PARIHAARAMS

Question:

Can one’s Karma be changed/influenced by pariharas?

Reply:

The famous sanskrit statement relating to our human mind: "yath bhaavam tath bhavati" -is applicable to queries regarding the Karma theory and the pariharas undertaken to reduce the sufferings arising as a result of the operation of the law of Karma. One who has unquestioned belief in God's grace will be greatly benefited from the rituals of Pariharas through the consequent strengthening of one's own mind to deal with the karmic situation.

To develop this great faith, one first needs the attitude of mind that can affirm with faith Kulasekhara Azhwaar's staement: yath yath bhavyam bhavatu bhagawanpoorva karmaanuroopam- (Mukundamala). Our weak minds get strengthened and benefit greatly when we accept karmic happenings and humbly seek His Grace to reduce/avoid the ill-effects.

Theories and explanations that are acceptable to the logical mind belong to the realm of science which insists on prior proof through repeatable experiments. All other statements which have stood the test of time over hundreds of centuries and are believed by succeeding generations with great faith belong to what Sri Aurobindo called the 'supra-mind'. Most religions and philosophies call them received truths, implying that sages in the ancient past received the knowledge in their meditations directly from the super-consciousness.

We are lucky to have inherited this cultural tradition in our families through our parents/grand-parents. By definition therefore, these statements/truths are verifiable only through individual experience. For such experience to happen, it is first necessary to have faith that the ancient statements have come from a believable source. To question, at the very beginning, without traveling the indicated path fully is like the one who does not leave home and take even the first unless totally assured of reaching the goal. Even the statistical theory of probability on which many scientific pronouncements are based does not assure certainty for the future happening of an event.

Rejecting this great cultural treasure because of lack of faith and equating it to mere superstitious belief is like the miser with hoarded wealth, who chooses to live like a poor man. Pariharas, which are part of the treasure handed down over centuries are needed by us to strengthen our minds adequately to deal with difficult life-situations.They help to strengthen our minds, if we have faith in their efficacy, to strengthen our mind to face adverse events in life.

Bedtime Prayers (contd.)

In continuation of the Post: Prayers at Bedtime:

Srimad Bhagavatam relates the story of Gajendra Moksham where the mighty elephant Gajendra, caught in the vicious grip of the crocodile, surrendered to the Lord and cried out for his help. Vishnu rushed to its rescue, killed the crocodile and saved His devotee. In Sri Vaishnava philosophy, the story is recounted to illustrate the effectiveness of the princliple of surrender to God (sharanaagati).

Also in Sri Vishnu Sahasranamam: slokam 99 http://kirtimukha.com/chinnamma/sahasra/sloka99.htm

uttAraNo dushkRti-hA puNyo duH-svapna-nASanaH
vira-hA rakshaNaH santo jIvanaH paryavasthitaH

Nama 926: dus_svapna-nASanaH – “Remover of evil dreams”, is considered as referring to the Gajendra Moksham story and the need for a sharanaagati-attitude of the mind in us.

Hanuman is a great Rama-bhakta, ever-present wherever his Lord Rama's story is told and He is worshipped.

Garuda is in eternal service to Vishnu as His vahanam.

Bhima, the strong one, was a great warrior rendering eternal service to Lord Krishna in the cause of Dharma.

They are all great devotees of the Lord.

Remembering these great devotees of the Lord when we are awake during the day and when we are about to retire for sleep, will help us to develop a sharanagati attitude of mind towards the Lord and ride the rough waves in the samsara sagara - stormy ocean of life..

SrI ChinmayAnanda, in his commentary on Vishnu Sahasranamam, explains that the worst dream is that of being re-born. He notes that when one is ever centered in nArAyaNa-smaraNa, then one's sub-conscious mind is not loaded with half-digested thoughts and unexpressed intentions, repressed desires and suppressed motives, immoral passions and covetous inclinations, and he has no fearful dreams in his sleep. Over time one enters nArAyaNa-consciousness, and there is no room for bad dreams.

What better way to help us than remembering these great souls, great Bhaktas who ever in the service of the Lord.

OM namo Narayanaya
Sarvam Sri Krishnarpanamastu

Prayers at bed-time

Sri Ranganathar

Bed-time prayers:

Night-fall

kshIra sAgara taraN^ga shIkarA.
sAra tArakita chAru mUrtaye
bhogi bhoga shayanIya shAyine
mAdhavAya madhu vidviShe namaH

Madhava! Lord of Sri Devi, resting on the bed of
the serpent Adisesha in the milky ocean
(like Sri Ranganathan in Sri Rangam),
sprayed with drops from the ocean's waves
shining like stars in the sky, adorning you,
Madhusudana! the killer of the demon Madhu,
to You I offer my salutations.

anyatha sharanam naasthi,
thvameva sharanam mama
tasmaath kaarunya-bhavena
raksha, raksha Janardhana

No other support have I,
except thou to whom I surrender;
therefore, have compassion upon me
O Janardhana! save me, save me.

raamaskandham hanumantam
vainateyam vrukodaram
Shayane yassmaren nityam
dussvapanam tasya nashyati

Hanuman the one with strong, red shoulders,
Garuda, son of Vinati, - Lord Vishnu's Vaahanam,
Bhima - the mighty Pandava with a voracious appetite,
whoever remembers these valiant persons daily at bed-time,
his/her bad dreams shall be destroyed.

Arunodayam - Sun-rise

"Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray dear Lord my soul you'll keep.
May angels watch me through the night
and wake me with the morning light.
Amen"
--------------------------------------------------
Hold me with both your hands, lest I should stray;
Fold me in your arms, lest I lose my way.
The night is cold; the road is dim;
My heart, once bold has now lost its vim.
Let me feel your reassuring touch, let the sun shine
Let your ever-wakeful watch surround me.
Let the vermilion elation of your dusk annihilate my trivial woes;
Let my distressed soul bask in the glory of your garden's crimson rose.
Let the molten golden hue of your dawn be smeared on my forehead;
Let me wear your blessing like the Brahmin's sacred thread.
Often my heart is tempted to play a pernicious game,
But, suddenly, I remember your face and lower my head in shame.
My foes are not strong enough to deprive me of your kindness;
Your illuminated presence has cured me of my blindness.
You are my refuge, my harbour on a stormy night;
Against all evils, you infuse in me the strength to fight.
I roll your name on my tongue;
your voice resonates in my ears;
I sing your praise in all my songs;
your touch soothes my fears.
When thunder strikes, the wind howls, I remember this —
I have found the secret path to your tranquil abode of peace.
In this world where hatred is rife and truth has lost its way;
Where recidivist men often revert to strife
and Truth has lost her sway;
Your benison inflames the extinguished flame of hope anew;
Let me hold your hand; let me lean on you.

Mirrors Don’t Lie. Mislead? Oh, Yes

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/science/22angi.html?pagewanted=1&ref=science

Mirrors are the best ‘virtual reality’ system that we can build

Whether made of highly polished metal or of glass with a coating of metal on the back, mirrors have fascinated people for millennia: ancient Egyptians were often depicted holding hand mirrors. With their capacity to reflect back nearly all incident light upon them and so recapitulate the scene they face, mirrors are like pieces of dreams, their images hyper-real and profoundly fake. Mirrors reveal truths you may not want to see. Give them a little smoke and a house to call their own, and mirrors will tell you nothing but lies.

To scientists, the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of mirrors make them powerful tools for exploring questions about perception and cognition in humans and other neuronally gifted species, and how the brain interprets and acts upon the great tides of sensory information from the external world. They are using mirrors to study how the brain decides what is self and what is other, how it judges distances and trajectories of objects, and how it reconstructs the richly three-dimensional quality of the outside world from what is essentially a two-dimensional snapshot taken by the retina’s flat sheet of receptor cells. They are applying mirrors in medicine, to create reflected images of patients’ limbs or other body parts and thus trick the brain into healing itself. Mirror therapy has been successful in treating disorders like phantom limb syndrome, chronic pain and post-stroke paralysis.

“In a sense, mirrors are the best ‘virtual reality’ system that we can build,” said Marco Bertamini of the University of Liverpool. “The object ‘inside’ the mirror is virtual, but as far as our eyes are concerned it exists as much as any other object.” Dr. Bertamini and his colleagues have also studied what people believe about the nature of mirrors and mirror images, and have found nearly everybody, even students of physics and math, to be shockingly off the mark.

