courageous in a crisis, an inspiration to their staffs and attentive to business goals as well as technology innovation. The Premier 100 IT Leaders for 2002 are the might and muscle of today's corporate IT organizations. They have the weight of a staggering economy and pressing security fears on their shoulders, but they've also got the heart and soul to carry the load. And they have a lot to say about how 2002 will shake out for IT. Meet them and learn from them in our third annual special report...
Stephen Knapp
http://www.stephen-knapp.com/ : This site is for anyone interested in Spiritual Enlightenment, Eastern Philosophy, the Vedas, Vedic Culture, Yoga, Hinduism, Reincarnation and the Science of the Soul, traveling to the holy places of India, Comparative Religion, as well as global unity, peace, cooperation, and more. Here you can find information on the books of the writer, author, philosopher, spiritual practitioner, traveler, photographer, and lecturer Stephen Knapp. His books can easily and quickly help give the insights and knowledge for you to better understand who you are, your spiritual identity, where you come from, where you are going, and the real purpose of life from a spiritual point of view. [Articles|http://www.stephen-knapp.com/articles_to_read.htm]
Deepak Jayaraman
source : http://www.sulekha.com/authordesc.asp?authid=11122
I am a management consultant working in Mumbai currently. Just moved into Mumbai in Jan 2001 before which I was posted at London for about a year and a half. My interests mainly lie in the area of sports. I am an avid cricketer and a Table Tennis player. During my stint in London, I picked up the art of juggling from one of the professional performers. Prompted by a friend of mine, I picked up a Canon EOS 300 camera which got me interested in photography. I have had the opportunity to visit places in continental Europe and the US ( thanks to my friends) and take pics of some scapes there. As far as my background goes, I am an engineer from IIT-Madras ( 93-97) and a PG Diploma in Management from IIM-Ahmedabad( 97-99)
Freeman Thomas
[People] > Freeman Thomas
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/30/thomas.html
What drives distinctive design? According to Freeman Thomas, who assisted in the creation of two of this decade's most engaging cars -- VW's New Beetle and the Audi TT -- it isn't just one thing; it's a combination of honesty, intuition, collaboration, and open-mindedness.
Links
http://www.shivashakti.com
* Second-hand knowledge of the self gathered from books or gurus can never emancipate a man until its truth is rightly investigated and applied; only direct realisation will do that. Realise yourself, turning the mind inward. - Tripura Rahasya, 18: 89
http://www.sivasakti.com
the wisdom that makes everything possible.
http://www.geocities.com/kundal/Adi-Nath.html - The Path of the Adi-Nath
http://www.beezone.com
http://www.2bblissful.com
http://www.sivasakti.com
[The nine main siddhis and eight additional siddhis|http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/zennun/nine_siddhis.html]
[Spacecraft Systems|http://users.commkey.net/Braeunig/space/systems.htm]
2003 04 10 - The [Blumhardts|http://www.Blumhardts.com] : ...We live in a time of intense searching. Few are satisfied with what church and society have served up. We hunger for something more, for a faith with the power to transform ourselves and our world. Johann Christoph Blumhardt and his son Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt influenced a whole generation of Christian thinkers. But their message shatters the walls of conventional Christianity.
http://www.sivasakti.com
[map24|http://www.map24.com/en/]
* [Frederick Mann]'s [Free World Order] [*|http://www.buildfreedom.com/]
* [Robert Yeung]'s [Cyber Nation] [*|http://www.cybernation.com]
* [Steve Solomon]'s [Soil and Health Library] ([*|http://www.soilandhealth.org/])
* [brian douglas skinner]'s [The Gumption Memo] ([*|http://www.gumption.org/1993/memo.htm]) - "...Back in 1992 I unexpectedly inherited $50,000 and decided to use it to help prevent some of the human suffering around the world. So I spent some time studying up on the world's problems and trying to figure out how to fix them..."
* [Test your internet connection|http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/]
* http://www.livelongto100years.com/
Weblog
[weblog - a whatis definition|http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci213547,00.html] : .....A weblog (sometimes shortened to blog or written as "web log" or "Weblog") is a Web site of personal or non-commercial origin that uses a dated log format that is updated on a daily or very frequent basis with new information about a particular subject or range of subjects. The information can be written by the site owner, gleaned from other Web sites or other sources, or contributed by users.....
|<form name=daypop method=get action="http://www.daypop.com/search">
|<a href="http://www.daypop.com"><font face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=+1 |color=#009999 style="text-decoration:none;">DAYPOP</font></a>
* http://www.carnatic.com/kishore/
2004 June 27: [How to write a better weblog|http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/04/24/how_to_write_a_better_weblog] : .....Forget HTML, CSS, RSS, XML, OPML, Google boxes, and auto-linkbacks. Want a better weblog? Read Strunk and White’s [The Elements of Style].....
2004 June 27: [10 Tips on Writing the Living Web|http://alistapart.com/articles/writeliving], [How to Write a Better Weblog|http://alistapart.com/articles/writebetter/]
2004 May 16 : [Movable Type Migration Options - A Comparative Chart|http://www.megacity.org/blog/archives/001738.php]
2004 Mar 28 - Ronald Tanglao : [How Blogs Work in 7 Easy Pieces|http://www.streamlinewebco.com/blog/_archives/2004/3/23/28903.html]
2003 Nov 01 : Diego Doval : [an introduction to weblogs|http://www.dynamicobjects.com/d2r/archives/002399.html]
2003 Oct 04 : [Philip Greenspun] : [What is the point of blogging?|http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2003/10/04#a2500] , [Blogging and Education|http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2003/10/04#a2503] , [Random Thoughts from BloggerCon|http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2003/10/04#a2504]
2003 June 18 : [Dave Winer] : [What makes a weblog a weblog?|http://davenet.userland.com/2003/06/18/whatMakesAWeblogAWeblog]
2003 June 17 : [Sam Ruby] : [Anatomy of a Well Formed Log Entry|http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/1472.html]
2003 April 13 - [Towards Structured Blogging|http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/stories/2003/03/13/towardsStructuredBlogging.html]
2003 Feb 14 - [Some things to keep in mind|http://www.fourstones.net/blog/2001_07_01_blogarchives.html#4737482]
2003 Feb 10 - [Microsoft Bloggers|http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,4248,852932,00.asp]
2003 Jan 04 - MSNBC [Weblog Central|http://www.msnbc.com/news/809307.asp]
2002 Dec 31 Wei-Meng Lee : [Understanding Weblogs|http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2002/12/30/weblog_intro.html]
dt? Cameron Barrett : [Anatomy of a weblog|http://www.camworld.com/journal/rants/99/01/26.html], [More about Weblogs|http://www.camworld.com/journal/rants/99/01/26.html]
dt? Dave Winer : [The History of Weblogs|http://newhome.weblogs.com/historyOfWeblogs]
dt? Jorn Barger : [Weblog resources FAQ|http://www.robotwisdom.com/weblogs/] : ...A weblog (sometimes called a blog or a newspage or a filter) is a webpage where a weblogger (sometimes called a blogger, or a pre-surfer) 'logs' all the other webpages she finds interesting...
|<center>The impossible is often the untried<br><br>Brave Buffalo, Brule Sioux Nation (1985) : ...The Earth People (indigenous natives) never wrote anything down, had no written language. They knew that if they wrote anything down it would be disastrous. If you write something down you don't have to remember it. And mind goes off into unconsciousness. It becomes negative, or unconscious force... </center>
* http://www.carnatic.com/kishore/neti-neti/
* http://www.carnatic.com/kishore/ru/
* [Kishore Balakrishnan's Psychic RAM|http://kishore.editthispage.com/]
* [Kishore Balakrishnan's Thoughts|http://kishore.weblogger.com/]
* [Kishore Balakrishnan's Live Journal|http://kishore.livejournal.com/]
* [Kishore Balakrishnan - Home|http://www.carnatic.com/kishore/]
2001August
[Dave|http://davenet.userland.com/2001/08/31/microsoftsScriptingStrategy] : ...Anyone can be a hero of this revolution...
Yesterday, [We] solved the supposedly [Einstein's Challenge|http://www.greylabyrinth.com/Puzzles/puzzle084.htm] first :-)
[Disconnecting the emotions from mother's death]
[Gayathri Japam|http://www.voiceofsankara.com/ponmalar/62000/gayathri.asp]
[UserLand Most read sites on 2001 August 05|http://kishore.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$390]
learnt that Mouli's mother passed away yesterday at 6AM - sad... Sivananda's [What Becomes of the Soul after Death|http://www.sivanandadlshq.org/download/afterdeath.htm] might help...
Health
From Sidhar songs in Tamil. (from [Sakthi Foundation|http://www.sakthifoundation.org/index41.html])
One who eats one complete meal a day is a YOGI (yogi is a healthy person)
One who eats two complete meals a day is a BOGI (Bogi is a connoisseur)
One who eats three complete meals a day is ROGI (Rogi is a sick guy)
One who eats four complete meals a day is DROHI (Drohi is a mean person wasting food)
* 2009 oct 23 fri : http://life.gaiam.com/gaiam/p/Healthy-Eating.html
* [Ice|http://www.peterussell.com/PassingThoughts/Ice.html]? - Just Say "No"
* Milk Products - [WhyMilk|http://www.whymilk.com] , [NotMilk|http://www.notmilk.com/] , [NoMilk|http://www.panix.com/~nomilk/]
* [Food Combination : Why is it important|http://www.marysherbs.com/foodcom.htm]
* [The Correct Way Of Eating Fruits|http://www.littleindia.com.sg/food/food_highlights/001_the_correct_way_of_eating_fruits.htm] by Devagi Sanmugam
* Dr. [Mercola|http://www.mercola.com/] states ""Doctors Are the Third Leading Cause of Death In the US" This Site Will Help You Learn - How You Can Avoid Dying Early"
* [ChetDay|http://www.chetday.com/]'s Health and Beyond is a great site
* [Dr Keki Sidhwa|http://members.rotfl.com/sidhwa/]'s The Quintessence of Natural Living for health and happiness
* [Dr. Stanley S. Bass|http://www.angelfire.com/ny2/bass/] - many articles - superior nutrition and superior health
* [Former Fat Guy|http://www.formerfatguy.com/] - Anything is Possible
* [Chris Sheridan]'s [Nutrition|http://www.youknow.com/chris/body/nutrition.html]
* [VegSource].com
* [Living and Raw Foods] : The largest community on the internet for living and raw food information
* [Beyond Vegetarianism|http://www.beyondveg.com/] : Reports from veterans of vegetarian and raw-food diets, veganism, fruitarianism, and instinctive eating, plus new science from paleolithic diet research and clinical nutrition.
* [MIT Vegetarian Group|http://www.mit.edu/activities/vsg/home.html]
* [Living Nutrition|http://www.livingnutrition.com] is the world's only periodical dedicated to teaching health seekers how to eat their natural diet of alive raw fruits and vegetables and build everlasting superb health in this modern, stress-filled world.
* [Sunfood.NET|http://www.sunfood.net] is dedicated to the promotion of the raw food vegan way of life. You will find articles regarding raw foodism, vegetarianism, living foods, and other aspects of natural living.
* [Soil and Health Library] - Health begins in the soil; Healing begins with hygiene; Liberty begins with freedom
* [HealthFree.com Newsletters|http://www.healthfree.com/health/newsletter/index.html]
* [Free Acne Book|http://www.FreeAcneBook.com] titled: "No More Cellulite, No More Acne, No More Overweight" by Wai Genriiu (in PDF format)
* [Home Remedies|http://www.geocities.com/robbiehaf/RobbiesKitchen/HomeRemedies.html]
* [Home Remedies at cuisinecuisine.com|http://www.cuisinecuisine.com/HomeRemedies.htm]
* [Lorenzo's Organic Olive Oil|http://www.healthfree.com/nutrition/lorenzos_organic_olive_oil.htm]
Dates
* March 29 - [We] came to Germany (from Malaysia) and hope to live here for atleast 5 years
* Feb 01 - [We] moved to Malaysia from Singapore
Quotations
[Marcel Proust] : Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
[Christopher Wynter] : "what you are looking for, is what you are looking out of, which is what is looking for you." --- " the the true teacher cannot teach you anything...but can only remind you of what, on some level...you already know."
[Voltaire] in [Freedom of Thought] : It rests entirely with you to learn to think. You're born with a mind. You are a bird in the cage of the Inquisition: the Holy Office has clipped your wings, but they can grow back. Whoever doesn't know geometry can learn it; every man can tutor himself: it's shameful to put your soul in the hands of those to whom you'd never trust your money. _Dare to think for yourself._
[Sogyal Rinpoche] : Tomorrow or the next life - which comes first, we never know.
[Martin Luther King, Jr.] : If a man hasn't discovered something that he would die for, he isn't fit to live
[Janis Joplin] : Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got.
One who pays attention only to knowledge from outside will lose sight of one's own potential.
[Confucius] : By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest.
4. Commerce Without Morality
To ask is a moments shame, not to ask, and remain ignorant, is a lifelong shame.
Somebody is sex-obsessed. In a country like India, where for centuries sex has been repressed, that has become almost a universal characteristic; everybody is obsessed with sex. Somebody is obsessed with anger, and somebody else is obsessed with greed. You have to watch which is your basic obsession.
[Henry Miller], Sexus : Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there.
[Helen Keller] : I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
[Helen Keller] : I am only one; but I am still one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do.
[Stephen Palmer] : Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence or fear
* [Roger Ebsen]'s [Quotes|http://www.actualizations.com/quotes/]
* [The QuotesPage|http://www.westegg.com/morgan/quotes.html] of [Steven Morgan Friedman] : "These quotes sum up my views on things"
* http://quotations.about.com/
* [Paul Graham]'s [Quotes|http://www.paulgraham.com/quotes.html]
Passions
* Like Horace in his Epistles I like to "walk in silence through the healthy woods, pondering questions worthy of the good and wise" ( via [Rich Geib|http://www.rjgeib.com/biography/ventura/] )
* [To become Enlightened|http://oz.sannyas.net/quotes/enlight2.htm] !!!
How to set and Achieve Goals
*When it comes to setting goals, start off with what's important to you in life. Take out a sheet of paper. Sit quietly, and on that sheet of paper, brainstorm what you want to accomplish between now and the end of your life.
* Second step-use another sheet of paper, and this time consider yourself and your personal goals for the next 12 month period. Some key areas in which you might set personal goals include: family, personal growth, financial, health, social, career, hobbies, spiritual, and recreation. Write down the things that you plan to accomplish or achieve or attain during this one-year period?
* Now, as a third step, go back and compare the two goal lists you have made. Make sure that the items on your short-term list will, as you attain them, be helping you attain your long-term or lifetime goals. It is important that what you are doing short term is taking you in the right direction toward your lifetime goals. Please rewrite your short term goals now if you need to.
* Now, on still another sheet of paper, create the job goals that are important to you during this upcoming 12-month period. Identify what outcomes you wish to attain or achieve during this one-year period in your specific area of responsibility and authority.
* Some key areas in which you might consider writing job goals, if you did not already, include: quality, quantity, cost control, cost improvement, equipment, procedures, training, sales, financial, and personnel.
* Now on another piece of paper titled "Things To-Do List" identify from the activities you just listed, the ones that you must do tomorrow to move you toward your most important goal.
* Recognize how focusing on what you do want, what you do intend to accomplish, also defines what you choose not to do in your life.
* It is not the achieving of a goal that is so important, it is what you become in the process.
* Decide what you should be accomplishing and then stick to your knitting. Do not attempt to be or do all things for all people.
* Written specific goals provide direction and focus to your activities. They become a road map to follow.
* Being busy with activities does not pay, only results do. As in baseball you only get points for getting to the goal of home plate. Just making it to the bases does not count.
* Be sure the goals and activities that you are working for are yours and that you really want and desire to achieve them. The commitment is vital to your success in achieving them.
* When you have a goal that is exciting to you, the life energy flows through you. You are excited about accomplishing it because it is personally meaningful.
* Create a time line or matrix chart on which you display your goals visually and the dates when you will have them accomplished.
* Set goals that you will be proud to have achieved, then sense your having completed them. * Have a vision that you know is unquestionably right and you will be internally driven to achieve that vision.
Looking Back: 14 Years of Tips
source : http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/15/travel/15PRAC.html ( via Rebecca Blood )
It's a good first principle. And now that it is time for me to yield this space, I thought to compress into the allotted 1,200 words other nuggets I have derived from 613 weeks — I did take vacations — of sometimes furious research. So here goes.
When you walk out into a foreign city, one where English is not the first language, snag a business card or a brochure from the desk of your hotel. It will save you from the terrors Jean Simmons suffered in "So Long at the Fair," when her hotel room apparently disappeared.
Taxes can destroy bargain rates. A car rented for $179.99 a week in Minneapolis will run $245.10 by the time the taxes and fees are piled on. A hotel room in New York City advertised at, say $129, will cost a somewhat less reasonable $148 a night after the taxes of 13.25 percent plus $2 are added. This could be a particularly unwelcome surprise. Ask about taxes when you call.
If you didn't notice on checking in, you can tell it's an economy hotel by the thinness of the towels.
Get the name of the person who takes your hotel or tour reservation. If the computer system digests badly, that name will uphold your credibility and may even help another employee trace your record.
What's a double room in another country? It may have one wide bed or two narrow ones. If it matters to you, ask. Similarly, a British hotel room described as having a private bath may indeed have a bath but not a toilet. Ask.
In an airport crisis, blowing up at the gate agent will not help. It can hurt. On an occasion of awful weather at La Guardia some years ago, the man in line in front of me lost it and called the gate agent an obscene word. She told him to step aside before she called the police. He became more objectionable. I told her that if she needed a witness, I would be available. Most of us who stuck it out got on the flight, when there finally was one. He was not aboard, and may have been in detention.
The little note pad with the name and phone number of the hotel in Florence is meant to be taken with you. I have a rack of hotel note pads more treasured than objects from lost arks. When these are given to friends who ask for a recommendation, the hotel will recoup its investment many times over.
Arrive at a hotel with some singles in your pocket; save yourself from groping and embarrassment.
Computer systems get knocked out: At hotels, at airports, at car rental counters and even in the stock exchange and A.T.M. networks. Carry a few extra dollars; do not rely utterly on electronic lifelines. And if you have a faxed confirmation sheet, it may get you into a hotel room while the reservation system is brought back up.
It is a dark topic, but children who take airplane trips alone often experience many more difficulties than airlines, parents, safety advocates and airport managers want to acknowledge. Parents should do whatever is humanly possible to avoid sending a child alone by plane before the child is old enough to ride alone on public transportation in a city. Some children are ready at 14; some are still uncertain at 16.
Your bank may sock you with a fee of as much as $5 for getting cash from your account through an A.T.M. abroad, but those machines installed at overseas banks do not hit you for the annoying $1.50 or $2 you pay at home for using another bank's machine.
Hotels in the United States are required to provide a card by the room phone stating the telephone charges. If it's not there, ask the front desk for one before you hook up your computer.
A journalism teacher from The Daily News admonished our class at Columbia University many years ago, in colorful language, to let it enter our heads once in a great while that we might be wrong. That's a good thought for coping while traveling.
Kishore Balakrishnan - Details
* MSc Computer Science @ Madurai Kamaraj University - 1991 - 93
* BSc Computer Science @ NGM College, Pollachi -- 1988 - 91
Questions to Ask Yourself, Regularly
http://www.storybin.com/lists/list145.shtml
Someone once observed that you learn more by the questions you ask than by the answers you give. Call it Socratic learning, if you will, but I find that asking questions of myself helps keep me on track. Here are ten I ask regularly.
# What is the lesson here? There's a second step that is needed to reinforce the insight gained by asking the first question. In order to really benefit, we have to actually seek out the lesson, demonstrate that we really want to hear, and be willing to follow the often-subtle guidance that comes.
# Have I been here before? Often our most pressing issues are thinly disguised versions of problems we've failed to solve in the past. Different names and faces maybe, but the same underneath, destined not to go away until we meet and resolve them once and for all. If your answer to this question is, yes, then maybe it's time to get to the bottom of the issue and solve it!
We pay a price for every negative thought we entertain, and it's measured in decreased energy, heightened depression, reduced immune function, and sometimes serious illness. Although you may believe otherwise, we have to reach the place where anger, frustration, worry, and criticism have no place in our experience. Until we do, we are losing energy, diluting our focus, and rendering ourselves vulnerable.
* Am I holding on to something I need to let go of?
One of the most difficult tasks of this life consists in letting go-of our attachments, of ego, of our need to be right, and ultimately, of this life. You cannot fly unless you are willing to relinquish your firm footing on earth; flying requires that sort of faith, and commitment. The surprising thing is that, when we really let go, we begin to grow.
Every moment you spend regretting the past or worrying about the future is a moment of the present, lost. Yes, we need to complete the past, wind up our unfinished business, and be attentive to trends that portend of future events, but we can take action only in the present. So, that's where your full attention needs to be, and staying in the present is a full time job.
To act or not to act, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to take action against a sea of troubles and so by doing, prolong them, or to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous inaction and so gain clarity. (Shakespeare would sue for what I've done to Hamlet's timeless prose) Put the question differently: is there a NEED for action now? Often, we act because we're afraid that, if we don't, things will get worse. The truth is that deliberate inaction is action, and it is often a way to allow a cloudy situation to become clear.
True or false?: It's important to be in control of your life. Control can be a big issue for some people, especially if they feel they don't have it. So, granted, it's perfectly reasonable to want to feel in control. Letting go of the past, staying in the present, and taking action (including no action) are all ways to develop a sense that you are in control. But, let me suggest that there is a step beyond control. It is to recognize that, ultimately, you are NOT in control-that you are always subject to a higher authority. Paradoxically, this recognition and your acknowledgement of it can free you from the need to always be IN control.
Have you noticed how some people have a need to involve others in their problems? If it's your boss, your significant other, or your child, it's normal to conclude that your have to do something. But, that something doesn't mean becoming part of the problem! Your responsibility, in this case, is to maintain a level of detachment that will enable you to see the situation clearly, and this clarity pertains not only to the solution, but to the extent that you should be involved in the problem in the first place.
Do you know when you're at peace with something? Chances are, it's when you can look at an issue, person, or problem and feel no charge, no subtle or sudden surge of emotion. But peace is something more. It's about balance, an inner certainty that you are untouched by it, him, or her. The peace-check is a key element in gaining closure, in ascertaining that the situation is complete.
Pretzel
http://www.fritolay.com/pretzel.html
Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming
[Articles] > Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming
Note: [I|Kishore Balakrishnan] didnot write it ! If you know who wrote it... please email to kishore at carnatic dot com - Thanks ! - [Chandramouli Mahadevan] forwarded it to me
Dan MacNeil <dan at lctc dot org> : ...the term "egoless programming" was created in [The Psychology Of Computer Programming]... - Can anyone let me know if these commandments are from that book !
* [builder.com: Lamont Adams: Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming|http://builder.com.com/5100-6404-1045782.html]
* [zdnet.co.uk: Ten Commandments of egoless programming|http://www.zdnet.co.uk/print/?TYPE=story&AT=2111465-39020648t-10000021c] - same as above - printer friendly !
3. No matter how much karate you know, someone else will always know more. This fact kept the Samurai from indiscriminately attacking people in Imperial Japan. In our less violent times, the individual who knows more can teach you some new moves if you ask. There will always be people who know more than you. Seek and accept input from others, even when you think it's not needed.
4. Don't rewrite other programmers' code without consultation. There's a fine line between "fixing other programmers' code" and "rewriting other programmers' code." The former implies that a bug or other functionality problem exists and needs to be fixed; it can also refer to correcting gross readability problems. The latter, however, refers to changes made to code for the sake of style. Programmers fresh from college are often guilty of this. Things like renaming variables, the use of a different construct, recommenting, or gratuitous reformatting of white space fall into this category. Such activities, even with the purest of motives, are high hubris and detrimental to team mentality.
5. Treat people who know less than you with respect, deference, and patience. Nontechnical people who deal with developers on a regular basis almost universally hold the opinion that we are prima donnas at best and crybabies at worst. Becoming angry only reinforces this perception and teaches people to avoid asking questions. This can only harm your work in the long run.
6. The only constant in the world is change. Be open to it and accept it with a smile. Look at each change to your requirements, platform, or tool as a new challenge, not as some serious inconvenience to be fought.
7. The only true authority stems from knowledge, not from position. Knowledge engenders authority, and authority engenders respect so if you want respect in an egoless environment, cultivate knowledge.
8. Fight for what you believe but gracefully accept defeat. Understand that sometimes your ideas will be overruled. Even if you do turn out to be right, don't take revenge or say, "I told you so" more than a few times at most, and don't make your dearly departed idea a martyr or rallying cry.
9. Don't be "the guy in the room." Don't be the guy coding in the dark office emerging only to buy cola. The guy in the room is out of touch, out of sight, and out of control and has no place in an open, collaborative environment.
10. Critique code instead of people be kind to the coder, not to the code. As much as possible, make all of your comments positive and oriented to improving the code. Relate comments to local standards, program specs, increased performance, etc.
Onam
Onam is a traditional festival of Kerala. It reminds every Keralite on those days of plenty, equality, and honesty when King Mahabali ruled the Kingdom of Kerala.
The legend says there was a war between the Devas (saintly people) and the Asuras (wicked people). The Asuras won the war. This had upset Aditi, mother of Devas, and so she approached Lord Mahavishnu for help. Lord Mahavishnu promised her that he would slay the Asura King, Mahabali, to regain power. So to do this he had to disguise himself as 'Vamanan', a brahim boy. He knew that  Mahabali was a generous and honest man and would fulfill anyones wishes, so he asked the King for three steps of land. The wish was granted. Vamanan covered the whole land with his two steps and then he came back to the King asking him where can he place the third step, since there wasn't anymore land left. So the King, whose honour was at stake, offered his head as the third step. Vamanan pushed Mahabali deep down into the earth. Lord Mahavishnu was so pleased with the noble King that he in turn granted him a wish. The wish that the King asked for was, to visit his kingdom and people on a particular day once a year. This day is known as Onam and falls in the month of August or September according to the moon calender, which works on the basis of stars.
As a symbolic gesture to welcome ' King Mahabali' a flower carpet is laid in front of every house. The head of the family distributes new cloths to all the family members and their dependants. A sumptious meal on plantain leaf and the traditional sweet dish of Kerala 'Payasam' etc are served in every house.
Anant Chaturdashi
The 14th day of the bright half of Bhadrapad is the day of the immersion of Ganpati. On this day some people observe a vow in honour of Vishnu, which if kept for 14 years is supposed to bring wealth. On this day, the festival of Ganpati comes to an end, the installed Murti's of Lord Ganpati are taken to a lake, river or a sea in great processions to be immersed in the waters. Thus Lord Ganesha is departed, only to be welcomed the next year with equal excitement.
There was a Brahmin named Sumant. From his wife Diksha he had a daughter named Sushila. After the death of Diksha Sumant married Karkash, who began to give a lot of trouble to Sushila. Sushila married Kaundinya, and both decided to leave the house to avoid the harassment of the step-mother. On the way they stopped near a river. Kaundinya went to take bath, and Sushila joined a group of women who were performing worship. They told Sushila that they were worshipping "Anant". "What kind of worship is this?" Sushila asked.
They told her that it was Anant's vow. Then they explained to her the importance of that vow. Some fried "Gharga" (made of flour) and "anarase" (special food) are prepared. Half of them have to be given to the Brahmins. A hooded snake (cobra) made of "darbha" (sacred grass) is put in a bamboo basket. Then the snake ("shesh") is worshipped with scented flowers, oil lamp and incense sticks. Food is offered to the snake and a silk string is kept before the god, and tied to the wrist. This string is called "anant", it has 14 knots, and is coloured with "Kunkum". Women tie the "anant" on their left hand and men on their right. The purpose of this vow is to obtain divinity and wealth, and is kept for 14 years.
After listening to this explanation Sushila decided to take the Anant vow. From that day she and her husband Kaundinya began to prosper and became very rich.
One day Kaundinya, noticed the Anant string on Sushila's left hand. When he heard the story of the Anant vow, he was displeased and maintained that they had become rich, not because of any power of Anant, but because of the wisdom he had acquired by his own efforts. A heated argument followed, and at the end Kaundinya took the Anant string from Sushila's hand and threw it into the fire.
Then suddenly an old venerable brahmin appeared before him. He removed the rope from Kaundinya's neck and led him into a cave. At first it was very dark. But then a bright light appeared and they reached a big palace. A great assembly of men and women had gathered. The old brahmin went straight towards the throne. Then Kaundinya could no longer see the brahmin, but only Vishnu instead. Kaundinya realized that Vishnu himself had come to save him, and that Vishnu was Anant, the Eternal One. He confessed his sin in failing to recognize the Eternal in the string on Sushila's hand.
Anant promised Kaundinya that if he made the 14-year-vow, he would be free from all his sins, and would obtain wealth, children and happiness. Then Anant disclosed the meaning of what Kaundinya had seen during the search. Anant explained that the mango tree was a brahmin, who in a previous life had acquired plenty of knowledge, but had not communicated it to anyone. The cow was the earth, which at the beginning had eaten all the seeds of plants. The bull was religion itself. Now he was standing on a field of green grass. The two Lakes were two sisters who loved each other very much, but all their alms were spent on each other only. The donkey was cruelty and anger. Finally the elephant Kaundinya's pride. 
Navaratri
Navaratri is a festival that lasts nine days and nine nights. The word Navaratri actually means nine (Nava) nights (ratri). This is celebrated in different styles throughout India. Navaratri occurs during the first 9 days of the bright half of the month of Aashwayuja in the Indian calendar. The most significant part of Navaratri is the setting up an odd number of steps (usually 7, 9, or 11), and the placement of different idols of Gods on them. This setup is called a Golu. Generally, when people come to a person's house to see their Golu, they are given prasad (the offering given to God that day), kumkum (red powder), and a small bag of gifts usually containing a mirror, a comb, a small box of kumkum, and fruits. These are only given to girls and married women. This is chiefly a woman's festival.
Today, Vijayadasami is supposed to be one of the most auspicious days in the Hindu year. Some schools in India start on this day. Children first starting their education are taught some of the basics by a priest on this day.
Durga Puja or Navaratri commences on the first and ends on the tenth day of the bright half of Aswayuja (September-October). It is held in commemoration of the victory of Durga over Mahishasura, the buffalo-headed demon. In Bengal Her image is worshipped for nine days and then cast into water. The tenth day is called Vijaya Dasami or Dussera (the "tenth day"). Processions with Her image are taken out along the streets of villages and cities.
The mother of Durga (that is, the wife of the King of the Himalayas) longed to see her daughter. Durga was permitted by Lord Shiva to visit her beloved mother only for nine days in the year. The festival of Durga Puja marks this brief visit and ends with the Vijaya Dasami day, when Goddess Durga leaves for Her return to Mount Kailas. This is the view of some devotees.
In Bengal, Durga Puja is a great festival. All who live away from home return during the Puja days. Mothers reunite with their sons and daughters, and wives with their husbands.The woman of Bengal welcomes the Goddess with a mother's love and sends away the image on the last day, with every ceremony associated with a daughter's departure to her husband's home and with motherly tears in her eyes. This signifies the parting of Durga from Her beloved mother.
Devi fought with Bhandasura and his forces for nine days and nine nights. This Bhandasura had a wonderful birth and life. When Lord Shiva burnt Cupid with the fire of His "third eye", Sri Ganesha playfully moulded a figure out of the ashes, and the Lord breathed life into it! This was the terrible demon Bhandasura. He engaged himself in great penance and on account of it obtained a boon from Lord Shiva. With the help of that boon, he began harassing the worlds. The Divine Mother fought with him for nine nights (the demons have extraordinary strength during the night), and killed him on the evening of the tenth day, known as the Vijaya Dasami. The learning of any science is begun on this highly auspicious day. It was on this day that Arjuna worshipped Devi, before starting the battle against the Kauravas on the field of Kurukshetra.
Disconnecting the emotions from mother's death
[Articles] > Disconnecting the emotions from mother's death
source : http://www.parksmed.com/psych/gdmother.html
The death of a mother you loved can be the cause of a long period of depression. Knowing that death comes to us all doesn't help. The emotions come out of the subconscious, a non-reasoning mind. In this exercise I give you two concepts, which you must accept for this to work.
Second is that if your mother loved you, she wouldn't want you mourning over her death for a prolonged period, if at all. She would want you to go on with your life and be a happy, healthy person, wouldn't she? Now often people lay guilt on themselves, saying "I should have gone to see her more, I should have gotten her a better doctor, I wish I had or hadn't done this or that." But all that is water over the dam. It makes no difference now. What has happened is final, and your feeling guilty isn't helping your mother a bit and most likely has a bad effect on those you love who are still around you. For the benefit of yourself and those you love, you MUST disconnect the guilt. This exercise will help you do that because it says "It will disconnect you from all the emotional upsets you experienced involving your mother."
Now you must understand that this makes sense. You can't change the past. But you can change your reaction to the past. Do you want your kids and friends moping over your death when it's your time to go? I doubt it. Give YOUR mother the same consideration. The good memories and feelings will remain after this exercise, but the upset feelings will be gone. When you think of mother in the future only good feelings will come--how fortunate you were to have had a good mother. A lot of people didn't.
The sound is not very good, especially on computer speakers. It is because audio has been condensed for short download time and no special media program. It will sound better if you get some cheap hi-fi earphones and plug them in to the back of your computer where you have the speaker plugged in.
Osho
Osho has spoken on virtually every topic of concern to modern man. He answers questions submitted to him, or comments on the teachings of other mystics and religious traditions. All these talks have been recorded and many are available as books, audiobooks, or on videotape.
"So always remember, whatsoever I say to you, you can take it in two ways. You can simply take it on my authority, "Because I say so, it must be true" -- then you will suffer, then you will not grow. Whatsoever I say, listen to it, try to understand it, implement it in your life, see how it works, and then come to your own conclusions. They may be the same, they may not be. They can never be exactly the same because you have a different personality, a unique being. Whatsoever I am saying is my own. It is bound to be in deep ways rooted in me. You may come to similar conclusions, but they cannot be exactly the same. So my conclusions should not be made your conclusions. You should try to understand me, you should try to learn, but you should not collect knowledge from me, you should not collect conclusions from me. Then your mindbody will grow."
* [Osho's Life|http://www.oshoworld.com/biography/] : An anthology of Osho's Life From his own books
* [Osho's Words for Everyone|http://www.geocities.com/yahugrup/]
* [Osho's Life|http://www.oshoturk.com/osho-life/00-main-menu.htm]
Science, Religion and the Big Bang Theory
The basic them of the article was that science and religion have been brought close together by the "big bang" theory of creation in which the universe is supposed to have come into being through a vast fireball explosion, fifteen or twenty billion years ago.
When you are ill you go to the physician, you don't go to the poet. The poet has no authority; he may be a great poet but that is irrelevant when you are ill. He may be a great poet, but when something goes wrong in your bathroom you don't call him, you call a plumber. The plumber may not be a poet at all, but the plumber is relevant there. You don't call Albert Einstein -- he may be a great physicist, but what does he know about plumbing?
The person who said that the earth goes around the sun was called to the court by the Vatican. Galileo had to appear, in his old age -- he was more than seventy, ill, on his deathbed, but he was forced to come to the court to declare there that whatsoever he had said is wrong.
The same started happening with physicists, chemists and other scientists. In the beginning of this century, science became very arrogant -- the same type of arrogance, just the authority shifted from the priests to the scientists. The scientists started saying: "There is no God and there is no soul and there is no consciousness, and all that is rubbish."
This type of arrogance has always remained with man. We have not yet learned anything. This is again the same game being played. When science became very arrogant, naturally religion became defensive. It was losing, it became defensive. So anything that is discovered by science religion tries to appropriate. It tries somehow to make it fit with itself, because the only possibility for it to survive now is if it proves itself to be scientific.
But religion is very defensive, continuously searching for anything to cling to. The big bang theory says that in a sudden explosion, in a great flash of light, the world was created. Jump on it; you can always find some way, some logical way. You can say: "Yes, this is right, this is what we have been saying all along. God in the beginning said: 'Let there be light' -- and now the theory says there was a great explosion, the world was suddenly created."
And it happened fifteen or twenty billion years ago. You cannot even be certain whether Krishna ever existed or not, just five thousand years ago. You cannot be certain even about Jesus, whether he was really an historical person or is just a myth -- and he was only two thousand years ago. Do you think you can be certain about something that happened twenty billion years ago? All guesses.
Why do I say that there was no beginning? Subhuti, it is so simple. Even if you believe in the big bang theory, there must have been something that exploded. Do you think nothing exploded? If there was something, x, y, z, -- any name, I am not much interested in such nonsense things, x, y, z, whatsoever it was that exploded -- if something was there before the explosion then the explosion is not the beginning. It may be a beginning but it is not the beginning.
And when I say there has never been any beginning, I mean the beginning. Something was always there -- whether it exploded or whether it grew slowly, in one day or in six days or in one single moment, doesn't matter. There must have been something before it, because only something can come out of something. Even if you say there was nothing, and it came out of nothing, then your nothing is full of something, it is not really nothing.
That's why, Subhuti, I say that all these guesses are useless and there is no need for them and they serve no purpose. This was Buddha's approach too. Whenever somebody would ask a question like: "Who created the world?" -- whether the world was ever created or is uncreated -- Buddha would answer by other questions. He would ask: "If who created the world is decided, is it going to help your enlightenment? Is it going to help you become more silent, more meditative, more aware?"
Then Buddha said: "Then why bother about all this? Think of things which can help you to become more meditative, think of things which can help you become free of all the ego-clinging, think of things which can ultimately lead you into the state of samadhi."
Jayalakshmi Sekhar
Music Training: Initial carnatic music training from father, C.S.Krishnaswamy, on vocal and flute. Formal veena training from Sri Pudukottai Jayarama Iyer, Chennai (1969 - 1978) Advanced music training on techniques of veena play of Veena Vidushi Dhanammal applied to vocal style of rendering by Sangeetha Kalanidhi Dr. Sripada Pinakapani of Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh (1994 onwards).
Prizes: The Gottuvadhyam Narayana Iyengar Award in August 1998 from Sri Krishna Gana Sabha.
Recently, she accompanied for the first time in Ramli’s successful, extensive Odissi Dance Tour in Malaysia with 5 other musicians from Orissa, India.
She accompanies nearly all visiting musicians from India and Sri Lanka to Malaysia on the violin.
In October 2000, she gave a solo veena recital at the Indian High Commission and the Temple of Fine Arts, Kuala Lumpur.
University of Pittsburg, USA: She participated in the avant garde music compositions of Malaysian composer, Valerie Ross and performed in the Pittsburg University during the year 1995.
Berlin She will also perform in the Indian High Commission, Berlin, Germany
Email id: jlvina@yahoo.com
jstvs@hotmail.com
Fruits
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[Banana] [Mango] Pomegranate Apple Orange Cherry Peach Pineapple Guava Cucumber Tomato Melon [Strawberry] Grape [Durian] Papaya Jackfruit Kiwi Persimmon Tamarind Olive [Dragon fruit] Passion fruit Tamarillo Fig Avocado Plums
[The Exotic Fruits of Malaysia|http://agrolink.moa.my/comoditi/fruits.html]
[Fruits and Vegetables|http://community.webshots.com/album/198347]
[http://www.carnatic.com/images/fruits.jpg]
Kishore Balakrishnan - Resume
kishore@carnatic.com , http://www.carnatic.com/kishore/
* To be a master craftsman in the art of computer programming.
* M.Sc. Computer Science - July 1993, Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU), India
* B.Sc. Computer Science - July 1991, Nallamuthu Gounder Mahalingam College (NGM), Pollachi, India
* I built [World Wide Wisdom|http://www.carnatic.com/www/]
Mind -- Friend or Foe?
The Book of Wisdom, Number 7
You say: "Please say something about mind and action in witnessing." In witnessing, mind remains only as a biocomputer, a mechanism, but separate from you; you are no longer identified with it. When you want any memory you can use the mind just as you can put on your tape recorder. Mind is really a tape recorder. But it is not continuously on, not twenty-four hours on. When needed, the witness, the man of meditation, the man of awareness, is capable of putting the mind on or off. He puts it on when there is some need....
Come, Come, Yet Again Come, Number 1
And this can happen in one person. And when I say it, I say it from my own experience. I have been doing both. When it is needed, I can become as logical as any Greek. When it is not needed, I can become as absurd, illogical as any Hindu. So when I say it I mean it, and it is not a hypothesis. I have experienced It that way. The mind can be used and can be put aside. It is an instrument, a very beautiful instrument; no need to be so obsessed with it. No need to be so fixed, fixated with it. Then it becomes a disease. Just think of a man who wants to sit but cannot sit because he says, "I have legs -- how can I sit?" Or, think of a man who wants to keep quiet and silent and cannot keep quiet and silent because he says, "I have a mind." It is the same.
One should become so capable that even the closest instrument of mind can be put aside and can be put off. It can be done, it has been done, but it has not been done on a great scale. But more and more it will be done. This is what I am trying to do here with you.
No, I have not said that. Knowledge is very useful -- wisdom is useless! Knowledge is needed in the marketplace, in business, in politics. Everywhere knowledge is needed -- in technology, in science -- everywhere knowledge is needed. Knowledge is very useful, utilitarian; wisdom is absolutely useless, but that's its beauty. It is not a commodity, you cannot use it in any way; you cannot sell it, you cannot purchase it. It does not belong to the utilitarian world; it is a flowering....
The Roots of Obesity
A young man had come to darshan two weeks ago saying that he was overeating. Osho suggested he chew his food more carefully, at least forty times for each mouthful, and that he spend a certain time each day having food fantasies. He reports to Osho: I have chewed the food very slowly, and at first I was very sad, but now that has gone and I think that food is not so much the problem.
Chewing is possible only in the mouth. There are no teeth in the stomach, so once you have swallowed, the food can never be chewed again. So it is an unnecessary burden on the stomach, and by and by it becomes a problem. People who don't eat well eat much. People who eat well, with deep respect, never eat more than is needed. Then the body functions perfectly, and it immediately gives you an indication that now you are full and there is no need to eat any more.
And one more thing is involved in it. When you go on throwing things inside yourself it is a sort of aggression, a violence. Teeth are the most violent part of your body, and part of the animal heritage. When animals are aggressive they will bite. They only have teeth and nails, so it is with these that they do violence. That has remained with man too, because man comes from animals. So whenever you are chewing a lot, much violence will be satisfied. A good chewer will become less violent because through the exercise of the teeth, violence is released. A person who goes on stuffing, without chewing, will become violent. So you became sad.
Remember that anger is one phase of violence, the active phase; and sadness is another phase, inactive, passive. Have you watched? Anger can immediately become sadness, and sadness can immediately become anger -- they are not very far away. So when you were throwing things inside, the anger was there, violence was there. Now you are chewing, the violence and the anger relax and sadness will settle. But if you continue, by and by the sadness will disappear and you will feel really fulfilled and happy. So continue.
Why do I lose focus?
The ability to concentrate is not something to feel blessed about. It is a frozen state of mind, a very narrow state of mind. Useful, of course, useful -- for others. Useful in scientific inquiry, useful in business, useful in the market, useful in politics -- but absolutely useless for yourself. If you become too attuned with concentration you will become very, very tense. Concentration is a tense state of mind; you will never be relaxed. Concentration is like a torch, focused, and consciousness is like a lamp, unfocused.
My whole effort here is to teach you consciousness, not concentration. And this is the point to be remembered: if you become conscious, any moment you want to concentrate on a particular problem, you can. It is not a problem. But if you become too focused with concentration the vice versa is not true: you cannot relax. A relaxed mind can always concentrate. easily, there is no trouble about it. But a focused mind becomes obsessed. narrow. It is not easy for it to relax and leave the tension. It remains tense.
Right now, you are being used by society. Society wants efficient people. It is not worried about your soul, it is worried about your productivity. I am not worried about your productivity: man has already too much, more than he can enjoy -- there is no need to go on producing more. Now there is more need to play around more and there is more need to be more conscious. Science has developed enough. Now, whatsoever science is doing is almost futile. Now, going to the moon is simply useless. But tremendous energy is wasted. Why? Because scientists are now obsessed -- they have to do something. They have learned a trick of concentration and they have to do something. They have to produce, they have to go on producing something -- they cannot relax. They will go to the moon, they will go to Mars, and they will persuade people that whatsoever they are doing is tremendously important. It is absolutely useless. But this happens.
Once you become trained in a certain thing, you go on in that line, blind, unless a cul de sac comes and you cannot go on anymore. But life is infinite. There comes no cul de sac. You can go on and on and on.
And now scientific activity has almost become ridiculous.
Religious activity is totally different. It is not worried about being more efficient; the whole point is how to be more joyful, how to be more celebrating. So if you 90 with me, by and by, concentration will relax. And in the beginning you will feel afraid because you will see your skill disappearing, your efficiency disappearing. You will feel you are losing something that you have gained with so much effort. In the beginning it will happen. The ice is melting and becoming water. The ice was solid, something concentrated; now it is water -- loose, relaxed, flowing in all directions. But anytime you need ice, the water can be turned into ice again. There is no problem -- just a little more cooling is needed.
This is my own experience. Whatsoever I say, I say from my own experience -- the same has happened to me. First, concentration disappeared; but now I can concentrate on anything. There is no problem. But I don't remain in concentration; I can concentrate and relax -- whenever the need arises. Just as whenever the need arises, you walk; you don't sit on the chair and go on moving your Legs. There are a few people who go on moving because they cannot sit relaxed -- you will call this man restless!
But your concentration has become almost as focused as if you are continuously preparing for an Olympic! Runners in an Olympic cannot relax. They have to run a particular amount every morning and evening; they are continuously on the go. If they relax for a few days they will lose their skill. But I call all Olympics political, ambitious, foolish. There is no need.
Competition is foolish. There is no need. If you enjoy running -- perfectly good. Run. and enjoy. But why compete? What is the point of competition? Competition brings illness, unhealthiness; competition brings jealousy, and a thousand and one diseases.
Feel blissful, blessed. What is the point of uttering logical sentences! Utter nonsense; make sounds, gibberish, like birds... Like trees! (At this moment a nearby tree decided, with the help of a passing breeze, to illustrate Osho's words by shaking its branches and causing hundreds of leaves to fall with loud rustling sounds to the ground.) Look! This way! Is this logical? The tree is enjoying. Delighting. Simply shedding away the past.
Delight. Sing. Utter sounds. Forget all logic! And by and by you will become more alive. Less logical of course that is the price one has to pay -- but you become dead if you become more logical and you become more alive if you become less logical.
Look at life, and by and by you will understand that life has its own very logical logic. Be attuned to it and that will become the door for your ecstasy, samadhi, nirvana.
Swami Sivananda
[Simple way, lofty life|http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/09/14/stories/13141365.htm]
The Invitation
([source|http://www.familymanagement.com/spirit/invitation.html])
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.
from its presence.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom
from the inside
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.
I am concerned about my friends drinking habits
Your life is short, and your life is slipping out of your fingers. Each moment you are less, each day you are less, and each day you are less alive and more dead! Each birthday is a death day; one more year is gone from your hands. Be a little more intelligent.
Somebody is sex-obsessed. In a country like India, where for centuries sex has been repressed, that has become almost a universal characteristic; everybody is obsessed with sex. Somebody is obsessed with anger, and somebody else is obsessed with greed. You have to watch which is your basic obsession.
So first find the main characteristic upon which your whole ego edifice rests. And then be constantly aware of it, because it can exist only if you are unaware. It is burnt in the fire of awareness automatically.
And remember, remember always, that you are not to cultivate the opposite of it. Otherwise, what happens is a person becomes aware that, "My obsession is anger, so what should I do? I should cultivate compassion." "My obsession is sex, so what should I do? I should practice brahmacharya, celibacy."
People move from one thing to the opposite. That is not the way of transformation. It is the same pendulum, moving from left to right, from right to left. And that's how your life has been moving for centuries; it is the same pendulum.
The Book of Wisdom, Chapter 9
Could you say something about forgiveness?
[Articles] > Could you say something about forgiveness?
It is one of the most fundamental things to understand. People ordinarily think that forgiveness is for those who are worthy of it, who deserve it. But if somebody deserves, is worthy of forgiveness, it is not much of a forgiveness. You are not doing anything on your part; he deserves it. You are not really being love and compassion. Your forgiveness will be authentic only when even those who don't deserve it receive it.
I am reminded of one of the most significant woman mystics, Rabiya al-Adabiya, a Sufi woman who was known for her very eccentric behavior. But in all her eccentric behavior there was a great insight. Once, another Sufi mystic Hasan was staying with Rabiya. Because he was going to stay with Rabiya, he had not brought his own holy Koran, which he used to read every morning as part of his discipline. He thought he could borrow Rabiya's holy Koran, so he had not brought his own copy with him.
In the morning he asked Rabiya, and she gave him her copy. He could not believe his eyes. When he opened the Koran he saw something which no Mohammedan could believe: in many places Rabiya had corrected it. It is the greatest sin as far as Mohammedans are concerned; the Koran is the word of God according to them. How can you change it? How can you even think that you can make something better? Not only has she changed it, she has simply cut out a few words, a few lines -- removed them.
Hasan said to her, "Rabiya, somebody has destroyed your Koran!" Rabiya said, "Don't be stupid, nobody can touch my Koran. What you are looking at is my doing." Hasan said, "But how could you do such a thing?" She said, "I had to do it, there was no way out. For example, look here: the Koran says, "When you see the devil, hate him." Since I have become awakened I cannot find any hate within me. Even if the devil stands in front of me I can only shower him with my love, because I don't have anything else left. It does not matter whether God stands in front of me, or the devil; both will receive the same love. All that I have is love; hate has disappeared. The moment hate disappeared from me I had to make changes in my book of the holy Koran. If you have not changed it, that simply means you have not arrived to the space where only love remains."
I will say to you, the people who don't deserve, the people who are unworthy, don't make any difference to the man who has come to the space of forgiveness. He will forgive, irrespective of who receives it. He cannot be so miserly that only the worthy should receive it. And from where is he going to find unforgiveness? This is a totally different perspective. It does not concern itself with the other. Who are you to make the judgment whether the other is worthy or unworthy? The very judgment is ugly and mean.
I know Rudolph Hess is certainly one of the greatest criminals. And his crime becomes even a millionfold bigger, because in the Nuremburg trial with the remaining companions of Adolf Hitler -- who killed almost eight million people in the second world war -- he said in front of the court, "I don't repent anything!" Not only that, he also said, "And if I could start from the very beginning, I would do the same thing again." It is very natural to think this man is not worthy of forgiveness; that will be the common understanding. Everybody will agree with you.
A great old master, worshiped by millions of people, refused to initiate anyone into disciplehood. His whole life, consistently, he was asked by kings, he was asked by very rich people, he was asked by great ascetics, saints, to be initiated as his disciples, and he went on refusing. He would always say, "Unless I find a man who deserves it, unless I find a man who is worthy of it... I am not going to initiate any Tom, Dick, Harry."
He had a small young boy who used to cook food for him, wash his clothes, fetch vegetables from the market. The boy himself had become slowly, slowly old and for his whole life he had been listening to the old man, who had lived almost one hundred years, and without exception the denial: nobody is worthy! "I will die," he said, "without initiating anyone, but I will not initiate anyone who is nondeserving."
People became tired, frustrated. They loved the man, the man had immense qualities, but they could not understand his very stubborn attitude -- no kindness, no compassion.
But one morning the old man woke up his companion, who himself had become old, and said to him, "Run immediately down the hills to the marketplace and tell everybody that whoever wants to be initiated must come soon, because this evening as the sun sets I am going to die."
His companion said, "But what about worthiness? I don't know who is worthy and who is not worthy. Who have I to bring?"
The old man said, "Don't worry at all. It was only a device, because I myself was not worthy to initiate anyone, but it was against my dignity to say so. So I chose the other way round. I was saying, `Unless I find somebody worthy enough, deserving enough, I am not going to initiate.' The truth is, I was not worthy to be a master. Now I am, but the time is very short. Only this morning as the sun was rising, my own consciousness has also risen to the ultimate peak. Now I am ready. Now it does not matter who is worthy and who is unworthy. What matters now is that I am worthy. Just go and fetch anybody! Just go and make the whole village aware that this is the last day of my life, and anybody who wants to be initiated should come immediately. Bring as many people as you can."
The companion of the old man was at a loss, but there was no time to argue. He ran down the hill, reached the marketplace and shouted all over the village, "Anybody who wants to become a disciple, the old man is ready now."
People could not believe it. But out of curiosity a few thought, "There is no harm at least to see what is going on." The man had refused his whole life, and on the last day of his life suddenly such a great change. Somebody's wife had died and he was feeling very lonely, so he thought, "It is good. If he is going to initiate everybody, no question of worthiness..." Somebody was released from jail just the night before; he thought, "Nobody is going to give me employment; this is a good chance to become a saint."
All kinds of strange people went to the cave of the old man, and his companion was feeling so embarrassed at the kind of people he had brought: one is a criminal, one's wife is dead, that's why he thinks, "It is better... now, what else to do?" Somebody has gone bankrupt and was thinking to commit suicide; now he thinks that this is better than suicide.
A few had come just out of curiosity. They had no other work; they were playing jazz and they thought, "We can play jazz tomorrow, but today there is no harm, let us see what this initiation is. Anyway, that man is going to die by the evening so we will be free to remain disciples or not. We can play jazz tomorrow -- there is no harm."
The companion of the old man was feeling very embarrassed, "How will I present this strange lot when that old man has refused kings, saints, sages, who have come with deep earnestness to be initiated? And now he is going to initiate this gang!" He was even feeling ashamed, but he entered and asked, "Should I call the people? -- eleven have come."
His companion said, "What can I do? It is a working day; it is not a holiday. I could only get these. All are absolutely useless; even I could not initiate them. Not only that they are not worthy -- they are absolutely UNworthy. But you insisted to bring somebody; nobody else was available."
Everybody has his own flaws, weaknesses; everybody has done things that he never wanted to do. Everybody has gone astray. Nobody can say that he is absolutely pure; everybody is polluted. So when the old man insisted, "Unless you are worthy don't come back to me," nobody argued with him; he was right. First they have to be worthy!
If your meditations bring you to the state of a rain cloud, you will forgive without any judgment out of your abundance, out of your love, out of your compassion.
Your question was raised before Gautam Buddha, because he was going to initiate a murderer into sannyas -- and the murderer was no ordinary murderer. Rudolf Hess is nothing compared to him. His name was Angulimal. Angulimal means a man who wears a garland of human fingers.
He had taken a vow that he would kill one thousand people; from each single person he would take one finger so that he could remember how many he had killed and he will make a garland of all those fingers. In his garland of fingers he had nine hundred and ninety-nine fingers -- only one was missing. And that one was missing because his road was closed; nobody was coming that way. But Gautam Buddha entered that closed road. The king had put guards on the road to prevent people, particularly strangers who didn't know that a dangerous man lived behind the hills. The guards told Gautam Buddha, "That is not the road to be used. You will have to take a little longer route, but it is better to go a little longer than to go into the mouth of death itself. This is the place where Angulimal lives. Even the king has not the guts to go on this road. That man is simply mad.
"His mother used to go to him. She was the only person who used to go, once in a while, to see him, but even she stopped. The last time she went there he told her, `Now only one finger is missing, and just because you happen to be my mother... I want to warn you that if you come another time you will not go back. I need one finger desperately. Up to now I have not killed you because other people were available, but now nobody passes on this road except you. So I want to make you aware that next time if you come it will be your responsibility, not mine.' Since that time his mother has not come."
The guards said to Buddha, "Don't unnecessarily take the risk." And do you know what Buddha said to them? Buddha said, "If I don't go then who will go? Only two things are possible: either I will change him, and I cannot miss this challenge; or I will provide him with one finger so that his desire is fulfilled. Anyway I am going to die one day. Giving my head to Angulimal will be at least of some use; otherwise one day I will die and you will put me on the funeral pyre. I think that it is better to fulfill somebody's desire and give him peace of mind. Either he will kill me or I will kill him, but this encounter is going to happen; you just lead the way."
The people who used to follow Gautam Buddha, his close companions who were always in competition to be closer to him, started slowing down. Soon there were miles between Gautam Buddha and his disciples. They all wanted to see what happened, but they didn't want to be too close.
Angulimal was sitting on his rock watching. He could not believe his eyes. A very beautiful man of such immense charisma was coming towards him. Who could this man be? He had never heard of Gautam Buddha, but even this hard heart of Angulimal started feeling a certain softness towards the man. He was looking so beautiful, coming towards him. It was early morning... a cool breeze, and the sun was rising... and the birds were singing and the flowers had opened; and Buddha was coming closer and closer.
That man said, "I used to think I was mad -- you are simply mad. And you go on moving closer. Then don't say that I killed an innocent man. You look so innocent and so beautiful that I want you to go back. I will find somebody else. I can wait; there is no hurry. If I can manage nine hundred and ninety-nine... it is only a question of one more, but don't force me to kill YOU."
Buddha said, "I am ready, but why is your hand shaking? -- you are such a great warrior, even kings are afraid of you, and I am just a poor beggar. Except the begging bowl, I don't have anything. You can kill me, and I will feel immensely satisfied that at least my death fulfills somebody's desire; my life has been useful, my death has also been useful. But before you cut my head I have a small desire, and Ithink you will grant me a small desire before killing me."
Buddha said, "I want you just to cut from the tree a branch which is full of flowers. I will never see these flowers again; I want to see those flowers closely, feel their fragrance and their beauty in this morning sun, their glory."
Angulimal said, "I was thinking from the very beginning that you are crazy. Now this is the craziest desire. How can I put this branch back?"
A moment of silence and a moment of transformation... the sword fell down from his hands. Angulimal fell down at the feet of Gautam Buddha, and he said, "I don't know who you are, but whoever you are, take me to the same space in which you are; initiate me."
By that time the followers of Gautam Buddha had come closer and closer. Seeing that now Gautam Buddha was standing in front of Angulimal, there was no problem, no fear, although he needed only one finger. They were all around and when he fell at Buddha's feet they immediately came close. Somebody raised the question, "Don't initiate this man, he is a murderer. And he is not an ordinary murderer; he has murdered nine hundred and ninety-nine people, all innocent, all strangers. They have not done any wrong to him. He had not even seen them before!"
The question is not whether anybody is worthy or not. The question is whether you have the consciousness, the abundance of love -- then forgiveness will come out of it spontaneously. It is not a calculation, it is not arithmetic.
Osho, The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, chapter 24
What is jealousy and why does it hurt so much?
Jealousy is comparison. And we have been taught to compare, we have been conditioned to compare, always compare. Somebody else has a better house, somebody else has a more beautiful body, somebody else has more money, somebody else has a more charismatic personality. Compare, go on comparing yourself with everybody else you pass by, and great jealousy will be the outcome; it is the by-product of the conditioning for comparison.
Otherwise, if you drop comparing, jealousy disappears. Then you simply know you are you, and you are nobody else, and there is no need. It is good that you don't compare yourself with trees, otherwise you will start feeling very jealous: why are you not green? And why has God been so hard on you -- and no flowers? It is better that you don't compare with birds, with rivers, with mountains; otherwise you will suffer. You only compare with human beings, because you have been conditioned to compare only with human beings; you don't compare with peacocks and with parrots. Otherwise, your jealousy would be more and more: you would be so burdened by jealousy that you would not be able to live at all.
Comparison is a very foolish attitude, because each person is unique and incomparable. Once this understanding settles in you, jealousy disappears. Each is unique and incomparable. You are just yourself: nobody has ever been like you, and nobody will ever be like you. And you need not be like anybody else, either.
A bunch of chickens were in the yard when a football flew over the fence and landed in their midst. A rooster waddled over, studied it, then said, "I'm not complaining, girls, but look at the work they are turning out next door."
Next door great things are happening: the grass is greener, the roses are rosier. Everybody seems to be so happy -- except yourself. You are continuously comparing. And the same is the case with the others, they are comparing too. Maybe they think the grass in your lawn is greener -- it always looks greener from the distance -- that you have a more beautiful wife.... You are tired, you cannot believe why you allowed yourself to be trapped by this woman, you don't know how to get rid of her -- and the neighbor may be jealous of you, that you have such a beautiful wife! And you may be jealous of him....
Everybody is jealous of everybody else. And out of jealousy we create such hell, and out of jealousy we become very mean.
"How about Thompson's pigs?" asked the farmer.
But why does the idea of the other enter in your head in the first place? Again let me remind you: because you have not allowed your own juices to flow; you have not allowed your own blissfulness to grow, you have not allowed your own being to bloom. Hence you feel empty inside, and you look at each and everybody's outside because only the outside can be seen.
That night he had a beautiful dream -- beautiful and very revealing. He had a dream that night that God appeared in the sky and he said to everybody, "Bring all your sufferings into the temple." Everybody was tired of his suffering -- in fact everybody has prayed some time or other, "I am ready to accept anybody else's suffering, but take mine away; this is too much, it is unbearable."
So everybody gathered his own sufferings into bags, and they reached the temple, and they were looking very happy; the day has come, their prayer has been heard. And this man also rushed to the temple.
And the second problem was, one had become accustomed to one's own sufferings. Now to choose somebody else's -- who knows what kind of sufferings will be inside the bag? Why bother? At least you are familiar with your own sufferings, and you have become accustomed to them, and they are tolerable. For so many years you have tolerated them -- why choose the unknown?
And everybody went home happy. Nothing had changed, they were bringing the same suffering back, but everybody was happy and smiling and joyous that he could get his own bag back.
Because of jealousy you are in constant suffering; you become mean to others. And because of jealousy you start becoming phony, because you start pretending. You start pretending things that you don't have, you start pretending things which you can't have, which are not natural to you. You become more and more artificial. Imitating others, competing with others, what else can you do? If somebody has something and you don't have it, and you don't have a natural possibility of having it, the only way is to have some cheap substitute for it.
I hear that Jim and Nancy Smith had a great time in Europe this summer. It's so great when a couple finally gets a chance to really live it up. They went everywhere and did everything. Paris, Rome... you name it, they saw it and they did it.
But it was so embarrassing coming back home and going through customs. You know how custom officers pry into all your personal belongings. They opened up a bag and took out three wigs, silk underwear, perfume, hair coloring...really embarrassing. And that was just Jim's bag!
The jealous man lives in hell. Drop comparing and jealousy disappears, meanness disappears, phoniness disappears. But you can drop it only if you start growing your inner treasures; there is no other way.
Grow up, become a more and more authentic individual. Love yourself and respect yourself the way God has made you, and then immediately the doors of heaven open for you. They were always open, you had simply not looked at them.
The Book of Wisdom, Chapter 27
What is wrong with being in a hurry?
From some book I remember this sentence: "For the pilgrim to reach his destiny, it's essential to move instantly, but without hurry. It is so urgent that he reaches his destiny, that there is no time to hurry." Could you please comment on this?
First...the situation is every moment urgent for the simple reason that you cannot rely on the next moment; whether it will come or not is not in your hands. So every moment we are living in urgency. If you want to do something, do it now and here, because how can you postpone it?
Secondly, you say, "From some book I remember this sentence: `For the pilgrim to reach his destiny, it is essential to move instantly...'"
Certainly if you want to come to yourself you should not lose a single moment, because there is always a possibility that death may interfere. But you must have got into trouble because the sentence certainly comes from some great mystic... "but without hurry."
Move instantly because it is urgent, but without hurry, because in hurry you are not together, in hurry you are always late, in hurry you forget the essentials, in hurry you need time. Just to be in a hurry you will require time--and there is no time. This moment is all and all, and the situation is urgent.
You have been born without your agreement, without a contract, even without your permission; that was not in your hands. You will die without any advance information, without fixing a date and time--that is not in your hands. Once dead you cannot complain; and not yet born you are nowhere. To whom should existence ask, "Do you want to be born or not?"
So what you have really got in your hands, solid and real, is only this moment, in which you can act intelligently or stupidly; in other words, in which you can act as a meditator or as a mediocre....
So silently, peacefully, without hurry, without any tension, without any anguish, move into yourself instantly. It is urgent. Unless meditation becomes urgent to you, it will never happen; you will die before it. Put meditation on your laundry list as the most important, urgent...number one.
But meditation in your life is just at the very end of your laundry list--and the laundry list goes on becoming bigger and bigger. And before you finish your laundry list, you are finished, so the time for meditation never comes.
There is no time for hurry, there is no time for worry; in a single moment what can you do? Only one thing: you can settle within yourself. That will be the great transformation of your being. And certainly it is the most urgent thing--which we have been trying to postpone as long as possible.
The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, Number 10
Living in Germany
* Learn [German|http://german.about.com/] - Start with [German for beginners|http://german.about.com/library/anfang/blanfang01.htm]
* Use http://babelfish.altavista.com/
* [german.about.com|http://german.about.com/]
* [GINDS|http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GINDS/]
You can send money from Germany to India via [State Bank of India Frankfurt|http://www.statebank-frankfurt.com/main/schalter.html]
Zen
(copied from http://www.ibiblio.org/zen/ )
If you've wandered here wanting to know what Zen is, then more than likely you will come away disappointed. This is a question that is easily asked but not easily answered. A Hindu story tells of a fish who asked of another fish: "I have always heard about the sea, but what is it? Where is it?" The other fish replied: "You live, move and have your being in the sea. The sea is within you and without you, and you are made of sea, and you will end in sea. The sea surrounds you as your own being." The only true answer is the one that you find for yourself.
(copied from http://www.zopezen.org/Zen )
zen vt. To figure out something by meditation or by a sudden flash of enlightenment. Originally applied to bugs, but occasionally applied to problems of life in general. "How'd you figure out the buffer allocation problem?" "Oh, I zenned it."
Travel
[World's Best List Index - Discovery Travel Channel|http://travel.discovery.com/fansites/worldsbest/listing.html]
[Fodors.com Miniguides|http://www.fodors.com/miniguides/]
[Lonely Planet : Destinations|http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/]
http://www.travel-library.com/
http://www.visiteurope.com/
National Geographic's [50 places you should visit in your lifetime|http://www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/intro.html]
Great vacations start with [Karen Brown's Travel Guides|http://www.karenbrown.com/]
[Rick Steves]' Europe Through the Back Door , [Back Doors], [Travel Links|http://www.ricksteves.com/plan/links/home.htm]
[50 places you should visit in your lifetime|http://www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/intro.html]
Hindu Temples in Germany
Tip: Use http://www.mapquest.com to get driving directions...
* [Nava-Jiyada-Nrsimha-Ksetra|http://www.narasimha.net/ncfestival/welcome-fs.htm], Zielberg 20, 94118 Jandelsbrunn
* Vinayagar Temple - INTZESTRASSE 26, FRANKFURT, HESSEN, 60314 - open daily from 6pm to 7pm (update on 2006-03-05: used to be 6 to 7 PM - think it is just 6pm to 7pm and not 6am to 7pm - please visit and confirm)
!Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
* Hamm - Sri Sithivinayagar Tempel Hamm e.V., Ferdinand Poggel Str. 25, 59065(/7 ?) Hamm. Phone: 02381-162686 - Open 9am-8pm - Archanai : 10-12am, 6-8pm - Poojai: 10am, 6pm - Uthsavam: 13 June 2002 - On June 10-12, 1994, sixteen Sri Lankan Sivacharyas performed the elaborate kumbhabishekam rituals to install Lord Ganesha in the recently completed Siddhi Vinayaga temple in Hamm, Germany. Devotees attending reported a powerful presence of Ganesha, saying that it was as if they were at the Kumbalavalai temple in Jaffna, A gift from Kauai Aadheenam was a three-foot tall, 1,100-pound Siddhi Vinayaga murthi-so far the largest Ganesha murthi in Europe-exquisitly carved in Mahabalipuram, South India. It arrived in Hamburg Harbor on March 1st and was ceremoniously paraded to Hamm. In appreciation, the devotees brought their Satguru, Subramuniyaswami, from Hawaii to attend the temple consecration as the guest of honor. - The temple is within an old metal-working warehouse of 2,500 sq. feet. It was designed as a small replica of the famed Nallur temple, near Jaffna. Also housed in the temple are shrines to Lord Muruga, Durga, Siva-Parvati, Bhairava and the navagraha. This temple is the newest of ten Hindu temples in Germany.
* Hamm - Sri Kamadchi Ambal Temple Siegenbeckstr.04, 59071 Hamm-Uentrop, - http://www.kamadchi-ampal.de/ Tel.: +49 2388 302223 Fax.+49 2388 302224 - Opening Hours : 08.00 to 13.00 & 17.00 to 20.00 - On May 13-25, 1994, another temple in Hamm, the Sri Kamadchi Ambal temple, held its yearly 10-day festival, complete with a parade through the streets of Hamm. According to Jnana Deepam, a Tamil newspaper printed in Germany, 7,000 devotees participated. Though the organizers started without a parade permit, the understanding Hamm police force quickly redirected traffic from the parade route.
* [Radhadesh] - Septon, ISKCON Radhadesh, Château de Petite Somme, 6940 Septon (Durbuy) / Tel. (086) 322926 / Fax (086) 322929 / E-mail: radhadesh@com.bbt.se - Dutch description at http://www.phantom.yucom.be/durbuy.htm - nice description at http://members.rott.chello.nl/tjemmes/psomme.html - interesting read at http://www.jeremyjosephs.com/markjosephs.htm !!!
* DURGA PUJA WEBSITES - Bremen: http://www.puja-bremen.com - Cologne: http://www.durgapujacologne.de - Stuttgart: http://durgapuja.cjb.net
* [List of Hindu Temples in Europe|http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5180/temple6.html]
Food Shelter Clothing Net
[http://www.carnatic.com/images/fscn.gif] for all
Movies
2003 Jan 19 - [Samasthanam|http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/fr/2002/10/04/stories/2002100401330200.htm], [Album|http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/fr/2002/10/11/stories/2002101101170202.htm]
2001 August 18 - [Dumm Dumm Dumm|http://www.dummdummdumm.com/update/update.htm]
2001 August 18 - [Citizen|http://www.chennaionline.com/moviereviews/tammov125.asp]
2001 August 17 - [Down to Earth|http://us.imdb.com/Title?0231775]
[The Hindu: Entertainment Film Review|http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/fr/frcl03.htm]
[Latest Tamil Movie Reviews|http://www.tamilstar.com/reviews/] from [TamilStar Entertainment]
[Indian Movies|http://www.bonkanwa.com/Entertainment/IndianMovies/IndianMovies.htm] (in japanese...)
I feel so much anger towards my mother....
Gautam Buddha is reported to have made a very strange statement: In your anger you punish yourself for somebody else's fault. It looks very strange the first time you come across the statement that in anger you punish yourself for somebody else's fault.
Your parents have done something twenty years back, thirty years back, and you are angry now. Your anger is not going to help anyone; it is simply going to create more wounds in you. And being near me, close to me.... I am trying to explain to you the whole mechanism of how children are being brought up, you should become more understanding that whatever has happened had to happen. Your parents were conditioned by their parents. You cannot find out who was really responsible to begin with. It has been passed from generation to generation.
Your parents are doing exactly what has been done to them. They have been victims. You will feel compassion for them and you will feel joyous that you are not going to repeat the same thing in your life. If you decide to have children you will feel joyous that you are going to break the vicious circle, that you are going to jump out of the line that goes back to the very beginning and continues up to you, that you can become the dead end. You will not do it to your children or to any other person's children.
You should feel fortunate that you have a master with you to explain what has been happening between parents and children -- the complex upbringing, good intentions, bad results, where everybody is trying to do the best and the world goes on becoming worse and worse.
Your parents were not so fortunate to have a master -- and you are being angry at them. You should feel kind, compassionate, loving. Whatever they did was unconscious. They could not have done otherwise. All that they knew they have tried on you. They were miserable, and they have created another miserable human being in the world.
They had no clarity about why they were miserable. You have the clarity to understand why one becomes miserable. And once you understand how misery is created, you can avoid causing the same in somebody else.
But feel for your parents. They worked hard; they did everything that they could, but they had no idea how psychology functions. Instead of being taught how to become a mother or how to become a father, they were being taught how to become a Christian, how to become a Marxist, how to become a tailor, how to become a plumber, how to become a philosopher -- all these things are good and needed, but the basic thing is missing. If they are going to produce children, then their most significant teaching should be how to become a mother, how to become a father.
It has been taken for granted that by giving birth you know how to become a mother and how to become a father. Yes, as far as giving birth to a child... it is a biological act, you don't have to be psychologically trained for it. Animals are doing perfectly well, birds are doing perfectly well, trees are doing perfectly well. But giving birth to a child biologically is one thing and to be a mother or to be a father is totally different. It needs great education because you are creating a human being.
Animals are not creating anything, they are simply producing carbon copies. And now science has come to a point where they have discovered that carbon copies can really be produced! It is a very dangerous idea. If we make banks -- and sooner or later we are going to make them; once an idea is there it is going to become a reality. And scientifically it is proved that it is one hundred percent possible...there is no problem.
We can have banks in the hospitals for both the male sperms and female eggs. And we can create exactly the same two sperms and exactly the same two eggs, so two children are born which are exactly the same. One child will be released into the world; the other will grow in a fridge, unconscious, but all his parts will be exactly the same as the other person. And if the first person is in an accident and loses a leg or loses a kidney, or has to be operated on, there is no problem: his carbon copy is waiting in the hospital. From the carbon copy a kidney can be taken out -- he is growing exactly at the same rate, he is just unconscious -- and it will be exactly the same as the kidney that has been lost. It can be replaced.
That carbon copy will always be available for replacing any parts -- even the brain. You can fall into a coma or you can even have a heart attack.... Your brain can remain alive even after a heart attack for at least four minutes -- but not more than that. If during these four minutes an identical brain is inserted, an identical heart is inserted, you will never feel that anything has changed or anything has happened to you. Perhaps you fell asleep and now you are awake. You will never know that your brain has been changed, that your heart has been changed.