Other researchers have determined that mirrors can subtly affect human behavior, often in surprisingly positive ways. Subjects tested in a room with a mirror have been found to work harder, to be more helpful and to be less inclined to cheat, compared with control groups performing the same exercises in nonmirrored settings. Reporting in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, C. Neil Macrae, Galen V. Bodenhausen and Alan B. Milne found that people in a room with a mirror were comparatively less likely to judge others based on social stereotypes about, for example, sex, race or religion.

“When people are made to be self-aware, they are likelier to stop and think about what they are doing,” Dr. Bodenhausen said. “A byproduct of that awareness may be a shift away from acting on autopilot toward more desirable ways of behaving.” Physical self-reflection, in other words, encourages philosophical self-reflection, a crash course in the Socratic notion that you cannot know or appreciate others until you know yourself.

The mirror technique does not always keep knees from jerking. When it comes to socially acceptable forms of stereotyping, said Dr. Bodenhausen, like branding all politicians liars or all lawyers crooks, the presence of a mirror may end up augmenting rather than curbing the willingness to pigeonhole.

The link between self-awareness and elaborate sociality may help explain why the few nonhuman species that have been found to recognize themselves in a mirror are those with sophisticated social lives. Our gregarious great ape cousins — chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and gorillas — along with dolphins and Asian elephants, have passed the famed mirror self-recognition test, which means they will, when given a mirror, scrutinize marks that had been applied to their faces or bodies. The animals also will check up on personal hygiene, inspecting their mouths, nostrils and genitals.

Yet not all members of a certifiably self-reflective species will pass the mirror test. Tellingly, said Diana Reiss, a professor of psychology at Hunter College who has studied mirror self-recognition in elephants and dolphins, “animals raised in isolation do not seem to show mirror self-recognition.”

For that matter, humans do not necessarily see the face in the mirror either. In a report titled “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Enhancement in Self-Recognition,” which appears online in The Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Nicholas Epley and Erin Whitchurch described experiments in which people were asked to identify pictures of themselves amid a lineup of distracter faces. Participants identified their personal portraits significantly quicker when their faces were computer enhanced to be 20 percent more attractive. They were also likelier, when presented with images of themselves made prettier, homelier or left untouched, to call the enhanced image their genuine, unairbrushed face. Such internalized photoshoppery is not simply the result of an all-purpose preference for prettiness: when asked to identify images of strangers in subsequent rounds of testing, participants were best at spotting the unenhanced faces.

How can we be so self-delusional when the truth stares back at us? “Although we do indeed see ourselves in the mirror every day, we don’t look exactly the same every time,” explained Dr. Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. There is the scruffy-morning you, the assembled-for-work you, the dressed-for-an-elegant-dinner you. “Which image is you?” he said. “Our research shows that people, on average, resolve that ambiguity in their favor, forming a representation of their image that is more attractive than they actually are.” Asian elephants are among the few nonhuman animals found to recognize themselves in mirrors.

When we look in the mirror, our relative beauty is not the only thing we misjudge. In a series of studies, Dr. Bertamini and his colleagues have interviewed scores of people about what they think the mirror shows them. They have asked questions like, Imagine you are standing in front of a bathroom mirror; how big do you think the image of your face is on the surface? And what would happen to the size of that image if you were to step steadily backward, away from the glass?

People overwhelmingly give the same answers. To the first question they say, well, the outline of my face on the mirror would be pretty much the size of my face. As for the second question, that’s obvious: if I move away from the mirror, the size of my image will shrink with each step.

Both answers, it turns out, are wrong. Outline your face on a mirror, and you will find it to be exactly half the size of your real face. Step back as much as you please, and the size of that outlined oval will not change: it will remain half the size of your face (or half the size of whatever part of your body you are looking at), even as the background scene reflected in the mirror steadily changes. Importantly, this half-size rule does not apply to the image of someone else moving about the room. If you sit still by the mirror, and a friend approaches or moves away, the size of the person’s image in the mirror will grow or shrink as our innate sense says it should.

What is it about our reflected self that it plays by such counterintuitive rules? The important point is that no matter how close or far we are from the looking glass, the mirror is always halfway between our physical selves and our projected selves in the virtual world inside the mirror, and so the captured image in the mirror is half our true size.

Rebecca Lawson, who collaborates with Dr. Bertamini at the University of Liverpool, suggests imagining that you had an identical twin, that you were both six feet tall and that you were standing in a room with a movable partition between you. How tall would a window in the partition have to be to allow you to see all six feet of your twin?

The window needs to allow light from the top of your twin’s head and from the bottom of your twin’s feet to reach you, Dr. Lawson said. These two light sources start six feet apart and converge at your eye. If the partition is close to your twin, the upper and lower light points have just begun to converge, so the opening has to be nearly six feet tall to allow you a full-body view. If the partition is close to you, the light has nearly finished converging, so the window can be quite small. If the partition were halfway between you and your twin, the aperture would have to be — three feet tall. Optically, a mirror is similar, Dr. Lawson said, “except that instead of lighting coming from your twin directly through a window, you see yourself in the mirror with light from your head and your feet being reflected off the mirror into your eye.”

This is one partition whose position we cannot change. When we gaze into a mirror, we are all of us Narcissus, tethered eternally to our doppelgänger on the other side.

On Torture in Fight against Terror

Dark Side:
“The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.”

Review by Bob Herbert in New York Times (Madness and Shame )

Jane Mayer of The New Yorker devotes a great deal of space to David Addington, Dick Cheney’s main man and the lead architect of the Bush administration’s legal strategy for the so-called war on terror.

She quotes a colleague as saying of Mr. Addington: “No one stood to his right.” Colin Powell, a veteran of many bruising battles with Mr. Cheney, was reported to have summed up Mr. Addington as follows: “He doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”
Very few voters are aware of Mr. Addington’s existence, much less what he stands for. But he was the legal linchpin of the administration’s Marquis de Sade approach to battling terrorism. In the view of Mr. Addington and his acolytes, anything and everything that the president authorized in the fight against terror — regardless of what the Constitution or Congress or the Geneva Conventions might say — was all right. That included torture, rendition, warrantless wiretapping, the suspension of habeas corpus, you name it.

This is the mind-set that gave us Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and the C.I.A.’s secret prisons, known as “black sites.”

Ms. Mayer wrote: “The legal doctrine that Addington espoused — that the president, as commander in chief, had the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries if national security demanded it — rested on a reading of the Constitution that few legal scholars shared.”

When the constraints of the law are unlocked by the men and women in suits at the pinnacle of power, terrible things happen in the real world. You end up with detainees being physically and psychologically tormented day after day, month after month, until they beg to be allowed to commit suicide. You have prisoners beaten until they are on the verge of death, or hooked to overhead manacles like something out of the Inquisition, or forced to defecate on themselves, or sexually humiliated, or driven crazy by days on end of sleep deprivation and blinding lights and blaring noises, or water-boarded.

To get a sense of the heights of madness scaled in this anything-goes atmosphere, consider a brainstorming meeting held by military officials at Guantánamo. Ms. Mayer said the meeting was called to come up with ways to crack through the resistance of detainees.

“One source of ideas,” she wrote, “was the popular television show ‘24.’ On that show as Ms. Mayer noted, “torture always worked. It saved America on a weekly basis.”
I felt as if I was in Never-Never Land as I read: “In conversation with British human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, the top military lawyer in Guantánamo, Diane Beaver, said quite earnestly that Jack Bauer ‘gave people lots of ideas’ as they sought for interrogation models.”

Donald Rumsfeld described the detainees at Guantánamo as “the worst of the worst.” A more sober assessment has since been reached by many respected observers. Ms. Mayer mentioned a study conducted by attorneys and law students at the Seton Hall University Law School.

“After reviewing 517 of the Guantánamo detainees’ cases in depth,” she said, “they concluded that only 8 percent were alleged to have associated with Al Qaeda. Fifty-five percent were not alleged to have engaged in any hostile act against the United States at all, and the remainder were charged with dubious wrongdoing, including having tried to flee U.S. bombs. The overwhelming majority — all but 5 percent — had been captured by non-U.S. players, many of whom were bounty hunters.”