This idea of having carbon copies seems to be a great advancement in medical science in a way, but it is dangerous -- dangerous in the sense that man becomes a machine with replaceable parts, just like any machine. When something goes wrong you replace the part. And if every part can be replaced then man will be falling farther and farther away from spiritual growth, because he will start thinking of himself as just a machine. That's what half of the world, the communist world, thinks -- that man is a machine.
In fact you can help them by really becoming the individual that I am talking about: more conscious, more alert, more loving. Seeing you can only change them. Seeing you so radically changed can only make them think twice, that perhaps they are wrong. There is no other way. You cannot intellectually convince them. Intellectually they can argue, and argument never changes anybody. The only thing that changes people is the charisma, the magnetism, the magic, of your individuality. Then whatever you touch becomes golden.
So rather than wasting your time and energy in being angry and fighting against the past which no longer exists, put your whole energy into becoming the magic of your individuality. So when your parents see you they cannot remain untouched by the new qualities that you have grown, qualities which are automatically impressive: your freshness, your understanding, your unconditional lovingness, your kindness even in a situation where anger would have been more appropriate.
Just create a small ripple of right individuality and it will reach to many people -- and certainly to those who are most closely related to you. They will see it first, and they will understand with great awe. They will not believe their eyes because all that they know of religion is the Sunday church, where nothing happens. They have been going every Sunday their whole lives, and they come back home just the same.
In the name of religion they know only the Bible or the Koran or the Gita and they have been reading it and nothing happens, because they don't know one thing -- that you are a living being and a book is dead. And the man in the church who is delivering a sermon is just a professional. He has prepared the sermon from the books, and he goes on repeating the same sermons. Nobody listens, so nobody catches him. He is repeating the same sermon that he delivered two months before. Nobody listened that time, and nobody is listening this time. And you know that that sermon cannot change you because that sermon has not changed the preacher himself. He is just as mundane as you are -- perhaps more. I used to know a Jaina monk who was a very simple man, almost a simpleton. He asked me, "How many lectures do you have?"
He said, "I have only three: one is for ten minutes, one is for twenty minutes, one is for thirty minutes, depending on the occasion. Sometimes in a conference you have only ten minutes. I have a ready-made, ten minute lecture. If they give me twenty minutes, I have a twenty minute lecture. If they give me thirty minutes, I have a thirty minute one. More than that is not possible, because nobody is interested in listening too much. People want a short cut."
One of the most famous, world-renowned Christian missionaries was Stanley Jones. He was very friendly with me but he became very angry and then the friendship was broken. He was an old man, a friend of Mahatma Gandhi, and Mahatma Gandhi respected him very much. He used to come to the city where I was living and he stayed in the house of one of my friends. He had printed cards -- ten cards or twenty cards for his whole lecture -- and he would put the cards on the table. He would start lecturing, and he would go on changing the cards.
He became very angry with me because I mixed up his cards! So he was saying something and it was not on the card. He almost had a nervous breakdown. He looked at all the cards and it was not there. That card I had taken out. And he said, "Today I am not feeling well. I am feeling sick, so I will not be speaking."
I said, "Once in a while you should speak from your heart, not from these cards. I have looked in your suitcase, and you have almost fifty sets of these cards, so you can go on repeating these speeches. And do you think this is going to help anybody? -- these dead cards that you have repeated your whole life? And today just because one card was missing and the numbers were mixed up, you lost your temper, you lost your integrity. You were almost in a state of madness. And what do you think people thought who had come to listen to you?"
He had written many books. I have gone through those books: he writes well, beautifully, but it is all stolen. Nothing is his own. Nothing is his own experience. Unless something is your own experience it is not going to impress anybody.
Heidelberg
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/heidelbergI love.gif]
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/heidelberg.jpg]
[We] live in Leimen St.Ilgen, above 10 kms from Heidelberg. We go there atleast once a week. We want to write why it's special for residents & tourists.
* It is supposedly a Romantic city
* Grab a bratwurst from a street vendor in Universitatplatz
* Events > http://www.visit-heidelberg.com/events/events.htm
* http://www.fodors.com/miniguides/mgresults.cfm?destination=heidelberg@233&cur_section=sig
* http://www.e-heidelberg.com/
* restaurants > http://www.e-heidelberg.com/eating/eating.html
* http://home.cwru.edu/~mas73/placestogo.html
* http://www.germanworld.com/places.htm
* http://www.virtualtourist.com/.41281/1082/?s=P&
* http://www.visit-heidelberg.com
Epictetus
http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html : ...Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions...
Tirukkalukunram
http://www.templenet.com/Tamilnadu/s080.html
sight. At the stroke of noon every day, two eagles would appear from nowhere
Tirukkalukunram -- literally the hill of the holy eagles -- 60 km from
community has asked the wildlife department to check out the exact species
of the birds from old photos and see if younger birds of the same species
from nearby areas can be housed atop the hill.
Horse
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/Horse.gif]
Cat
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/paintedcat2.gif]
Goat
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/paintedgoat1.gif]
Sprouts
[Why Eat Sprouts ?|http://www.cityfarmer.org/sprout86.html] : "Lots of reasons! They carry plenty of vitamins, minerals, proteins, and enzymes, all necessary for the body to function optimally. In addition to providing the greatest amount of these nutrients, sprouts deliver them in a form that is easily digested and assimilated. In fact, they improve the efficiency of digestion. Sprouts are also deliciously fresh and colourful! - Sprouts are very inexpensive (even when organic), always fresh (_they grow until you chew them_) and have the potential to help solve hunger and malnutrition problems in our communities and in developing countries, because they are so rich in nutrients, affordable, and easy to transport before sprouting. Sprouts are precious in winter, when the quality of fresh fruits and vegetables is declining as their price increases."
[Sprouting : A brief Overview|http://www.living-foods.com/articles/sprouting.html] by Thomas E. Billings
[Sprouting : Questions and Answers|http://www.living-foods.com/articles/sproutingqa.html] by Thomas E. Billings
Consequences of Anger
Aspirants should not allow these vrttis (thought-waves) to manifest in the mind-lake, as they may burst out as big waves of anger at any moment, if you are careless or weak. There should not be the least disturbance in the mind-lake it should be perfectly calm and serene. Then only you will find meditation possible.
Do not allow this modification to assume the form of a big wave on the surface of the conscious mind. Nip it in the bud when it is in the form of irritability. Divert the mind. Entertain divine thoughts. Do vigorous japa (repetition of God's name) and kirtan (chanting). Repeat some prayers or slokas (verses) from the scriptures.
Mumuksutva
Mumuksutva is intense desire for liberation or deliverance from the wheel of birth and death with its concomitant evils of old age, disease, delusion and sorrow. If one is equipped with the previous three qualifications, viz., viveka (wisdom), vairagya (dispassion) and sad sampat (six virtues), mumuksutva will come by itself.
The mind moves towards the source of its own accord, because it has lost its hold now on external objects. It has no resting place in this objective universe. Purification of the mind and mental discipline form the rock-bottom foundation of yoga. When this is effected, the longing for liberation dawns by itself. Mumuksutva must be of a burning type. If burning mumuksutva is coupled with burning vairagya, self-realisation will come within the twinkling of an eye. Generally the vast majority of people have got a dull type of vairagya and mumuksutva. So they do not succeed in their attempts. If one finds that he has not got burning mumuksutva, he must practise the other three sadhanas (practices) vigorously till he acquires intense longing for attaining salvation or immortality. That aspirant who is endowed with these four qualifications should hear the srutis (scriptures) from a Brahma Nista guru (preceptor who is established in Brahman), and then reflect and meditate on the inner self. He will soon get self­realisation.
My Happiness Purpose
source : [What's the Point?|http://www.adventureliving.com/home/life/point/index.html]
What is the point of defining life in such simple and general terms? It shows that the only things we can gain from this life are the memories of our experiences and possibly spiritual salvation or other spiritual benefits if you are religious. Given that our choices and actions and the choices and actions of the people around us shape our experiences, we must consider our choices well; they define our lives.
__My own memories and the memories locked in the heads of the people I care about are the most important things in my life.__ Therefore, my purpose in life is to enhance my memories and enhance the memories belonging to other people. Given that, I decided one of the ways I can enhance my own memories is by experiencing many different adventures, hence all my experiences skydiving, SCUBA diving, traveling, exploring the woods, watching nature, etc. How I enhance the memories of the people I care about varies from person to person, but I try to help each person have a slightly better life.
By enhancing other people's experiences, we expand the power and duration of our life's influence on this planet. I have decided to attempt to expand the direct influence of my life beyond just those people I have met and try to touch the lives of complete strangers. That's why I built this web site, why I respond with as much help as I can to all the email I receive, and why I try to encourage people to donate more stories, photos, and videos. I am trying to encourage my visitors to experience something new. I know that I am only touching a small percentage of them, but when people write to me telling me that my site inspired them to try something new, I feel an immense joy. I know that I have helped improve the memories of someone else. Even if I had only received one email telling me about one person, I would have felt all the effort I put into this site was worth it.
HEARTICULTURE
cannot enter the domain of supreme peace.
Mind is compared to a garden. Just as you can cultivate good flowers
form of samskaras or impressions. The samskaras again become vrttis,
it you cannot liberate yourself from the trammels of the mind and
2001September
Today is [Heidelberger Herbst 2001|http://www.cvb-heidelberg.de/deutsch/hdherbst2001.html]. A few sections of the hauptstrasse was suffering from terrible stau !
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/stickfigure.gif]
I had a close (sehr kurz) Hair Cut. Above picture from Muktha T Atmavilas too...
(via [Muktha T Atmavilas|http://www.geocities.com/mukthat.rm/]) [Surabhi|http://www.indiasurabhi.com/] : The Cultural Discovery of India
I ordered [Mac OS X|http://www.apple.com/macosx/]
[Wesley Felter|http://wmf.editthispage.com/2001/09/26] : If you bought $1,000 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49. If you bought $1,000 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer and traded in the cans for the nickel deposit, you would have $79.
He has been conferred with a [BSc|http://wmf.editthispage.com/pictures/viewer$5772]. Congrats !
[Mira|http://surprise.editthispage.com/2001/09/23] : The real war takes place in our heads ( within us ) - The inner battle is the biggest battle each of us has to fight. It is a continuous fight against thoughts, fears, wrong ideas, desires, anger..... in order to recognize truth and to find out why we are here, who we really are, where we really want to go....Only when all these obstacles and temptations are overcome we can be free and enjoy our own being fully. What is true for the single person is also true for mankind.
[Think Shoes|http://www.thinkshoes.com/index_ht_e.html]
[Baden Baden|http://www.baden-baden.com/eng/index_e.html]
(via [Jim|http://jim.roepcke.com/2001/09/14#item2739]) [Dave|http://scriptingnews.userland.com/backissues/2001/09/13] : ...People don't sacrifice themselves for no reason. Let's find out what it is. And if we did something wrong (no doubt we did) let's apologize, ask for forgiveness, and then ask how we can do better. It's clear now that when we screw up we're going to feel it...
Guardian : [They can't see why they are hated|http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,551036,00.html] : ...Americans cannot ignore what their government does abroad...
[Osama bin Laden|http://www.google.com/search?q=osama+bin+laden] [brushes teeth|http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=93624] with [Miswak|http://www.islam.tc/Miswaak/] stick while I use [Balsara's Meswak toothpaste|http://www.balsara.com/toothpaste.htm]
Do you know [what really happened|http://www.whatreallyhappened.com] ?
[We] met someone who was interested in wandering... [Wanderungen im Gebiet des Val Chironico|http://www.monti-doro.ch/gite.htm]
Practice of Meditation
In the dilapidated building of an elementary school, the class is on. The teacher explains something and then asks the children, "Did it enter?". There is an instant response from the backmost bench: "Only the tail has not entered yet!". The earnest voice belongs to a boy who has been all along intently watching the struggle of a rat to wriggle out of the class room through a hole in the wall. It has managed to squeeze in its body, but its tail is still not gone in. Perhaps the hole is blocked.
That is concentration. Arjuna's is the power of concentration. Concentration, when developed, becomes meditation.
The purified mind must be made to concentrate. Concentration is mental focussing. The mind can be focussed on a concrete object or an abstract idea. For a novice, concentration becomes easy if the object of concentration is concrete. Also, the beginner should choose a pleasing object on which to concentrate. Only thus can he prevent the mind from wandering away from the object of concentration. To start with, concentration can be practised on the flame of a candle, the tick-tick sound of a clock, the star in the sky, the picture of OM or the picture of one's lshta Devata (personal God). This should be followed by concentration on a suitable spiritual centre within the body. The Sadhak may concentrate with closed eyes on the space between is the eyebrows or on the tip of the nose. There is nothing which cannot be achieved by concentration.
Concentration should be followed by meditation. Meditation is nothing but protracted or sustained concentration. A scientist has to concentrate on a problem, on a given subject, on a riddle, to bring out the answer, to solve it. He has to think, think and think. Then only the answer flashes forth. Likewise, meditation is intense concentration, concerted concentration on the problem of life, on the problem of the inexplicable triad of God, man and the universe. While concentration becomes essential even to solve small problems in science, what to speak of the problem of life which has baffled humanity since time immemorial? The Sadhak (aspirant) who wants God must meditate, meditate and meditate.
Meditation can be practised on any image of the Lord. This is concrete meditation. After some practice, the aspirant will be able to visualise the form of the image even with closed eyes. Meditation can also be practised on abstract ideas and on various Vedantic formulae such as "I am Eternity", "I am Infinity" and so on.
While meditating on a particular object or idea, various extraneous thoughts will try to enter the mind of the aspirant and interfere with his meditation. The aspirant should ignore these extraneous thoughts, be indifferent to them and repeatedly try to concentrate on the object of his meditation. Gradually, the frequency of interruption will be reduced and a time will come when meditation will give uninterrupted peace and bliss.
Meditation is digging deep into the mine of truth and wisdom. Swamiji asks the Sadhak to meditate and bring put his own Gita and Upanishads. Says the Master: "There is no knowledge without meditation. An aspirant churns his own soul. Truth becomes manifest".
You are just returning from deep sleep
It is not possible to meditate the whole day. Without variety, the mind, especially of a beginner, will get tired . It is necessary to guard against this possibility. It is important that the aspirant should be protected from the monotony of one-sided spiritual practice leading to reaction and a return to worldly activity with a vengeance. The beauty of divine life lies in the fact that the seriousness of meditation is tempered with the joy of Kirtan, the happiness and strength of service, the peace of Japa and the understanding of Svadhyaya (reading of scriptures).
In the books of Yoga, the great Rishis (sages) distinguish between Bahiranga Sadhana and Antaranga Sadhana. Bahiranga Sadhana is outer Yoga or spiritual practices designed to perfect the outer instruments of body and Prana (vital- energy). These are the ethical practices and the Yogasana and Pranayama exercises. Once the body is perfected and the Nadis or astral tubes are purified through Pranayama practices, the spiritual seeker attains fitness to start the inner Yoga or Antaranga Sadhana. This includes Pratyahara, Dharana and Dhyana-sense abstraction, concentration and meditation. The senses and the mind must be withdrawn from the sense objects and the mind must be focussed on the God within. This is inner Yoga. The outer Yoga practices are to prepare the aspirant to gain fitness to practise this inner Yoga.
Where the necessary preparation is inadequate or wanting, meditation cannot succeed. Simply sitting cross-legged and closing the eyes, thinking the same worldly thoughts and building castles in the air, or falling into a semi- sleep is not meditation. A person who wants to meditate must be free from disease and desire, from cares and worries. He must be free from love and hatred, and from like and dislike. He must be soaked in Vairagya (dispassion). He must be able to sit firmly for hours together in the same posture. His breathing must be slow and even. His stomach must be free from constipation, free from gas and very light. when these conditions are not satisfied, meditation will remain just a pipe dream.
While meditation in itself constitutes. a very powerful attack on ignorance, Swami Sivananda suggests that the spiritual aspirant should practise Vichar also. Vichar is enquiry into the real nature of things. Vichara results in Viveka or discrimination between the real and the unreal. It helps the aspirant to sift the true from the false. Swamiji asserts that without cogitation, Truth cannot be known or realised. Vichara sharpens the intellect and leads to the discernment of the Truth that lies behind the phenomenal universe.
How should the aspirant reflect? The Master shows the way: "Who am I? What is Brahman (God)? What is this Samsara (process of worldly life)? What is the goal of life? How to attain the goal? How to attain freedom from births and deaths? What is the Svarupa of Moksha (Essential nature of liberation)? Whence? Where? Whither? Thus should the aspirant of liberation ever enquire, seeking to achieve the purpose of life". The justification for this method of Vichara or enquiry is contained in the saying, "As you think, so you become". By constant reflection on the Reality behind the appearances, the seeker attains oneness with the Reality and becomes that Reality itself.
Enquiry opens the aspirant's eyes to new vistas of knowledge. It leads him steadily to Truth. For instance, if the aspirant starts the "Who am I?" enquiry, he will soon find that he cannot equate himself with any one of his sense organs like the nose, the eyes or the ears, because even without one or more of these, he can live and life can pulsate in his veins. So, he is not the body. Nor is he the mind, because even during the unconscious and the deep sleep states, when the mind ceases to function, he exists and his heart throbs. Then, what is this 'I' in everybody? Swami Sivananda declares that the real 'I' is none, else than Brahman or the Atman who is the motive force behind all existence. It is He who thinks through the mind, sees through the eyes, eats through the mouth, hears through the ears and so on He is the Witnessing Consciousness who dwells in all beings. When a person gets up from deep sleep and says, "I enjoyed a sound dreamless sleep", it is this Witnessing Consciousness which remembers the fact that the body and the mind rested in sound sleep. It cannot be otherwise. The mind which was virtually dead during the deep sleep state could . not itself have consciously enjoyed a sound slumber and remembered it. The enjoyer is the Atman. Swamiji repeatedly advises the spiritual seeker to identify himself with this Atman which is his real Self and not with his perishable body. Constant identification with the Atman or the Witnessing Consciousness in oneself is a shortcut to spiritual success. The aspirant who adopts this technique will soon rise above body consciousness.
The secret of spirituality lies in realising one's essential nature. It is not becoming something outside of oneself. It is not as if man and God are separate and that man should go to a God who is external to him and merge in that God. No. God is already there, everywhere, Within us and outside of us. The body and the mind in which man is encased are mere illusions of an ignorant mind. God only is. All else is not. All else is only appearance. This appearance is made possible by the functioning of the mind. Meditation and enquiry enable the aspirant to feel, to realise that he is, after all, Brahman and not a bundle of body and mind. When divine wisdom dawns, the Sadhak realises his innermost Being. And being is Brahman.
Herbs
[Spices kill bacteria and protect cells|http://usaweekend.com/02_issues/021110/021110eatsmart.html]
Thulasi
from http://www.internaturalhealth.com/herbalmain.htm
A common sight in most homes, the tulsi plant has many medicinal and curative properties. There are at least 150 varieties of basil in the world.
The Tulsi plant seen in most Hindu homes, is known as the Holy or Sacred Basil (Botanical name: Ocimum Sanctum). It is an aromatic herb. The leaves of this plant are used in worship and also have medicinal and curative properties. The name probably comes from the Greek Besileus, meaning "King". There are at least 150 varieties of basil in the world.
Every part of the tulsi plant, from roots to leaves, possesses health-giving properties. Its use as a medicine in different ailments has been known from ancient times in the Ayurvedic system. The leaves of the basil yield an essential oil which contains eugenol, carvacrol, methyl eugenol and caryophyllene. It has the property of destroying bacteria and insects. The juice of the leaves is used in treatment of bronchitis and gastric disorders.
* [Thulasee dhalamulache santhoshamuga poojinthu|http://www.geocities.com/promiserani2/c1047.html]
Bhaja Govindam
Adhi Shankaracharya wrote a number of vedantic works for imparting knowledge of the self and the universal spirit. He also composed a number of hymns to foster Bhakthi in the hearts of men. One of these hymns is the famous Bhaja govindaM. The way of devotion, is not different from the way of knowledge or gnyana. When intelligence matures and lodges securely in the mind, it becomes wisdom. When wisdom is integrated with life and issues out in action, it becomes bhakthi. Knowledge, when it becomes fully mature is bhakthi. If it doesnot get transformed into bhakthi, such knowledge is [useless tinsel|http://www.carnatic.com/kishore/life/]. To believe that gnyana and bhakthi, knowledge and devotion are different from each other, is ignorance. If Sri Adi Shankara himself who drank the ocean of gnyana as easily as one sip water from the palm of one's hand, sang in his later years, hymns to develop devotion, it is enough to show that gnyana and bhakthi are one and the same. Sri Shankara has packed into the Bhaja govindaM song: the substance of all vedanta, and set the oneness of gnyana and bhakthi to melodious music.
Bhaja govindaM is one of the minor compositions of the spiritual gaint, Adi SHANKARA. It is classified as a Prakarana grantha, a primer to the major works. Though sung as a bhajan, it contains the essence of vedanta and awakens the man to think, "Why am I here in this life ? Why am I amassing wealth, family, but have no peace ? What is the Truth ? What is the purpose of life ?" Man is thus awakened and gets set on a path to the inner road back to God.
The background of Bhaja GovindaM is worth examining. During Shankara's stay in Kashi, he noticed a very old man engaged in the early hours studying the rules of sanskrit by Panini. Shankara was touched with pity seeing the plight of the old man spending his years at a mere intellectual accomplishment while he would be better off praying and spending time to control his mind. Shankara understood that the majority of the world was also engaged in mere intellectual, sense pleasures and not in the divine contemplation. Seeing this, he burst forth with the verses of Bhaja govindaM.
In 31 (some cite 33) verses, he, like no other, explains our fallacies, our wrong outlook for life, and dispells our ignorance and delusions. Thus bhaja govindaM was originally known as Moha Mudgara, the remover of delusions.
Bhaja govindaM is divided into dvaadasa manjarika stotram and chaturdasa manjarika stotram. At the end of composing the first stanza, it is said that Shankara burst forth with the next 12 stanzas of bhaja govindam. Thus stanzas 1-12 are called dvaadas manjarika stotram. Inspired by the extempore recital by Shankara, each of his 14 disciples composed a verse and the 14 verse compendium is called chaturdasa manjarika stotram. Shankara added the finishing touches by adding five of his own stanzas at the last bring the total to 31. This edition shows 33 verses, though the last 2 are not given in all versions.
Anyone who listens to the music of Bhaja govindaM is attracted to it. However, the significance of the text goes much deeper and contains a well defined philosophy of attaining salvation. Shankara words here seem to be quite piercing and seem to lack his softness and tenderness often found in his other texts. The reason is that this was an extempore recital to an old man. His words can be compared to a knife of a doctor. The doctor's knife cruely removes the tumor with much pain, but removing the tumor ultimately restores good health in the patient. So is Shankara's words, which pierce and point out our ignorance. It is a knife into the heart of worldliness, and by removing this tumor of ignorance, we can attain everlasting bliss with the grace of Govinda.
May the acharayaa guide us from ignorance to truth and help us remember the song of Swami Vivekananda at all times :
Ever more beauteous in fresh blossoming love
OM tat sat.
Oh fool ! Give up your thrist to amass wealth, devote your mind to thoughts to the Real. Be content with what comes through actions already performed in the past.
Do not get drowned in delusion by going wild with passions and lust by seeing a woman's navel and chest. These are nothing but a modification of flesh. Do not fail to remember this again and again in your mind.
So long as a man is fit and able to support his family, see the affection all those around him show. But no one at home cares to even have a word with him when his body totters due to old age.
When one is alive, his family members enquire kindly about his welfare. But when the soul departs from the body, even his wife runs away in fear of the corpse.
The childhood is lost by attachment to playfulness. Youth is lost by attachment to woman. Old age passes away by thinking over many past things. But there is hardly anyone who wants to be lost in parabrahman.
Who is your wife ? Who is your son ? Strange is this samsara. Of whom are you ? From where have you come ? Brother, ponder over these truths here.
From Satsangh comes non-attachment, from non-attachment comes freedom from delusion, which leads to self-settledness. From self-settledness comes Jeevan Mukti.
Do not boast of wealth, friends, and youth. Each one of these are destroyed within a minute. Free yourself from the illusion of the world of Maya and attain the timeless Truth.
Daylight and darkness, dusk and dawn, winter and springtime come and go. Time plays and life ebbs away. But the storm of desire never leaves.
Oh mad man ! Why this engrossment in thoughts of wealth ? Is there no one to guide you ? There is only one thing in three worlds that can save you from the ocean from samsara. Get into that boat of satsangha quickly. Stanza attributed to Padmapada.
There are many who go with matted locks, many who have clean shaven heads, many whose hairs have been plucked out; some are clothed in saffron, yet others in various colors --- all just for a livelihood. Seeing truth revealed before them, still the foolish ones see it not. Stanza attributed to Totakacharya.
Strength has left the old man's body; his head has become bald, his gums toothless and leaning on crutches. Even then the attachment is strong and he clings firmly to fruitless desires. Stanza attributed to Hastamalaka.
Behold there lies the man who sits warming up his body with the fire in fromt and the sun at the back; at night he curls up the body to keep out of the cold; he eats his beggar's food from the bowl of his hand and sleeps beneath the tree. Still in his heart, he is a wretched puppet at the hands of passions. Stanza attributed to Subodha.
Take your residence in a temple or below a tree, wear the deerskin for the dress, and sleep with mother earth as your bed. Give up all attachments and renounce all comforts. Blessed with such vairagya, could any fail to be content ? Stanza attributed to Nityananda.
Let a man read but a little from giitaa, drink just a drop of water from the ganges, worship murari (govinda) just once. He then will have no altercation with Yama. Stanza attributed to dR^iDhabhakta.
Born again, death again, birth again to stay in the mother's womb ! It is indeed hard to cross this boundless ocean of samsara. Oh Murari ! Redeem me through Thy mercy. Stanza attributed to Nityanatha.
There is no shortage of clothing for a monk so long as there are rags cast off the road. Freed from vice and virtue, onward he wanders. One who lives in communion with God enjoys bliss, pure and uncontaminated, like a child and as someone intoxicated. Stanza attributed to Nityanatha.
Who are you ? Who am I ? From where do I come ? Who is my mother, who is my father ? Ponder thus, look at everything as essenceless and give up the world as an idle dream. Stanza attributed to surendra.
Do not waste your efforts to win the love of or to fight against friend and foe, children and relatives. See yourself in everyone and give up all feelings of duality completely. Stanza attributed to medhaatithira.
Regularly recite from the Gita, meditate on Vishnu [thro' Vishnu sahasranama] in your heart, and chant His thousand glories. Take delight to be with the noble and the holy. Distribute your wealth in charity to the poor and the needy. Stanza attributed to sumatira.
Oh devotee of the lotus feet of the Guru ! May thou be soon free from Samsara. Through disciplined senses and controlled mind, thou shalt come to experience the Indwelling Lord of your heart !
# [at Spirituality, Yoga and Hinduism|http://www.geocities.com/RodeoDrive/1415/bhaja1.html]
# [with raga|http://www.geocities.com/malibutemple/bhajagovind.htm]
Gurudeva
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/gurudeva.jpg]
slightly from the South Indian form. He explained that the name Subramuniya
Subramanya). It is formed from subhra meaning, "light; intuition," and muni,
out from intuition.
Source: http://www.gurudeva.dynip.com/~htoday/press_releases/
of Hinduism's foremost and globally prominent spiritual teachers, a prolific
"Great Union," today at age 74 at his ashram home on the tropical island of
discovered on October 9, soon after he returned from a 30-day pilgrimage to
practice, called Prayopavesa in Sanskrit scripture, to abstain from
nourishment and take water only from that day on. His doctors endorsed and
exalted event, signalling the completion of his mission on Earth and his
Gods to help mankind. Nearly a hundred devotees from all over the world flew
whom Subramuniyaswami, the successor of Lanka's great guru Yogaswami, is
An outpouring of appreciation came from the local Kauai island residents
developed a fondness and profound appreciation of Subramuniyaswami, whom
you all from the inner planes." Bereaved devotees arriving at the island
tomorrow morning in a meditation crypt behind the sanctum sanctorum of the
As is traditional, the passage of a saint is not accompanied by the Hindu
rituals of mourning. The release from the mortal coils at the time of the
who had gained prominence over the decades for his practical and
clear-minded books replete with explanations of everything Hindu, from the
Hinduism Today, which evolved over 21 years from a simple newsletter to an
promoted Hinduism in the past 25 years. Among his other honors are being
the chiseled body he had developed in his youth as an accomplished ballet
always impeccably groomed and fashionably dressed. His devotees loved his
classical Eastern and Western dance and in the disciplines of yoga, becoming
slightly from the South Indian form. He explained that the name Subramuniya
Subramanya). It is formed from subhra meaning, "light; intuition," and muni,
out from intuition.
Sri Lanka, from which he wrote his first book, "Raja Yoga." This profound
welcomed Hindu swamis coming for the first time to America, including Swami
Chinmayananda, whom he extensively assisted in setting up his Chinmaya
devotees, then the largest group from America ever to come to India. Similar
tours focused on connecting with the Tamil Saivite communities around the
globe, which he nurtured from Kauai.
Hinduism, and established Kauai Aadheenam, a monastery-temple complex in the
from India to the United States and Europe, encouraged by new immigration
themselves cut off from the guidance of Hindu leaders in India.
community. He helped major institutions like the Chinmaya Mission and
Lanka, to whom he spread a message of courage, regenerating pride of
was paraded through towns and villages in the ancient way, seldom seen
would walk to each meeting, each temple rite, each lecture. Sometimes these
Siddhantin, A. P. C. Veerabhagu, lead Gurudeva and his 50-plus devotees from
Hundreds of thousands of Saivites turned out that morning to welcome the
sage from America, and he was led for miles through the city streets with
hundreds of women with baskets full of flowers standing on the tops of each
During this same journey, he was given awards from all the major spiritual
to the temples from which they had been banned for so long.
government had invited him to revive a languishing Hindu faith. "Please come
Always an accomplished publisher, Subramuniyaswami came in on the ground
floor with desktop publishing, adopting the Apple computer in 1985, then in
Engineers from Apple came to Kauai to marvel at the setup. Apple even sent a
Subramuniyaswami had come by this time to be well-known throughout the world
leaders outside of India who had most dynamically promoted Hinduism in the
income for Hindu swamis, temples and orphanages worldwide and created a
from the printers in Malaysia shortly before his passing.
a path that leads the soul from simple service to worshipful devotion to
God, from the disciplines of meditation and yoga to the direct knowing of
and wisdom. He urges all seekers to live a life of ahimsa, nonhurtfulness
From his ashram in Hawaii, Subramuniyaswami continued to follow his own
vows and ten brahmachari, celibate monks in training, come from six
the ancient Nandinatha Sampradaya. This lineage is bound by certain common
through all karmas before liberation from rebirth may be obtained. It
recognize caste distinctions in spiritual pursuits and initiate from the
his ability to explain the most complex principles in a uniquely lucid and
his super compendium of books on Hinduism so carefully compiled, classified,
American universities for Hindu courses of study and comparative religion
115-year-old Swami Bua of New York recently commented, "These guidelines
for everybody, for every situation -- for men, women, parents, husbands,
tradition has always provided for fasting under strict community regulation
as a means of accelerating one's departure from the body in the case of
terminally diseased, to choose a righteous release. What wonderful wisdom.
hands of unscrupulous doctors. No lapsing into unconscious coma. No loss of
a quiet, slow, natural exit from the body, coupled with spiritual practices,
support from friends and relations."
origins of mankind on Earth; "Weaver's Wisdom," the best English translation
request from the Hindus of Fiji, he prepared a children's course, Saivite
One book in particular, "How to Become a Hindu," published in 2000,
Become a Better Hindu." The Shankaracharya of Puri, one of Hinduism's
Subramuniyaswami enjoyed promoting his books, and in the course of his
would come, and compensated by bringing dozens of extra copies. At the end
about Hinduism; 4) To protect, preserve and promote the sacred Vedas and the
promote Sanatana Dharma. The magazine is supplemented with a daily e-mailed
periodical and the only one which deals with all denominations of Hinduism
(start at www.himalayanacademy.com). A unique part of his website is "A
lead in the effort to overcome the problem of self-alienation and growing
vision, he commissioned the construction of a large temple to be entirely
carving commenced in 1990 at a work site in Bangalore, India, a ceremony
desert lands, Gurudeva founded an entire village for the project. Homes were
protect the stone sculptors from the Indian sun. A Malaysian family,
where starting in May, 2001, a team of seven master stone carvers from India
temple; the work is expected to take several more years to complete. At the
time of Gurudeva's passing, they had just completed the floor of the inner
hundreds of man years to complete, is being produced in the same way that
At the moment when Nepal changed from a monarchy to a democracy in 1990, his
would be held back from this needy nation should Nepal declare itself
punishment in the homes and schools of Hindus. He immediately began a
campaign to "Stop the War in the Home" (see source for this talk at end) and
positive discipline within their local community. For this, he partnered
Hindu communities around the world. This campaign, which is paralleled in
is to stop the war in the home. It is here that hatred begins, that
animosities with those who are different from us are nurtured, that battered
religious community."
passing. He accomplished this both through his publications and through his
other experts, all of whom enthusiastically assisted this great spiritual
had special relations with a number of communities including the Sri Lankan
the authority to clarify and reinterpret scripture and to revise customary
practices of their communities. They also deal with worldly matters and are
called upon to settle disputes in the community, to advise politicians, even
these functions in these various communities.
maintained contact with each of these communities, advised them on how to
last Innersearch travel-study program, he visited many of these communities
homes. In Denmark in August of 2001 he laid the foundation stone for an
Amman temple and visited other temple communities in Sweden, Norway, Germany
abolishing corporal punishment in the homes and schools, directing his
Gurudeva's swamis are from Malaysia.
prominent attorney, offered this summary of Subramuniyaswami's work in the
elders who were worried about the high rate of conversion from the Hindu
fold. In January, 1982, he spent an entire month there traveling from
dharma, etc., all of which gave us a glimpse of our incomparable heritage,
misconceptions in the Tamil Saivite community. Many of us came to understand
people would come for the weekly homas held at that time. Today the major
in the country. It is now regularly visited by pilgrims from the world over.
"We have had a regular flow of monastics from our headquarters in Hawaii,
well he encouraged the wearing of Hindu dress at home, temples and during
festivals. Several Mauritians have completed a six-month training at our
Tyaganatha, hailing from the same village of Rempart, who is one of the
discipline, the concept of education without violence at home and school and
the only way to completely eradicate violence from our society. Gurudeva
"He will also be remembered for two meetings to promote community harmony.
community. Then in 1995, under the auspices of the municipal Council of Port
and in a largely non-Hindu community, still he found himself performing the
traditional functions of an aadheenam for the local community. He was a key
member of "Vision Kauai," a group of community leaders including
positive future for the island's community. He worked monthly with the mayor
he was invited to speak, and in person. He would from time to time be sought
out for advice by community leaders on the important issues facing the
from island residents upon his passing was at times as deep and as heartfelt
diligently on their personal spiritual disciplines and to live every moment
wisdom and love, are well-prepared to keep his mission potent and effective.
Equally, his family devotees are pure, one-minded and deeply committed.
These two communities will continue the work together: building the Iraivan
contributing to our local Kauai community, guiding the future of Hinduism
http://www.gurudeva.dynip.com/~htoday/press_releases/
Guruji
[http://www.carnatic.com/guruji/guruji001.gif]
2001 09 09 : I had registered www.guruji.com and pointed to http://www.carnatic.com/guruji/
What Makes a House a Home?
[Articles] > What Makes a House a Home?
What is it that makes a house a home? A home is a place of companionship
workplace or with classmates at school. A home is a place that's so
magnetic that it's difficult to leave. In a home there is love, kindness,
everybody else. In a home, the guests are treated like Deities or devas
coming to the temple. That is the spirit of hospitality in the Hindu
a home, and everything else is just a house or a hotel lobby.
If you were to look at a harmonious home with your astral vision,
that house was not much different from a hotel lobby.
I was once asked about the desperately poor, homeless families living
other families have large, luxurious homes. I, too, have seen families
destitute. Such a family is at home wherever they are. You don't need a
roof to make a family. You don't need a roof to make a home. The truly
homeless are some of the rich people who build multi-million-dollar houses
and are too busy to really live in them. The truly homeless are those who
have turned their home into a hotel lobby. The husband works. The wife
works. The children are delinquent. There's no companionship. They don't
see each other. The truly homeless people are those with babysitters,
are unaware, too busy making money outside the home that they don't live
in. This is another way of looking at the rich and the homeless. Who is
Control of the computer and the Internet is also important to make a
house into a home. If the computer is on all the time, the house turns
into an office, even if everyone is at home. Many homes these days are
just offices. Human communication has stopped. The computer eats up
the time that one should be giving to others within the home. Using the
computer moderately gives us time for gentleness, play and communication,
needed in a home.