The U.S. shamed itself on George W. Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s watch, and David Addington and others like him were willing to manipulate the law like Silly Putty to give them the legal cover they desired. Ms. Mayer noted that Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the late historian, believed that “the Bush administration’s extralegal counterterrorism program presented the most dramatic, sustained and radical challenge to the rule of law in American history.”

After reflecting on major breakdowns of law that occurred in prior administrations, including the Watergate disaster, Mr. Schlesinger told Ms. Mayer: “No position taken has done more damage to the American reputation in the world — ever.”

Americans still have not come to grips with this disastrous stain on the nation’s soul. It’s important that the whole truth eventually come out, and as many of the wrongs as possible be rectified.

Ms. Mayer, as much as anyone, is doing her part to pull back the curtain on the awful reality. “The Dark Side” is essential reading for those who think they can stand the truth.

Quotes from John Maynord Keynes

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.

By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved,
an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems - the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion.

Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.

The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.

For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not.

Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.

Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.

I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.

Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead!

BRAIN AND BLUEBERRIES

What is good for your heart is generally good for your brain: for example, fish oil which is rich in omega-3. Dietary intake of antioxidants from fruits and vegetables significantly reduce the risk of developing cognitive impairment. Some of these are: Prunes, Raisins, Blueberries, Blackberries, Cranberries Strawberries, Spinach, Plums, Broccoli, Beets, Spinach Raspberries, Brusselsprouts, Kiwis, Red bell-peppers Avocados, Oranges, Red grapes, Cherries.

"Brain in the News" is a weekly commentary on how brain science relates to the news. The article gives valuable information to strengthen the brain and heart:

The brain is involved in everything we do. Wherever there are human stories the brain is involved. From the impact of war and natural disasters on the brain to drug abuse scandals to courtroom dramas to politics the brain is in the news, and you can read about it here.

Another Reason To Love Blueberries

If you’ve listened to me speak or seen my writings about brain-healthy eating you’ve probably heard me tout blueberries as the best brain food on the planet! Now, there’s even more compelling reasons to include them as part of your diet.

Blueberries help protect the brain, but the fruit may also have a heart protective effect by significantly lowering cholesterol, Canadian researchers say. Lead scientist Wilhelmina Kalt of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada conducted tests on pigs fed a blueberry-supplemented diet. Blueberry-supplemented diets resulted in a reduction in total cholesterol including both low-density lipoprotein, or LDL (the bad cholesterol) and high-density lipoproteins, or HDL, (the good cholesterol), Kalt said.

“In feeding trials, we found that blueberry supplementation reduced plasma cholesterol levels more effectively when the animals received a mostly plant-based diet than when they received a less heart-healthy diet”, Kalt said in a statement. The soy, oats and barley contained in these diets may have functioned synergistically with the blueberries to beneficially affect plasma lipids..

The study, published in the British Journal of Nutrition, found that the greatest reduction in total, LDL and HDL cholesterol levels was found in pigs fed a 2 percent blueberry diet equivalent to approximately 2 one-cup servings of blueberries in the human diet. Pigs have levels of LDL similar to humans and are susceptible to diet-induced vascular disease, develop atherosclerotic plaques in the aorta and carotid artery and have a similar blood pressure and heart rate as humans, Kalt said.

What I’ve found through looking at the research and in my own personal practice, is that what is good for your heart is generally good for your brain. Here are some other thoughts about brain-healthy eating….

Fish, Fish Oil, Good Fats and Bad Fats

Fish has been touted as brain food. Omega three fatty acids are the rave. There is good research to support these claims. In a study published in the British Medical Journal, French researchers reported that there is a significantly lower risk of developing brain problems among older people who eat fish at least once a week. Fish contain higher levels of omega-3-fatty acids.

It is hard to get enough omega-3-fatty acids in our diet. The foods that are now considered "mainstream" are often deficient in omega-3. Even if your diet includes several meals of fish per week, you may not be ingesting sufficient amounts of omega-3. This is because much of the fish we consume is now farm raised or does not contain significant amounts of omega-3. When ordering fish in a restaurant or buying it at the store, ask if it was caught in the wild or farm raised. Ideally, your diet should supply at least 650 mg of long chain omega-3 (DHA + EPA) per day, either from food sources or dietary supplementation. Omega-3 fatty acids are found in deep, cold-water fish, such as salmon, mackerel and sardines. Omega-6 fatty acids are also important, but are usually found in adequate amounts in corn, safflower, sunflower or soybean oils..

Dietary Antioxidants

A number of studies have shown that dietary intake of antioxidants from fruits and vegetables significantly reduce the risk of developing cognitive impairment. Here’s a list of the best antioxidant fruits and vegetables from the US Department of Agriculture…

Prunes, Raisins, Blueberries, Blackberries, Cranberries
Strawberries, Spinach, Plums, Broccoli, Beets, Spinach
Raspberries, Brussel-sprouts, Kiwis, Red bell-peppers
Avocados, Oranges, Red grapes, Cherries .

Your diet affects your brain, which affects literally everything you do. It’s something you can take control of to change your life for the better. Isn’t that what we all want? I encourage you to take an honest inventory of what you’re putting into your body and try a test period of 30 days with some healthier changes. Your vital organs, including your brain, will thank you and so will the people who care about you.

Daniel Amen, M.D., CEO, Amen Clinics, Inc.
Distinguished Fellow, American Psychiatric Association

MOUNAM - the Silent Mind

A Muni and Mounam.

Thoughts produced by incessant thinking are like the bees buzzing around the hive and taking off for acquiring honey for the Queen bee = our ego. When we ralise that this compulsive, icessant activity is a non-ending slavery to the ego without giving lasting happiness and that it is an obstacle to our progress in the spiritual path, we realise that the ego is the culprit like the ghost which does not exist. As Ramana Maharishi said in Upadesa Saaram, we find: ayi patathyaham nija vibhanakam. The ego falls, and the true self shines forth.

A successful muni = mounee is silent not only in speech, but also in the mind and thus deprives the ego of nourishment. J Krishnamurti advised that we first first learn to observe the interval that exists between two thoughts, become more and more aware of it and extend it to practise mounam.

Getting rid of this disease of ceaseless thoughts, that exists in all human beings, first needs acknowledgment that it is a disease, not an intellectual virtue. Unfortunately, the emphasis is on refining and bettering (worsening?) it as a skill and an asset to a intellectual person. This wrong attribute will persist until a revelation takes place as in the case of Yogis and one does not mind travelling on the rough, difficult spiritual path strewn with difficulties, with guidance from a competent Guru.

What can one do when being a slave to the ego is considered a blessing and one is content and happy with being a slave for ever and ever?

The way to gain anything is to lose it

The way to gain anything is to lose it.

True charity emanates from sound judgment of the intellect rather than a weak emotion of the mind. In its purest form, charity has the distinction of benefiting the receiver as well as the donor.

Victor Hugo in his novel Les Miserables highlights the benefaction that charity brings to the receiver. A convict had escaped from prison and sought shelter for the night. The priest obliged, gave him supper and a bed to sleep. In the middle of the night he decamped with the silver plates of the house. The next morning the police who had caught him brought him in. The priest feigned surprise and asked the policeman: "Why did you harass him? I gifted the plates to him last night." The policeman apologised and left.

The convict was astounded. To crown it all, the priest picked up two solid silver candlestick stands from his desk and gave them to the convict with these words: Remember, life is to give, not to take. The convict took them and departed. Thence, he was transformed. Living a life of service and sacrifice. Such would be the outcome of true charity.

Likewise, the donor is blessed with the effect of charity. Charity is a synonym for prosperity. So is sacrifice for success. Swami Rama Tirtha proclaims: The way to gain anything is to lose it. The more you run after wealth, the more it recedes. You crave for it, and it eludes you. Leave it alone, and it follows you. Work earnestly, dispassionately; the reward of work shall court you.

The phenomenon of colours illustrates this law of life. Light is constituted of seven colours. When an object is bathed in light the seven colours impinge upon it. An object appears blue when it actually gives away blue and takes in the other six. It appears in the colour it parts with. An object gains the colour it gives away! You gain what you give away, what you sacrifice. Not what you take. Develop the spirit of dispassion, renunciation in life. You turn pure, divine. And when you amass wealth you turn impure, demonic. Oliver Goldsmith wrote: Where wealth accumulates, men decay. [.....] -- Swami Parthasarathy
The complete article is at 'Speaking Tree', Times of India
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In this context, it is perhaps relevant to recall Lao Tsu's

Law of the Reversed Effort

The Law which sees to it that
When you try to stay afloat, you sink;
When you try to sink, you float;
When you hold your breath, you lose it.
Those who justify themselves, do not convince.