Italy
http://www.dolcevita.com/ : The insiders's guide to Italy
Herbs & Spices
A complete listing of Herbs and Spices
A New World spice from the Jamaican Myrtle tree with a sweet and savory flavor reminiscent of nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, and a hint of pepper. This spice is also known as Jamaica or Myrtle pepper. This spice works well in pickling spice mixtures and in marinades for fish, poultry and meat. It especially works well with ham, rice, puddings, cakes and pies.
From seeds extracted from a small fragrant, flowering tree grown in the Caribbean, Central and South America. This herb has a gentle flavor and is used most as a coloring agent. It is also known as achiote, bija, roucou or lipstick tree. This spice works well in a variety of dishes including legumes, grains, rice, seafood, meats, stews, chili sauces and spice mixtures.
A tropical American plant with roots that yield edible starch known as Arrowroot Powder. It has been used by American Indians to absorb poison from wounds.
An extremely versatile herb in the mint family, with many types which vary by flavor, color and size. The domestic version, native to India and Iran, has a large leaf with a flavor that greatly enhances tomatoes, pesto and Italian foods of all kinds. Sweet basil has a smaller leaf and has a sweet taste as its name suggests with a more pungent aroma. Sweet basil also works well in Italian foods. Basil also has blends nicely with other herbs and spices such as parsley, rosemary, oregano, thyme, sage and saffron.
An herb of the Mediterranean region, it has substantial culinary versatility. Its strong taste works well in soups, with meat and poultry dishes, pasta sauces, fish and is also used to flavor some desserts.
A native Indian spice in the ginger family, it has a spicy, sharp and sweet taste with a aroma reminiscent of cinnamon.
A seasoning ground from small, red chili peppers (of the Capsicum frutescens variety). It has been used as a spice in the dishes of many countries and is also used as a table condiment. It's heat and spiciness varies.
Originating in seventeenth century Europe, there are three types: white, green and turnip rooted. Celery seed tastes like celery and is aromatic with a slight bitterness which enhances other flavors. It's best uses are in breads and cooked dishes that are enhanced by a celery-like flavor.
An essential spice in French cuisine, it used like parsley and provides an herbal taste with the slight flavor of anise. Chervil is used much like parsley, but is more delicate. It is most commonly used on fish, egg dishes, salads and as a glaze on vegetables such as carrots.
First cultivated in Mexico and South America 9,000 years ago, chile peppers are members of the Solanaceae plant family, to which tomatoes, potatoes and eggplants belong. All chile peppers fall into genus Capsicum, which includes 20-30 different species. The plant pods are really berries, but are referred to as fruits by horticulturists. When harvested green, pods are considered vegetables, and when harvested red, are referred to as spice. "Heat" comes from Capsaicin, which can be measure in units called Scoville units. For more information on specific chilies, please see (add link to another page/section? on chile).
Made from dried chilies, usually blended with garlic, onion, cumin, oregano, allspice and salt. Color and spiciness varies.
An herb of Southern European as well as Middle/Far Eastern origin, it is one of the most widely used flavorings in many world cuisines. It has a flavor reminiscent of anise and is used a seasoning in stews, soups, curries, vegetables, salads, relishes and tomato based sauces.
Native to Sri Lanka, it comes from the bark of a small evergreen tree. Cinnamon is fragrant with a slightly sweet taste and works well in sweets and also with meats, stews, vegetables and curries. In the United States, cinnamon is the same as cassia.
Of Southeast Asian origin, an unopened flower bud of an evergreen clove tree. It has a sweet, strongly aromatic flavor best used as an accent to baked goods, stews and soups and meats.
A popular herb in the carrot family, its flavor is reminiscent of an orange peel. It is commonly used as a companion to curry and to flavor meat and poultry.
Used in both a seed and leave (known as dill weed) form, it is known for it's distinct flavoring in the cuisines of Germany, Scandinavia and Central and Eastern Europe. It works well with a variety of culinary dishes such as omelets, soups, stuffed grape leaves, potato salad, cucumber, veal, breads, cabbage, meat stews and rice. It is also widely used with herring, salmon and other seafood dishes.
A Northern Indian blend of cumin, coriander, cardamom, black peppercorn, clove, mace, bay leaf and cinnamon.
Of central Asian origin, it is the bulb of a plant in the lily family. It comes in many varieties, most commonly as white, pink and purple skinned cloves, the latter considered to be the best. One of the most versatile and useful flavorings, it is widely used spice in many cuisines, most notably Italian and Mexican.
Ground from a tropical Asian root, it has a rich and warming spicy-sweet flavor and is most commonly used in Asian dishes and in sweets such as cakes, cookies, puddings and sweet breads.
A Mediterranean blend containing oregano, savory, rosemary, thyme and marjoram, use to flavor stews, chicken, kabobs and tomato dishes and pizza.
Most commonly a blend of marjoram, basil, Mediterranean oregano, thyme and rosemary and used, as its name suggests, in a variety of Italian dishes, especially tomato-based sauces.
The fruit of a small evergreen shrub, it is aromatic and spicy with the slight flavor of pine. It is mostly used a spice for meats--in marinades, on roasts and in sausage mixes.
The zest or dried skin of the lemon, which is the most aromatic part of the fruit where the citrus oil is contained.
From an evergreen tree grown on the Spice Island of Moluccas, it is the red, lacy covering of the nutmeg fruit. It has a cinnamon and pepper flavor making it excellent for desserts and sauces.
Mint exists in more than 600 varieties, with a wide range of distinct scents and flavors. In cooking, the two best known mint flavorings are spearmint and peppermint. Spearmint is most widely used in tea and in sauces and jellies that are used to accent lamb and vegetables such as potatoes and carrots. Peppermint has a strong aroma and is most frequently used to flavor candy and desserts.
From the cabbage family, mustard seeds come in a variety of flavors and colors. Mustards made from the brown and black seeds have the strongest flavor. White mustard which bears large, yellow seeds is most commonly used in American mustards. Yellow mustard is more spicy than white and is used to accent sauces, meats, stews and dressings. Colmans mustard is even spicier and is used for pickling and in sauces.
A fruit seed from an evergreen tree grown on one of the Spice Islands, it has a strong cinnamon, nutty flavor used to flavor sweets, fruit dishes, sauces and vegetables.
Taken from the dried skin or zest of the orange which contains the citrus oil, it is the most aromatic part of the fruit.
A wild variety of marjoram, it has a stronger flavor and is native to the Mediterranean region. It most commonly appears in French and Italian cuisines, especially in tomato-based sauces. It is the most recognizable flavor in pizza and is a favored accent in both Greek and Mexican cuisines.
Originating in Southern Mexico, it is a bright red sweet pepper with a vibrant flavor most popularly used in Hungarian foods. It is also known as pimiento or tomato pepper and tastes great with eggs, poultry, stews and vegetables.
Native to Southern Europe, it is grown worldwide in temperate regions. Curly and flat-leaf are the two main types, and both are rich in vitamins and minerals. Flat-leaf parsley is heartier and more flavorful. Curly is milder and is widely used to garnish a large variety of dishes. Parsley goes well in and with sauces, salads, potatoes, omelets and soft cheeses.
The black variety originates from unripe green berries that ferment before drying, which results in strong flavor and aroma. White pepper originates from ripe berries soaked to remove the red skin and are hotter than black pepper with less aroma and flavor. Pepper is used as an accent to a wide variety of dishes. White pepper is best used in dishes requiring a milder pepper flavor such as soups, sauces and eggs.
Peppercorns, from which pepper originates, are also available whole in a variety of colors and flavors. Green peppercorns are milder and fruitier than the berries used to ground white pepper. These corns, used ground and whole, are best used in seafood sauces, egg salads, and cream-based sauces served with meat and poultry. Pink peppercorns are harvested as an almost ripe berry, prior to drying. These corns have a slightly resinous flavor and are mostly used in the visual presentation of food. Tellicherry peppercorns are grown on the Malabar coast of India. They have a clean flavor with an aroma less pungent than black peppercorns. Peppercorns also come in a medley, which is a blend of black, white, green and pink peppercorns.
A chile pepper that when hot is Mexican piquin chile and when milder is Indian tsin tsin. Crushed red pepper is commonly used a table condiment.
A Mediterranean spice with a sweet, pungent flavor and an aromatic needle-like leaf. It is considered to the most excellent herb to use as an accent for poulty and veal. It also works well with stews, sauces and in Italian dishes.
A Spanish spice originating from the stigma of a flowering crocus. It has a pungent taste and is yellow in color. It is most commonly used to flavor bouillabaisse and paella and also accents fish, poultry and breads well.
A Mediterranean spice in the mint family, it has a sweet taste and herbal fragance. It can be used to flavor a variety of foods including pork, veal, stuffing, sausage and tomato sauces.
From a tree in the laurel family native to North America, it is primarily used is as a filé powder consisting of the dried ground leaves of the tree. It's most common use is as a thickening agent in Cajun or Creole gumbo. It is also used in and with soups, fish, shellfish, poultry, highly spiced meat and in savory dishes requiring a thickening agent.
Another Mediterranean spice in the mint family, it has a strong, slightly peppery flavor and is used to flavor legumes, meat, fish (especially trout), sausage, stuffing and tomato sauces.
Also known as Fagara and originating in China, it is not a true pepper but a dried berry of a prickly ash tree. It has a woody aroma with a spicy, tingly taste. It is an essential ingredient in Chinese 5 Spice.
An herb in the mint family of Mediterranean origin, it is aromatic with an herbal flavor. It can be used to improve the flavor of most dishes, especially slow cooked dishes.
A spice in the ginger family, it has a warm, mild aroma with a yellow/gold color. It is most often used in East Indian foods such as chutney and as an accent to legumes, vegetables and meats.
Radhadesh
[http://www.castles.nl/eur/be/psomme/psomme1.jpg]
Radhadesh-Chateau de Petite Somme, 6940 Septon (about 3 km from Durbuy)
Septon, ISKCON Radhadesh, Château de Petite Somme, 6940 Septon (Durbuy) / Tel. (086) 322926 / Fax (086) 322929 / E-mail: radhadesh @ com . bbt . se
* ISKCON Radhadesh -> http://www.radhadesh.com/
* nice description at http://www.castles.nl/eur/be/psomme/psomme.html
* Dutch description at http://www.phantom.yucom.be/durbuy.htm
* interesting read at http://www.jeremyjosephs.com/markjosephs.htm !!!
Germany
[http://www.carnatic.com/images/feriendoerfer.jpg]
* National Parks comprise vast natural areas of a special kind which, in most cases, have remained completely untouched or have been only slightly influenced by man. >>> 13
* Looking for something special from Germany, visit http://www.roemertopf.de
* [Frommer's Germany|http://www.frommers.com/destinations/germany/]
* [Lonely Planet's Guide to Germany|http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/europe/germany/]
* [Vacation in Germany - farm and home stays|http://www.landtourismus.de/e/index_e.html]
* http://www.visiteurope.com/Germany/
Singapore
* [Interesting places to bring kids|http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/content/interesting-places-bring-kids]
# Economy
[SBS Transit|http://www.sbstransit.com.sg/]'s [SBS Bus Guide|http://www.sbstransit.com.sg/busGuide_index.htm]
* [Golden Village|http://www.gv.com.sg]
* [National Parks Board|http://www.nparks.gov.sg/] , [The Green Singapore|http://www.thingsasian.com/goto_article/article.1918.html]
* [OrganicWorld|http://www.organicworld.com.sg/], Block 5 Eunos Crescent #01-2617, Singapore 400005. Retail Store Opening Hour: 8.30 am - 7.30 pm (Close on Monday)
* Awareness Place - http://www.awarenessplace.com/
* The Inspiration Junction - http://www.ij.com.sg/
[Singapore Property Guide|http://era.jehpin.com/] - Your personal guide to buying and selling a property in Singapore. Lewis Liew has helped me. Do contact him !
[American Association of Singapore|http://www.aasingapore.com]
The Singapore InfoMap is at http://www.sg
Read [Stephen Palmer]'s view : [Republic of Singapore|http://www.stephenrpalmer.co.uk/places/Singapore/Singapore.html] which starts ...Singapore is a kidney bean shaped island approx. 30 miles from east to west and 2? miles north to south dangling a little precariously by a causeway and a bridge below the main Malaysian peninsula...
[Singapore - A Tropical Island|http://www.comvet.com/html/singaporeliving.html] : ...Singapore lies at the southern tip of the Malaysian peninsula, 1 degree 17 minutes or 137 kilometers north of the equator. The main island is approx. 40 km east-to-west & 18 km north-south, with a total land area of 632 sq.km. However, not a single island, Singapore consists of around 60 islands & islets and extends to the shores of both Malaysia and Indonesia, separated by the Straits of Johor and Straits of Singapore respectively. - - - Of Singapore's nearly 3.5 million people (4 million with expatriates & foreign workers), 70 - 75% are ethnic Chinese, with the Malay and Indian communities making up the next two largest contingents.
[things to do in Singapore|http://www.thingstodo-singapore.com/]
[International Indenting House|http://www.iihtravel.com/] No 2. Finlayson Green, #16-08 Asia Insurance Building, Singapore
[The InnCrowd Hostel|http://www.the-inncrowd.com/] : [Going from Singapore to Malaysia by Bus, Coach, Rail or Air.|http://www.the-inncrowd.com/singtomsia.htm]
* The Typhoon, offered by a consortium of aircraft makers from Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain
AHD Homoeopathic Centre - Tel 62961050 - 46, Campbell Lane, Singapore 209918 - Consultation Hours 10am - 9pm - Closed on 3rd and 4th Sunday of every month
http://www.coldstorage.com.sg - Tel 63441661
http://www.windowtothepast.com - "beautiful homes and offices at affordable prices...any style and any budget, purchase or lease..."
http://www.themaletherapist.com/ - "a giving nature"
[Ken-Air (Transnasional)|http://www.kenair.com.sg/]
http://www.thefurnituresquare.com.sg/
http://www.windsorplayskool.com.sg
http://www.cleverway.com.sg
http://www.renovate.com.sg
DVD Rentals : http://www.homepal.com.sg http://www.hollywoodclicks.com http://www.moviemaster.com
http://www.komoco.com.sg - Wendy Sim - Sales Executive
Malaysia
http://www.island.com.my
[Tioman]
India
[Mystic India|http://www.mysticindia.com] : Rediscover Ancient India
http://travel.indiainfo.com/
http://www.indiatravelite.com
[Osho Commune]
[India learns the tricks of world trade and makes them its own.|http://www.goodnewsindia.com/Pages/content/economy/upChain.html]
France
http://www.franceguide.com/
Motto
2002 Jan 01 : This page will not be updated any longer... Visit [Companies]
[Philips|http://www.philips.com] : Let's make things better
[GE|http://www.ge.com/] : We bring good things to life.
[Ford|http://www.ford.com/] : Striving to Make the World a Better Place
[Miele|http://www.miele.com/usa/facts/Facts.html] : Immer Besser / Forever Better / Always Better
[Infineon|http://www.infineon.com/] : Never Stop Thinking
[SAP|http://www.sap.com/] : The Best-Run E-Businesses Run SAP
[Nike|http://www.nike.com] : Just Do It !
[Microsoft|http://www.microsoft.com/] : Where do you want to go today ?
Mantras
[What Is a Mantra and How Does It Work|http://www.sanskritmantra.com/what.htm]
[Om Tat Sat]
[The Power of Mantra Meditation|http://www.mantra-meditation.com/search-for-happiness.html]
http://www.livelongto100years.com/mantras.html
[2do|http://kishore.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$157]
Panchakshara
at any given moment we are a complete Parasiva-Satchidananda jiva, only
working on the "Maheshvara part"--on the jiva's becoming Siva. Parasiva
experience it, and to experience it is to become initiated.
and an assignment from my guru to perform japa regularly." As the japa
wisdom from within. Japa yoga is the first yoga to be performed toward
and it is automatic now." Siva Yogaswami enjoined his devotees: "Wear
Count your blessings
If you live in a good home, have plenty to eat and can read, you are a member of a very select group.
If you have a good house, food, can read and have a computer,
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet and spare change in a dish someplace...
todo
reorganise [Explore|http://www.carnatic.com/etal.html]
# [John VanDyk] [*|http://iowa.weblogger.com/]
# [Craig Jensen] [*|http://booknotes.weblogs.com/]
# [Mahesh Shantaram] [*|http://msram.livejournal.com/]
# [Vikas Kamat] [*|http://www.kamat.com/vikas/blog.htm]
# [Cameron Barrett] [*|http://www.camworld.com/]
# [Mark Pilgrim] [*|http://diveintomark.weblogger.com/]
# [Andrea Frick] [*|http://andrea.editthispage.com/]
# [PapaScott, MamaMaus featuring Christopher Ryan|http://shanson.editthispage.com/]
* [John Renesch] [*|http://www.renesch.com/]
* [Steve Wainstead] [*|http://www.panix.com/~swain/]
* [David Rogers] [*|http://timesShadow.editthispage.com/]
* [Steven Vore] [*|http://mumble.editthispage.com]
* [garret p vreeland] [*|http://www.dangerousmeta.com/]
* [Aaron Swartz|http://www.aaronsw.com/]
* [Jakob Nielsen|http://www.useit.com/]
* [Philip Greenspun|http://philip.greenspun.com]
* [Richard P. Gabriel|http://www.dreamsongs.com]
* [Wesley Felter|http://wmf.editthispage.com/]
* [Doc Searls|http://doc.weblogs.com/]
* [Jason Levine|http://q.queso.com/]
* [Brent Simmons|http://inessential.com/]
* [Sheila Simmons|http://sheila.inessential.com/]
* [Jim Roepcke|http://jim.roepcke.com/]
* [Mark Pilgrim|http://diveintomark.weblogger.com/]
* [Joel Spolsky|http://www.joelonsoftware.com/]
* [Joshua Allen|http://www.netcrucible.com/blog/]
* [Philippe MARTIN] [*|http://www.mose.com/flip/]
* [Stephanie Relfe] [*|http://www.relfe.com]
2001October
[Windows XP tour|http://eshop.msn.com/softcontent/softcontent.aspx?scpId=1930&scmId=850]
[Dan Sanderson|http://www.dansanderson.com/]'s [blogtracker|http://www.dansanderson.com/blogtracker/] is very useful !
Dave : [do timezones have names?|http://www.google.com/search?q=do+timezones+have+names?] - Visit [Time Zone Abbreviations|http://www.timeanddate.com/time/abbreviations.html]
found at the [weblogs.com Ping-Site Form|http://newhome.weblogs.com/pingSiteForm] : Thanks for the ping, however we can only accept one ping every five minutes. It's cool that you're updating so often, however, if I may be so bold as to offer some advice -- take a break, you'll enjoy life more.
I played [Badminton] at the [Racket Center Nussloch|http://www.racket-center.com] and it seems that Boris Becker was practising at the same center years ago...
'[Congratulations|http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=congratulations]'
[Daylight Saving Time|http://www.timeanddate.com/time/aboutdst.html] (DST) ends in Europe... The clock will be set back one hour from 3 am to 2 am in the parts of Central Europe that observe Daylight Saving Time or Summer Time, including Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Scandinavia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Croatia, most of western Russia (including Moscow) and many more.
[BMW Manufacturing Corp.|http://www.bmwusa.com/contact/manufacturing/manufacturing.html], BMW's first full U.S. manufacturing facility, is the worldwide production home of the entire Z3 model line, the M coupe, M roadster and the upcoming BMW X5, BMW's new Sports Activity Vehicle™. Located in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the plant has almost doubled in size since opening in 1994.
[web archive of carnatic.com|http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.carnatic.com] is cool...
(via [Dave Winer]) [Mark Pilgrim|http://diveintomark.weblogger.com/2001/10/23] : "Welcome to my weblog. I hope you enjoy it. I just got hired for it...I'd call it good karma, except that karma is supposed to manifest itself over many lifetimes. It's not like a crash diet; you're not supposed to see results within 3 weeks. Maybe I'm the exception that proves the rule. Maybe I should just be grateful that I have a job, thank everyone who has supported me in the past few weeks, stop introspecting, and get back to work..."
Welcome! [Ian Lovell Rager]
[The Mayapur Trust|http://www.mayapurtrust.org] is a UK-based registered charity, working to promote sustainable development in rural-village West Bengal and is currently providing funding for safe drinking water, mother and child, ambulance and education projects.
[Gray Watson|http://256.com/gray/]'s [Brain Teasers and Riddles|http://256.com/gray/teasers/]
[ISKCONWorldWide|http://www.iskconworldwide.com]
[Rainbow Gathering|http://rainbow.iskconworldwide.com/] : Spritual Food, Mantra Meditation and Bhakti Yoga
We went to [Nava-Jiyada-Nrsimha-Ksetra|http://www.narasimha.net/ncfestival/welcome-fs.htm] Zielberg 20, 94118 Jandelsbrunn
Memory upgrade for iMac from 64MB to 192MB...
([via CamWorld|http://www.camworld.com/journal/2001/10/#06]) 3D [Damage report from the city of New York|http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/damage.map.html]
[via Mira|http://surprise.editthispage.com/2001/10/07] : Santoka did not think of yesterday or of tomorrow, but lived each today as it came on him. In Zen every single breath is appreciated to the full. Santoka gave full justice to each breath, each moment, each day, as if it was his last. Each step, each movement, each haiku formed a consummate whole in his life
[Nutrition Ecology Workgroup|http://www-ife.uni-giessen.de/hoffmann/Englisch/homepage.html] is useful
A cousin of mine ( my mother's sister's son ) sent me an email yesterday... " I had a peep at your web site for the first time and I must say, it was very different from other juntha web sites that I have seen. The clincher was " To apply Kaizen to all aspects of life"!!!" :-)
Is life really meaningless?
([source|http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/2334/meaning.html])
MEANING CAN BE understood in two ways. There is meaning that is somewhere far away, you have to reach to it. It is extrinsic.
Life is not meaningful in this first sense. And it is good that life is not meaningful in that sense, because then life becomes only a means to reach to the faraway goal, the faraway star. Then life loses its autonomous beauty. It is just a way; the real thing is tomorrow.
Meaning has another category too: intrinsic. Life is tremendously meaningful in the second sense. Then meaning is not separate, somewhere else; then meaning is in the very living itself.
You don't ask, has love any meaning? You know love is itself meaningful, it is not a means to some end. You do not ask if the beauty of a rose is meaningful. The beauty itself is enough; it does not lead anywhere, it contains its meaning within itself.
In existence everything that is really valuable is always intrinsically meaningful. And life is equivalent to existence. Life has meaning. If you just change the word "life" into "living," you will be able to understand more easily. Living has meaning -- each moment -- because living is not something dead like "life." The word "life" is dead -- all nouns are dead. But the language is created by dead people.
Some day the new man is going to create a language which consists only of verbs, because that will be authentic to existence. In existence there is no noun. Have you seen "life"? Have you met "life" anywhere? All that you meet, experience, is living.
Sipping a cup of tea, going for a morning walk, doing your work -- all these small activities make up your living. And each part, each moment of living, is meaningful. You just have to be there; otherwise, who is going to experience the meaning?
People go on drinking tea, but they never are there; their minds are wandering all over the world. People are making love, but they are not there. It is a very strange world that we have created. In one bedroom there are at least four people. Already the bedrooms are so small, too difficult for two people; and in the bed there are four people, or even more. These two people who are making love are not there: the man is thinking of some Hollywood actress, the woman is thinking of Muhammad Ali. So there are four people. Who is making love to whom? These two people are simply going through the gestures of love -- they are not present -- mechanical gestures of love. And then they ask, "Is there any meaning in life?"
You go on losing every moment by your absence.
WHEN I WAS A STUDENT, my principal in the high school was continuously troubled by my absence from the school. My family was troubled. I would start going to school, but never reach there. Life was so much, and so many things were happening on the way... and the school was almost one mile away from the house.
"He asked me, 'Son, why are you following me?' I said, 'You are getting old. Don't you want your tricks to live on even when you are gone?' He said, 'That seems to be meaningful! -- you can come in. Many people have asked me to teach them the tricks, but not in this way.' So I have been with the magician.
"Life is a bigger school than your school. And I am, each moment, present wherever I am. To be absent is not my style of life, so you please take your words back."
I said, "You can see anybody you like, but remember that my father knows me perfectly well. Just let me be informed when you are coming so I can also be present there. You both will be absent -- because my father is continuously busy with his business, and you are busy with who is absent, who is present. At least let somebody into that meeting who is present!" I told him, "Be honest and sincere and tell me: Are you present right now?"
I said, "You need not be worried, I know where she is. That's the beauty of being present everywhere! I have seen her just by the side of the tent of the magician. Now what do you say: Was it more worthwhile my coming to the class, or finding your lost buffalo? You can go and catch hold of her."
People are not there where they seem to be. This is why they go on missing the meaning of life. Just remain present to any small act you are doing. It does not matter -- you don't have to do great acts, become a world conqueror, go to the moon, or stand on top of Everest; it does not matter what you do.
But don't seek it somewhere else -- in a church, in a temple, in a holy book. You will not find it. Even if you come across God -- who, by the way, does not exist -- but even if you come across God, you will not be present. You may be thinking of your buffalo. It is good that God is not there; otherwise, he would be so embarrassed by all these saints of all the religions, because none of them is present to the moment. They are living a life somewhere else in the tomorrows -- and today goes on slipping by, and the tomorrow never comes. Finally comes death, not tomorrow.
Life is today! Tomorrow is death. So when you come across death, it is a great shock that life has gone by and you have not been able to find any meaning in it. And now there is no tomorrow left, and you are accustomed to search for meaning in the tomorrows. But you have been told about, taught about, prepared for, tomorrows.
If you understand me... I want you always to be present wherever you are. It does not matter where you are; just be totally present, and every small act, by your presence, will become lighted up, and you will know that your whole life becomes just a caravan of lights. That's the meaning. Death comes and goes, but the caravan continues.
From Bondage to Freedom,Chapter 40
The algebra of infinite justice
Here's the rub: America is at war against people it doesn't know, because they don't appear much on TV. Before it has properly identified or even begun to comprehend the nature of its enemy, the US government has, in a rush of publicity and embarrassing rhetoric, cobbled together an "international coalition against terror", mobilised its army, its air force, its navy and its media, and committed them to battle.
The trouble is that once Amer ica goes off to war, it can't very well return without having fought one. If it doesn't find its enemy, for the sake of the enraged folks back home, it will have to manufacture one. Once war begins, it will develop a momentum, a logic and a justification of its own, and we'll lose sight of why it's being fought in the first place.
What we're witnessing here is the spectacle of the world's most powerful country reaching reflexively, angrily, for an old instinct to fight a new kind of war. Suddenly, when it comes to defending itself, America's streamlined warships, cruise missiles and F-16 jets look like obsolete, lumbering things. As deterrence, its arsenal of nuclear bombs is no longer worth its weight in scrap. Box-cutters, penknives, and cold anger are the weapons with which the wars of the new century will be waged. Anger is the lock pick. It slips through customs unnoticed. Doesn't show up in baggage checks.
Who is America fighting? On September 20, the FBI said that it had doubts about the identities of some of the hijackers. On the same day President George Bush said, "We know exactly who these people are and which governments are supporting them." It sounds as though the president knows something that the FBI and the American public don't.
In his September 20 address to the US Congress, President Bush called the enemies of America "enemies of freedom". "Americans are asking, 'Why do they hate us?' " he said. "They hate our freedoms - our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." People are being asked to make two leaps of faith here. First, to assume that The Enemy is who the US government says it is, even though it has no substantial evidence to support that claim. And second, to assume that The Enemy's motives are what the US government says they are, and there's nothing to support that either.
For strategic, military and economic reasons, it is vital for the US government to persuade its public that their commitment to freedom and democracy and the American Way of Life is under attack. In the current atmosphere of grief, outrage and anger, it's an easy notion to peddle. However, if that were true, it's reasonable to wonder why the symbols of America's economic and military dominance - the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon - were chosen as the targets of the attacks. Why not the Statue of Liberty? Could it be that the stygian anger that led to the attacks has its taproot not in American freedom and democracy, but in the US government's record of commitment and support to exactly the opposite things - to military and economic terrorism, insurgency, military dictatorship, religious bigotry and unimaginable genocide (outside America)? It must be hard for ordinary Americans, so recently bereaved, to look up at the world with their eyes full of tears and encounter what might appear to them to be indifference. It isn't indifference. It's just augury. An absence of surprise. The tired wisdom of knowing that what goes around eventually comes around. American people ought to know that it is not them but their government's policies that are so hated. They can't possibly doubt that they themselves, their extraordinary musicians, their writers, their actors, their spectacular sportsmen and their cinema, are universally welcomed. All of us have been moved by the courage and grace shown by firefighters, rescue workers and ordinary office staff in the days since the attacks.
The world will probably never know what motivated those particular hijackers who flew planes into those particular American buildings. They were not glory boys. They left no suicide notes, no political messages; no organisation has claimed credit for the attacks. All we know is that their belief in what they were doing outstripped the natural human instinct for survival, or any desire to be remembered. It's almost as though they could not scale down the enormity of their rage to anything smaller than their deeds. And what they did has blown a hole in the world as we knew it. In the absence of information, politicians, political commentators and writers (like myself) will invest the act with their own politics, with their own interpretations. This speculation, this analysis of the political climate in which the attacks took place, can only be a good thing.
But war is looming large. Whatever remains to be said must be said quickly. Before America places itself at the helm of the "international coalition against terror", before it invites (and coerces) countries to actively participate in its almost godlike mission - called Operation Infinite Justice until it was pointed out that this could be seen as an insult to Muslims, who believe that only Allah can mete out infinite justice, and was renamed Operation Enduring Freedom- it would help if some small clarifications are made. For example, Infinite Justice/Enduring Freedom for whom? Is this America's war against terror in America or against terror in general? What exactly is being avenged here? Is it the tragic loss of almost 7,000 lives, the gutting of five million square feet of office space in Manhattan, the destruction of a section of the Pentagon, the loss of several hundreds of thousands of jobs, the bankruptcy of some airline companies and the dip in the New York Stock Exchange? Or is it more than that? In 1996, Madeleine Albright, then the US secretary of state, was asked on national television what she felt about the fact that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of US economic sanctions. She replied that it was "a very hard choice", but that, all things considered, "we think the price is worth it". Albright never lost her job for saying this. She continued to travel the world representing the views and aspirations of the US government. More pertinently, the sanctions against Iraq remain in place. Children continue to die.
So here we have it. The equivocating distinction between civilisation and savagery, between the "massacre of innocent people" or, if you like, "a clash of civilisations" and "collateral damage". The sophistry and fastidious algebra of infinite justice. How many dead Iraqis will it take to make the world a better place? How many dead Afghans for every dead American? How many dead women and children for every dead man? How many dead mojahedin for each dead investment banker? As we watch mesmerised, Operation Enduring Freedom unfolds on TV monitors across the world. A coalition of the world's superpowers is closing in on Afghanistan, one of the poorest, most ravaged, war-torn countries in the world, whose ruling Taliban government is sheltering Osama bin Laden, the man being held responsible for the September 11 attacks.
The only thing in Afghanistan that could possibly count as collateral value is its citizenry. (Among them, half a million maimed orphans.There are accounts of hobbling stampedes that occur when artificial limbs are airdropped into remote, inaccessible villages.) Afghanistan's economy is in a shambles. In fact, the problem for an invading army is that Afghanistan has no conventional coordinates or signposts to plot on a military map - no big cities, no highways, no industrial complexes, no water treatment plants. Farms have been turned into mass graves. The countryside is littered with land mines - 10 million is the most recent estimate. The American army would first have to clear the mines and build roads in order to take its soldiers in.
Fearing an attack from America, one million citizens have fled from their homes and arrived at the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The UN estimates that there are eight million Afghan citizens who need emergency aid. As supplies run out - food and aid agencies have been asked to leave - the BBC reports that one of the worst humanitarian disasters of recent times has begun to unfold. Witness the infinite justice of the new century. Civilians starving to death while they're waiting to be killed.
In America there has been rough talk of "bombing Afghanistan back to the stone age". Someone please break the news that Afghanistan is already there. And if it's any consolation, America played no small part in helping it on its way. The American people may be a little fuzzy about where exactly Afghanistan is (we hear reports that there's a run on maps of the country), but the US government and Afghanistan are old friends.
In 1979, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA and Pakistan's ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) launched the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA. Their purpose was to harness the energy of Afghan resistance to the Soviets and expand it into a holy war, an Islamic jihad, which would turn Muslim countries within the Soviet Union against the communist regime and eventually destabilise it. When it began, it was meant to be the Soviet Union's Vietnam. It turned out to be much more than that. Over the years, through the ISI, the CIA funded and recruited almost 100,000 radical mojahedin from 40 Islamic countries as soldiers for America's proxy war. The rank and file of the mojahedin were unaware that their jihad was actually being fought on behalf of Uncle Sam. (The irony is that America was equally unaware that it was financing a future war against itself.)
Civil war in Afghanistan raged on. The jihad spread to Chechnya, Kosovo and eventually to Kashmir. The CIA continued to pour in money and military equipment, but the overheads had become immense, and more money was needed. The mojahedin ordered farmers to plant opium as a "revolutionary tax". The ISI set up hundreds of heroin laboratories across Afghanistan. Within two years of the CIA's arrival, the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland had become the biggest producer of heroin in the world, and the single biggest source of the heroin on American streets. The annual profits, said to be between $100bn and $200bn, were ploughed back into training and arming militants.
In 1995, the Taliban - then a marginal sect of dangerous, hardline fundamentalists - fought its way to power in Afghanistan. It was funded by the ISI, that old cohort of the CIA, and supported by many political parties in Pakistan. The Taliban unleashed a regime of terror. Its first victims were its own people, particularly women. It closed down girls' schools, dismissed women from government jobs, and enforced sharia laws under which women deemed to be "immoral" are stoned to death, and widows guilty of being adulterous are buried alive. Given the Taliban government's human rights track record, it seems unlikely that it will in any way be intimidated or swerved from its purpose by the prospect of war, or the threat to the lives of its civilians.
After all that has happened, can there be anything more ironic than Russia and America joining hands to re-destroy Afghanistan? The question is, can you destroy destruction? Dropping more bombs on Afghanistan will only shuffle the rubble, scramble some old graves and disturb the dead.
The desolate landscape of Afghanistan was the burial ground of Soviet communism and the springboard of a unipolar world dominated by America. It made the space for neocapitalism and corporate globalisation, again dominated by America. And now Afghanistan is poised to become the graveyard for the unlikely soldiers who fought and won this war for America.
And what of America's trusted ally? Pakistan too has suffered enormously. The US government has not been shy of supporting military dictators who have blocked the idea of democracy from taking root in the country. Before the CIA arrived, there was a small rural market for opium in Pakistan. Between 1979 and 1985, the number of heroin addicts grew from zero to one-and-a-half million. Even before September 11, there were three million Afghan refugees living in tented camps along the border. Pakistan's economy is crumbling. Sectarian violence, globalisation's structural adjustment programmes and drug lords are tearing the country to pieces. Set up to fight the Soviets, the terrorist training centres and madrasahs, sown like dragon's teeth across the country, produced fundamentalists with tremendous popular appeal within Pakistan itself. The Taliban, which the Pakistan government has sup ported, funded and propped up for years, has material and strategic alliances with Pakistan's own political parties.
Now the US government is asking (asking?) Pakistan to garotte the pet it has hand-reared in its backyard for so many years. President Musharraf, having pledged his support to the US, could well find he has something resembling civil war on his hands.
India, thanks in part to its geography, and in part to the vision of its former leaders, has so far been fortunate enough to be left out of this Great Game. Had it been drawn in, it's more than likely that our democracy, such as it is, would not have survived. Today, as some of us watch in horror, the Indian government is furiously gyrating its hips, begging the US to set up its base in India rather than Pakistan. Having had this ringside view of Pakistan's sordid fate, it isn't just odd, it's unthinkable, that India should want to do this. Any third world country with a fragile economy and a complex social base should know by now that to invite a superpower such as America in (whether it says it's staying or just passing through) would be like inviting a brick to drop through your windscreen.
Operation Enduring Freedom is ostensibly being fought to uphold the American Way of Life. It'll probably end up undermining it completely. It will spawn more anger and more terror across the world. For ordinary people in America, it will mean lives lived in a climate of sickening uncertainty: will my child be safe in school? Will there be nerve gas in the subway? A bomb in the cinema hall? Will my love come home tonight? There have been warnings about the possibility of biological warfare - smallpox, bubonic plague, anthrax - the deadly payload of innocuous crop-duster aircraft. Being picked off a few at a time may end up being worse than being annihilated all at once by a nuclear bomb.
The US government, and no doubt governments all over the world, will use the climate of war as an excuse to curtail civil liberties, deny free speech, lay off workers, harass ethnic and religious minorities, cut back on public spending and divert huge amounts of money to the defence industry. To what purpose? President Bush can no more "rid the world of evil-doers" than he can stock it with saints. It's absurd for the US government to even toy with the notion that it can stamp out terrorism with more violence and oppression. Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease. Terrorism has no country. It's transnational, as global an enterprise as Coke or Pepsi or Nike. At the first sign of trouble, terrorists can pull up stakes and move their "factories" from country to country in search of a better deal. Just like the multi-nationals.
Terrorism as a phenomenon may never go away. But if it is to be contained, the first step is for America to at least acknowledge that it shares the planet with other nations, with other human beings who, even if they are not on TV, have loves and griefs and stories and songs and sorrows and, for heaven's sake, rights. Instead, when Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, was asked what he would call a victory in America's new war, he said that if he could convince the world that Americans must be allowed to continue with their way of life, he would consider it a victory.
The September 11 attacks were a monstrous calling card from a world gone horribly wrong. The message may have been written by Bin Laden (who knows?) and delivered by his couriers, but it could well have been signed by the ghosts of the victims of America's old wars. The millions killed in Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia, the 17,500 killed when Israel - backed by the US - invaded Lebanon in 1982, the 200,000 Iraqis killed in Operation Desert Storm, the thousands of Palestinians who have died fighting Israel's occupation of the West Bank. And the millions who died, in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Panama, at the hands of all the terrorists, dictators and genocidists whom the American government supported, trained, bankrolled and supplied with arms. And this is far from being a comprehensive list.
For a country involved in so much warfare and conflict, the American people have been extremely fortunate. The strikes on September 11 were only the second on American soil in over a century. The first was Pearl Harbour. The reprisal for this took a long route, but ended with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This time the world waits with bated breath for the horrors to come.
Someone recently said that if Osama bin Laden didn't exist, America would have had to invent him. But, in a way, America did invent him. He was among the jihadis who moved to Afghanistan in 1979 when the CIA commenced its operations there. Bin Laden has the distinction of being created by the CIA and wanted by the FBI. In the course of a fortnight he has been promoted from suspect to prime suspect and then, despite the lack of any real evidence, straight up the charts to being "wanted dead or alive".
From all accounts, it will be impossible to produce evidence (of the sort that would stand scrutiny in a court of law) to link Bin Laden to the September 11 attacks. So far, it appears that the most incriminating piece of evidence against him is the fact that he has not condemned them.
From what is known about the location of Bin Laden and the living conditions in which he operates, it's entirely possible that he did not personally plan and carry out the attacks - that he is the inspirational figure, "the CEO of the holding company". The Taliban's response to US demands for the extradition of Bin Laden has been uncharacteristically reasonable: produce the evidence, then we'll hand him over. President Bush's response is that the demand is "non-negotiable".
But who is Osama bin Laden really? Let me rephrase that. What is Osama bin Laden? He's America's family secret. He is the American president's dark doppelgänger. The savage twin of all that purports to be beautiful and civilised. He has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid to waste by America's foreign policy: its gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear arsenal, its vulgarly stated policy of "full-spectrum dominance", its chilling disregard for non-American lives, its barbarous military interventions, its support for despotic and dictatorial regimes, its merciless economic agenda that has munched through the economies of poor countries like a cloud of locusts. Its marauding multinationals who are taking over the air we breathe, the ground we stand on, the water we drink, the thoughts we think. Now that the family secret has been spilled, the twins are blurring into one another and gradually becoming interchangeable. Their guns, bombs, money and drugs have been going around in the loop for a while. (The Stinger missiles that will greet US helicopters were supplied by the CIA. The heroin used by America's drug addicts comes from Afghanistan. The Bush administration recently gave Afghanistan a $43m subsidy for a "war on drugs"....)
Strive
from the round of births and life in eternity is the goal of man.
O man! Wake up from this slumber of ignorance. Why do you waste your
the pearl of atman. You will be freed from birth and death here and
Remember the goal every moment of this life. Strive incessantly to
good and do good so that each tomorrow will find you farther than
Become wise. Whoever does anything with enthusiasm, patience and
Seek the company of saints and devotees. Control the mind. Control
Living
[Education for Living|http://www.asis.com/education-for-living/]
[Vedic way to healthy living|http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mp/2002/09/02/stories/2002090200120300.htm]
Test
|Sri Sri Ravi Shankar : <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1885289391/carnaticcom">Celebrating Silence<br /><img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1885289391.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" border="0" alt="cover" hspace="3" vspace="3"/></a>
|<a href=http://www.research.att.com/~north/cgi-bin/webdot.cgi/http://downloads.weblogger.com/gems/kishore/people.dot.map><img src=http://www.research.att.com/~north/cgi-bin/webdot.cgi/http://downloads.weblogger.com/gems/kishore/people.dot.gif ismap></a>
Nuts
[Google Directory Nuts and Seeds|http://directory.google.com/Top/Home/Cooking/Nuts_and_Seeds/]
Global Village
If we could shrink the Earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the human ratio's remaining the same, it would look something like the following:
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both North & South á
11 would be homosexual
á 6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the US
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would own a computer
Music
[VK's Notes and Chords for Tamil Songs|http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Ridge/4694/keyboard-class/tamil/notes-new.htm]
[Tamil Marriage Songs (kalyaana paadalgal)|http://forumhub.com/tlit/1583.23.58.26.html]
Azim Premji's Success Recipe
[source|http://www.rediff.com/money/2001/jul/27wipro.htm]
I am privileged to be with you here today and to share this significant moment of your life.
The convocation marks the culmination of all the endless nights you worked through, all the anxieties you have gone through facing one examination after another and all the preparation you have put in, not only to enter this prestigious institution but also to graduate from it successfully. It is no mean achievement.
And the world is very different from what it was when I was at your age. Never before has the role of technology been so pervasive and so central. The Internet has breached all physical borders and connected the world together like no other force has done before.
All opportunities are accompanied by their own challenges. I thought I would share with you a few of the lessons I have learnt in my own life, while loading the transformation at Wipro, from a small company three and a half decades back into a global corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange. I hope you find them useful.
When I entered Wipro at the age of 21, it was a sudden and unexpected event. I had no warning of what lay ahead of me and I was caught completely unprepared. All I had with me was a dream.
A dream of building a great Organisation. It compensated for my inexperience and I guess, also prevented me from being overwhelmed by the enormity of the task before me.
What I am happy is that we never stopped dreaming. Even when we achieved a position of leadership in every business we operated in India. We now have a dream of becoming one of the top 10 global it service companies.
Many people wonder whether having unrealistic dreams is foolish. My reply to that is dreams by themselves can never be realistic or safe. If they were, they would not be dreams. I do agree that one must have strategies to execute dreams. And, of course, one must slog to transform dreams into reality. But dreams come first.
What saddens me most is to see young, bright people getting completely disillusioned by a few initial setbacks and slowly turning cynical and some of them want to migrate to America in the hope this is the solution.
While success is important, it can become enduring only if it is built on a strong foundation of Values. Define what you stand for as early as possible and do not compromise with it for any reason. Nobody can enjoy the fruits of success if you have to argue with your own conscience.
In Wipro, we defined our Beliefs long before it became a fashion to do so. It not only helped us in becoming more resilient to stand up to crises we faced along the way, but it also helped us in attracting the right kind of people.
All the available knowledge in the world is accelerating at a phenomenal rate. The whole world's codified knowledge base (all documented information in library books and electronic files) doubled every 30 years in the early 20th century.
Remaining on top of what you need to know will become one of the greatest challenges for you.
There is a tremendous difference between being good and being excellent in whatever you do. In the world of tomorrow, just being good is not good enough.
One of the greatest advantages of globalisation is that it has brought in completely different standards. Being the best in the country is not enough; one has to be the best in the world. Excellence is a moving target. One has to constantly raise the bar.
In the knowledge-based industries, India has the unique advantage of being a quality leader. just like japan was able to win in the overseas market with its quality leadership in automobile manufacturing, india has been able to do the same in information technology.
At Wipro, we treat quality as the #1 priority. This enabled us not only to become the world's first SEI CMM Level 5 software services company in the world but also a leader in Six Sigma approach to quality in India.
However, even today I am dissatisfied with several things which we are not doing right in the area of customer satisfaction.
Doing something excellently has its own intrinsic joy, which I think is the greatest benefit of Quality.
Self-confidence comes from a positive attitude even in adverse situations. Self-confident people assume responsibility for their mistakes and share credit with their team members.
The challenges ahead are so complex that no individual will be able to face them alone. While most of our education is focused in individual strength, teaming with others is equally important. You cannot fire a missile from a canoe. Unless you build a strong network of people with complimentary skills, you will be restricted by your own limitations.
Globalisation has brought in people of different origin, different upbringing and different cultures together. Ability to become an integral part of a cross-cultural team will be a must for your success.
I have myself found that my job has become enormously more complex over the last two or three years. Along with mutual alertness, physical fitness will also assume a great importance in your life.
Finally, no matter what you decide to do in your life, you must persevere. Keep at it and you will succeed, no matter how hopeless it seems at times. In the last three and half decades, we have gone through many difficult times. But we have found that if we remain true to what we believe in, we can surmount every difficulty that comes in the way.
When she heard daddy say to her tearful mother with whispered desperation, 'Only a miracle can save him now', the child went to her bedroom and pulled a glass jar from its hiding place in the closet.
Clutching the precious jar tightly, she slipped out the back door and made her way six blocks to the local drug Store. She took a quarter from her jar and placed it on the glass counter.
"His name is Andrew and he has something bad growing inside his head and my daddy says only a miracle can save him. So how much does a miracle cost?"
"Listen, I have the money to pay for it. If it isn't enough, I can try and get some more. Just tell me how much it costs."
In the shop was a well-dressed customer. He stooped down and asked the little girl, "What kind of a miracle does you brother need?"
"I don't know," she replied with her eyes welling up. "He's really sick and mommy says he needs an operation. But my daddy can't pay for it, so I have brought my savings".
"How much do you have?" asked the man. "One dollar and eleven cents, but I can try and get some more", she answered barely audibly.
That well-dressed man was Dr Carlton Armstrong, a surgeon, specialising in neuro-surgery. The operation was completed without charge and it wasn't long before Andrew was home again and doing well.
"That surgery," her mom whispered, "was a real miracle. I wonder how much it would have cost?"
For decades we have been waiting for some one who will help us in 'priming the pump' of the economy.
In the millennium of the mind, knowledge-based industries like Information Technology are in a unique position to earn wealth from outside. While earning is important, we must have mechanisms by which we use it for the larger good of our society.
Through the Azim Premji Foundation, we have targeted over the next 12 months to enrol over a million children, who are out of school due to economic or social reasons.
The moment we allow success to build a feeling or arrogance, we become vulnerable to making bad judgements.
I suffer immensely from loneliness....
[Articles] > I suffer immensely from loneliness....
The darkness of loneliness cannot be fought directly. It is something essential for everyone to understand, that there are a few fundamental things which cannot be changed. This is one of the fundamentals: you cannot fight with darkness directly, with loneliness directly, with the fear of isolation directly. The reason is that all these things do not exist; they are simply absences of something, just as darkness is the absence of light.
Now what do you do when you want the room not to be dark? You don't do anything directly with darkness -- or do you? You cannot push it out. There is no possible way to make any arrangement so that the darkness disappears. You have to do something with the light. Now that changes the whole situation; and that's what I call one of the essentials, fundamentals. You don't even touch the darkness; you don't think about it. There is no point; it does not exist, it is simply an absence.
So just bring in light and you will not find darkness at all, because it was the absence of light, simply the absence of light -- not something material, with its own being, not something that exists. But simply because light was not there, you got a false feeling of the existence of darkness.
You can go on fighting with this darkness your whole life and you will not succeed, but just a small candle is enough to dispel it. You have to work for the light because it is positive, existential; it exists on it own. And once light comes, anything that was its absence automatically disappears.
Because you don't know your aloneness, there is fear. You feel lonely so you want to cling to something, to somebody, to some relationship, just to keep the illusion that you are not lonely. But you know you are -- hence the pain. On the one hand you are clinging to something which is not for real, which is just a temporary arrangement -- a relationship, a friendship.
And while you are in the relationship you can create a little illusion to forget your loneliness. But this is the problem: although you can forget for a moment your loneliness, just the next moment you suddenly become aware that the relationship or the friendship is nothing permanent. Yesterday you did not know this man or this woman, you were strangers. Today you are friends -- who knows about tomorrow? Tomorrow you may be strangers again -- hence the pain.
The illusion gives a certain solace, but it cannot create the reality so that all fear disappears. It represses the fear, so on the surface you feel good -- at least you try to feel good. You pretend to feel good to yourself: how wonderful is the relationship, how wonderful is the man or the woman. But behind the illusion -- and the illusion is so thin that you can see behind it -- there is pain in the heart, because the heart knows perfectly well that tomorrow things may not be the same... and they are not the same.
Your whole life's experience supports that things go on changing. Nothing remains stable; you cannot cling to anything in a changing world. You wanted to make your friendship something permanent but your wanting is against the law of change, and that law is not going to make exceptions. It simply goes on doing its own thing. It will change -- everything.
It may take a little time for you to understand. You want this friend to be your friend forever, but tomorrow he turns into an enemy. Or simply -- "You get lost!" and he is no longer with you. Somebody else fills the gap who is a far superior being. Then suddenly you realize it was good that the other one got lost; otherwise you would have been stuck with him. But still the lesson never goes so deep that you stop asking for permanence.
You will start asking for permanence with this man, with this woman: now this should not change. You have not really learned the lesson that change is simply the very fabric of life. You have to understand it and go with it. Don't create illusions; they are not going to help. And everybody is creating illusions of different kinds.
He said, "Everybody changes. You cannot rely on anybody. And as you get older, only your money is yours. Nobody cares -- not even your son, not even your wife. If you have money they all care, they all respect you, because you have money. If you don't have money you become a beggar."
His saying that the only thing in the world to trust is money comes out of a long experience of life, of getting cheated again and again by the people he trusted -- and he thought they loved him but they were all around him for the money.
"But," I told him, "at the moment of death money is not going to be with you. You can have an illusion that at least money is with you, but as your breathing stops, money is no longer with you. You have earned something but it will be left on this side; you cannot carry it beyond death. You will fall into a deep loneliness which you have been hiding behind the facade of money."
There are people who are after power, but the reason is the same: when they are in power so many people are with them, millions of people are under their domination. They are not alone. They are great political and religious leaders. But power changes. One day you have it, another day it is gone, and suddenly the whole illusion disappears. You are lonely as nobody else is, because others are accustomed to being lonely. You are not accustomed... your loneliness hurts you more.
Society has tried to make arrangements so you can forget loneliness. Arranged marriages are just an effort so that you know your wife is with you. All religions resist divorce for the simple reason that if divorce is allowed then the basic purpose marriage was invented for is destroyed. The basic purpose was to give you a companion, a lifelong companion.
But even though a wife will be with you or a husband will be with you for your whole life, that does not mean that love remains the same. In fact, rather than giving you a companion, they give you a burden to carry. You were lonely, already in trouble, and now you have to carry another person who is lonely. And in this life there is no hope, because once love disappears you both are lonely, and both have to tolerate each other. Now it is not a question of being enchanted by each other; at the most you can patiently tolerate each other. Your loneliness has not been changed by the social strategy of marriage.
Man has come of age, and God has become meaningless. The hypothesis has lost its grip.
What I am trying to say is that every effort that has been directed towards avoiding loneliness has failed, and will fail, because it is against the fundamentals of life. What is needed is not something in which you can forget your loneliness. What is needed is that you become aware of your aloneness, which is a reality. And it is so beautiful to experience it, to feel it, because it is your freedom from the crowd, from the other. It is your freedom from the fear of being lonely.
Just the word "lonely" immediately reminds you that it is like a wound: something is needed to fill it. There is a gap and it hurts: something needs to be filled in. The very word "aloneness" does not have the same sense of a wound, of a gap which has to be filled. Aloneness simply means completeness. You are whole; there is no need of anybody else to complete you.
So try to find your innermost center, where you are always alone, have always been alone. In life, in death -- wherever you are you will be alone. But it is so full -- it is not empty, it is so full and so complete and so overflowing with all the juices of life, with all the beauties and benedictions of existence, that once you have tasted aloneness the pain in the heart will disappear. Instead, a new rhythm of tremendous sweetness, peace, joy, bliss, will be there.
It does not mean that a man who is centered in his aloneness, complete in himself, cannot make friends -- in fact only he can make friends, because now it is no longer a need, it is just sharing. He has so much; he can share.
Friendship can be of two types. One is a friendship in which you are a beggar -- you need something from the other to help your loneliness -- and the other is also a beggar; he wants the same from you. And naturally two beggars cannot help each other. Soon they will see that their begging from a beggar has doubled or multiplied the need. Instead of one beggar, now there are two. And if, unfortunately, they have children, then there are a whole company of beggars who are asking -- and nobody has anything to give.
The other kind of friendship, the other kind of love, has a totally different quality. It is not of need, it is out of having so much that you want to share. A new kind of joy has come into your being -- that of sharing, which you were not ever aware of before. You have always been begging.
When you share, there is no question of clinging. You flow with existence, you flow with life's change, because it doesn't matter with whom you share. It can be the same person tomorrow -- the same person for your whole life -- or it can be different persons. It is not a contract, it is not a marriage; it is simply out of your fullness that you want to give. So whosoever happens to be near you, you give it. And giving is such a joy.
Begging is such a misery. Even if you get something through begging, you will remain miserable. It hurts. It hurts your pride, it hurts your integrity. But sharing makes you more centered, more integrated, more proud, but not more egoistic -- more proud that existence has been compassionate to you. It is not ego; it is a totally different phenomenon... a recognition that existence has allowed you something for which millions of people are trying, but at the wrong door. You happen to be at the right door.
You can love a person, and if the person loves somebody else there will not be any jealousy, because you loved out of so much joy. It was not a clinging. You were not holding the other person in prison. You were not worried that the other person may slip out of your hands, that somebody else may start having a love affair...
So if anybody is thankful, you are thankful to the person who has accepted your love, who has accepted your gift. He has unburdened you, he allowed you to shower on him. And the more you share, the more you give, the more you have. So it does not make you a miser, it does not create a new fear that "I may lose it." In fact the more you lose it, the more fresh waters are flowing in from springs you have not been aware of before.
Forget loneliness, forget darkness, forget pain. These are just the absence of aloneness. The experience of aloneness will dispel them instantly. And the method is the same: just watch your mind, be aware. Become more and more conscious, so finally you are only conscious of yourself. That is the point where you become aware of aloneness.
You will be surprised that different religions have given different names to the ultimate state of realization. The three religions born outside of India don't have any name for it because they never went far in the search for oneself. They remained childish, immature, clinging to a God, clinging to prayer, clinging to a savior. You can see what I mean: they are always dependent -- somebody else is to save them. They are not mature. Judaism, Christianity, Islam -- they are not mature at all and perhaps that is the reason they have influenced the greatest majority in the world, because most of the people in the world are immature. They have a certain affinity.
But the three religions in India have three names for this ultimate state. And I remembered this because of the word aloneness. Jainism has chosen kaivalya, aloneness, as the ultimate state of being. Just as Buddhism chose nirvana, no-selfness, and Hinduism chose moksha, freedom, Jainism chose absolute aloneness. All three words are beautiful. They are three different aspects of the same reality. You can call it liberation, freedom; you can call it aloneness; you can call it selflessness, nothingness -- just different indicators towards that ultimate experience for which no name is sufficient.
There is no door; there is only darkness, there is only absence. And the more they fight, the more they find failure, the more they become dejected, pessimistic ... and ultimately they start finding that life has no meaning, that it is simply torture. But their mistake is they entered from the wrong door.
So before you face a problem, just look at the problem: is it an absence of something? And all your problems are the absence of something. And once you have found what they are the absence of, then go after the positive. And the moment you find the positive, the light -- the darkness is finished.
Why so much conflict between the different religions?
The world seems to be getting more and more crazy from day to day. nobody knows what is going on and everything is upside down and confused. this is what is told in the newspapers. is it real? and if so, is there any intrinsic balance in life which is keeping everything stable?
The world is the same; it has always been the same -- upside down, crazy, insane. In fact, only one thing new has happened in the world, and that is the awareness that we are crazy, that we are upside down, that something is basically wrong with us. And this is a great blessing -- this awareness. Of course it is only a beginning, just the abc of a long process, just a seed, but immensely pregnant. The world was never so aware of its insane ways as it is today. It has always been the same. In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars.
And all these religions were promising the people, "If you die in a religious war, your heaven is absolutely certain. Killing in war is not sin; being killed in war is a great virtue." This is sheer stupidity! But ten thousand years of conditioning has seeped deep into the blood, into the bones, in the very marrow of humanity. Each religion, each country, each race was claiming, "We are the chosen people of God. We are the highest; everyone is lower than us." This is insanity, and everybody has suffered because of it.
Jews have suffered immensely for one single folly that they committed: the idea that "We are the chosen people of God." Once you have the idea that you are the chosen people of God, then you cannot be forgiven by others because they are also the chosen people of God, and how to decide it? No argument can be conclusive, and nobody knows where God is hiding so you cannot ask him either; he cannot be brought in the court to be a witness. Then only the sword is going to decide. Whosoever is mighty is going to be right. Might has been right. Jews really suffered for centuries, but the suffering has not changed them. In fact it has strengthened the idea that they are the chosen people of God.
And the rabbi was not asking for anything; otherwise there was a way out. If he had been asking for something it would have been given and the rabbi would have been told, "Get lost!" But he was not asking for anything, just praying. Finally God asked him, "Why do you go on torturing me? What do you want?" And the old rabbi said, "Just one thing. Is it not time for you to choose some other people? Please, make some other people your chosen people. We have suffered enough!"
But this is not only so with the Christians, Jews, Mohammedans and Hindus; it is exactly the same with all the people that have existed up to now. The racial ego, the religious ego, the spiritual ego is far more dangerous than the individual ego, because the individual ego is gross. You can see it -- everybody can see it, it is so visible on the surface. But when the ego becomes racial -- "Hinduism is great" -- you don't think you are claiming anything for yourself. Indirectly you are claiming, "I am great because I am a Hindu, and Hinduism is great." This is an indirect way, a subtle, cunning way: "I am great because I am a Japanese, because Japanese are the direct descendants of the sun God"; or, "I am a Chinese and the Chinese are the most civilized people, the most cultured."
Even the emperor of China was very much interested in seeing the Europeans because he had heard many stories about them. They were invited to his court, not because he respected the Europeans, but just to see what kind of people these were. Never before...! And he could not contain his laughter; he started laughing when he saw the Europeans. The Europeans were very much embarrassed: "Why is he laughing?" They were told, "That is his way of appreciating. He always laughs, enjoys; that is his way of welcoming the guests." But the reality was that he could not believe that these are human beings!
He asked his people, "Have you brought them from African jungles? They look like monkeys!" That's how the ego functions: the other is always reduced to the lowest possible; and compared to the other, one raises oneself higher. You say, "The world seems to be getting more and more crazy from day to day." That is not right; it has always been so.
Only one thing new is happening, and that is a blessing, not a curse at all. For the first time in the whole history of humanity, a few people are becoming aware that the way we have existed up to now is somehow wrong; something basically is missing in our very foundation.
There is something which does not allow us to grow into sane human beings. In our very conditioning are the seeds of insanity. Every child is born sane, and then, slowly slowly, we civilize him -- we call it the process of civilization. We prepare him to become part of the great culture, the great church, the great state to which we belong.
Our whole politics is stupid, and then he becomes stupid. Our whole education is ugly. Our politics means nothing but ambition, naked ambition -- ambition for power. And only the lowest kind of people become interested in power. Only the people who are suffering from a deep inferiority complex become politicians. They want to prove that they are not inferior; they want to prove it to others, they want to prove to themselves that they are not inferior, they are superior.
Adolf Hitler was mad, but nobody in Germany dared to say it. Many felt that he was mad, but the moment he was defeated and committed suicide, many people started writing that they had always felt it. Even his own physicians who had never dared to tell the person himself -- at least they were supposed to say the truth, they were the physicians -- they had not said that he was sick, badly sick, and not only physiologically but psychologically too.
He suffered from many nightmares, he was constantly afraid of being killed. He was obsessed with the idea that he was going to be killed, so much so that he never got married. He got married only when he had decided to commit suicide, just three hours before. To avoid having a woman in the same room, he never got married -- because who knows, the woman may be a spy, an enemy, and while he is asleep she may kill him, poison him.
He never trusted even the woman he pretended to love. He had no friends, because to be friendly with someone means to trust, and he was so doubtful. The politicians are insane, the priests are insane too....
Humanity has always been insane. It has always remained upside down and confused, because you have been brought up on lies. But one thing good is happening today: at least a few intelligent young people are becoming aware that our whole past has been wrong and it needs a radical change. "We need a discontinuity from our past. We want to start afresh, we need to start afresh. The whole past has been an experiment in utter futility!"
Once we accept the truth as it is, man can become sane. Man is born sane; we drive him crazy. Once we accept that there are no nations and no races, man will become very calm and quiet. All this continuous violence and aggression will disappear. If we accept man's body, its sexuality, naturally, then all kinds of stupidities preached in the name of religion will evaporate.
Ninety-nine percent of psychological diseases exist because of man's sexual repression. We have to make man free of his past. That's my whole work here: to help you to get rid of the past. Whatsoever the society has done to you has to be undone. Your consciousness has to be cleaned, emptied so that you can become like a pure mirror reflecting reality. To be able to reflect reality is to know God. God is just another name for reality: that which is. And a man is really sane when he knows the truth.
Come, Come, Yet Again Come, chapter 12
I often panic, and worry that I might go mad....
The basic thing to be understood is that you are not the mind -- neither the bright one nor the dark one. If you get identified with the beautiful part, then it is impossible to disidentify yourself from the ugly part; they are two sides of the same coin. You can have it whole, or you can throw it away whole, but you cannot divide it.
The moment you are not choosing, all worry disappears. A great acceptance arises, that this is how the mind has to be, this is the nature of the mind -- and it is not your problem, because you are not the mind. If you were the mind, there would have been no problem at all. Then who would choose and who would think of transcending? And who would try to accept and understand acceptance?
But you are being an observer who gets identified with anything that he finds pleasant -- and forgets that the unpleasant is coming just behind it as a shadow. You are not troubled by the pleasant side -- you rejoice in it. The trouble comes when the polar opposite asserts -- then you are torn apart.
But you started the whole trouble. Falling from being just a witness, you became identified. The biblical story of the fall is just a fiction. But this is the real fall -- the fall from being a witness into getting identified with something and losing your witnessing.
Just try once in a while: Let the mind be whatever it is. Remember, you are not it. And you are going to have a great surprise. As you are less identified, the mind starts becoming less powerful, because its power comes from your identification; it sucks your blood. But when you start standing aloof and away, the mind starts shrinking.
The day you are completely unidentified with the mind, even for a single moment, there is the revelation: mind simply dies; it is no longer there. Where it was so full, where it was so continuous -- day in, day out, waking, sleeping, it was there -- suddenly it is not there. You look all around and it is emptiness, it is nothingness.
And with the mind disappears the self. Then there is only a certain quality of awareness, with no "I" in it. At the most you can call it something similar to "am-ness," but not "I-ness." To be even more exact, it is "is-ness" because even in am-ness some shadow of the "I" is still there. The moment you know its is-ness, it has become universal.
With the disappearance of the mind disappears the self. And so many things disappear which were so important to you, so troublesome to you. You were trying to solve them and they were becoming more and more complicated; everything was a problem, an anxiety, and there seemed to be no way out.
The master tells the disciple to meditate on a koan: A small goose is put into a bottle, fed and nourished. The goose goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger, and fills the whole bottle. Now it is too big; it cannot come out of the bottle's mouth -- the mouth is too small. And the koan is that you have to bring the goose out without destroying the bottle, without killing the goose.
What can you do? The goose is too big; you cannot take it out unless you break the bottle, but that is not allowed. Or you can bring it out by killing it; then you don't care whether it comes out alive or dead. That is not allowed either.
Day in, day out, the disciple meditates, finds no way, thinks this way and that way -- but in fact there is no way. Tired, utterly exhausted, a sudden revelation... suddenly he understands that the master cannot be interested in the bottle and the goose; they must represent something else. The bottle is the mind, you are the goose... and with witnessing, it is possible. Without being in the mind, you can become identified with it so much that you start feeling you are in it!
If you go on struggling with the goose and the bottle, there is no way for you to solve it. It is the realization that, "It must represent something else; otherwise the master cannot give it to me. And what can it be?" -- because the whole function between the master and the disciple, the whole business is about the mind and awareness.
Whether it is good, beautiful, delicious, something that you would like to enjoy closely, or it is ugly -- remain as far away as possible. Look at it just the way you look at a film. But people get identified even with films.
I have seen, when I was young... I have not seen any movie for a long time. But I have seen people weeping, tears coming down -- and nothing is happening! It is good that in a movie house it is dark; it saves them from feeling embarrassed. I used to ask my father, "Did you see? The fellow by your side was crying!"
"But," I said, "there is only a screen and nothing else. Nobody is killed, there is no tragedy happening -- just a projection of a film, just pictures moving on the screen. And people laugh, and people weep, and for three hours they are almost lost. They become part of the movie, they become identified with some character..."
I said, "I can enjoy the film, but I don't want to cry; I don't see any enjoyment in it. I can see it as a film, but I don't want to become a part of it. These people are all becoming a part of it."
My grandfather had an old barber who was an opium addict. For something which was possible to do in five minutes he would take two hours, and he would talk continuously. But they were old friends from their childhood. I can still see my grandfather sitting in the chair of the old barber... And he was a lovely talker. These opium addicts have a certain quality, a beauty of talking, telling stories about themselves, what is happening day-to-day; it is true.
I said to him one day, "About everything you go on saying, `Yes, right, it is great.' Sometimes he is talking nonsense, simply irrelevant."
In India razor blades are not used; things almost like six-inch long knives are used as razor blades. "Now what do you want me to say? -- with that man who has a knife, a sharp knife in his hand, just on my throat. To say no to him... he will kill me! And he knows it. He sometimes tells me, `You never say no. You always say yes, you always say great.' And I have told him, `You should understand that you are always under the influence of opium. It is impossible to talk with you, to discuss with you or to disagree with you. You have a knife on my throat, and you want me to say no to something?'"
I said, "Then why don't you change from this man? There are so many other barbers, and this man takes two hours for a five-minute job. Sometimes he takes half your beard and then he says, `I am coming back, you sit.' And he is gone for an hour, because he gets involved in a discussion with somebody and forgets completely that a customer is sitting in his chair. Then he comes and says, `My God, so you are still sitting here?'"
And my grandfather would say, "What can I do? I cannot go home with half the beard shaved. You just complete it. Where have you been?"
The barber would say, "I got in such a good argument with somebody that I completely forgot about you. It is good that that man had to go; otherwise you would have been sitting here the whole day. And sometimes I don't even close the shop at night. I simply go home, just forget to close, and once in a while a customer is still sitting in the chair and I am sleeping. Somebody has to say to him, `Now you can go; that man will not be seen again before tomorrow morning. He is fast asleep in his home. He has forgotten to close his shop and he has forgotten about you.'"
And if you were angry... Sometimes new people got into his shop, and became angry. He would say, "Calm down. At the most you need not pay me. I have cut only half of the beard; you can just go. I don't want to argue. You need not pay me; I don't ask even half payment."
This man was dangerous! But my grandfather used to say, "He is dangerous but he is lovely and I have become so much identified with him that I cannot conceive that if he dies before me I will be able to go to another barber's shop. I cannot conceive... for my whole life he has been my barber. The identity has become so deep that I may stop shaving my beard, but I cannot change my barber."
Love and God at Work
That is called compassion!
Saraswathi Poojai
Source http://www.vishuji.com/saraswathi.htm (which is not available sometimes !)
Shri Saraswathi is the Goddess of learning, who is divine knowledge personified. The sound of Her celestial veena awakens the notes of the sublime utterances of the sacred monosyllable, "OM". She bestows the knowledge of the supreme, mystic sound, clarity of thought and nobility of ideas as represented by Her pure dazzling white clothes, with the hands holding the veena and books seated on the white lotus.
OM Shuklam bharadharam Vishnum, Shashi Varnam chaturbhujam ! Prasanna Vadanam Dyayethe, Sarva Vighno Upashanth aye !!
Om boohu, Om bhuvaha, Oghum suvaha,
Om mahaha, Om janaha, Oghum satyam,
Om tat sa Vithurvarenyam
Om apaha, Jyothi rasa, amrutham brahma
Bhur bhuvasuvarom
OM Mamopaatha Samashta,
Om shri Maha Ganapataye namaha.
Om shri Gurubhyo namaha
!! OM Shri Saraswathyey namaha !!
Om shri saraswathyey Namaha ! Aavaahayaami !!
Om shri Saraswathyey Namah ! Aasanam Samarpayaami !!
OM Shri saraswathyey Namah ! Paadhyam samarpayaami !!
OM Shri Saraswathyey Namaha ! Arghyam Samarpayaami !!
OM Shri Saraswathyey Namaha ! Aachamanam Samarpayaami !!
OM Sri Saraswathyey Namaha ! Snaaneeyam Samarpayaami !!
OM Shri Saraswathyey Namaha Shubra Vastram Samarpayaami.
OM Shri Saraswathyey Namaha ! Gandham Samarpayaami !!
OM Shri Saraswathyey Namaha ! Akshathaan Samarpayaami !!
OM Shri Saraswathyey Namaha / Pushpaani Samarpayaami
1 OM Saraswathyey Namaha
2 OM Mahaabhadraayey Namaha
3 OM Mahaamaayaayey Namaha
4 OM Varapradaayey Namaha
5 OM Padmanilayaayey Namaha
6 OM Padmaakshyey Namaha
7 OM Pusthakabhruthey Namaha
8 OM Jnanamudraayey Namaha
9 OM Kamarupaayey Namaha
10 OM Mahaavidhyaayey Namaha
11 OM Mahaapaathaka Naashinyey Namaha
12 OM Vidhyaadhara Supujithaayey Namaha
OM Shri Saraswathyey Namaha !
Om shri Saraswathyey Namaha,
OM bhur bhuvasuvaha, that sa vithur varenyam
OM pranaaya swaha
OM Apaanaya swaha
OM Vyaanaya swaha
OM Udaanaaya swaha
OM Samaanaaya swaha
OM Brahmaney swaha
OM shri Saraswathyey Namaha !
Om sri Saraswathyey namaha !
OM sri Saraswathyey Namaha !
Karomi yadhyathu sakalam parasmey
OM thath Sath Brahmaarpana Mastu !!
------------ OM -------------
The real meaning of peace
[InspirationPeak|http://www.inspirationpeak.com]
Above was an angry sky, from which rain fell and in which lightning
Gayathri Mantram
[http://www.carnatic.com/images/gayatrimantra.jpg]
(source : http://www.angelfire.com/me2/sutras/ssrs.html)
([Source|http://www.vishuji.com/mornpray.htm])
Om Ekadanthaaya Vidhmahe, Vakratundaaya Dheemahi
Om Namashivaya Gayatri
Om thathpurushaaya Vidhmahe Mahadevaaya Dheemahi
Om Mahadevyai cha vidhmahe vishnu pathni cha dheemahi
Shri Mahalakshmi Ashtakam
([Source|http://www.vishuji.com/mornpray.htm])
AnnapoornaShothram
([Source|http://www.vishuji.com/mornpray.htm])
    Kaumaree Nigamartha gocharakaree omkara beejaakshari, !
Conversation of William Knott and Mr Watt.
A long pause, and then from Watt, "Is this
What is the meaning of Life?
Life in itself has no meaning. Life is an opportunity to create meaning. Meaning has not to be discovered: it has to be created. You will find meaning only if you create it. It is not lying there somewhere behind the bushes, so you can go and you search a little bit and find it. It is not there like a rock that you will find. It is a poetry to be composed, it is a song to be sung, it is a dance to be danced.
So remember: Buddha finds the meaning because he creates it. I found it because I created it. God is not a thing but a creation. And only those who create find. And it is good that meaning is not lying there somewhere, otherwise one person would have discovered it -- then what would be the need for everybody else to discover it?
Buddha also discovered something, Zarathustra also discovered something, but it is not like Albert Einstein's discovery. It is not there that you have just to follow Zarathustra and his map and you will find it. You will never find it. You will have to become a Zarathustra. See the difference!
To understand the theory of relativity, you need not become an Albert Einstein, no. You have to be just of average intelligence, that's all. If you are not too much retarded, you will understand it.
But to understand the meaning of Zarathustra, you will have to become a Zarathustra -- less than that won't do. You will have to create it again. And each individual has to give birth to God, to meaning, to truth; each man has to become pregnant with it and pass through the pains of birth. Each one has to carry it in one's womb, feed it by one's own blood, and only then does one discover.
You must be waiting passively for the meaning to come... it will never come. This has been the idea of the past religions, that the meaning is already there. It is not! Freedom is there to create it, energy is there to create it. The field is there to sow the seeds and reap the crop. All is there -- but the meaning has to be created. That's why to create it is such a joy, such an adventure, such an ecstasy.
Now, I tell you, this has to be asked: Praise a man because he has created a song. Praise a man because he has created a beautiful sculpture. Praise a man because he plays such a beautiful flute. Let these be religious qualities from now onwards. Praise a man because he is such a lover -- love is religion. Praise a man: because of him the world is becoming more graceful.