It is in the letting go, that we are enabled to receive;
In the stillness, that we can participate;
In the silence, hear; and,
out of the dark night, see.
To know the Truth, one must get rid of knowledge.

Time Shifting vs Time Management

[...] for those of us who live in nanosecond time, a moment becomes very, very short, and in each moment we ask how much we have gotten done. How much did I cram into it? Was I successful in multitasking?

This approach to time management simply turns up the speed on the treadmill of our lives. I propose we evolve beyond time management to "timeshifting" - which is different from merely "downshifting." The practice of timeshifting recognizes that every single moment has a particular rhythm to it, and that we have the capacity to expand or contract an individual moment as appropriate. One way to shift what's going on in our world is not to try to rush to do more, but to allow ourselves to go deeper into that moment of being present. Our ability to shift gears, to shift our rhythm to meet that moment and be present in it, is what allows us to experience the fullness of life, to create our life in the way we want it to be.-- Stephan Rechtschaffen. ****** Source: Nipun Mehta: Thought/Week

See also: Concept of Time - click HERE

Leaving no Foot-prints behind

Living in the past, present and future at once

The time zones of our life by Mukul Sharma (article in Economic Times)

Aphorisms telling us to live “one day at a time” turn out to be less cutesy if we think of a day as an extended metaphor for the present. Then it begins to make a little more sense. Recovering drug abusers and alcoholics, for instance, are exhorted by their various anonymous organisations to do the same: just try to stay off the stuff for the coming 24 hours and not think of how they might be able to hold out during the next day, the week after or even luck out for a lifetime later without breaking into a cold turkey of anticipation immediately. The reason is, for most of us the future comes so heavily pre-loaded with the past and memories of experience that it skews the path ahead unfairly at times. As a result we hardly remain in the kind of control we would ideally like to be. In the 1964 classic Games People Play, the psychiatrist Eric Berne described the dysfunctional nature of such set patterns by calling them predetermined “scripts”. He catalogued a series of mind games in which people play through an outlined and predictable sequence of “transactions” that are superficially plausible but which actually conceal motivations, include private significance to the parties involved and lead to a well-defined outcome that are usually counterproductive. Of course we can’t avoid history, much less disregard it, and those who don’t learn from its mistakes are indeed doomed to repeat them with unnecessarily distressing consequences. One day at a time also doesn’t mean repeating the same day forever because that would make it like instant history happening all the time in the present. Neither does it mean an unconcern about opportunity and potential since that would lock us eternally in the here and now. What living one day at a time actually means is being able to learn from the future before it takes place. Learning from the future is the art of trial and error without, in fact, trying or (hopefully) turning out to be erroneous. In a sense it’s a process of virtual extrapolation which makes the day more dynamic, meaningful and, ultimately, rewarding — during the course of the day itself. People who manage to do this also manage to shorten its duration from an arbitrary 24 hours down to the extremely thin slice of “now” moving across the continuum of all time available to them. They live, as some of our wisest folk have done, in the past, present and future at once. – Mukul Sharma

See also Swami Chidananda's discourse "Leaving no foot-prints behind" (click here)

THE LOTUS FLOWER - Significance

The Lotus Flower - Significance as symbol
In Hindu/Buddhist philosophical literature, the lotus flower is a symbol with great significance. For example, in Sloka 10, Chapter 5 of the Bhagavad Gita it is said: "One who leads his life dedicating all his actions to Brahman, abandoning attachments, is freed from bondage just as a lotus leaf remains unaffected by the water.

Alan Watts, in his Essay "Seven Symbols of Life" explains the symbolic meaning of the Lotus flower thus:

It figures in the art of every great civilization of Asia, and in the course of thousands of years has gathered to itself associations which, to the Western mind, are bound up with all that seems exotic in the life of the East. For the lotus is a mystery—a perfected glory appearing out of the unknown, a flower in whose circular spread of petals has been seen a symbol of the Wheel of Life and the rays of the sun. Yet while there is mystery in the perfection of its form, the greatest mystery is that such a form should appear out of the slime—the formless primeval morass, where, in the earliest ages, stirred the first living creatures—the home of blind worms and slithering reptiles, feeding upon one another and begetting their kind in innumerable masses.

This underworld of the morass has been sufficiently described in Kesserling’s masterpiece the South American Meditations, and there is no need to describe it further. But what must never be forgotten is that this underworld still exists in the soul of man; that while his spirit, like the Lotus struggles towards the light, so beneath him and surrounding and nourishing his roots is the primaeval slime. And further, below this slime is the world of minerals, the rock and ores descending deeper and deeper into the earth right down to that flaming darkness which men have imagined as Hell - From all this the flower gathers its nourishment while from above the sun and the rain bring to it the gifts of Heaven. Both are essential to the life of the flower.

It might seem to the eyes of man that the lotus is no more than a flower, that this resplendent creation exists of itself floating detached and spotless above the water. But this is illusion. For just as the sage may appear spotless and detached from the world he is like the lotus in that he has roots in the primaeval slime—and knows it. Foolishly it is thought that the highest achievement of the human spirit is a heavenly purity detached from earth—a rootless flower suspended in the air and nourished wholly from above. Yet in the symbol of the lotus we see that there is no conflict between heaven and earth; above, the flower develops into the fullness of its glory, expanding joyfully, opening its petals in welcome to sun and rain, while below, its root. stretch out into the morass, welcoming darkness and slime as the petals welcome light and air. For the life of the lotus is not in the flower alone; if it were, the roots would shrivel and die and the flower too would sink back into the mud. Nor is its life in the roots alone, for if this were so the flower would never raise its head above the water.

The realization of the truth contained in this symbol is the central problem of human life—the equal acceptance of both earth and heaven. Yet remember it is the roots which accept the slime—not the flower, and the flower which opens itself to the sun—not the roots. The reverse of this would indeed be abomination and evil- But nothing can be evil so long as it is in its right place, for the conflict between good and evil is not a conflict between heaven and earth, but between a right and a wrong orientation of man between the two. For evil is when the flower turns and plunges into the slime, twisting up its roots to gesticulate meaninglessly in the light of day. Or again, evil is to withdraw from either the root or the flower, to try to deny either of the two by refusing it its right to reach out into its appropriate world. Thus the particular problem of modern man of the West is to recognize his roots.

For hundreds of years his peculiar interpretation of the teaching of the Christ, his cult of consciousness, his moralism, his belief in progress towards the hygienic, the individuated and the independent has made him forget his roots in the primaeval slime. But he must remember that the roots are not to be recognized once more by searching them out with the flower; to attempt this would be to lose all that he has gained by his development, one-sided though it be. It is this folly which we see at work in the West to-day, in the growing obsession with the irrational force of sex, of the herd, of blood and violence. Yet these forces are, in themselves, as pure as any of the virtues, and as full of life-giving nourishment as Reason and the cool thought of great philosophy. For this obsession is not recognition. It is feeding the mouth with the contents of the bowels, or, conversely, filling the bowels with undigested food.

What must be done, therefore, if man is to attain a right orientation between heaven and earth, and a full development of both root and flower? How can he fulfill the Eastern precept, “Grow as the flower grows, at peace”? How can he give full recognition to the slime, and at the same time rise upwards to the sun?

In the darkness below the surface of the water lies what modern psychology has termed the Unconscious. A little way down it remains individuated, but the further it descends, the more individuals are lost in the mass. Thus in the slime is the world of reptiles, an ever coiling and uncoiling world of flux, where the individual is subordinated to the one aim of reproducing the species—a world of extreme fertility and ruthless destruction—symbolized by the circle snake which swallows its own tail. In the depths of the slime below the reptiles are even more primitive and un-individuated forms of life—plasmic formations wherein even the distinction between the sexes has not developed, formations which reproduce their kind simply by dividing into two. And further down, beneath the bed of decaying vegetable and animal matter (the death from which life arises again and again), is the formless substratum of the mineral world.

These depths have their counterpart in the soul of man, for his Unconscious sinks beyond the personal and the chain of his past lives and the lives of his forefathers, to the race, to the animal, vegetable and mineral worlds. Here lies hidden the memory of the whole Universe, and in these unconscious depths every man has his roots. From them he derives his life just as much as from the conscious world above the water. And by accepting them he transmutes the life of the slime into the glory of the flower. Therefore man must learn to recognize his foundation, to accept the primaeval slime as part of his nature—nay more, to affirm and welcome it with his roots, stretching them down deeper and deeper into the earth.

For as men we cannot deny that we came into the world with blood and pain, that the powerful reproductive urge symbolized by the reptile stirs within us, that we have bowels as well as brains, that our life depends alike on growth and decay, and that what we have been accustomed to regard as dirt, violence and pain is an essential part of our nature. This is the meaning of the Resurrection, that life comes forth out of death and decay, just as the fruit must rot for the seed to grow into the tree.

Therefore nothing is to be gained by trying to escape from the primaeval slime; without it we should die, while in truth it is no evil, Indeed, the humility of the sage is his capacity to accept the lowliest of things, to find goodness in slime. Yet it is strange that this should have been perverted into the false humility of the ascetic who rejoices in the dirt on the outside of his body, for this again is obsession, it is making the flower descend to the root.

Some will ask if this is not a ghastly life where the most gorgeous of flowers depends on slime, where growth can only be had at the expense of decay, where great achievements of the human spirit have their roots in the darkness and “depraved” irrationality of the Unconscious. Indeed, there are those who are so revolted by this life that they deny both flower and root, growth and decay, light and darkness, conscious and unconscious—hating both.

But their attitude is false, for they do not really hate both; they hate the dark side and would like to have the light, could it be had without darkness. When they speak of the vanity of life we must remind ourselves of the story of the sour grapes; they would not call it vain if it could be had without death. Yet nothing is to be achieved by revulsion and denial, not only because the attitude is fundamentally false, but because the denial of a thing does not make one free of it. Paradoxically, hatred binds one to the thing one hates, for if anything has enough power over a man to make him hate it, to that extent he is bound and conditioned by it. But while hatred is extracted, love is given. Therefore freedom comes not through hatred and denial, but through love and affirmation. “Love” is not meant in the sense of “like” as opposed to dislike, for one may love without liking; the two are on different planes. To love both the root and the flower, earth and heaven, slime and air, death and life is not merely to like decay because it makes possible growth; it is to bring the two together into an inseparable unity and to become one with it by a complete acceptance; until, beholding it, man can make to himself that tremendous affirmation: Tat tvam asi —That art thou!

by ALAN WATTS

A Personal God

It's truly a miraculous experience, watching a child grow from infant to baby to child - struggling to crawl, move on all fours, sit, stand, walk and speak to the mother. The instructions wired into the brain have to be decoded and practiced repetitively by the infant before it learns all the tricks to balance itself, stand, walk and speak. The nurturing mother watches, encouraging her child, but every step of the learning process in the mind has to be taken by the child itself.

A similar process is in operation when we learn to walk on the spiritual path. An urge to seek the mysterious spirit arises in the mind that then has to unlearn the old urges and directives of the ego, and learn new ways to see, hear and experience. The Universal Mother, with great love and affection, watches patiently - confident that her child would overcome the initial hurdles as it did the physical ones as an infant and triumphantly come to her ultimately. For, she has already provided the needed equipment and knowledge for this new experience.

We have to have faith in this belief. Reincarnating over many births, benefiting from past experiences, like the child tripping, falling and finally learning to stand and walk and take great strides upon this earth, we too will be ultimately successful in attaining to the goal of Sat-Chit-Ananda that is pure Bliss.

Einstein who said he experienced the mystifying forces in Nature, stated also that he did not believe in a personal God. But the God that he refuted thus was the anthropomorphic God created by man, in the image of man, for the worldly benefit of man - a God that ruled like a disciplinarian, granting favors to those who conformed and punishing the rebels; that was the fictional God of the religions preached by the Priests, in collusion with the earth's Rulers.

The Upanishads however speak only of a Brahman, (in the neuter as tat - IT), that is omnipresent - filling every atom of the Universe and living in every moment of time, past-present-& future. Conceptualizing this huge, timeless & dimensionless presence in a Rama or a Krishna helps the mind of the seeker in the same manner as a stroller helps the child to walk without faltering and falling. Identifying totally with a personal God of one's choice in this manner, one advances spiritually by leaps and bounds. The personal God then becomes the Universal Presence, which is experienced in the silence of the mind and the Bliss in the heart. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa experienced this Blissful presence of the Universal Mother in the idol of Kali that he worshipped.

Hinduism is a strange amalgam of a core theory and accompanying practices, rituals and superstitions. Understanding its core truth is akin to reaching the kernel of a coconut - remove and throw away the tight, adhering coverings of fiber, break the hard shell, pour away the water and reach the pure white delicious kernel. Is it any wonder that those who do not practice it with faith, sincerity, steadfastness, devotion and detachment see the outer coverings and are turned away?

Einstein did not believe in a personal God as he also considered that organized religion and its rituals were not effective in ensuring the practice of what they preached about morality and ethics. He summed up this ineffectiveness, and his disappointment, in forceful terms thus:

"When considering the actual living conditions of present day civilized humanity from the standpoint of even the most elementary religious commands, one is bound to experience a feeling of deep and painful disappointment at what one sees. For, while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. Everywhere, in economic as well as in political life, the guiding principle is one of ruthless striving for success at the expense of one's fellow men. This competitive spirit prevails even in school and, destroying all feelings of human fraternity and cooperation, conceives of achievement not as derived from the love for productive and thoughtful work, but as springing from personal ambition and fear of rejection."

The Vedantic portion of Hinduism lays emphasis on a personal, moral, ethical code of conduct. It however goes further to analyze the root cause of humanity’s suffering and concludes that the powerful, over-riding ego nurtured in societal materialistic values is to blame. This analysis, which is contained in the Upanishads, leads to many recommendations for getting complete control of the mind and developing contact with Universal Consciousness. Perhaps, had Einstein been familiar with the Upanishads, he might have conceded the validity of Upanishadic statements - which do not refer to a Personal God but name Brahman (in the neuter) as the source that exists every where, in all things and beings -- like the concept of energy.

This Upanishadic concept of the Universe is not religion but pure philosophy. Hence, realizing the practical needs of the 99% of humanity, Hinduism’s ancestors created Gods, mythologies, rules, regulations and rituals -- all of which served a temporary, intermediate purpose like a ladder. An advanced practitioner like an ascetic (sanyasi) has to step out of it and climb further on his own in order to realize the Truth.

Hinduism thus provides a 2-tier system: an elementary stage in which you believe in a personal Deity of your choice and follow rules for personal ethics and morality, and an advanced stage when one is ready to leave behind ego-dictated pursuits for material goals and is ready for the higher goal of realizing Sat-Chit-Ananda, with the assistance of a Guru. The Guru of Hinduism is merely a guide and an adviser, not a priest like the priest in a church with authority to control and guide his flock in accordance with a set of rules prescribed in a book. He is a realized saintly person who has understood and practiced the Upanishadic statements relating to the nature of Reality and therefore is able to give his disciple (sishya) guidance in the travel along the spiritual path which has been described in the Upanishad as being like the razor’s edge, difficult to tread and beset with obstacles:

Kathopanishad:
UtthishThatha, jAgrata, prApya varAn nibodhata
Kshurasya dhArA nishitA duratyatA
durgam pathastat kavayo vadanti.

Arise, awake, receive guidance from the best preceptors
For the path is like a razor’s edge
- dark, beset with obstacles, difficult to tread,
so the experienced (who have travelled the path), say.