Meaning comes out of creativity. Religion has to become more poetic, more aesthetic.
And second thing: sometimes it happens that you search for the meaning because you have already concluded. Out of a conclusion you search for it. You have already decided what meaning should be there, or has to be there... and then you don't find it.
What meaning are you looking for? You must be looking for a certain meaning. You will not find it -- because from the very beginning your inquiry is polluted, your inquiry is impure. You have already decided.
For example, if a man comes into my garden and thinks if he can find a diamond there then this garden is beautiful, and he cannot find the diamond, so he says there is no meaning in the garden.... And there are so many beautiful flowers, and so many birds singing, and so many colors, and the wind blowing through the pines, and the moss on the rocks. But he cannot see any meaning because he has a certain idea: he has to find the diamond, a Kohinoor -- only then will there be meaning.
He is missing meaning because of his idea. Let your inquiry be pure. Don't move with any fixed idea. Go naked and nude. Go open and empty. And you will find not only one meaning -- you will find a thousand and one meanings. Then each thing will become meaningful. Just a colored stone shining in the rays of the sun... or a dewdrop creating a small rainbow around itself... or just a small flower dancing in the wind.... What meaning are you searching for?
Don't start with a conclusion, otherwise you have started wrongly from the very beginning. Go without a conclusion! That's what I mean when I say again and again: Go without knowledge if you want to find truth. The knowledgeable person never finds it. His knowledge is a barrier.
Meaning has to be created. And meaning has to be searched for without any conclusions. If you can drop your knowledge, life will suddenly take on color, it will become psychedelic. But you are continuously carrying the load of your scriptures, books, theories, doctrines, philosophies... you are lost in all that. And everything has become mixed, hotchpotch. And you cannot even remember what is what.
So many thoughts in the mind, mixed up; nothing seems to be clear; you have heard so many things from so many sources -- your mind is a monster. And you are trying to remember, and you have been told to remember: Don't forget! And, naturally, the burden is so much that you cannot remember. Many things you have forgotten. Many things you have imagined and added on your own.
"Here's to the happiest moment of my life,
"By Jove, that's ripping," the Englishman thought to himself. "I must remember to use it back home."
Some weeks later when he returned to England, he attended a church luncheon and was asked to give a toast. In thunderous tones he addressed the crowded room:
"Here's to the happiest moment of my life,
"By Jove," the speaker blurted out, "you will have to excuse me. I forgot the name of the "blooming" woman."
That is happening. You remember this -- Plato has said this. And you remember that -- Lao Tzu has said that. And you remember what Jesus has said, and what Mohammed has said... and you remember many things. And they have all got mixed up. And you have not said a single thing on your own. Unless you say something on your own, you will miss the meaning.
Drop the knowledge and become more creative. Remember, knowledge is gathered -- you need not be creative about it; you have only to be receptive. And that's what man has become: man is reduced to being a spectator. He reads the newspapers, he reads the Bible and the Koran and the Gita; he goes to the movie, sits there and sees the movie; he goes to the football match, or sits before his TV, listens to the radio... and so on and so forth. Twenty-four hours a day he is just in a kind of inactivity, a spectator. Others are doing things, and he is simply watching. You will not find meaning by watching.
You can see a thousand and one lovers making love and you will not know what love is -- you will not know that orgasmic abandonment by watching. You will have to become a participant. Meaning comes through participation. Participate in life! Participate as deeply, as totally, as possible. Risk all for participation. If you want to know what dance is, don't go and see a dancer -- learn dancing, be a dancer. If you want to know anything, participate! That is the true and the right way, the authentic way, to know a thing. And there will be great meaning in your life. And not only one-dimensional -- multi-dimensional meanings. You will be showered by meanings.
Somebody becomes an engineer, and then he thinks all is finished. He becomes identified with being an engineer. Then his whole life he is just an engineer. And there were millions of things available. But he moves only on one track, becomes bored. Is fed up. Is tired, wearied. Goes on dragging. Waits only for death. What meaning can there be?
Have more interests in life. Don't be always a businessman. Sometimes play too. Don't be just a doctor or an engineer, or a headmaster, or a professor -- be as many things as possible! Play cards, play the violin, sing a song, be an amateur photographer, a poet.... Find as many things as possible in life, and then you will have richness. And meaning is a by-product of richness.
He had never played on the flute. Something inside him persisted, "Socrates, make music!" Just in the face of death! It looked so ridiculous. And he had never played, he had never made music. A part of his being had remained suffocated. Yes, even a man like Socrates, had remained one-dimensional. The denied part insisted, "Enough of logic -- a little music will be good, will bring balance. Enough of argumentation -- play on the flute." And the voice was so persistent that he had to yield to it.
His disciples must have been puzzled: "Has he gone mad? Socrates playing on the flute?" But to me it is very significant. The music could not have been very great, because he had never played. Absolutely amateurish, childish it must have been -- but still something was satisfied, something was bridged. He was no more one-sided. For the first time in his life, maybe, he was spontaneous. For the first time he had done something for which he could not supply any reason. Otherwise, he was a rational man.
It was a holiday, and the Hassidim had gathered to pray and to have a communion -- sat sang -- with the Master.
A man had come with his retarded child. He was a little worried about the child, the boy. He may do something, so he was keeping an eye on the boy. When the prayers were said, the boy asked his father, "I have got a whistle -- can I play on it?"
Don't allow your life to become just a dead ritual. Let there be moments, unexplainable. Let there be a few things which are mysterious, for which you cannot supply any reason. Let there be a few doings for which people will think you are a little crazy. A man who is a hundred percent sane is dead. A little bit of craziness by the side is always a great joy. Go on doing a few crazy things too. And then meaning will be posible.
Moving from anger into sadness...
[Articles] > Moving from anger into sadness...
Osho, I can feel myself moving from anger into sadness. I don't know whether I should try and get the anger out or just let it explode inside.
Anger and sadness are both the same. Sadness is passive anger and anger is active sadness. Because sadness comes easy, anger seems to be difficult. because you are too much in tune with the passive.
In all our emotions the basic polarity continues -- of man and woman, yin and yang, the male and the female. Anger is male, sadness is female. So if you are in tune with sadness, it is difficult to shift to anger, but I would like you to shift. Just exploding it within won't help much because again you are seeking some way of being passive. No. Bring it out, act it out. Even if it looks nonsense, then too. Be a buffoon in your own eyes, but bring it out.
If you can float between anger and sadness, both become similarly easy. You will have a transcendence and then you will be able to watch. You can stand behind the screen and watch these games, and then you can go beyond both. But first you have to be moving easily between these two. otherwise you tend to be sad and when one is heavy, transcendence is difficult.
Remember, when two energies, opposite energies, are exactly alike, fifty-fifty, then it is very easy to get out of them, because they are fighting and cancelling each other and you are not in anybody's grip. Your sadness and your anger are fifty-fifty, equal energies, so they cancel each other. Suddenly you have freedom and you can slip out. But if sadness is seventy percent and anger thirty percent, then it is very difficult. Thirty percent anger in contrast with seventy percent sadness means forty percent sadness will still be there and it will not be possible; you will not be capable of easily slipping out. That forty percent will hang over you.
So this is one of the basic laws of inner energies -- to always let the opposite polarities come to an equal status, and then you are able to slip out of them. It is as if two persons are fighting and you can escape. They are so engaged with themselves that you need not worry, and you can escape. Don't bring the mind in. Just make it an exercise.
You can make it an everyday exercise; forget about waiting for it to come. Every day you have to be angry -- that will be easier. So jump, jog. scream, and bring it. Once you can bring it for no reason at all, you will be very happy because now you have a freedom. Otherwise even anger is dominated by situations. You are not a master of it. If you cannot bring it, how can you drop it?
But if you can bring it.... And it is always available, just by the comer, you just have to pull it in. It comes easily when anybody provides an excuse. Somebody insults you -- it is there. So why wait for the insult? Why be dominated by the other? Why can't you bring it yourself? Bring it yourself!
In the beginning it looks a little awkward, strange, unbelievable, because you have always believed in the theory that it is somebody else whose insult has created the anger. That's not true. Anger has always been there; somebody has just given an excuse for it to come up. You can give yourself an excuse. Imagine a situation in which you would have been angry, and become angry. Talk to the wall and say things, and soon the wall will be talking to you. Just go completely crazy. You have to bring anger and sadness to a similar status, where they are exactly proportionate to each other. They will cancel each other out and you can slip away.
Why do you contradict yourself?
Osho, I know that you love contradictions. A lot of it I can accept now as two sides of one coin. But today after lecture some questions still arose. On the one side you say the good and the bad are two sides of the same coin and both have to be and the one can't be without the other. On the other side you want to create a better world with your sannyasins. On the one side you tell us not to think in terms of the future. On the other side you are talking about the coming third world war. On the one side you tell us not to wish anything. On the other side it seems you want to avoid the third world war. On the one side you say things are okay as they are, there is no goal, nothing to achieve, to change. On the other side: what are you doing here? What are we doing here? I can feel there is an answer, but I can't point it out. Can you?
It is not that I love contradictions: life is contradictory. Existence itself is possible only through contradictions. It is the mind that has been trained in Aristotelian logic that becomes disturbed because of contradictions. The Aristotelian logic gives you a linear mind, a one-dimensional mind. It says: A can only be A and can never be B, and B can only be B and can never be A, and for two thousand years our minds have been conditioned by this logic.
This logic never had any sway over the mystics, and now even scientists are escaping from the Aristotelian prison. If you want to be true to life you cannot be a follower of Aristotle; to be true to life you will have to say things as they are. If you want to be true to Aristotle then you will have to repress a few things of life, deny, at least avoid, not look at them, choose only what fits with your logic.
The whole world has existed up to now according to one-dimensional logic -- and existence is multi-dimensional, it is rooted in contradictions. In fact, to call it a contradiction is again to use a word from Aristotle.
The mystics use the word "paradox," not "contradiction." In the very word "contradiction" there is condemnation: something is wrong, something has to be put right. But a paradox is a totally different phenomenon: nothing has to be put right. A paradox is a mystery, elusive, inexplicable.
Your problem, Suresh, is that you suffer from Aristotelitis. It is one of the most deep-rooted diseases.
It is not so that I love contradictions. What can I do? Contradictions are there! If I have to be true to the totality of existence I have to love them, otherwise something will have to be denied. And the moment you deny something you miss something immensely valuable, and the denial will never allow you to know the whole. And only the whole is true; the parts are only parts. They have some meaning only in the context of the whole; in themselves they are meaningless.
Aristotle is very absolutistic: A is absolutely A and never B, man is absolutely man and never a woman. He believes in the absolutes, and Einstein brought the idea of relativity. He said absolutes don't exist; there are only relative things. A man is relatively more a man than a woman and a woman is relatively more a woman than a man, but the question is not one of absolute distinction -- they overlap. And you may be a man in the morning and you may not be a man by the evening; you may be a woman in the evening and you may not be a woman by the morning. You are not one-sided, you have many sides.
Have you not seen a woman in anger? Then she is more masculine than any male. And have you not seen a man when he is in love? -- his tenderness, his feminineness. He is more feminine than any woman can ever be. When a woman is in anger, enraged, her whole denied part starts functioning, and the denied part is very vital and alive because it has never been used.
The customer was a little puzzled. He said, "What do you mean? Do you mean that the politician has a greater brain than a great, Nobel prize-winning scientist?"
Whatsoever is not used and denied in you remains very vital. Hence a woman enraged is far more dangerous than a man; and if you have been in relationship with a woman you know it perfectly well -- she can drive you crazy! because that is the denied part, the unused part. When it is used it has vitality, newness. And when a man is tender, loving, he is more tender and loving than a woman. He can be more womanly because that is his denied part.
Carl Gustav Jung accepted that man is bi-sexual: no man is simply man and no woman is simply woman. Man has a woman part, a very intrinsic part, and woman has a man inside her, very intrinsic. Now this is a totally different world: old categories lose meaning, old absolutes disappear.
And then came the theory of uncertainty -- because up to now science was aware only of the superficial world of matter. It has not penetrated into the mysteries of matter as mystics have done in the inner world; they have penetrated into the mysteries of consciousness. And when they penetrated the mysteries of consciousness they became aware that it is not Aristotelian at all. Sometimes A is A and sometimes A is B; and not only that -- that sometimes A is B -- there are times when A is both A and not A simultaneously.
Mahavira said that; his philosophy is known as saptabhangi -- sevenfold. He must have appeared a very strange man. You asked one question and he would always answer your one question with seven answers, because his philosophy was sevenfold. He said, "I have come to see the seven aspects of the inner world." You asked him, "Does God exist?" and he would say, "First: perhaps he exists. Second: perhaps he does not. Third: perhaps he exists and yet does not exist. And fourth: perhaps he neither exists nor does not exist." And so on and so forth. He would give you seven answers. You would leave him more confused than you had come. That's why he could not influence many people. His religion remained one of the smallest although it had the potential of becoming one of the greatest religions of the world.
But now the days of Mahavira are coming: Albert Einstein has made the way for it. As the physicist entered deeper into the mysteries of matter he was very much puzzled -- Aristotle works no more, helps no more. On the contrary, if you remain hung up with Aristotle you have to deny a few things which you cannot deny -- they are there!
For example: matter does not exist at the deepest level of matter; matter is only apparent, it is maya. Shankara said it thousands of years ago: it is illusion. By "illusion" he does not mean that it does not exist; by "illusion" he simply means it appears to exist -- something else exists. Don't be deceived by the appearance. And the scientist found himself entering more into the world of Shankara than into the world of Aristotle. Matter disappears, there is only energy -- energy moving so fast that you cannot see its movement and it gives you the idea of solid matter.
Nothing is solid, everything is liquid. And when there is nothing solid, what meaning can the word "liquid" have? Then a new problem arises: if there is nothing solid, what do you mean by "liquid?" Liquidity had meaning only in reference to solidity; the moment solidity disappears, liquidity disappears...and you are dumb, in awe.
Only energy is, and the ways of energy are very paradoxical, very mystic. One particle of energy jumps from its place to another place; it is continuously lumping. It is taking quantum leaps. The term "quantum leap" comes from quanta. "Quanta" means the ultimate particle of energy, and "quantum leap" means a very different leap from what you understand by the word "leap."
When the ultimate particle of energy jumps from place A to B the phenomenon is very mysterious: it simply disappears from A and appears at B and you cannot find it anywhere in between. You come from your place to me; you will be found in between. How can you just jump from your place to my place? Even if you jump, you will have to pass through. Even if you take the fastest plane, still you will be in between. But the ultimate particle of matter simply disappears from one place and appears at another place and you cannot find it in between at all. Now what to make out of it? It should not be so, but it is so.
First scientists figured, "We must be missing it -- maybe we don't have sophisticated enough instruments. How can it be?" The old Aristotle was haunting them: "It must be somewhere in between." But now we have more sophisticated instruments -- it simply disappears. It becomes unmanifest in one place and becomes manifest again in another place. What happens in between nothing can be known about, because it becomes unmanifest; it simply disappears from existence. It moves into a totally different dimension which is not known at all and may never be known at all, because it is the unknowable.
And it was thought always, according to Aristotle and Euclid, that a point can never be a line. It was found by the physicists that the point can be both together: it can be a particle and a wave, it can be a point and a line. Euclidean geometry used to say -- you must have read it at school -- that two parallel lines never meet. Now there is something like non-Euclidean geometry which says they meet. What to make out of it? Euclidean geometry says you can draw a straight line: a straight line is the shortest distance between two points -- a well-known definition, every schoolboy knows about it. But non-Euclidean geometry has come with great force and is changing the whole course of scientific thinking.
Non-Euclidean geometry says you cannot draw a straight line at all; it is impossible to draw a straight line. Why? -- because you are sitting on an earth which is round. So whatsoever you draw, it appears straight because you don't know that you are sitting on a round globe. Go on drawing the line, go on drawing the line, and soon you will see that it becomes a circle, because it will cover the whole earth. And a straight line cannot be a part of a circle, obviously; if it is a part of a circle it is not straight. No straight line can create a circle, but every straight line that you know, if drawn to its ultimate, will become part of a circle. Then it is an are, not a straight line.
Mystics have always talked in paradoxes; now physicists are talking in paradoxes. And the reason is the same: mystics entered reality through their being and came across the mystery; physicists are coming across the same reality from another door -- the outward door.
Satsangh
Satsangh is the company of a good person. 'Sat' stands for godliness, 'sangh' for company.  
* [Hindu Puja & Bhajan Home Page|http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/8891/]
Understanding the Lessons of September 11
compassionate. War, by its very definition, is none of these. The terrorists
then look at what we can learn, what reassurance we can gain from this
tragic event. What can we take from this which will both help us grow
comfort, one of complacency. So many people throughout the world (especially
Western as superior, as inherently "safe." If you give someone a gift and
say it's "from America," their eyes will widen with anticipation. If you
tell someone that a particular object you own is "from America," that
automatically grants it "First Class" status. The idea of sending our
pride, comfort and security. It is every parent's dream to send their
that parents think their children will have a higher income in America.
Additionally, from what I
material prosperity, but also personal comfort and safety. And, I am not
that we wake from our sleep each day. It is only by the grace of God that
of blood vessels in our body, continue to carry blood safely to and from the
that tragic moment came it was only a matter of them and God. It is only our
Divine Insurance Policy in whom we can have total trust. It is only the
achievements for what they can really give us -- comfort, ease and the
crimes will not be tolerated. However, is war the answer? Is dropping bombs
will be action in the name of compassion, action in the name of a better,
illusion. The solution cannot be to continue fighting from behind borders
can only come by breaking these borders, by breaking these boundaries and by
The answer cannot come by the civilized,
committed these horrendous acts.
will come. Every moment is a gift. No matter how high we build our towers of
prosperity, we never know when they can come crashing down. Therefore, why
not live peacefully, why not live every moment in love, in harmony, in joy?
Who knows if this moment will be our last?
gifts, to come together as sister and brother, to forgive and forget our
may find solace and serenity. Lastly, we pray for those who have committed
this atrocious act and for all those who have plans or desires to commit a
similar act -- we pray that God may bestow wisdom and compassion upon them,
Om, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti -- Om, Peace, Peace, Peace.
vandana shiva
* [God Bless the World|http://www.mofga.org/mofgd01v.html] is a Keynote Speech by Dr. Vandana Shiva at MOFGA's Common Ground Country Fair
* [An Interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva|http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/shiva.html]
* [Vandana Shiva on McDonald's, Exploitation and the Global Economy|http://www.mcspotlight.org/people/interviews/vandana_transcript.html]
Computers
Computers
Linderhof
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/4080/travelind.htm
Ian Lovell Rager
http://hal.editthispage.com/2001/10/23
http://hal.editthispage.com/ian
Dave Winer
[People] > Dave Winer http://www.scripting.com
2005-01-29 - [How to unsubscribe from Scripting News Email|http://www.carnatic.com/kishore/blog/2005/01/29/how-to-unsubscribe-from-scripting-news-email/]
Thousands ( or maybe millions ) of people receive Dave's [Scripting News|http://www.scripting.com/]letter via email daily and [Kishore Balakrishnan] is one of them... Lots of links on my [Weblog] are via this newsletter...
Open Request to Dave :-) Please make it easier for me to link to the [permanent link|http://scriptingnews.userland.com/backissues/2001/10/23] by sending it in the email. Thanks.
2003 04 08 - [Speech and weblogs|http://davenet.userland.com/2003/04/08/speechAndWeblogs] : ...the only reason anyone would want to create things is to make money. If you have any other motive they think you're an idiot, and tell you so...
[2003 01 09|http://scriptingnews.userland.com/backissues/2003/01/09] : "It's true, it's true. I've been offered a fellowship at the [Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School|http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/], and have, of course, accepted."
* [Transcendental Money|http://davenet.userland.com/2000/10/19/transcendentalMoney]
* [Programmers] have a very precise understanding of truth. You can't lie to a compiler. Try it sometime. Garbage in, garbage out. Booleans, the ones and zeros, trues and falses, make up the world programmers live in. That's all there is! I think programming is deep, it teaches us about the non-cyber universe we live in. There's something spiritual about computers, and I want to understand it.
* [Seven Years of DaveNet|http://davenet.userland.com/2001/10/07/sevenYearsOfDavenet]
* [DaveNet|http://davenet.userland.com/]
Money
[Money|http://thoughts.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$77] is a special promise...In the simplest of markets you give something useful to the other person and you get something useful for yourself...
It can buy a House, But not a Home
Seriously... read http://www.livejournal.com/users/kishore/day/2002/01/02 , [The Soul of Money|http://members.aol.com/thesoulhaven/money.htm] , http://www.bruderhof.com/us/Articles/Money.htm
slide show [Does money make you happy?|http://www.goodthink.com/writing/slideshows.cfm]
Meditation
[Osho's Life: Osho explains Meditation|http://www.oshoturk.com/osho-life/05-17-meditaiton.htm] : .....The basic element running through all the methods of meditation is [witnessing].....
[Swami Sivananda] in [Goal of Life is God-Realisation|http://www.sivanandadlshq.org/messages/goal.htm] : ...There is no Knowledge without Meditation. The aspirant churns his own soul. Truth becomes manifest...Why do you read many books? It is of no use. The great book is within your heart. Open the pages of this inexhaustible book, the source of all knowledge...
[Meditations By Gurani Anjali|http://www.santosha.com/dhyana/] : These essays are transcriptions of meditations given by Gurani Anjali at Yoga Anand Ashram
[Jorn Barger] in [An Internet way of self-knowledge|http://www.robotwisdom.com/weblogs/selfknowledge.html] : ...I think real meditation is about detecting self-deception...
[112 Tantra Meditations|http://www.iosho.com/TantraMeditation.html]
[Joe Loffredo] : [Some Thoughts on Meditation|http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Cyprus/5927/meditate.htm]
[Peter Russell]'s [Three-Minute Meditation|http://www.peterussell.com/TV/3Min.html]
http://reluctant-messenger.com/ : [How to Meditate|http://reluctant-messenger.com/meditation.htm]
[wellnessgoods.com :: Meditation|http://www.wellnessgoods.com/meditation.asp]
Why is love so painful?
Hence, fear arises, and leaving the old, comfortable, safe world, the world of convenience, pain arises. It is the same pain that the child feels when he comes out of the womb of the mother. It is the same pain that the bird feels when he comes out of the egg. It is the same pain that the bird will feel when he will try for the first time to be on the wing.
And because the transformation is going to be from the self towards a state of no-self, agony is very deep. But you Cannot have ecstasy without going through agony. If the gold wants to be purified, it has to pass through fire.
The reflection that you will find in the other of your own self may be ugly; that is the anxiety. Avoid the mirror. But by avoiding the mirror you are not going to become beautiful. By avoiding the situation you are not going to grow either. The challenge has to be taken.
One has to go into love. That is the first step towards God, and it cannot be bypassed. Those who try to bypass the step of love will never reach God. That is absolutely necessary because you become aware of your totality only when you are provoked by the presence of the other, when your presence is enhanced by the presence of the other, when you are brought out of your narcissistic, closed world under the open sky.
And to drop the ego is very painful because we have been taught to cultivate the ego. We think the ego is our only treasure. We have been protecting it, we have been decorating it, we have been continuously polishing it, and when love knocks on the door, all that is needed to fall in love is to put aside the ego; certainly it is painful. It is your whole life's work, it is all that you have created -- this ugly ego, this idea that "I am separate from existence. "
The truth is that there is no person at all in the world; there is only presence. You are not -- not as an ego, separate from the whole. You are part of the whole. The whole penetrates you, the whole breathes in you, pulsates in you, the whole is your life.
Love gives you the first experience of being in tune with something that is not your ego. Love gives you the first lesson that you can fall into harmony with someone who has never been part of your ego. If you can be in harmony with a woman, if you can be in harmony with a friend, with a man, if you can be in harmony with your child or with your mother, why can't you be in harmony with all human beings? And if to be in harmony with a single person gives such joy, what will be the outcome if you are in harmony with all human beings? And if you can be in harmony with all human beings, why can't you be in harmony with animals and birds and trees? Then one step leads to another.
A lover remains a virgin. All lovers are virgin. The people who don't love cannot remain virgin; they become dormant, stagnant; they start stinking sooner or later -- and sooner than later -- because they have nowhere to go. Their life is dead.
That's where modern man finds himself, and because of this, all kinds of neuroses, all kinds of madnesses, have become rampant. Psychological illness has taken epidemic proportions. It is no more that a few individuals are psychologically ill; the reality is the whole earth has become a madhouse. The whole of humanity is suffering from a kind of neurosis.
And that neurosis is coming from your narcissistic stagnancy. Everyone is stuck with one's own illusion of having a separate self; then people go mad. And this madness is meaningless, unproductive, uncreative. Or people start committing suicide. Those suicides are also unproductive, uncreative.
You may not commit suicide by taking poison or jumping from a cliff or by shooting yourself, but you can commit a suicide which is a very slow process, and that's what happens. Very few people commit suicide suddenly. Others have decided for a slow suicide; gradually, slowly, slowly they die. But almost, the tendency to be suicidal has become universal.
Hence people are interested in sex, because sex is not risky. It is momentary, you don't get involved. Love is involvement; it is commitment. It is not momentary. Once it takes roots, it can be forever. It can be a lifelong involvement. Love needs intimacy, and only when you are intimate does the other become a mirror. When you meet sexually with a woman or a man, you have not met at all; in fact, you avoided the soul of the other person. You just used the body and escaped, and the other used your body and escaped. You never became intimate enough to reveal each other's original faces.
It is painful, but don't avoid it. If you avoid it you have avoided the greatest opportunity to grow. Go into it, suffer love, because through the suffering comes great ecstasy. Yes, there is agony, but out of the agony, ecstasy is born. Yes, you will have to die as an ego, but if you can die as an ego, you will be born as God, as a Buddha. And love will give you the first tongue-tip-taste of Tao, of Sufism, of Zen. Love will give you the first proof that God is, that life is not meaningless.
Let there be pain, let there be suffering. Go through the dark night, and you will reach to a beautiful sunrise. It is only in the womb of the dark night that the sun evolves. It is only through the dark night that the morning comes.
My whole approach here is that of love. I teach only love and only love and nothing else. You can forget about God; that is just an empty word. You can forget about prayers because they are only rituals imposed by others on you. Love is the natural prayer, not imposed by anybody. You are born with it. Love is the true God -- not the God of theologians, but the God of Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, the God of the Sufis. Love is a tariqa, a method, to kill you as a separate individual and to help you become the infinite. Disappear as a dewdrop and become the ocean, but you will have to pass through the door of love.
And certainly when one starts disappearing like a dewdrop, and one has lived long as a dewdrop, it hurts, because one has been thinking, "I am this, and now this is going. I am dying. " You are not dying, but only an illusion is dying. You have become identified with the illusion, true, but the illusion is still an illusion. And only when the illusion is gone will you be able to see who you are. And that revelation brings you to the ultimate peak of joy, bliss, celebration.
Is there a law of karma?
I have very little to say about it -- but it will still take two and a half hours! The law of karma, in the first place, is not a law. That word gives it an aroma as if it is something scientific, like the law of gravitation. It is merely a hope, not a law at all. It has been hoped for centuries that if you do good you will attain to good results. It is a human hope in existence which is absolutely neutral.
If you look at nature, there are laws -- the whole of science is nothing but discovery of those laws -- but science has not come even close to detecting anything like the law of karma. Yes, it is certain that any action is going to bring certain reactions, but the law of karma is hoping for much more. If you simply say any action is bound to produce some reactions, it is possible to have scientific support for it. But man is hoping for much more. He is asking that a good action inevitably brings a good consequence with it, and the same with a bad action.
Then what kind of law is it? It is a hope. A man wandering in immense darkness, groping his way, clings to anything that gives a little hope, a little light -- because what you observe in life itself is something totally different from the law of karma. A man who is a well-known criminal may succeed and become the president, the prime minister; or vice versa: he was not a criminal before, but when he becomes the president or prime minister of a country he becomes a criminal... So in life this strange situation happens: bad people reach good positions, become respectable or honored, not only in their time but throughout history. It is full of their names. In history, Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Kanad, Gautam, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu -- people like these you will not find even in the footnotes. And Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler -- they make up the major portion of history. In fact, we have to write the whole of history again because all these people have to be completely erased. Even the memory of them should not be carried on, because even their memory may have evil effects on people.
A better humanity will not give these names even a place in the footnotes; there is no need. They were nightmares; it is better they are completely forgotten so they don't follow you like shadows. And we have to discover people who have lived on this earth and made it in every way beautiful; shared their joy, their dance, their music, shared their ecstasies -- but lived anonymously. People have completely forgotten even their names. To me, certainly each action has its result, but not somewhere far away in a future life. The action and the result are continuous, they are part of one process. Do you think sowing the seed and reaping the crop are separate? It is one process. What begins in sowing the seed, grows, and one day the one seed has become thousands of seeds. That's what you call your crop. It is the same seed which has exploded into thousands of seeds. No death is intervening, no afterlife is needed; it is a continuum.
So the one thing to be remembered is: in my vision of life, yes, every action is bound to have some consequences, but they will not be somewhere else, you will have them here and now. Most probably you will get them almost simultaneously. When you are kind to someone, don't you feel a certain joy? A certain peace? A certain meaningfulness? Don't you feel that you are contented with what you have done? There is a kind of deep satisfaction. Have you ever felt that contentment when you are angry, when you are boiling with anger, when you hurt somebody, when you are mad with rage? Have you ever felt a peace, a silence descending in you? No, it is impossible. You will certainly feel something, but it will be a sadness that you again acted like a fool, that again you have done the same stupid thing that you decided again and again not to do. You will feel a tremendous unworthiness in yourself. You will feel that you are not a man but a machine, because you don't respond, you react. A man may have done something, and you reacted. That man had the key in his hands, and you just danced according to his desire; he had power over you. When somebody abuses you and you start fighting, what does it mean? It means that you don't have any capacity not to react.
Osho, From Personality to Individuality, chapter 9
Procrastination
We've all been plagued by procrastination at one time or another. For some, it's a chronic problem. Others find that it hits only some areas of their lives. The net results, though, are usually the same - wasted time, missed opportunities, poor performance, self-deprecation, or increased stress.
We all seem to do fine with things we want to do or enjoy doing for fun. But, when we perceive tasks as difficult, inconvenient, or scary, we may shift into our procrastination mode. We have very clever ways of fooling ourselves. See how many of the following excuses hit home for you:
It's OK to celebrate ... besides, I'll start my diet (sobriety) tomorrow.
A closer look at our crooked thinking reveals three major issues in delaying tactics - perfectionism, inadequacy, and discomfort. Those who believe they must turn in the most exemplary report may wait until all available resources have been reviewed or endlessly rewrite draft after draft. Worry over producing the perfect project prevents them from finishing on time. Feelings of inadequacy can also cause delays. Those who "know for a fact" that they are incompetent often believe they will fail and will avoid the unpleasantness of having their skills put to the test. Fear of discomfort is another way of putting a stop to what needs to be done. Yet, the more we delay, the worse the discomforting problem (like a toothache) becomes.
Our behavioral patterns are the second cause. Getting started on an unpleasant or difficult task may seem impossible. Procrastination is likened to the physics concept of inertia - a mass at rest tends to stay at rest. Greater forces are required to start change than to sustain change. Another way of viewing it is that avoiding tasks reinforces procrastination which makes it harder to get things going. A person may be stuck, too, not by the lack of desire, but by not knowing what to do. Here are some things to break the habit. Remember, don't just read them, do them!
EXCUSE: I'm not in the mood right now. REALISTIC THOUGHT: Mood doesn't do my work, actions do. If I wait for the right mood, I may never get it done. EXCUSE::I'm just lazy. REALISTIC THOUGHT: Labeling myself as lazy only brings me down. My work is really separate from who I am as a person. Getting started is the key to finishing.
"There's no such thing as perfectionism. It's an illusion that keeps me from
3. Don't Catastrophe. Jumping to the conclusion that you will fail or that you are no good at something will only create a wall of fear that will stop you cold. Recognize that your negative predictions are not facts. Focus on the present and what positive steps you can take toward reaching your goals.
4. Design Clear Goals. Think about what you want and what needs to be done. Be specific. If it's getting that work project completed by the deadline, figure out a time table with realistic goals at each step. Keep your sights within reason. Having goals too big can scare you away from starting.
6. Partialize the Tasks. Big projects feel overwhelming. Break them down into the smallest and most manageable subparts. You'll get more done if you can do it piece by piece. For example, make an outline for a written report before you start composing or do a small portion of the chores rather than all at once. Partializing works especially well with the unpleasant jobs. Most of us can handle duties we dislike as long as they're for a short time and in small increments.
7. Get Organized. Have all your materials ready before you begin a task. Use a daily schedule and have it with you all the time. List the tasks of the day or week realistically. Check off the tasks when you have completed them.
8. Take a Stand. Commit yourself to doing the task. Write yourself a "contract" and sign it. Better still, tell a friend, partner, or supervisor about your plans.
9. Use Prompts. Write reminders to yourself and put them in conspicuous places like on the TV, refrigerator, bathroom mirror, front door, and car dashboard. The more we remember, the greater the likelihood we'll follow through with our plans.
10. Reward Yourself. Self-reinforcement has a powerful effect on developing a "do it now" attitude. Celebrate, pat yourself on the back, smile, and let yourself enjoy the completion of even the smallest of tasks. Don't minimize your accomplishments. Remember, you're already that much closer to finishing those things that need to be done. Go ahead, get started ... NOW!
Reproduced from: Innovations in Clinical Practice:
Mosaraf Ali
some have renamed him 'The Eighth Wonder of the World
* [Doctor of Common Sense|http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/250401/htc02.asp] : ...Ali, therefore, emphasises on what he calls "the tripod that promotes the healing power withing you." The tripod consists of a balanced diet (a fruity breakfast, a substantial lunch with both veggies and proteins, and a light dinner without dessert), 15 minutes of yoga and breathing exercises, and regular therapeutic massages focusing on the neck and shoulders. And he make a strong pitch for the habit of taking regular breaks from work. "The human brain," he says, "can work at a certain pace and take a certain load." Not surprisingly, some of the world's most stressed-out people have happily entrusted their lives to Ali...
* [Mosaraf Ali's Tips on Integrated Health|http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/080501/htc05.asp] : ...Listen to your body. Each of us has the physis or the healing power to cure 80 per cent of all ailments ourselves...
Switzerland
[Details about Switzerland from CIA's The World Factbook|http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sz.html]
http://www.twenj.com/swissvisit.htm
http://www.myswitzerland.com
Swiss Museum of Transport and Communication >>> http://www.verkehrshaus.ch/intro.htm
Interests
* [Zen] vt. To figure out something by meditation or by a sudden flash of enlightenment. Originally applied to bugs, but occasionally applied to problems of life in general. "How'd you figure out the buffer allocation problem?" "Oh, I zenned it."
![Computers]
![Companies]
Knowledge Management
[Denham Grey|http://www.voght.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?DenhamGrey] : "I believe this is the largest collaborative KM repository on the web!!"
[Personal Knowledge Management : Who, What, Why, When, Where, How?|http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/jason.frand/researcher/speeches/PKM.htm] : "...we begin with data, add context to get information, add understanding to get knowledge, and add judgment (values) to get wisdom..."
The [Knowledge Management Forum|http://www.km-forum.org/] is a virtual community of practice focused on furthering the fundamental theories, methods, and practices collectively called - Knowledge Management
[The 12 Principles of Collaboration|http://www.mongoosetech.com/realcommunities/12prin.html]
Arundhati Roy
* [ Salon | Arundhati Roy|http://www.salon.com/sept97/00roy.html]
* [The Greater Common Good|http://www.narmada.org/gcg/gcg.html]
* [A Life Full of Beginnings and No Ends|http://aroy.miena.com/]
Dave Klein
http://www.livingnutrition.com
[Self Healing Empowerment|http://www.selfhealingempowerment.com/]
Mad Cowboy
[Mad Cowboy|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684854465/] : Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat
2do
[100 things to do before you die. . .|http://brass612.tripod.com/cgi-bin/things.html]
[Tom Butler-Bowdon]
[Indian Terrain|http://www.myvalueshop.com/brandpage.asp?type=Indian+Terrain]
http://www.bingen-ruedesheimer.com/rhine-cruise/
http://www.2bblissful.com/
http://www.beezone.com/
http://www.lastminute.com
http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/2003/02/13.html : ...(via Carnatic, one quite unusual site)...
osho_flowering at yahoogroups.com
What is truth but to live for an idea ( http://www.webcom.com/kierke/bio/backgr.html )
..."What I really need is to come to terms with myself about what I am to do, not about what I am to know, except insomuch as knowledge must precede every act. It is a matter of understanding my destiny, of seeing what the Divinity actually wants me to do; what counts is to find a truth, which is true for me, to find that idea for which I will live and die."...
Rick Rescorla
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56956-2001Oct26.html
http://magnificentlives.com/rick-rescorla.htm
George Monbiot
http://www.monbiot.com/
Aradhana Srikanth
* 2001 June 08 - first day at school - http://www.sjcluny.com/
* http://www.carnatic.com/aradhana/
Akila Srikanth
http://akila.weblogs.com/
Usha Balakrishnan
http://www.carnatic.com/usha/
TL Balakrishnan
http://tlb.editthispage.com/
Srikanth Sivaraman
http://www.carnatic.com/srikanth/
Mira Art
[People] > Mira Art http://surprise.editthispage.com
[RAQs|http://surprise.editthispage.com/raqs] ([Rarely Asked Questions])
* a different new year greeting at http://surprise.editthispage.com/2004/01/01
Brent Simmons
http://inessential.com/
[Tips for Frontier and Radio Developers|http://inessential.com/tips/]
Andrea Frick
http://andrea.editthispage.com/
Christopher Ryan
http://shanson.editthispage.com/
Jim Roepcke
http://jim.roepcke.com/
Jason Levine
http://q.queso.com/
Jason : ...It's my first attempt to share the sometimes-appropriate (usually-inappropriate), rarely-influential, always-honest thoughts that come to me throughout the day...
Request : the background image Q looks nice... But doesnot help if someone wants to read in detail
Cameron Barrett
http://www.camworld.com/
[More About Weblogs|http://www.camworld.com/journal/rants/99/05/11.html] : ...The truth is, I'm burnt out. I simply cannot do it anymore. At least not at this pace. Increasing responsibilities at my full time job that require me to spend even more time in a 12x12 box of pre-fabricated cube walls, surrounded by no less than four computer monitors...
Aaron Swartz
[People] > Aaron Swartz http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/
http://swartzfam.com/aaron/
Check out [schoolyard subversion|http://swartzfam.com/aaron/school/] : "fight the power. beat the system. change the world."
I think deeply about things and want others to do likewise. I work for ideas and learn from people. I don't like excluding people. I'm a perfectionist, but I won't let that get in the way of publication. Except for education and entertainment, I'm not going to waste my time on things that won't have an impact. I try to be friends with everyone, but I hate it when you don't take me seriously. I don't hold grudges (it's not productive) but I learn from my experience. I want to make the world a better place.
Joel Spolsky
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/
Joel states in [Books|http://www.joelonsoftware.com/stories/storyReader$37] : I've always felt that you can learn a lot about a person by the books they read. I suspect that if you read all the books that I've read, you will come not only to understand me, but you'll start to think like me, too. To encourage everyone to think like me, this page will contain a few of the best books I've been reading lately. I read a lot of books, and only the top 10% are going to make it into this list.
[Painless Software Management|http://www.webword.com/interviews/spolsky.html] : An interview with Joel Spolsky, the wizard behind Joel on Software
James Pryor
[Joel|http://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/29]: His article Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper is one of the best tutorials on any kind of writing: - - - - - "Pretend that your reader is lazy, stupid, and mean. He's lazy in that he doesn't want to figure out what your convoluted sentences are supposed to mean, and he doesn't want to figure out what your argument is, if it's not already obvious. He's stupid, so you have to explain everything you say to him in simple, bite-sized pieces. And he's mean, so he's not going to read your paper charitably. (For example, if something you say admits of more than one interpretation, he's going to assume you meant the less plausible thing.)" - - - - - I can think of no better advice for the kind of writing that programmers should be doing in designing and documenting their code.
Philip Greenspun
http://philip.greenspun.com/
His advise (best so far in my opinion): Work on something that excites you enough to want to work 24x7. Become an expert on data model + page flow. Build some great systems by yourself and put them on your resume ("I built X" rather than "I built a piece of X as part of a huge team"). Take periodic long trips to exotic countries and learn from people (sometimes your own country is after all the most exotic). --- For more... visit [Ask Philip Forum|http://philip.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=22]
[The book behind the book behind the book...|http://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/dead-trees/story.html]
http://philip.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000taw&topic_id=22&topic=Ask%20Philip
The fact that Doug got this built in 3 months using Tcl pages doesn't prove that Tcl is as good as Lisp, of course. What it does prove is that when you're using an RDBMS the most important engineering steps are data model development and page flow design. The code for an individual page is merely glue to merge the results of an SQL query with an HTML template. Tcl is adequately powerful and it doesn't get in the way as Java or C might, which means that there isn't much productivity benefit to be gained by switching to even the mythical ideal computer language.
nice to program in an advanced computer language, e.g., Eiffel, Lisp,
I have very few complaints with my life right now, I must admit. Retirement
the weather is bad, I don't get annoyed. Plenty of time tomorrow. Or next
started a research lab here for Orange, the mobile phone company.
Even if I didn't have the MIT and the Orange commitments, I would definitely
not want to start a company any time soon. After the disappointments of the
late 1990s, who has time to bother looking at what a small company is doing?
companies looking for innovation? Or do you check out microsoft.com and
ibm.com and then go home for an evening of relaxation? This is a very
difficult time for a new company to be getting the attention of customers,
But more to the point is that business isn't very interesting compared to
fronts). But it is tough to get customers to pay for research. They want
solutions. There are some problems that I know how to solve. But I also
Let them start the companies; I'll keep trying to make airplane-shaped holes
Jakob Nielsen
http://www.useit.com/jakob/
[Alertbox|http://www.useit.com/alertbox/] is very useful
Read [Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines|http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980906.html] until you get it !
Peter Russell
http://www.peterussell.com/
[Passing Thoughts|http://www.peterussell.com/PT.html]
Mahatma Gandhi
[Mahatma Gandhi Album|http://www.kamat.com/mmgandhi/mmgandhi.htm]
when the self becomes too much with you,
Dan Sanderson
http://www.dansanderson.com/
[Resume Emailer|http://www.dansanderson.com/resume/] is cool...
[blogtracker|http://www.dansanderson.com/blogtracker/] is very useful !
Grayson Harding
http://2cents.weblogs.com/
Grayson : I'm an underpaid misclassified Director of Technology. It's not just me, they underpay everyone. I live in the midwest, sometimes called God's Country or the Heartland of America. Yea, that narrows it down for ya'. I'm really in the country. My little half acre is almost completely surrounded by a national forest. I've seen three or four bald eagles in the last several years that I've lived here. Lots of white-tailed deer, possum, wild turkey, chipmunks, and four-legged fox.
me : We are also living somewhere closer to such a place, which is reachable by walk in 20 minutes :-) (I could think of a better sentence... but Sushma understands it right now !)
K.V. Swamy
http://www.carnatic.com/homoeo/
Saravanan Natarajan
http://www.carnatic.com/sara/
Radhika Nathan
http://www.geocities.com/radhika_nathan/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/radhika_nathan/
http://radhikascorner.blogspot.com
http://www.carnatic.com/kamala/
Durian
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/durian.gif]
Banana
[The Washington Banana Museum|http://www.geocities.com/NapaValley/1799/]
[Banana Varieties|http://www.the-banana.com/more_banana_info_.htm]
Strawberry
[The Strawberry Facts Page|http://www.jamm.com/strawberry/facts.html]
AUTOSTADT
http://www.autostadt.de/english/home.html
Stuttgart
http://www.stgt.com/stuttgart/homee.htm
Weblog2001November
[CityDesk] is [here|http://joel.editthispage.com/news/fog0000000311.html] ! Congrats !
Both Goals are accomplished very well... I installed Fink and later installed [Lynx]... Many websites look funny via Lynx
(via [Gleanings]) [The emergent new order|http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/11/28/emergence/index.html] : Feed magazine founder [Steven Johnson] explains how self-organizing systems are made to order for ants, cities, software and terrorists.
[Romy and Lisa]'s [Quotes and Poems|http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/7454/quotes.html]
A [Petition|http://www.PetitionOnline.com/CRYfor93/] : 93rd amendment - Making Education a Fundamental Right in India
(via [PaperQuote]) [Oliver Wendell Holmes] : What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
[Peter Coad] : [Feature Driven Development|http://www.togethersoft.com/services/publications/presentations/fddatjavaone2000_ppt.zip]
[Unified Modeling Language] , [Three Amigos|http://www.jguru.com/faq/view.jsp?EID=929]
We went to [Salzburg] for the weekend. We will go again in Spring, Summer or Autumn and we have learnt some valuable lessons about Winter, Snow etc. !
As per [Peter Russell]'s [Age in Days|http://www.peterussell.com/age.html] : I am 10959 days old !
[Gerald M. Weinberg]'s book [The Psychology of Computer Programming]
[Mira Art] : [Not being attached to anything....|http://surprise.editthispage.com/2001/11/22] : "...All in the world recognise the beautiful as beautiful. Herein lies ugliness..."
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/head_animals.jpg]
[Allen Downey]'s [How to Think Like a Computer Scientist]
[Guido van Rossum]'s [Computer Programming for Everybody]
I have come across [Tom Van Vleck]'s [Software Engineering|http://www.multicians.org/thvv/tvvswe.html] once again after a long time :-)
([via|http://www.livejournal.com/users/msram/day/2001/11/07] [Mahesh Shantaram]) [Carlton Vogt]'s [Ethics Matters|http://www2.infoworld.com/cgi/component/columnarchive.wbs?column=ethics]
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/murugan_palani.jpg]
My answer of the moment :-) [Murugan Bhakti]
[Thomas Paine] in [The Age of Reason] : It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe.
After reading [Andre Durand]'s [Global Consciousness 1.0|http://discuss.andredurand.com/stories/storyReader$187], I have an idea about combining this thought with [Quaker]ism... Why not we implement a system where members can raise 1 issue per day and only 1 a day, Every other member can post their opinion after careful thought and it would be possible to edit the opinion only a few times within the next 1/2 hour ! and That's it ! - I will try to refine it !
([via|http://doc.weblogs.com/2001/11/19#andBlogsNeedClay] [Doc Searls]) November 23rd is [Buy Nothing Day] , [Clay Shirky] needs a blog !
[Charles du Bois] : The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
[Vikas Kamat]'s [Kamat AnthoBLOGy|http://www.kamat.com/vikas/]
Vikas' [How to Pick a Saree|http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/attire/saree/guide.htm] will be useful to me !
[John Taylor Gatto]'s [writing on the web|http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Gatto.html]
([via|http://owrede.khm.de/2001/11/15] [Oliver Wrede]) [Steve Hooker] : [Radio(Userland) and me|http://steveswar.warblogs.com/radioandme/]
[Ralph Waldo Emerson] : "Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him."
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/linkandthink.gif]
[http://philip.greenspun.com/photo/pcd0075/dachau-arbeit-56.1.jpg]
The sign of the gate is [Arbeit Macht Frei] (Work Brings Freedom)
[Madhu Menon] : [Conditional philanthropy - it stinks|http://madman.weblogs.com/2001/11/13]
[Joel Spolsky] : It's about time that I updated my crufty old list of recommended books. What books should I have up there? - [Vote for ONE Book|http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=934]
[Jeremy Stangroom] is the on-line editor for [The Philosopher's Magazine|http://www.philosophers.co.uk/]
Susan Dempsey (responsible for providing users with continued quality service from [HotLinks]) : ...Sadly, all good things must come to an end and this version will be subscription only...
[HotLinks] is going to charge for their service from 3rd December 2001... If they allow me to maintain 1 URL with multiple categories, I will consider paying for their service... Anyway, they have very nicely allowed me to export the content as a [html file|http://www.carnatic.com/2001/hotlinks.kishorebalakrishnan.2001nov14.htm] - Thanks a lot !
I sent an email to [Jonathan Abrams] several months ago and he prompty responded by stating that 'the request will be forwarded to Development' - Let us see...
[Viktor Frankl] : Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
[Free Alina Lebedeva|http://www.geocities.com/elsvenjo/FreeAlina.html] : ...This site is in support of Alina Lebedeva from Latvia. Alina is the schoolgirl who gave Prince Charles a slap in the face with  a bunch of flowers in protest over Britain's involvement in the war against Afghanistan. She is provisionally charged with endangering the life of foreign dignitary. If found guilty she could face up to 15 years in prison...
[Ramayan Audio|http://www.ramayanaudio.com/] : ...The Ramayana was meant to be heard!...
Today is yet another [Deepavali] away from India...
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/deepavali_image001.gif] [http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/deepavali_image002.gif]
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/deepavali_image003.gif]
[Satya Viswanathan|http://www.coroflot.com/satyaviswanathan] : [Ho! I went to America|http://www.livejournal.com/users/satyav/day/2001/10/11]
[Mira Art] [quotes|http://surprise.editthispage.com/2001/11/08] Mark Twain : Always do right. That will gratify some of the people, and astonish the rest.
[Shoba Narayan] : [Fashionably Devout|http://about.beliefnet.com/frameset.asp?pageLoc=/story/86/story_8692_1.html&boardID=23424]
[e-gineer].com is interesting... --- [Nathan Wallace]
[Joel on Software] sports a [new look|http://new.joelonsoftware.com/news/fog0000000290.html]
[Bill Clinton] : [A struggle for the soul of the 21st century|http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/11/10/speech/index.html]
[This Diwali has lost its sparkle|http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=2125046482] : ...Sampoorna Kohli, weaving his way through the small lanes of the Central Market in Lajpat Nagar, sums it up succinctly: "There is uncertainty for everyone. Nobody is feeling particularly festive what with jobs on the line and businesses doing badly. The light has already gone out of this Diwali."...
[Eric Margolis] : [ANTHRAX AND ABDUL HAQ: WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND|http://www.bigeye.com/foreignc.htm]
[http://static.userland.com/weblogsCom/images/86400weblogscom/flower002.gif]
[Swami Sivananda] : From [ABANDON BODY-CONSCIOUSNESS|http://www.dlsmd.org/sdr/11-sdr%20nov/1109.htm] : ...This body which is full of impurities, urine, pus and faecal matter etc., is perishable. It is like froth or bubble or mirage. It is despised by its enemies. It remains like a useless log of wood on the ground when prana (life) leaves it. It is the cause of pain and suffering. It is your enemy. You should treat this body with contempt, as dung. Why should you cling to it and worship it with scents, powders and flowers? Do not be silly and foolish in adorning it with fine silks and ornaments. It is dire ignorance only...
[Alwin Hawkins] : [New tag line|http://www.vfth.com/2001/11/10] and the cornerstone of a new ethic for me. : ''Work, Don't Whine''
[Joel Snyder] ( commenting on an article about Bin Laden's family members leaving the USA : ...This whole article is offensive and the worst sort of journalistic sensationalism...
[Freeman Thomas], head of advanced product design for DaimlerChrysler : "A lot of people in the design business are full of BS. They want to create the facade of an extreme individual. I don't want to be someone who can't be approached."
Fast Company's [Who's Fast 2002|http://www.fastcompany.com/online/52/wf_intro.html] : ...Ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Our fourth-annual Who's Fast issue arrives at a time when our feelings about work, life, business, and purpose need thoughtful recalibration...
[Doc Searls] is [Diggin'|http://doc.weblogs.com/2001/11/09#digginDurand] [Andre Durand]
[http://www.carnatic.com/pictures/diwali.gif]
[William Damon] coauthor of [Good Work] : "We're getting people to overcome the sense that to have a good career, you've got to compromise or cut
via [Susan A. Kitchens] : [Laid-Off|http://www.oddtodd.com/]
[Vincent Laforet] : [Frontiers of War|http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/19/international/index_JOURNAL01.html]
[via|http://jim.roepcke.com/2001/10/31#item3142] [Jim Roepcke] : [Seth Dillingham] : [Knowledge Management, Meta Data, and the Organization|http://www.truerwords.net/1241]
[Mira Art|http://surprise.editthispage.com/2001/11/01] : ...I never liked it, feeling the hypocrisy...
[Chandramouli Mahadevan] is in Germany. Welcome back !
[Stomach Ache]
In [You already know what to do] : ...In the early nineteenth century, when writer [Samuel Taylor Coleridge] awoke with the "distinct recollection of the whole" of "Kubla Khan", he demonstrated the effectiveness of intuition... When business man [Jagdish Parikh] speaks of creating a "synthesis...beyond selfishness and selflessness, beyond collectiveness and competitiveness, to a cooperativeness based on selfness," he is calling on intuition...
Stomach Ache
[Health] > Stomach Ache
([source|http://www.ayurvedic.org/stomach.html])
Symptoms
The main symptom as is clear from the name is ache or pain. The pain can be of many types depending upon the cause of pain. In some cases it can be very mild and bearable while in other it could be very severe and appears as if the patient is going to lose his/her life. Depending upon the cause of pain it can be continously high, sometimes high and sometimes low like a wave, appear during a specific time, like one hour before or after the meals or on empty stomach. The nature of pain is also different . It can be biting, burning, throbbing, spasmodic, piercing or sometimes very mild and relief giving.
Stomach ache is a term which is generally used for the abdominal region, so even if the pain is not exactly in the stomach, it can be termed as stomach ache in a layman's language. Common causes of pain in the abdominal region can be appendicitis, stones in the kidney and the gall bladder, gastric or duodenal ulcers, colitis, inflammation of liver or any other part of the alimentary canal and infection in the urinary tract.
Pain in the abdominal region can also be caused due to presence of worms in the digestive tract, constipation, indigestion, wind and distention, gastritis, food poisoning or food allergies ,acidity and diarrhea. It can also be caused due to the presence of a toxic material called ama. Though most pains according to Ayurveda are caused by vata (air ) aggravation, it can also occur by the aggravation of pitta (fire) and kapha (water and mucus ) doshas.
The treatment according to Ayurveda varies according to the cause of the pain. As the aim of Ayurvedic treatment is to remove the root cause, it could be different in different cases depending upon the cause. In this way the Ayurvedic approach is different from the modern medicine where generally pain killers are prescribed irrespective of the cause. Some general remedies for stomach ache are given here. In case of severe symptoms it is advised to consult the Ayurvedic physician.
3. Two tea spoons of lemon juice mixed with 50 ml. of warm water helps in relieving all kinds of stomach aches. One gram of rock salt powder should be mixed in this and can be taken at least thrice a day.
4. Take equal weights of dry ginger, black pepper, roasted cumin seeds, dry mint leaves, coriander, asa asafetida, garlic and rock salt. Make a fine powder by grinding all these together. Taking one or half tea spoon of this powder with warm water gives relief from stomach ache. This can be taken two or three times a day after meals. If some of the ingredients are not found, you can make the powder with what ever items being available. Common salt can be used if rock salt is unavailable.
5. Taking one to three grams of ajowan seeds with warm water relieves stomach ache. It becomes more effective if an equal weight of rock salt is added to it. In case rock salt is not available, common salt can be used.
6. Giving local heat treatment at the site of the pain also gives some relief from the pain.
7. One tea spoonful ginger juice and one tea spoonful castor oil mixed in half cup warm water relieves stomach ache. It can be taken twice a day.
intuition
* comes from the Latin intueri - meaning to consider, to look on
* the immediate knowing or learning of something without the conscious use of reasoning; instantaneous apperception
* Walter Russell : Intuition is the language of light through which men and God "intercommunicate"
* To separate authentic intuition from projections and wishful thinking
Sharon Franquemont
http://www.intuitionworks.com/
You already know what to do
http://www.intuitionworks.com/Youalred.htm
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/158542031X/
Jagdish Parikh
http://www.cersite.com/jnp.htm
Mahesh Shantaram
http://msram.livejournal.com/
* [15 day backlog|http://www.livejournal.com/users/msram/day/2001/07/30]
* [Nidhi Taparia] of [Rediff] questions and [Mahesh Answers|http://msram.livejournal.com/day/2001/09/15]...
* 2002 Jan 01 : http://www.livejournal.com/users/msram/day/2001/12/10
[Inflight Memories|http://msram.livejournal.com/day/2001/05/12] : "Some of my favourite, most memorable photos are those shot at airports, stations, and harbours. They leave behind lasting impressions. This is probably because I shot them just as I arrived at a place or when I was about to depart. That's the moment when I would have been at an emotional high."
Obstacles to Happiness
What I'm about to say will sound a bit pompous, but it's true. What is
coming could be the most important minutes in your lives. If you could
businessman, fifty-five years old, is sipping beer at a bar somewhere and
corporation; the other has become the Chief Justice; somebody else has
become this or that. Monkeys, all of them.
become famous. Our society and culture drill that into our heads day and
themselves. Because they drained all their energy getting something that
are constantly tense and anxious. Do you call that human? And do you know why that happens? Only one reason: They identified with some label. They
tomorrow, it's just like changing my clothes. I am untouched. Are you
identifying with them. They come and go.
or praise can affect you either. When someone says, "You're a great guy,"
failure. It is none of these labels. These things come and go. These
children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and
you already have? Then why don't you experience it? Because you've got to drop something. You've got to drop illusions. You don't have to add
anything in order to be happy; you've got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It's only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings.
Do you know where these things come from? From
Swami Vivekananda
[Swami Vivekanda: What Have I learnt?|http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/5208/vedanta/learnt.html] (Delivered at Dacca, 30th March, 1901)
Lyrics
[Complicated] - Avril Lavigne (Let Go)
[Top 50 Lyrics @ Absolute Lyric|http://www.absolutelyric.com/a/top50/]
Relative and Absolute Happiness
([source|http://www.frankcolon.com/happiness.html])
You will never find happiness if you don't challenge your weakness and change yourself from within.
True happiness is to be found within, in the state of our hearts. It does not exist on the far side of some distant mountains. It is within you, yourself. However, as much you try, you can never run away from yourself. And if you are weak, suffering will follow you wherever you go. You will never find happiness if you don©ˆt challenge your weakness and change yourself from within. Happiness is to be found in the dynamism and energy of your own life as you struggle to overcome one obstacle after another. This is why I believe that a person who is active and free from fear is truly happy.
The challenges we face in life can be compared to a tall mountain, rising before a mountain climber. For someone who has not trained properly, whose muscles and reflexes are weak and slow, every inch of the climb will be filled with terror and pain.
The exact same climb, however, will be a thrilling journey for one who is prepared, whose legs and arms have been strengthened by constant training. With each step forward and up, beautiful new views will come into sight.
My teacher used to talk about two kinds of happiness-©˜ relative and absolute©˜ happiness. Relative happiness is happiness that depends on things outside ourselves: friends, and family, surroundings, the size of our home or family income. This is what we feel when a desire is fulfilled, or something we have longed for is obtained. While the happiness such things bring us is certainly real, the fact is that none of this lasts for ever. Things change. People change. This kind of happiness shatters easily when external conditions alter.
Relative happiness is also based on comparison with others. We may feel this kind of happiness at having a newer or bigger home than the neighbors. But that feeling turns to misery the moment they start making new additions to theirs!
Absolute happiness, on the other hand, is something we must find within. It means establishing a state of life in which we are never defeated by trials and where just being alive is a source of great joy. This persists no matter what we might be lacking, or what might happen around us. A deep sense of joy is something which can only exist in the innermost reaches of our life, and which cannot be destroyed by any external forces. It©ˆs eternal and inexhaustible.
What we should compare is not ourselves against others. We should compare who we are today against who we were yesterday, who we are today against who we will be tomorrow. While this may seem simple and obvious, true happiness is found in a life of constant advancement. And the same worries that could have made us miserable can actually be a source of growth when we approach them with courage and wisdom.
One friend whose dramatic life proved this was Natalia Saltz, who founded the first children©ˆs theater in Moscow. In the 1930©ˆs, she and her husband were marked by the Soviet Union©ˆs secret police. Even though they were guilty of no crime, her husband was arrested and executed and she was sent to a prison camp in the frozen depths of Siberia. After she recovered from the initial shock, she started looking at her situation, not with despair, but for opportunity.
She realized that many of her fellow prisoners had special skills and talents. She began organizing a ©¯university©˜, encouraging the prisoners to share their knowledge. ©¯You. You are a scientist. Teach us about science. You are an artist. Talk to us about art.©˜ In this way, the boredom and terror of the prison camp were transformed into the joy of learning and teaching. Eventually, she even made use of her own unique talents to organize a theater group.
She survived the five year prison sentence, and dedicated the rest of her long life to creating children©ˆs theater. When we met for the first time in Moscow in 1981, she was already in her 80©ˆs. She was as radiant and buoyant as a young girl. Her smile was the smile of someone who has triumphed over the hardships of life.
The following is from [Info for newcomers|http://www.ramana-maharshi.org/newcomer.htm]
"It is a fact that everyone in the world is seeking happiness, often unconsciously (whatever their concept of it is) - some may deny it, citing other pursuits instead, but no-one actively pursues misery, except in the mistaken belief that it is happiness. That the pursuit of this ideal is often unrecognised by those seeking it, must be accepted by us - it is nevertheless a fact - and happiness is given many names, satisfaction, excitement, thrill, good times etc. Its pursuit can take on the guise of drug and alcohol abuse, sexual pursuit, greed, lust for power, high ambition, steady employment, a family, good exam results etc."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
[Inspiration from a Major Spiritual Teacher|http://www.ccnet.com/~elsajoy/spiritus.html]
Chet Day
http://www.chetday.com
Lotus Ayurvedic Garden, Heidelberg, Germany
http://www.ayurveda-garden.com
Ayurveda
* [Test your body type|http://www.allayurveda.com/know_qs.htm]
* [Ayurveda, mystery medicine|http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,68-2001380870,00.html] : ...Given my scientific inclination, I cannot help but marvel at the principles of Ayurvedic medicine. Everything in the universe, including me and my four goldfish, is composed of five elements collectively known as panchamahabhutas: space, air, fire, water and earth...
* [Ayurveda Info Center|http://www.ayurveda.com/info/index.html]
* [Google's Ayurveda|http://directory.google.com/Top/Health/Alternative/Ayurveda/]
* [HealthEpic.com - Ayurveda|http://www.healthepic.com/ayurveda/index.asp] - very good
* [allAyurveda.com|http://www.allayurveda.com/discover.htm] is good
Ramana Maharshi
(from 'Day by Day with Bhagavan')
[Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi site - Introductory page for newcomers|http://www.ramana-maharshi.org/newcomer.htm]
Who am i?
from the original Tamil
"Who am I?" is the title given to a set of questions and answers bearing on Self-enquiry. The questions were put to Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi by one Sri M. Sivaprakasam Pillai about the year 1902. Sri Pillai, a graduate in Philosophy, was at the time employed in the Revenue Department of the South Arcot Collectorate. During his visit to Tiruvannamalai in 1902 on official work, he went to Virupaksha Cave on Arunachala Hill and met the Master there. He sought from him spiritual guidance, and solicited answers to questions relating to Self-enquiry. As Bhagavan was not talking then, not because of any vow he had taken, but because he did not have the inclination to talk, he answered the questions put to him by gestures, and when these were not understood, by writing. As recollected and recorded by Sri Sivaprakasam Pillai, there were fourteen questions with answers to them given by Bhagavan. This record was first published by Sri Pillai in 1923, along with a couple of poems composed by himself relating how Bhagavan's grace operated in his case by dispelling his doubts and by saving him from a crisis in life. 'Who am I?' has been published several times subsequently. We find thirty questions and answers in some editions and twenty-eight in others. There is also another published version in which the questions are not given, and the teachings are rearranged in the form of an essay. The extant English translation is of this essay. The present rendering is of the text in the form of twenty-eight questions and answers.
Along with Vicharasangraham (Self-Enquiry), Nan Yar (Who am I?) constitutes the first set of instructions in the Master's own words. These two are the only prosepieces among Bhagavan's Works. They clearly set forth the central teaching that the direct path to liberation is Self-enquiry. The particular mode in which the enquiry is to be made is lucidly set forth in Nan Yar. The mind consists of thoughts. The 'I' thought is the first to arise in the mind. When the enquiry ' Who am I?' is persistently pursued, all other thoughts get destroyed, and finally the 'I' thought itself vanishes leaving the supreme non-dual Self alone. The false identification of the Self with the phenomena of non-self such as the body and mind thus ends, and there is illumination, Sakshatkara. The process of enquiry of course, is not an easy one. As one enquires 'Who am I?', other thoughts will arise; but as these arise, one should not yield to them by following them , on the contrary, one should ask 'To whom do they arise ?' In order to do this, one has to be extremely vigilant. Through constant enquiry one should make the mind stay in its source, without allowing it to wander away and get lost in the mazes of thought created by itself. All other disciplines such as breath-control and meditation on the forms of God should be regarded as auxiliary practices. They are useful in so far as they help the mind to become quiescent and one-pointed.
For the mind that has gained skill in concentration, Self-enquiry becomes comparatively easy. It is by ceaseless enquiry that the thoughts are destroyed and the Self realized - the plenary Reality in which there is not even the 'I' thought, the experience which is referred to as "Silence".
Om Namo Bhagavathe Sri Ramanaya
The gross body which is composed of the seven humours (dhatus), I am not; the five cognitive sense organs, viz. the senses of hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell, which apprehend their respective objects, viz. sound, touch, colour, taste, and odour, I am not; the five cognitive sense-organs, viz. the organs of speech, locomotion, grasping, excretion, and procreation, which have as their respective functions speaking, moving, grasping, excreting, and enjoying, I am not; the five vital airs, prana, etc., which perform respectively the five functions of in-breathing, etc., I am not; even the mind which thinks, I am not; the nescience too, which is endowed only with the residual impressions of objects, and in which there are no objects and no functioning's, I am not.
When the mind, which is the cause of all cognition's and of all actions, becomes quiescent, the world will disappear.
What is called 'mind' is a wondrous power residing in the Self. It causes all thoughts to arise. Apart from thoughts, there is no such thing as mind. Therefore, thought is the nature of mind. Apart from thoughts, there is no independent entity called the world. In deep sleep there are no thoughts, and there is no world. In the states of waking and dream, there are thoughts, and there is a world also. Just as the spider emits the thread (of the web) out of itself and again withdraws it into itself, likewise the mind projects the world out of itself and again resolves it into itself. When the mind comes out of the Self, the world appears. Therefore, when the world appears (to be real), the Self does not appear; and when the Self appears (shines) the world does not appear. When one persistently inquires into the nature of the mind, the mind will end leaving the Self (as the residue). What is referred to as the Self is the Atman. The mind always exists only in dependence on something gross; it cannot stay alone. It is the mind that is called the subtle body or the soul (jiva).
10. How will the mind become quiescent?
When other thoughts arise, one should not pursue them, but should inquire: 'To whom do they arise?' It does not matter how many thoughts arise. As each thought arises, one should inquire with diligence, "To whom has this thought arisen?". The answer that would emerge would be "To me". Thereupon if one inquires "Who am I?", the mind will go back to its source; and the thought that arose will become quiescent. With repeated practice in this manner, the mind will develop the skill to stay in its source. When the mind that is subtle goes out through the brain and the sense-organs, the gross names and forms appear; when it stays in the heart, the names and forms disappear. Not letting the mind go out, but retaining it in the Heart is what is called "inwardness" (antar-mukha). Letting the mind go out of the Heart is known as "externalisation" (bahir-mukha). Thus, when the mind stays in the Heart, the 'I' which is the source of all thoughts will go, and the Self which ever exists will shine. Whatever one does, one should do without the egoity "I". If one acts in that way, all will appear as of the nature of Siva (God).
Other than inquiry, there are no adequate means. If through other means it is sought to control the mind, the mind will appear to be controlled, but will again go forth. Through the control of breath also, the mind will become quiescent; but it will be quiescent only so long as the breath remains controlled, and when the breath resumes the mind also will again start moving and will wander as impelled by residual impressions. The source is the same for both mind and breath. Thought, indeed, is the nature of the mind. The thought "I" is the first thought of the mind; and that is egoity. It is from that whence egoity originates that breath also originates. Therefore, when the mind becomes quiescent, the breath is controlled, and when the breath is controlled the mind becomes quiescent. But in deep sleep, although the mind becomes quiescent, the breath does not stop. This is because of the will of God, so that the body may be preserved and other people may not be under the impression that it is dead. In the state of waking and in samadhi, when the mind becomes quiescent the breath is controlled. Breath is the gross form of mind. Till the time of death, the mind keeps breath in the body; and when the body dies the mind takes the breath along with it. Therefore, the exercise of breath-control is only an aid for rendering the mind quiescent (manonigraha); it will not destroy the mind (manonasa).
Through meditation on the forms of God and through repetition of mantras, the mind becomes one-pointed. The mind will always be wandering. Just as when a chain is given to an elephant to hold in its trunk it will go along grasping the chain and nothing else, so also when the mind is occupied with a name or form it will grasp that alone. When the mind expands in the form of countless thoughts, each thought becomes weak; but as thoughts get resolved the mind becomes one-pointed and strong; for such a mind Self-inquiry will become easy. Of all the restrictive rules, that relating to the taking of sattvic food in moderate quantities is the best; by observing this rule, the sattvic quality of mind will increase, and that will be helpful to Self-inquiry.
14. Is it possible for the residual impressions of objects that come from beginningless time, as it were, to be resolved, and for one to remain as the pure Self?
Without yielding to the doubt "Is it possible, or not?", one should persistently hold on to the meditation on the Self. Even if one be a great sinner, one should not worry and weep "O! I am a sinner, how can I be saved?"; one should completely renounce the thought "I am a sinner"; and concentrate keenly on meditation on the Self; then, one would surely succeed. There are not two minds - one good and the other evil; the mind is only one. It is the residual impressions that are of two kinds - auspicious and inauspicious. When the mind is under the influence of auspicious impressions it is called good; and when it is under the influence of inauspicious impressions it is regarded as evil.
The mind should not be allowed to wander towards worldly objects and what concerns other people. However bad other people may be, one should bear no hatred for them. Both desire and hatred should be eschewed. All that one gives to others one gives to one's self. If this truth is understood who will not give to others? When one's self arises all arises; when one's self becomes quiescent all becomes quiescent. To the extent we behave with humility, to that extent there will result good. If the mind is rendered quiescent, one may live anywhere.
Without desire, resolve, or effort, the sun rises; and in its mere presence, the sun-stone emits fire, the lotus blooms, water evaporates; people perform their various functions and then rest. Just as in the presence of the magnet the needle moves, it is by virtue of the mere presence of God that the souls governed by the three (cosmic) functions or the fivefold divine activity perform their actions and then rest, in accordance with their respective karmas. God has no resolve; no karma attaches itself to Him. That is like worldly actions not affecting the sun, or like the merits and demerits of the other four elements not affecting all pervading space.
He who gives himself up to the Self that is God is the most excellent devotee. Giving one's self up to God means remaining constantly in the Self without giving room for the rise of any thoughts other than that of the Self. Whatever burdens are thrown on God, He bears them. Since the supreme power of God makes all things move, why should we, without submitting ourselves to it, constantly worry ourselves with thoughts as to what should be done and how, and what should not be done and how not? We know that the train carries all loads, so after getting on it why should we carry our small luggage on our head to our discomfort, instead of putting it down in the train and feeling at ease?
As thoughts arise, destroying them utterly without any residue in the very place of their origin is non-attachment. Just as the pearl-diver ties a stone to his waist, sinks to the bottom of the sea and there takes the pearls, so each one of us should be endowed with non-attachment, dive within oneself and obtain the Self-Pearl.
God and the Guru will only show the way to release; they will not by themselves take the soul to the state of release. In truth, God and the Guru are not different. Just as the prey which has fallen into the jaws of a tiger has no escape, so those who have come within the ambit of the Guru's gracious look will be saved by the Guru and will not get lost; yet, each one should by his own effort pursue the path shown by God or Guru and gain release. One can know oneself only with one's own eye of knowledge, and not with somebody else's. Does he who is Rama require the help of a mirror to know that he is Rama?
All the texts say that in order to gain release one should render the mind quiescent; therefore their conclusive teaching is that the mind should be rendered quiescent; once this has been understood there is no need for endless reading. In order to quieten the mind one has only to inquire within oneself what one's Self is; how could this search be done in books? One should know one's Self with one's own eye of wisdom. The Self is within the five sheaths; but books are outside them. Since the Self has to be inquired into by discarding the five sheaths, it is futile to search for it in books. There will come a time when one will have to forget all that one has learned.
Happiness is the very nature of the Self; happiness and the Self are not different. There is no happiness in any object of the world. We imagine through our ignorance that we derive happiness from objects. When the mind goes out, it experiences misery. In truth, when its desires are fulfilled, it returns to its own place and enjoys the happiness that is the Self. Similarly, in the states of sleep, samadhi and fainting, and when the object desired is obtained or the object disliked is removed, the mind becomes inward-turned, and enjoys pure Self-Happiness. Thus the mind moves without rest alternately going out of the Self and returning to it. Under the tree the shade is pleasant; out in the open the heat is scorching. A person who has been going about in the sun feels cool when he reaches the shade. Someone who keeps on going from the shade into the sun and then back into the shade is a fool. A wise man stays permanently in the shade. Similarly, the mind of the one who knows the truth does not leave Brahman. The mind of the ignorant, on the contrary, revolves in the world, feeling miserable, and for a little time returns to Brahman to experience happiness. In fact, what is called the world is only thought. When the world disappears, i.e. when there is no thought, the mind experiences happiness; and when the world appears, it goes through misery.
25. What is wisdom-insight (jnana-drsti)?
Remaining quiet is what is called wisdom-insight. To remain quiet is to resolve the mind in the Self. Telepathy, knowing past, present and future happenings and clairvoyance do not constitute wisdom-insight.