GOD and EVIL

One is dismayed by the evil at large in the world and in oneself, depressed and humiliated by the inadequacy of one's efforts to cope with it, humiliated then by the inadequacy of one's own self. It is from precisely such a feeling of humiliation that, religious writers have often urged, the search for and need of God, take their rise. What is more, the seeker who is inspired by such a mood may not be wholly without hope of succeeding in his quest. For alienated by intellectual pride, they have assured us, God draws nearer to those who approach Him in humbleness of spirit." - From the Book "God and Evil" by C.E.M. Joad:

OPRAH WINFREY's interview with ELIE WIESEL
( From Oprah Winfrey's web-site: http://www2.oprah.com/omagazine/200011/omag_200011_elie_b.jhtml )

He's one of the people I most respect: Elie Wiesel. After I first read his memoir *Night* seven years ago, I was not the same—you can't be the same after hearing how Elie, at age 15, survived the horror of the Holocaust death camps. Through his eyes, we witness the depths of both human cruelty and human grace—and we're left grappling with what remains of Elie, a teenage boy caught between the two. I gain courage from his courage. The story—and especially that number, six million—numbs us:

A Jew hater named Adolf Hitler rises to power in Germany, the world goes to war in 1939, and when the showdown is over six years later, the tyrant has slaughtered six million Jews. Six million. Inconceivable. We see footage of the concentration camps, the gas chambers, the gallows.Yet words like Holocaust and Auschwitz are still abstractions—seemingly impossible until we see photos of someone who was there. A face. Eyes. Hair. Prison numbers tattooed into an arm. A real person like Elie Wiesel who made it through the atrocity.

"How could you live through the Holocaust and not be bitter?" I ask Elie. At 72, he emanates quiet strength; with his strong handgrip, it's as if he's saying, "I assure you—I am alive."

We sit across from each other at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan, where hundreds come to see evidence of what happened to the Jewish people. Thousands already know Elie Wiesel's name—he is a prolific writer, a professor at Boston University and an activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986—but I want him to take me back to the time when living to tell the story was the last thing that mattered to him. I wanted to know: "What does it take to be normal again, after having your humanity stripped away by the Nazis?"

"What is abnormal is that I am normal," he says. "That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life—that is what is abnormal." "Why didn't you go insane?" "To this day," he says, "that is a mystery to me." and a miracle.

After he was liberated from Buchenwald in 1945, he and other orphans were sent to France. There, he lived in an orphanage, then later supported himself as a tutor and choir director—and he decided that he wanted to live again. He studied literature, philosophy and psychology at the Sorbonne, and in 1952 he became a reporter for a newspaper in Tel Aviv. For ten years after his release, he vowed not to speak of his experience. "I wanted to be sure that the words I was going to use about this event were the proper words," he has said.

In our time together, Elie and I talk about how it is possible that he can still believe in the sovereignty of a force bigger than himself, why he has no explanation for his survival in the death camps, and what, five decades after Auschwitz, brings him what he calls real joy. Oprah: There may be no better person than you to speak about living with gratitude. Despite all the tragedy you've witnessed, do you still have a place inside you for gratefulness?

Elie Wiesel: Absolutely. Right after the war, I went around telling people, "Thank you just for living, for being human." And to this day, the words that come most frequently from my lips are ‘thank you’. When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.

O: Does having seen the worst of humanity make you more grateful for ordinary occurrences?
EW: For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.
O: Did you ever hate your oppressors?
EW: I had anger but never hate. Before the war, I was too busy studying [the Bible and the Cabala] to hate. After the war, I thought, What's the use? To hate would be to reduce myself.
O: On your first night in the camp, you saw babies being thrown into the flames. Can you ever forgive those who killed the children?
EW: Who am I to forgive? Only the children themselves could forgive. If I forgive, I should do it in their name. Otherwise, it is arrogant.
O: By becoming a voice for those who are suffering, are you doing what the world did not do for Jews during the Holocaust? EW: I've gone everywhere, trying to stop so many atrocities: Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia. The least I can do is show the victims that they are not alone. When I went to Cambodia, journalists asked me, "What are you doing here? This is not a Jewish tragedy." I answered, "When I needed people to come, they didn't. That's why I am here."
O: Is it our indifference and arrogance that makes us Americans feel that we are the center of the universe—that a mother's pain after losing her child in Bosnia or Nigeria isn't as important as our own pain?
EW: I wouldn't generalize. There are people in America who are so sensitive. Whenever I meet young Americans abroad, they are there to help. A doctor in New York read a quote of mine that sparked her involvement. Somebody had asked me, "What is the most important commandment in the Bible?" and I said, "Thou shalt not stand idly by." So she packed up her office and went to Macedonia—I met her there... We cannot free all the prisoners in the world or save all the victims of AIDS, but we can at least show them that we are with them.
O: You and the others in the camp were forced to march by three people who were hanged. And somebody behind you whispered, "Where is God?"
EW: A voice in me said, "God is there."
O: Where are you and God with each other these days?
EW: We still have a few problems! But even in the camps, I never divorced God. After the war, I went on praying to God. I was angry. I protested. I'm still protesting—and occasionally, I'm still angry. But it's not because of the past, but the present. When I see victims of a tragedy—and especially children—I say to God, "Don't tell me that you have nothing to do with this. You are everywhere—you are God."
O: Did you come out of the horror of the Holocaust with your ability to love intact?
EW: After my liberation, I fell in love with every girl—consecutively. But I would never dare tell a girl that I loved her, because I was timid—and afraid of rejection. I missed so many opportunities because I was afraid to say what I felt. I needed to love more than I needed to be loved. I needed to know that I could love—that after all I had seen, there was love in my heart.
O: Do you remember the day you were released from the camp? EW: April 11, 1945. The Americans were close by, and a few days before that, on April 5, the Germans had decided to evacuate all the Jews. Every day, they would evacuate thousands—and most were killed upon leaving. I was in a children's block with other adolescents, and we were left until the end. [But every day we marched to the gate anyway.] I was near the gate more than five times before I was released, and each time, the gate closed just before I came to it.
O: How do you explain that you survived the camps?
EW: I have no explanation.
O: You—someone who has studied the Talmud, the Cabala—have no explanation?
EW: Believe me, I have tried to know, but I do not. If it is God, I have problems with that. If he bothered to save me, why couldn't he have saved all the others? There were people worthier than I.
O: Don't you think your survival has something to do with who you've become and what you've said to the world about the Holocaust?
EW: No, no, no. The price is too high. Because I survived, I must do everything possible to help others.

There is no where that He is not there

A film that made a deep impression upon me in 1952 -- Yatrik, in which a pilgrim seeks spiritual experience in the Himalayas and realises that God is every where and is only to be experienced, not found. He is in the homes where we live, in the forests, and in our own hearts. Once this realisation takes place, we understand that there is nowhere that He is not there: He is in the temples and mosques, the mountain peaks and the Valleys. He is the beauty in the beautiful flowers, the sound in the waves of the flowing rivers. We experience his power in the cascading waterfalls and the energy in every little particle that He has created. There is no where that He is not there.
The lyrics reproduced below; music at:
http://kirtimukha.com/FilmSongs/tudhoondhtahaijisko.mp3

तू डूण्ढता है जिसको बसती में या के बन में
वह सॉवरा सलोना रहता है तेरे मन में
मस्जिद में मंदिरों में पर्वत के कंकडोँ में
नदियों के पानियों में गहरे समुन्दरोँ में
लहरा रहा है वो ही ख़ुद अपने बाँकपन में
वह सॉवरा सलोना रहता है तेरे मन में
हर जर्रे में रमा है हर फूल में बसा है
हर चीज़ में उसी का जलवा झलक रहा रहा है
हरकत वो कर रहा है हर एक के तन बदन में
वह सॉवरा सलोना रहता है तेरे मन में
___________________________________
tU DUNDutaa hai jisako bastI meiM yaa ke ban meM
vah saa.Nvaraa salonaa rahataa hai tere man meM
masjid meM maMdiroM meM parvat ke kaMkaDoM meM
nadiyoM ke paaniyoM meM gahare samundaroM meM
laharaa rahaa hai vah hI khud apane baa.Nkapana meM
vah saa.Nvaraa salonaa rahataa hai tere man meM
har jarre meM ramaa hai har phUl meM basaa hai
har chIz meM usii kaa jalavaa jhalak rahaa hai
harakat vah kar rahaa hai har eka ke tan badan meM
vah saa.Nvaraa salonaa rahataa hai tere man meM
______________________________________________

Narayana by Adi Sankara

Why Adi Sankara used the name Narayana when referring to Paramatma as Jagat-karaka:

Even though this country is well known for "tatva vichara", it is even more well known (good name and bad name both) for giving us a large number of Gods (deities). Instead of the Absolute being considered as a "dry" abstract principle, the deities which are no different from the Absolute, have form, and appear as the ' Absolute come to life'. The Acharya, in his bhashyas, could have dealt with the Paramatma as the prapancha karana sakthi, the Absolute, as a dry abstract principle. Instead of doing so, and in order that the treatment may be appealing to the community which is used to relating itself to God with Form, he had thought it necessary to refer to the Absolute at several places by a Name. The question arises about which Name to choose.