26. What is the relation between desirelessness and wisdom?
Desirelessness is wisdom. The two are not different; they are the same. Desirelessness is refraining from turning the mind towards any object. Wisdom means the appearance of no object. In other words, not seeking what is other than the Self is detachment or desirelessness; not leaving the Self is wisdom.
Rarely Asked Questions
I came across this phrase at [Mira Art]'s [RAQs|http://surprise.editthispage.com/raqs] page...
Kiran Bedi
Kiran Bedi : "I also teach them to be fearless. I tell them, nothing is permanent with you. What is permanent with you is your attitude to the moment. That is what is within your control, and that’s the only permanent thing at the moment I can see."
Guy Kawasaki
Read [Big Stones|http://www.garage.com/guy/speeches/paloAlto.shtml]
Chandramouli Mahadevan
[People] > Chandramouli Mahadevan http://86400.weblogs.com
Everyone calls him Mouli - He maintains a Weblog [86400 dollars a day|http://86400.weblogs.com/]. [We] had been to so many places together with Mouli.
Looking forward to going to [Salzburg] next weekend to celebrate [kishore's|http://www.carnatic.com/kishore/] Birthday on sunday 25th of November.
[http://static.userland.com/weblogsCom/images/86400weblogscom/flower002.gif]
Joshua Allen
[People] > Joshua Allen http://www.netcrucible.com/blog/
[Better Living Through Software|http://www.netcrucible.com/blog/]
Read [Making a Semantic Web|http://www.netcrucible.com/semantic.html]
Vincent Laforet
http://www.vincentlaforet.com/
Joseph Mercola
http://www.mercola.com/
Deepavali
DEEPAVALI or Diwali means "a row of lights". It falls on the last two days of the dark half of Kartik (October-November). For some it is a three-day festival. It commences with the Dhan-Teras, on the 13th day of the dark half of Kartik, followed the next day by the Narak Chaudas, the 14th day, and by Deepavali proper on the 15th day.
There are various alleged origins attributed to this festival. Some hold that they celebrate the marriage of Lakshmi with Lord Vishnu. In Bengal the festival is dedicated to the worship of Kali. It also commemorates that blessed day on which the triumphant Lord Rama returned to Ayodhya after defeating Ravana. On this day also Sri Krishna killed the demon Narakasura.
Everyone forgets and forgives the wrongs done by others. There is an air of freedom, festivity and friendliness everywhere. This festival brings about unity. It instils charity in the hearts of people. Everyone buys new clothes for the family. Employers, too, purchase new clothes for their employees.
Waking up during the Brahmamuhurta (at 4a.m.) is a great blessing from the standpoint of health, ethical discipline, efficiency in work and spiritual advancement. It is on Deepavali that everyone wakes up early in the morning. The sages who instituted this custom must have cherished the hope that their descendents would realise its benefits and make it a regular habit in their lives.
In a happy mood of great rejoicing village folk move about freely, mixing with one another without any reserve, all enmity being forgotten. People embrace one another with love. Deepavali is a great unifying force. Those with keen inner spiritual ears will clearly hear the voice of the sages, "O Children of God! unite, and love all". The vibrations produced by the greetings of love which fill the atmosphere are powerful enough to bring about a change of heart in every man and woman in the world. Alas! That heart has considerably hardened, and only a continuous celebration of Deepavali in our homes can rekindle in us the urgent need of turning away from the ruinous path of hatred.
On this day Hindu merchants in North India open their new account books and pray for success and prosperity during the coming year. The homes are cleaned and decorated by day and illuminated by night with earthern oil-lamps. The best and finest illuminations are to be seen in Bombay and Amritsar. The famous Golden Temple at Amritsar is lit in the evening with thousands of lamps placed all over the steps of the big tank. Vaishnavites celebrate the Govardhan Puja and feed the poor on a large scale.
He who Himself sees all but whom no one beholds, who illumines the intellect, the sun, the moon and the stars and the whole universe but whom they cannot illumine, He indeed is Brahman, He is the inner Self. Celebrate the real Deepavali by living in Brahman, and enjoy the eternal bliss of the soul.
The sun does not shine there, nor do the moon and the stars, nor do lightnings shine and much less fire. All the lights of the world cannot be compared even to a ray of the inner light of the Self. Merge yourself in this light of lights and enjoy the supreme Deepavali.
Many Deepavali festivals have come and gone. Yet the hearts of the vast majority are as dark as the night of the new moon. The house is lit with lamps, but the heart is full of the darkness of ignorance. O man! wake up from the slumber of ignorance. Realise the constant and eternal light of the Soul which neither rises nor sets, through meditation and deep enquiry.
http://www.diwali-cards.com
[Deepavali e-cards|http://www.123greetings.com/events/diwali/]
Bruce Mau
Read [An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth|http://www.brucemaudesign.com/manifesto/print.html]
Dan Chan
http://www.danchan.com/
Is http://www.daypop.com competing with http://www.google.com
Wesley Felter
http://wmf.editthispage.com/
Hal B. Rager
http://hal.editthispage.com/2001/10/23
Good Work
At http://www.fastcompany.com/learning/bookshelf/goodwork.html : The core message of our Who's Fast issue is the power of good work. Now three eminent psychologists are out with a new book actually called "Good Work." In an in-depth discussion, they discuss the right way to think about your profession and career.
Weblogs
[Weblog Madness|http://www.larkfarm.com/weblog_madness.htm]
Cool Tools
[Interests]/[Computers] > [Tools] > Cool Tools
Someday, I want to use the [natural|http://www.arab.net/saudi/culture/sa_miswak.html] Toothbrush
[Microsoft Outlook|http://www.microsoft.com/office/]
[Microsoft Internet Explorer|http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/]
[SAPGUI|http://www.sap.com/asia/ecommerce/sapgui.htm]
[Yahoo Email|http://mail.yahoo.com]
[blogtracker|http://www.dansanderson.com/blogtracker/]
[Radio Userland|http://radio.userland.com/]
[Manila|http://manila.userland.com/]
[InfoLink|http://www.biggbyte.com/biggbyte3/infolink/index.html] : The Dead Link Killer for Win95 and NT.
[WebCompiler|http://www.webcompiler.com/] 2000 allows you to take a collection of HTML, either from a Web Site you already have or maybe HTML you prepared specially, and turn it into a single self-contained "executable" file that you can use for any number of purposes.
Ford Focus
http://www.fordvehicles.com/cars/focus/
Bhagavad Gita
The Bhagavad- Gita is considered by eastern and western scholars alike to be among the greatest spiritual books the world has ever known. In a very clear and wonderful way the Supreme Lord Krishna describes the science of self-realization and the exact process by which a human being can establish their eternal relationship with God. In terms of pure, spiritual knowledge the Bhagavad- Gita is incomparable. Its intrinsic beauty is that its knowledge applies to all human beings and does not postulate any sectarian idealogy or secular view. It is appproachable from the sanctified realms of all religions and is glorified as the epitome of all spiritual teachings. This is because proficiency in the Bhagavad- Gita reveals the eternal principles which are fundamental and essential for spiritual life from all perspectives and allows one to perfectly understand the esoteric truths hidden within all religious scriptures. Many great thinkers from our times such as Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Schweizer as well as Madhvacarya, Sankara and Ramanuja from bygone ages have all contemplated and deliberarted upon its timeless message. The primary purpose of the Bhagavad- Gita is to illuminate for all of humanity the realization of the true nature of divinity; for the highest spiritual conception and the greatest material perfection is to attain love of God!
[Swami Prabhupada ] : [Bhagavad Gita As It Is Original|http://www.asitis.com/]
Doc Searls
http://doc.weblogs.com/
Andre Durand
http://discuss.andredurand.com/
[Global Consciousness 1.0|http://discuss.andredurand.com/stories/storyReader$187]
Wai Genriiu
http://www.waisays.com/ : Truth supplies us with the freedom of choice
Steve Yost
http://www.quicktopic.com/blog/
http://www.quicktopic.com/blurcircle
Geoff Goodfellow
[Saying Goodbye, and Good Riddance to Silicon Valley|http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/01/biztech/articles/17drop.html] - 'success is getting what you want & happiness is wanting what you get' - ...Until last year, Geoff Goodfellow was a Silicon Valley Wunderkind, a pioneer in the field of wireless electronic mail. Now, as a resident of the Czech Republic, he wakes up each day and gazes from the balcony of his loft over a jumble of rooftops at the Prague Castle on a nearby hill...
Steve Wainstead
http://www.panix.com/~swain/
Martha Schindler
http://www.marthaschindler.com/ - [browse the clips|http://www.marthaschindler.com/NewFiles/browse.html] are wow
David Allen
http://www.davidco.com/
Patrick Combs
[People] > Patrick Combs
http://www.goodthink.com/ : rise above the mediocrity of your surroundings
He publishes an inspiring [Newsletter|http://www.goodthink.com/newsletter.html]
[A Wild Experience with a Healer|http://www.goodthink.com/godbless.html]
Rich Geib
http://www.rjgeib.com/
He lives in the [Ojai Valley Community|http://www.rjgeib.com/biography/ventura/]
Karl Benz
[DaimlerChrysler : The year 1844|http://www.daimlerchrysler.com/index_e.htm?/history/epoche1/history1844_d_e.htm] : Karl Benz is born in [Karlsruhe] in 1844 and more than a hundred years later [Kishore Balakrishnan] is born on the same day in [Madurai]
Madurai
http://www.madurai.com/history.htm
Project Leader
[Project Leader Lessons Learned|http://www.jcdisciples.org/davidtannen/computer/project_leader/index.html]
Kris
http://netdyslexia.editthispage.com/discuss/msgReader$3532
Joel Snyder
http://www.opus1.com/www/jms.html
me: WOW - what a combination !
Doug Baron
[Doug Baron's Radio Weblog|http://radio.weblogs.com/0001075/]
[History of Frontier|http://dave.editthispage.com/historyOfFrontier]
[Frontier Credits|http://frontier.userland.com/credits] : ...I [Dave Winer] was sorry to see Doug go, his good nature and thorough engineering skills will certainly be missed inside UserLand and on the mail lists. We'll miss him, and we send him our thanks every day as we use Frontier, thanks for more than just one great release, Doug, thanks for six!...
Lawrence Lee
http://radio.weblogs.com/0001013/
John Robb
http://jrobb.userland.com/
He (John Robb) also served for seven years as a pilot in US Air Force Special Operations. He has a masters degree from Yale University and a BS in Astronautical Engineering from the United States Air Force Academy.
[klogs|http://groups.yahoo.com/group/klogs] is an interesting place...
2002 May 29 : [The New Economy|http://davenet.userland.com/2002/05/29/johnRobbTheNewEconomy]
Robert Scoble
[People] > Robert Scoble http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/
http://scobleizer.manilasites.com/
[Did Scoble gets Microsofted or did Microsoft get Scobleized?|http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2003/04/15.html]
20040320 : [fastcompany.com: It's A Blog World After All|http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/81/blog.html] : .....Robert Scoble may well be one of the most powerful people in Redmond right now.....
Eric Kidd
http://linux.userland.com/
Sean P. Floyd
http://singbluesilver.ManilaSites.Com/
Jake Savin
http://jake.editthispage.com/
Brad Pettit
http://bradpettit.editthispage.com/
Jeff Cheney
http://ican.editthispage.com/
Martin Luther King, Jr.
http://www.thekingcenter.com/
"If a man hasn't discovered something that he would die for, he isn't fit to live"
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
"A time comes when silence is betrayal."
"Some of us who have already begun to break the
within one's own bosom."
Sheila Simmons
http://sheila.inessential.com/
A visit to their garden is refreshing... http://sheila.inessential.com/garden/
Alwin Hawkins
[ViewFromTheHeart|http://www.vfth.com/]
I visit Alwin's page after a very long time and it is nice to see that from today, there is an important change...
a [New tag line|http://www.vfth.com/2001/11/10] and the cornerstone of a new ethic for me. : ''Work, Don't Whine''
John VanDyk
http://iowa.weblogger.com/
David Rogers
http://timesshadow.editthispage.com/
[Principles|http://timesshadow.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$56]
[Blinding Glimpses of the Obvious|http://timesshadow.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$249]
Steven Vore
after 2002 jan 6 > http://svore.home.mindspring.com
until 2002 jan 6 > http://mumble.editthispage.com/
[Books I've Read|http://mumble.editthispage.com/books]
Dori Smith
http://www.backupbrain.com/
Dan Gillmor
http://web.siliconvalley.com/content/sv/opinion/dgillmor/weblog/
Henry Miller
Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there.
2002 September 15 : I received the following quote in the 'Welcome to [BookCrossing]' email
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man cannot utter two or three sentences, without disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and thought, namely, whether in the kingdom of the senses and understanding, or, in that of ideas and imagination, in the realm of intuitions and duty. People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
compared to what lies within us.
http://www.transcendentalists.com/1emerson.html
[Texts|http://www.emersoncentral.com/texts.htm]
Confucius
http://www.cifnet.com/~geenius/kongfuzi/
The Tao of Web Sites
http://www.tlc-systems.com/tao.htm
Soil And Health Library
[Steve Solomon]
Steve Solomon
[People] > Steve Solomon
Lee Iacocca
http://www.saintrochtree.com/articles/000251.htm
http://www.exsands.com/History/People/leeiacoccabiog_wip_ex.htm
Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam
Email : APJAbdulkalam at yahoo dot com
[A blog about India's 12th President|http://abdulkalam.blogspot.com]
* [Interview Dr A P J Abdul Kalam - Pritish Nandy|http://www.carnatic.com/kishore/articles/art_0020.html]
* [A P J Kalam at HindustanTimes.com|http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/specials/kalam/home.shtml]
KJ Yesudas
http://www.yesudas.com
Beyond Vegetarianism
http://www.beyondveg.com/
Sitaraman Periasamy
http://www.webyogi.com/
Eric Margolis
http://www.bigeye.com/fcorrlst.htm
Aajonus Vonderplanitz
http://www.angelfire.com/ny2/bass/aajonus.html
http://www.primaldiet.com/ has info about his book [We want to live]
Advanced Manufacturing
http://www.advancedmanufacturing.com/
Netherlands
http://www.holland.com/
Ken Coar
http://web.golux.com/coar/
e-gineer
http://www.e-gineer.com/
Nathan Wallace
http://www.e-gineer.com/nathan/
How to Write a Software Specification
http://www.keycomputerconsultants.com/kcc/kccspec.html
[Tutorial: Functional Specification: What and Why|http://www.mojofat.com/tutorial/]
Joel on Software
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ : "The contents of these pages represent the opinions of one person."
Shoba Narayan
http://about.beliefnet.com/author/author_119.html
Rick Saenz
http://upstairs.weblogger.com/
[Books that Changed my life|http://upstairs.weblogger.com/stories/storyReader$13]
Eric Rawlins
http://www.well.com/user/woodman/
[Books That Changed My Life|http://www.well.com/user/woodman/books.html]
Books That Changed My Life
[Eric Rawlins] : [Books That Changed My Life|http://www.well.com/user/woodman/books.html] - Not necessarily the best books I've ever read--though that list would not be very far different from this one. But each of these books added something permanent to me--an insight, a vision, an attitude. I've placed them in roughly the order in which I encountered them:
[Rick Saenz] : [Books That Changed My Life|http://saenz.weblogs.com/stories/storyReader$25]
[Kins Collins] : [Books That Changed My Life|http://www.bayarea.net/~kins/AboutMe/Books.html] - The page starts with the following quote... Yet who reads to bring about an end however desirable? Are there not some pursuits that we practise because they are good in themselves, and some pleasures that are final? And is not this among them? I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards -- their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble -- the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading." -- The Second Common Reader by Virginia Wolff
George Orwell
http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/
How to Prepare an Effective Resume
http://www.jobweb.com/catapult/guenov/how_to.html
Art and the Zen of web sites
http://www.tlc-systems.com/webtips.shtml
AltaVista Translate
http://babelfish.altavista.com
HotLinks
2001 nov 14 : http://www.hotlinks.com/ is one of the best free web services ! - From 12/3/2001, they charge for the service
Jonathan Abrams
http://www.jabrams.com/
I came across several interesting sites at his [personal hotlinks|http://www.hotlinks.com/members/abrams/]
The Invisible Future: The Seamless Integration of Technology into Everyday Life
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0071382240/carnaticcom/
>Association for Computing Machinery), computer scientist Peter J. Denning
> "To most of the hundred millions of computer users around the world,
>the inner workings of a computer are an utter mystery. Opening the box
>maintaining, and understanding computers, network, applications and digital
>objects. Students expect IT curricula to provide comprehensive coverage of
>a comprehensive view of a fast-changing, fragmented world, for assistance
>differs markedly from what they expect. They find poorly designed software,
>complex and confusing systems, crash-prone systems, software without
>warranties, begrudging technical support, surly customer service,
>managed, investment-squandering dot-com companies. Businesspeople find it
>learning or career advancement and a cacophony of conflicting voices from
>serve their customers. Why is this not happening?"
Kalpana Mohan
http://www.geocities.com/kalpana_mohan/
C. Mohan
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/u/mohan/
KarthigaSaravanan
Karthiga got married to [Saravanan|http://www.carnatic.com/sara/index.htm] On July 2nd 1999.
SupriyaSaravanaKumar
After coming to Germany, i didnot find any Indian people near to my home.
Chandramouli
We used to call him Mouli - He is maintaining a [Weblog|http://86400.weblogs.com/].we had been to so many places together with Mouli. Looking forwad to go to [Saalzburg|http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.salzburg.com/&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dsalzburg%26hl%3Den/] next weekend to celebrate [kishore's|http://www.carnatic.com/kishore/] Birthday on sunday 25th of November.
He love to take more photos. You should see his professional touch [here|http://86400.weblogs.com/pictures/viewer$17] - Really superb!
Arbeit Macht Frei
[http://philip.greenspun.com/photo/pcd0075/dachau-arbeit-56.1.jpg]
Visit http://www.google.com/search?q=arbeit+macht+frei and see for yourself what it means !
Salzburg
http://www.salzburginfo.at/desk/frame_home_e.htm
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.salzburg.com/&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dsalzburg%26hl%3Den/
Austria
Top 7 excursions in the province of salzburg : http://www.top7-online.com/com/index.htm
http://www.salzbergwerke.com/hallein.htm
http://www.freilichtmuseum.com/
Tim Pozar
http://www.lns.com/house/pozar/
Jeremy Stangroom
[People] > Jeremy Stangroom
Manufacturing
[Fast and Flexible Communication Projects at MIT|http://web.mit.edu/ctpid/www/agile/]
[KAIZEN|http://www.kaizen-institute.com/kzn.htm] means improvement. Moreover, KAIZEN means continuing improvement in personal life, home life, social life, and working life. When applied to the workplace KAIZEN means continuing improvement involving everyone - managers and workers alike.
[Essential in the Lean Manufacturing Structure is The "5S" Philosophy|http://www.tpmonline.com/articles_on_total_productive_maintenance/leanmfg/5sphilosophy.htm]
The Machine That Changed the World : The Story of Lean Production
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/isbn=0060974176/carnaticcom/
The Best Things in Life
Finding a $20 bill in your coat from last winter.
Having someone tell you that you're beautiful.
Accidentally overhearing someone say something nice about you.
Late night talks with your roommate
Having someone play with your hair.
Watching a good movie cuddled up on a couch with someone you love
Watching the expression on someone's face as they open a much-desired present from you.
Mark Twain
Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Christina Wodtke
is an [Information Architect|http://www.eleganthack.com/blog/archives/00000069.html]
[Information Architecture and User Centered Design Reading List|http://www.eleganthack.com/reading/index.html]
[Weblog|http://www.eleganthack.com/blog/]
[ElegantHack|http://www.eleganthack.com/]
Madhu Menon
http://madman.weblogs.com/
2004 09 05 : Surfing... came to know that Madhu is Chef at http://www.shiokfood.com/ and new website is http://www.madmanweb.com/
Lagaan
http://msram.livejournal.com/day/2001/07/01
A Brief History of Time
http://www.generationterrorists.com/quotes/abhotswh.html
http://www.time.com/time/time100/poc/magazine/a_brief_history_of_rela6a.html
Mother
[Being a Good Mother|http://rachnaunedited.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/being-a-good-mother/]
Teacher & Students
TEACHER: Tommy, why do you always get so dirty?
TOMMY: Well, I'm a lot closer to the ground then
honesty vs practical
The woodcutter went home happily. One day while he was walking
If I say "No" to Jennifer Lopez, you will come up with Catherine Zeta
Jones. If I also say "No" to her, you will finally come up with my wife and I
The Mask
"Why do you do that, mommy?" he asked.
whodunnit
standard classroom.The teacher greets him.
complete faith in my staff,they always hope the best
Jonathan Wallace
"I am not too comfortable talking about myself, as opposed to what I believe..."
Paris
http://travel.yahoo.com/t/destinations/europe/france/paris/index.html
Steve Hooker
http://steveswar.warblogs.com/ , http://radio.weblogs.com/0001263/
I came across Steve via [Radio and me|http://steveswar.warblogs.com/radioandme/]
2002 feb 04 : Thought of the moment : "very soon, Steve might start work at UL" and remember thoughts have great power !
John Taylor Gatto
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/ : Challenging the myths of modern schooling
Vikas Kamat
http://www.kamat.com/vikas/
[Kamat AnthoBLOGy|http://www.kamat.com/vikas/blog.htm]
* 2001 Jan 01 - Vikas on a vacation to the DisneyWorld, Orlando --- his [content scheduling|http://www.kamat.com/vikas/blog.php?date=1/1/2002] is working perfectly !
Munich
http://www.munichwalktours.com
[BMW Museum|http://www.bmw.com/generic/com/de/fascination/discover/history/mobiletradition/museum/museum_overview.html] Petuelring 130, 80788 München - opened daily from 9.00am - 5.00pm admission until 4.00pm - Eintrittspreise: Erwachsene 3,00 EUR; ermäßigt 2,00 EUR
Read It and Think It
Questions:- 1. A murderer is condemned to death. He has to choose between three rooms. The first is full of raging fires,The second is full of assassins with loaded guns,and the third is full of lions that haven't eaten in 3years. Which room is safest for him.
2. A woman shoots her husband. Then she holds him under water for
4. There are two plastic jugs filled with water. How could you put all of this water into a barrel, without using the jugs or any dividers, and still tell which water came from which jug?
2. The woman was a photographer. She shot a picture of her husband, developed it, and hung it up to dry.
4. Freeze them first. Take them out of the jugs and put the ice in the barrel. You will be able to tell which water came from which jug.
5.The answer is Charcoal. In Homer Simpson's words:hmmmm...Barbecue.
6. Sure you can: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow!
7. The letter "e", which is the most common letter in the English
Steven Morgan Friedman
http://www.westegg.com/morgan/
"I'm an easily amused compulsive people watcher"
I subscribe to his [Random Thoughts|http://www.westegg.com/rt/] : ...It is the forum that I use to share insights, information, and interpretations with interesting people from around the world...
Merely talking about something confers importance on it. What I value
meeting. But there are some commonalities among other groups as well.
standard that our first question upon meeting someone for the first
Clay Shirky
http://www.shirky.com/
I have been a producer, programmer, professor, designer, author, consultant, sometimes working with people who wanted to create a purely intellectual or aesthetic experience online, sometimes working with people who wanted to use the internet to sell books or batteries or banking."
Amy Wohl
http://amywohl.weblogger.com/
Quaker
http://kishore.editthispage.com/2000/12/27
Albert Einstein
[Steven Morgan Friedman] maintains http://www.westegg.com/einstein/
A new website makes Albert Einstein's scientific and non-scientific manuscripts as well as his professional and personal correspondence, some dating back to his youth, within reach - http://www.alberteinstein.info
IT jokes
"Very simple," answers the shepherd. "First, you came here without being called. Second, you charged me a fee to tell me something I already knew,and third, you don't understand anything about my business..
PaperQuote
http://www.paperquote.com
Azim Premji
http://www.virtualbangalore.com/Ppl/PplPremji.php3
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_27/b3739083.htm
Extreme Programming
[Computers] > [Programming] > Extreme Programming
The Age of Reason
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/age_of_reason/
Thomas Paine
[People] > Thomas Paine
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/
Internet Application Workbook
http://philip.greenspun.com/internet-application-workbook/
Kuala Lumpur
http://www.geographia.com/malaysia/kualalumpur.html
Chennai
http://www.chennaionline.com/
[Madras Homoeo Pharmacy|http://www.carnatic.com/homoeo/]
2009 dec 11 fri - http://www.creamcentre.com/ should consider a simple page for the iPhone !
Pollachi
http://www.coimbatore.com/pollachi/ states "This town is about 40Kms from Coimbatore"
Erode
http://www.erode.com/tourinfo.htm
Wayne Downing
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55417-2001Nov19.html
Carlton Vogt
http://www2.infoworld.com/cgi/component/columnarchive.wbs?column=ethics
Think on These Things
|<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060916095/carnaticcom"><img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0060916095.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" border="0" alt="Jiddu Krishnamurti: Think on these Things" hspace="3" vspace="3"/></a>
Living and Raw Foods
http://www.living-foods.com - The largest community on the internet for living and raw food information
Developer Works
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/ : IBM's resource for developers
Literate Programming
[Computers] > [Programming] > Literate Programming
http://www.literateprogramming.com/
Donald Knuth
[Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About]
Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About
[Books] > Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About
PHP
[Computers] > [Programming] > PHP
([via|http://www.paradox1x.org/weblog/kmartino/archives/000818.shtml#000818] Karl Martino) [Making the Case for PHP at Yahoo|http://public.yahoo.com/~radwin/talks/yahoo-phpcon2002.htm]
[Working With Text Files in PHP|http://www.stickysauce.com/tutorials/programming/php/phptextfiles/index.htm]
[PHP Labs|http://www.phplabs.com/]
Developer Shed
http://www.devshed.com/ : The Open Source Web Development Site
Google
[Links]/[Companies] > Google
http://www.google.com
[Google Weblog|http://google.blogspace.com/] by [Aaron Swartz]
Microserfs
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.01/microserfs.html
The Pragmatic Programmer
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/ppbook/index.shtml
by [Andrew Hunt] and [David Thomas]
The Mythical Man-Month
http://www.ercb.com/feature/feature.0001.html
a [review|http://www.yourdon.com/books/coolbooks/notes/brooks.html] by [Ed Yourdon]
The Dynamics of Software Development
http://www.ercb.com/feature/feature.0003.html
Rapid Development
http://www.ercb.com/feature/feature.0004.html
About Face
http://www.ercb.com/feature/feature.0005.html
The Future Does Not Compute
[Books] > The Future Does Not Compute
http://www.ercb.com/feature/feature.0002.html
Electronic Review of Computer Books
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[Feature Book Reviews|http://www.ercb.com/feature/feature.new.html] : "Books that are awfully significant or significantly awful."
The Atlantic Systems Guild
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Tom Van Vleck
[People] > Tom Van Vleck
http://www.multicians.org/thvv/tvv-home.html
.....I have had the privilege of working with some of the finest people in the world on some of the most interesting projects in the computer field.
What I always say is, "You learn something every day, unless you're careful.".....
Peopleware
by [Tom DeMarco] and [Timothy Lister]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633439/
The Guild Library
http://www.systemsguild.com/GuildSite/Books/Guild_Library.html
Software Development Magazine
http://www.sdmagazine.com/
Ed Yourdon
http://www.yourdon.com/
Only a Ripe Fruit Falls
Question: Beloved Osho, I feel that through developing an attitude of endurance towards difficulties, I have become resigned to much of life. This resignation feels like a weight pushing against my effort to become more alive in meditation. Does this mean that I have suppressed my ego, and that I must find it again before I can really lose it?
This is something basic to be understood: the ego must come to a peak, it must be strong, it must have attained an integrity -- only then can you dissolve it. A weak ego cannot be dissolved. And this becomes a problem.
In the East, all the religions preach egolessness. So in the East, everybody is against the ego from the very beginning. Because of this anti-attitude, ego never becomes strong, never comes to a point of integration from where it can be thrown. It is never ripe. So in the East it is very difficult to dissolve the ego, almost impossible.
In the West, the whole Western tradition of religion and psychology propounds, preaches, persuades people, to have strong egos -- because unless you have a strong ego, how can you survive? Life is a struggle; if you are egoless, you will be destroyed. Then who will resist? Who will fight? Who will compete? And life is a continuous competition. Western psychology says: Attain to the ego, be strong in it.
This is going to be a hard task for you, first to attain and then to lose -- because you can lose only something which you possess. If you don't possess it, how can you lose it?
You can be poor only if you are rich. If you are not rich your poverty cannot have that beauty which Jesus goes on preaching: Be poor in spirit. Your poverty cannot have that significance which Gautam Buddha has when he becomes a beggar.
Only a rich man can become poor, because you can lose only that which you have. If you have never been rich, how can you be poor? Your poverty will be just on the surface; it can never be in the spirit. On the surface you will be poor, and deep down you will be hankering after riches. Your spirit will hanker towards riches, it will be an ambition, it will be a constant desire to attain riches. Only on the surface will you be poor. And you may even console yourself by saying that poverty is good.
What you have is not the point. If you have enough then the desire disappears. When you have enough riches, the desire disappears. Disappearance of the desire is the criterion of enoughness. Then you are rich -- you can drop it, you can become poor, you can become a beggar like Buddha. And then your poverty is rich; then your poverty has a kingdom of its own.
And the same happens with everything. Upanishads or Lao Tzu or Jesus or Buddha -- they all teach that knowledge is useless. Just getting more and more knowledgeable is not much help. Not only is it not much help, it can become a barrier.
Knowledge is not needed, but that doesn't mean you should remain ignorant. Your ignorance will not be real. When you have gathered enough knowledge and you throw it, then ignorance is attained. Then you really become ignorant -- like Socrates who can say: I know only one thing, that I don't know anything.
If you are simply ignorant because you never attained to any knowledge, your ignorance cannot be wise, it cannot be wisdom -- it is simply absence of knowledge. And the hankering will be inside: How to gain more knowledge? How to gain more information?
When you know too much -- you have known the scriptures, you have known the past, the tradition, you have known all that can be known -- then suddenly you become aware of the futility of it all, suddenly you become aware that this is not knowledge. This is borrowed! This is not your own existential experience, this is not what you have come to know. Others may have known it, you have simply gathered it. Your gathering is mechanical. It has not arisen out of you, it is not a growth. It is just rubbish gathered from other doors, borrowed, dead.
Remember, knowing is alive only when you know, when it is your immediate, direct experience. But when you know from others it is just memory, not knowledge. Memory is dead.
When you gather much -- the riches of knowledge, scriptures, all around you, libraries condensed in your mind, and suddenly you become aware that you are just carrying the burden of others, nothing belongs to you, you have not known -- then you can drop it, you can drop all this knowledge. In that dropping a new type of ignorance arises within you. This ignorance is not the ignorance of the ignorant, this is how a wise man is, how wisdom is.
Only a wise man can say: I don't know. But in saying: I don't know, he is not hankering after knowledge, he is simply stating a fact. And when you can say with your total heart: I don't know, in that very moment your eyes become open, the doors of knowing are open. In that very moment when you can say with your totality; I don't know, you have become capable of knowledge.
When Buddha comes down from his throne, becomes a beggar...what is the necessity for Buddha? He was a king, enthroned, at the peak of his ego -- why this extreme, moving down from his palace to the streets, becoming a beggar? But Buddha has a beauty in his begging. The earth has never known such a beautiful beggar, such a rich beggar, such a kingly beggar, such an emperor.
What happened when he stepped down from his throne? He stepped down from his ego. Thrones are nothing but symbols, symbols of the ego, of power, prestige, status. He stepped down and then egolessness happened.
He came to visit Socrates, and he started talking about egolessness. But Socrates' penetrating eyes must have come to realize that this man was not an egoless man. The way he was talking about humility was very egoistic.
Socrates is reported to have said: Through your dirty clothes, through the holes in your clothes, I cannot see anything else but the ego. You talk of humility, but that talk comes from a deep centre of the ego.
This will happen, this is how hypocrisy happens. You have the ego, you hide it through the opposite; you become humble on the surface. This surface humbleness cannot deceive anyone. It may deceive you, but it cannot deceive anyone else. From the holes of the dirty dresses, your ego goes on peeping. It is always there. This is a self-deception and nothing more. Nobody else is deceived. This happens if you start throwing the unripe ego.
What I teach will look contradictory, but it is true to life. Contradiction is inherent in life. I teach you to be egoists so that you can become egoless. I teach you to be perfect egoists. Don't hide it, otherwise hypocrisy will be born. And don't struggle with the unripe phenomenon. Let it ripen -- and help it. Bring it to a peak!
Don't be afraid -- there is nothing to be afraid of. This is how you will come to realize the agony of the ego. When it comes to its peak, then you will not need a Buddha or me to tell you that the ego is hell. You will know it, because the peak of the ego will be the peak of your hellish experiences, it will be a nightmare. And then there is no need for anybody to tell you: Drop it! It will be difficult to carry it on.
One reaches to knowledge only through suffering. You cannot throw anything just by logical argument. You can throw something only when it has become so painful that it cannot be carried any further. Your ego has not become that painful yet -- hence you carry it. It is natural! I cannot persuade you to drop it. Even if you feel persuaded, you will hide it -- that's all.
Ego is a survival measure. If a child is born without the ego, he will die. He cannot survive, it is impossible, because if he feels hunger he will not feel: I am hungry. He will feel there is hunger, but not related to him. The moment hunger is felt, the child feels: I am hungry, he starts crying and making efforts to be fed. The child grows through the growth of his ego.
So to me, ego is part of natural growth. But that doesn't mean that you have to remain with it forever. It is a natural growth, and then there is a second step when it has to be dropped. That too is natural. But the second step can be taken only when the first has come to its crescendo, its climax, when the first has reached its peak. So I teach both -- I teach egoness and I teach egolessness.
When it comes to a peak, suddenly you will become aware that you are not the center. This has been a fallacy, this has been a childish attitude. But you were a child, so nothing is wrong in it. Now you have become mature, and now you see that you are not the center.
Really, when you see that you are not the center, you also see there is NO center in existence or everywhere is the center. Either there is no center and existence exists as a totality, a wholeness without any center as a control point or every single atom is a center.
Jakob Boehme has said that the whole world is filled with centers, every atom is a center, and there is no circumference -- centers everywhere and circumference nowhere.
These two are the possibilities. Both mean the same; only the wording is different and contradictory. But first become a center.
It is like this: you are in a dream; if the dream comes to a peak, it will be broken. Always it happens -- whenever a dream comes to a climax, it is broken. And what is the climax of a dream? The climax of a dream is the feeling that this is real. You feel this is real, not a dream, and you go on and on and on and on to a higher peak and the dream becomes ALMOST real. It can never become real; it becomes almost real. It comes so close to reality that now you cannot go further, because one step more and the dream will become real -- and it cannot become real because it is a dream! When it comes so close to reality, sleep is broken, the dream is shattered, you are fully awake.
The same happens with all types of fallacies. Ego is the greatest dream. It has its beauty, its agony. It has its ecstasy, its agony. It has its heavens and hells, both are there. Dreams sometimes are beautiful and sometimes nightmares, but both are dreams.
So I don't tell you to come out of your dream before the time has come. No, never do anything before the time. Allow things to grow, allow things to have their time, so that everything happens naturally.
This is very deep. If YOU drop it, ego has remained inside. WHO will drop it? If you think YOU will drop it, YOU are the ego -- so whatsoever you drop will not be the real thing. The real thing will be preserved and you will have thrown something else.
You cannot make yourself egoless. Who will do it? It happens, it is not a doing. You grow into ego and a point comes when the whole thing becomes so hellish that the dream is broken. Suddenly you see the goose is out -- it has never been in the bottle.
In life everything is necessary. Nothing is unnecessary, nothing can be unnecessary. Whatsoever has happened had to happen. Whatsoever is happening is happening because of certain deep causes. You need it so you can remain in the fallacy. It is just a cocoon that helps you, protects you, helps you to survive. One need not be in the cocoon forever. When you are ready, break the cocoon, come out.
The ego is the shell of the egg, it protects you. But when you are ready, break the shell, come out of the egg. The ego is the shell.
They may not be after the things of this world, they are after the things of that world, but this or that, both are worlds. And they may be even more greedy, because they say these temporary things, momentary things of this world, consist of momentary pleasures -- and they want eternal pleasures. Their greed is supreme. They cannot be satisfied by momentary pleasures. They want eternal pleasures. Unless something is eternal they are not gratified. Their greed is deep, their greed is absolute and greed belongs to the ego. Greed is the hunger of the ego.
So it happens sometimes that saints are more egoistic than sinners, and then they are far away from the divine. And sometimes sinners can attain to the god more easily than those so-called saints, because ego is the barrier.
This has been my experience that sinners can drop their egos more easily than saints, because sinners have never been against the ego. They have been feeding it, they have been enjoying it, they have lived with it totally. And saints have always been fighting the ego, so they never allowed it to become ripe.
This is the arduousness of the whole phenom