Though there are many deities, these can be generally considered as falling under the broad classification of Saiva and Vaishnava. Between Siva and Vishnu, he may have thought about which to choose. The Acharya was himself an Avatara of Siva. So, he may have thought – why use my own Name. Siva is very dear to Vishnu. And, similarly, Vishnu is very dear to Siva. Therefore, wherever Vedanta refers to Paramatma as Jagat-karana-sakthi, Prapancha-mahasakthi, Saguna-bhramman, Iswaran, with an implicit suggestion of attributed Form, where Murthy Rupa is indicated, the Acharya has used NARAYANA as the name.

Avatara Siva talking about Adhara Siva does not look proper and talking about Vishnu appears more graceful, balanced and dignified. Is that not so?

So it is, in the Bhashya books, the root (moola) of the causal principle of the Jagat is referred to by the name Narayana. The supreme central meaning of these books is the Oneness (unity) of Paramatma and Jivatma, that is Advaita. In this way, the use by Siva Avatara Acharya of Vishnu's name brings in the Hari Hara Advaita - that Siva and Vishnu are one and the same.

Mahavishnu has many names. In fact, there are a thousand names. Then it may be asked why the Narayana name is chosen. The supreme astakshari mantra of Mahavishnu has the Narayana name in it.

Ayana means path (marga). Ayana also means the end (goal) of the path. In both these senses, Narayana is the Ayana for the Nara (Jivatma). Bhrama Vidya Sastra gives the path to salvation. Narayana is Bhrama Vidya. When He appears as Krishna Paramatma, he himself says "Adhyatma Vidya Vidhyanam" in the Gita. The final goal of that Vidya is also He only. Therefore it is that when Bhrahma Vidya Guru Parampara is talked about, it starts with "Narayanam". So it is quite appropriate that in the Bhashya books, which are Bhrahma Vidya Sastras, the Narayana name is used.

The name Sankara joining with the name Narayana has given rise to a name Sankaranarayanan. In south Pandya country, there is a place where the worshipped image (murthy) is the image of Siva and Vishnu in one body showing their oneness. That image is known as Sankaranarayanan. The place is called Sankaranarayanan Koil. This is now commonly pronounced as Sankaranainar Koil in usage.

The Acharya himself has used the above name in an important context. He has bequeathed to us in a question – answer form a text called "Prasnottara Ratna Malika". In the penultimate sloka of this work, the question is: Who is called Bhagwan and Maheswara. Our Acharya does not in reply give the names of Siva or Vishnu. Our Advaita Acharya gives the reply as the one Atma which is a communion of Siva and Vishnu. Even there he does not use Siva – Vishnu or Hari – Hara but has used Sankaranarayanan.

Q: Kascha Bhagwan Mahesah?
A: Sankara Narayanatmaikah

Therefore it is appropriate that this Sankara also gives a special niche for the name Narayana.

Thus it is clear that the Acharya has referred to the great causal principle of the Jagat by the name NARAYANA. So, when he intends that the namaskaras performed to us must be conveyed to the Jagat-Karana-Vastu, he instructs: Convey to Narayana. And to carry out the instruction, he has made a rule, which appears easy on the face of it.

Only that Narayana, who has created all this and has endowed all this with vital energy (sakthi), has the "right" to accept all the namaskaras. Namaskara to any deity goes to Kesava. We recite the sloka: Sarva Deva Namaskara Kesavam Pratigachhati. When namaskaras performed to the deities go only to HIM, how can namaskaras performed to ordinary people belong to them? All these namaskaras also go to HIM only. It is that we have been asked to always remember when namakaras are performed to us. In order that we do not "misappropriate" the namaskaras rightfully belonging to HIM only and make sure that the namaskara is duly redirected to HIM, the Acharya has most kindly defined a rule for us – a rule, which as I said earlier, is seemingly easy. The rule is that when someone performs a namaskara to us, we should say "Narayana, Narayana".

SELECT QUOTES

Zen is like soap.
First, you wash with it.
Then, you wash off the soap. --Yamaoka Tesshu

Let birds of sorrow
Fly over the head;
Do not allow them to build their nests
And multiply in you.

The past should be a springboard,
not a hammock.

Bitterness imprisons life;
love releases it.

Use what talents you possess.
The woods would be very silent
if no birds sang except those that sang best.

Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you,
but it is most important that you do it.

Don't put the key to your happiness
in someone else's pocket.

Be yourself.
The world worships the original.
Nobody can be exactly like me.
Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.

"Maturity includes the recognition that
no one is going to see anything in us
that we don't see in ourselves.
Stop waiting for a producer.
Produce yourself." -Marianne Williamson

This above all:
to thine own self be true.

No one can make you feel inferior
without your consent.

Chance is always powerful.
Let your hook be always cast in the pool;
where you least expect it, there will be a fish.

A man is but the product of his thoughts;
What he thinks, he becomes.
yath bhavam, thath bhavathi

We do not what we ought;
What we ought not, we do;
And lean upon the thought
That chance will bring us through.
But our own acts, for good or ill,
are mightier power
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"The Dangerous Age"
It is that point in a woman's life when her children are grown,
when she can finally say out loudthat she is married to the wrong man
and hasn't had a fulfilling romantic relationshipin well over a decade.
She is a little desperate, a little sada litle angry, a little lonely,
wanting to jump ship but not sure she can swim.
It's so common, it's almost generic subject matter.

We wait to see which sculpture the author will fashion it from:
Anna Karenina? Emma Bovary? Erica Jong?

If a woman takes a risk for her own happiness,
will she be happy in the end or will she be punished?
................................................................................... Annette Williams Jaffee
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What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action. --Meister Eckhart

The will is free.
Strong is the soul, and wise, and beautiful.
The seeds of god-like power are in us still;
Gods are we, Bards, saints, heroes,
if we will !

There is a plan to my life
but it's not always my plan.
God's way is not always my way.
Lord, Yours Will be done.

How else
except through a broken heart
may God enter?

Think of yourself as the carpenter
Who builds your house.
Each day you hammer a nail,
place a board, or erect a wall;
Build wisely.
It is the only life you will ever build.
Even if you live it for only one day more,
that day deserves to be lived graciously
and with dignity.

The nature of God is a circle
of which the center is everywhere
and the circumference is nowhere.

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour!

The term `myth' is not a synonym for fiction.
Myth is the word used to express
The inexpressible in human experience.
In mythical expressions or tales,
the truth is not in the description
but in the meaning or insight they communicate.

The mark of your ignorance
Is the depth of your belief
in injustice and tragedy.
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world,
The master calls a butterfly.

There is no such thing as a problem
without a gift for you in its hands.
You seek problems
because you need their gifts.

You teach best
what you need most to learn.

Who is Bored?

Observing Boredom can teach you who you are

The mind exists in a state of "not enough"
and so is always greedy for more.
When you are identified with mind,
you get bored and restless very easily.

Boredom means that the mind is hungry
for more stimulus, more food for thought,
and its hunger is not being satisfied.

When you feel bored, you can satisfy the mind’s hunger
by picking up a magazine, making a phone call, switching on the TV,
surfing the web, going shopping, or — and this is not uncommon —
transferring the mental sense of lack and its need for more
to the body and satisfy it briefly by ingesting more food.

Or you can stay bored and restless and observe
what it feels like to be bored and restless.

As you bring awareness to the feeling, there is suddenly
some space and stillness around it, as it were.
A little at first, but as the sense of inner space grows,
the feeling of boredom will begin to diminish
in intensity and significance.

So even boredom can teach you
who you are and who you are not.
You discover that a "bored person" is not who you are.

Boredom is simply a conditioned energy-movement within you.

Neither are you an angry, sad, or a fearful person.
Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not "yours," not personal.
They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go.

Nothing that comes and goes is you.

"I am bored." Who knows this?
"I am angry, sad, afraid." Who knows this?
You are the knowing, not the condition that is known. --Eckhart Tolle
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In Hindu philosophy, a muni is one who observes maunam - silence -
not merely in speech but also in mind;
emptied of thoughts and not engaged in recording,
the mind is totally free to be aware and just observe.

A new perspective of the self and Reality is experienced
and the Muni becomes a realised person.
The highest Truth is then revealed to the silent mind
as described by Adi Shankara :
maunavyakhyaa prakatita parabrahma tatvam
Siva, as the Guru, communicating in silence
to the assembled Munis the Truth about Reality.

We have to learn and practise how to convert boredom into
dynamic Silence that empowers us to receive the highest knowledge.
We need the help of a competent teacher to help us achieve this goal -
as advised in Kathopanishad:
praapya varaan nibodhata get guidance from a competent Guru for enlightenment.
As in education, it is not sufficient merely to get teachers
who "fill the bucket" of the mind with knowledge;
we have to 'light the fire' with a spark from the Guru to experience Reality.

The Fateful events in Ramayana

Was it Fate?

Any event happens due to the effect of interlocking events of the past.

Dasaratha was under a curse to die of Putrashoka because, while hunting in the forest,he had inadvertently caused the death of the young son of an aged, blind couple. He married Kaikeyi, a foreign princess of exotic beauty by promising her father that her son would succeed him as the king-- ignoring the law of primogeniture. He did not keep that promise.

He sent Bharata and Shatrughna to Kaikeyi's father's home. When they were away and without informing Kaikeyi, he made arrangements for the coronation of Rama - ignoring his earlier promise. He wanted to avoid a confrontation with her. He almost succeeded.

Due to her love and affection for Rama, Kaikeyi at first did not see anything wrong in this.
But when her well-wisher and representative of her father - Kooni convinced her, by reminding her of Dasaratha's two boons to her when she had once saved his life on the battle-field, she demanded that he crown Bharata and send Rama to the forest. Perhaps, we blame Kooni unnecessarily for protecting her ward's interests and doing her duty. Dasaratha could not proceed with the intended coronation of Rama and, due to his ill-health, age and strong emotions, swooned and fell down.

When summoned by Kaikeyi, Rama came and decided that the only dharmic way of dealing with the situation was to accede to Kaikeyi's demands which Dasaratha was bound to concede. ama's proceeding to the forest was thus caused by Dasaratha's actions - not Kaikeyi or Kooni who were merely agents of Fate to execute the Law of Karma.

In the forest also, destiny seems to have guided the handling of the situation involving Soorpanakha. She was teased by Rama to approach Lakshmana who got angry and disfigured her face by cutting her nose. In the normal course, Lakshmana who greatly respected ladies, would have adopted other means to get rid of her as a nuisance. It was because of this incident that Soorpanakha sought revenge, enticed Ravana with an account of the great beauty of Sita and persuaded him to abduct her.

When Mareecha came on the scene as the golden deer, Lakshmana could sense that the deer was a demon in disguise, but Sita insisted and Rama chose to follow the galloping animal far into the forest and finally kill it with the disastrous consequences that followed. Sita, a normally respectful person who was aware of the ability of Rama and the fine qualities of Lakshmana, abused him and goaded him to leave his guard-post and proceed to save Rama who she knew was capable of destroying hordes of demons easily. If rescuing and recovering Sita was the objective, Rama could have preferred to seek the assistance of the invincible Vali. Yet he chose Sugreeva, killed Vali, crossed the Ocean and battled with Ravana.

Every event in Ramayana seems to be tuned towards one single goal: the battle with and Killing of Ravana and his horde of Rakshasas: that was the primary purpose of the Avatar.

But, perhaps, there is an embedded lesson for us in this great story: namely, to educate us on the frailties of the human character and the weakness of the human intellect when it starts acting on its own limited capabilities, however high. That is why after Sita's ordeal by fire in Lanka after Ravana's death, Rama told Brahma: 'I do not know who I am, except that I am the son of Dasaratha, King of Ayodhya.'

May be, this is the important message:

You are not the limited person that you imagine;
you are an informed person, guided by the illuminating spirit
and you should make an effort to recognise its existence
and abide by its guidance instead of the dictates of the Ego.

All the events narrated in Ramayana, which do not make sense in a dharmic way, were perhaps intended to tell us forcefully how we suffer due to lack of contact with this superior intelligence which resides in the heart and is always within our reach.

Narayana Bhattathiri in his Narayaneeyam (Canto35 Verse 10), written about 400 years ago, noted the inexplicable situations in Ramayana (like the fire-ordeal of Sita) and observed:

"This human embodiment of Thine is for instructing mankind how too much attachment (Kama) will lead to pangs of separation and how addiction to Dharma (the letter of the Law) will push one to such Adharma as abandonment of innocent ones. Otherwise, it is unimaginable how Thou, who art ever established in the Atman-consciousness, canst ever have any weakness of the mind."

Discipline and drug-abuse

Below a photo-copy of an article contributed by me in June 1983 to the Tamil Magazine Magal (Madras).

It commences thus:

மகளே நீ என்ன காரியம் செய்து விட்டாய்? என்னால் இதுவரை யாருடனும் இவ்விஷயத்தைப் பற்றி பேசக்கூட முடியவில்லை. ஆனால் இனி பேசித்தான் ஆக வேண்டும்.

magale! nee yenna kaariyam saithivittaay? yennal iduvarai yaarudanum ivvishayatthaip patri pesakkuda mudiyavillai. aanaal ini pesitthaan aaga vendum.

My dear daughter,
What a great tragedy has happened due to your action. Till now I could not talk about this to any one. But now I have to speak about it. [............] She ends the letter hoping that sharing it thus through the 'Letters to the Editor' in LA Times (Los Angeles Times, December 1982) might help other parents in taking early action.

A large number of young people choose to live dangerously with the youthful courage and confidence that it would all end right. They follow the latest fashionable trend and succumb to peer pressure. The parents are busy and unaware of their children's misguided actions. They are also not conscious / aware of their responsibility in watching and guiding their wards. There are no easy answers to this problem of moulding their chldren as responsible future citizens. The most important element is finding adequate spare time to learn the process and guide the children from a very young age and instilling in them a proper value-system. May the Lord help them and the community.

shubhamastu

Don't let the system steal your life

Set your own Values

We delude ourselves into believing that we are free-agents, living a life according to standards set by us. Unfortunately, this is not true and the sorry state of affairs is not due to Fate. From birth, we are dictated to by a societal system that gives us a narrow slate of values to choose from and we tend to believe that therefore we are free. As Swami Dayananda has observed in his book “The Value of Values”, Values to be truly valuable must be discovered by us through knowledge and not simply be impressed from without. The following extract from his book is relevant in this context: (http://paathshala.net/Value_of_Values.html )

For values to be personally valuable they must be discovered through knowledge(seen as valuable by the value holder) and not simply impressed from without. Therefore, the term 'jnanam' is quite appropriate. The list of values constituting jnanam is long but the qualities are interrelated, defining a harmonious frame of mind in which knowledge can occur. Each of the terms used by Lord Krishna highlights a certain attitude, the value for which must be discovered personally in order that the attitude becomes a natural aspect of the seeker's frame of mind.

Although the primary purpose of jnanam values (as told by Lord Krishna to Arjuna) is to prepare the mind for self-knowledge, when the total value of these values is understood one sees that these attitudes have the highest personal values for everyone. The jnanam values, impartially, bless and make more effective both the mind of the everyday struggler who seeks fullness in the pursuit of artha (securities) and kama (pleasures) and the mind of the mumuksu-jijnyasu (the seeker of the knowledge for the sake of liberation) who, having discerned the futility of limited ends and means, seeks fullnessthrough the gain of Self-knowledge - through the study of Vedanta.

The article “The Greatest Danger Before You” at http://tow.charityfocus.org/index.php?tid=538 emphasizes the need for resisting the impulse to adopt standards set by powerful members of the society and for educating ourselves to determine what is important to us. We live in an age when the system pre-packages and standardizes our lives in attractive packages ultimately steal our life from us. A powerful message and warning has been communicated in these words:

From the pink granite of your own values, build a fortress against the world's ethical compromises,
or you will soon be among those dead of eye who stand next to you in elevators but who are not alive.
Don't let them steal your life.