'Weave in Faith; God will provide the thread' --
so says an ancient Indian proverb about the art of weaving the cloth of life.
Read on further to find out what others have to say on the subject of Faith:
Faith is a state of openness or trust.
To have faith is like when you trust yourself to the water.
You don't grab hold of the water when you swim, because if you do,
you will become stiff and tight in the water, and sink.
You have to relax, and the attitude of faith is
the very opposite of clinging, and holding on.
In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion,
and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe
becomes a person who has no faith at all. Instead they are holding tight.
But the attitude of faith is to let go,
and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be. -- Alan Watts
All that thought suggests to me, I can do.
All that thought reveals in me, I can become.
This should be the unshakable faith in my Self,
Because God dwells in me. ~Sri Aurobindo
No one can call upon God without knowing Him.
St.Augustine wonders:
"May it be that a man must implore You before he can know You?"
The only things to count on are longing and the occult directives of desire.
Does this mean that prayer must come before faith?
Perhaps, 'not knowing' is the first condition of prayer. Can that be?
Augustine finds his working answer in Scripture:
"How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?
They shall praise the Lord that seek him."
Longing is the only sure knowledge, that core of human instinct
which unfurls its song of praise. ~Saint Augustine
Shraddha:
The nearest English equivalent (to this Sanskrit term)
is Faith, but it means much more.
It is the set of values, axioms, prejudices, and pre-possessions
that colours our perceptions, governs our thinking, dictates our responses,
and shapes our lives, generally without our even being aware of its presence and power.
Shraddha is not an intellectual abstraction; it is our very substance.
The Gita says (17:3) --
"A person is what his Shraddha is."
The Bible using similar words, says:
"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
There is nothing passive about Shraddha. It is full of potency.
For it prompts action, conditions behavior,
and determines how we see and therefore, respond to the world around us.
The power to heal or harm is inherent in our ideas of ourselves.
Yet Shraddha is not brute determination or wishful thinking.
Our lives are an eloquent expression of our beliefs:
what we deem worth having, doing, attaining, being.
What we strive for shows what we value.
We back our Shraddha with our time, our energy, our very lives.
Thus Shraddha determines destiny.
As the Buddha put it:
"All that we are is the result of what we thought.
We are made of our thoughts,
we are moulded by our thoughts."
As we think, so we become. ~Eknath Easwaran
At points in our life, everything we believe in collapses into a deep, dark hole,
and we feel that all of our previous efforts to live an honest, principled life have been in vain. There is a crisis of faith—a place void of spirit and dominated by utter hopelessness.
There are no guides, no hints at where to go next.
There is no life in front of you and no one to talk to.
This emptiness seems barren.
But a new kind of faith arises directly
out of our depressive thoughts and emotions,
and we no longer crave comfort from anyone else. ~Thomas Moore
When all your efforts end in failure,
it means that you are being taught the lesson
that, not your own efforts,
but God's Grace alone can bring success.
And you should seek His Grace.
When you come to the edge of all the light you have, and
you must take a step into the darkness of the unknown,
believe that one of two things will happen to you:
Either there will be something solid for you to stand on, or
You will be taught how to fly. ~ Patrick Overton
The Guru tells the disciple:
"This is the truth that I have experienced."
and explains and instructs.
The disciple, with deep faith in the Guru,
travels the path, and ultimately exclaims:
"I too have now experienced the truth that my Guru spoke of."
There is no such thing as 'blind' faith!
_________________________
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Discovering purpose
ON PURPOSE
What is the life which most of us lead every day? Basically, it consists of actions to earn enough resources to enable us to acquire things which we want. We want to acquire these things because we expect that through them we will have the sensory experiences which we desire to have.
Since we are driven by our wants and since we cannot fulfill all the wants, we should audit our wants carefully with reference to a check-list and accept a commitment to fulfill only.those which pass this audit. Actions decided upon in this systematic manner will be greatly empowering because everytime we want any thing, we will have made it a habit to ask ourselves these questions:
· What experience am I looking for?
· Do I need this experience?
· Will it make me happy in the long run?
· Keeping in view that my time-resource is limited, can I afford the investment of the necessary time?
· What other activity/experience will I have to forego to be able to afford this? Is such a sacrifice acceptable?
· Am I making a wise choice, over-all?
· A good way of knowing what want we should select and why, is by knowing our purpose in life:
· A purpose is not a goal; for a goal is something that is reached. A purpose is only a direction. We use our purpose to set our course in life.
· A purpose is never achieved; it is fulfilled in each moment that we are "on purpose." When we are "on course," we are on "purpose."
· A purpose is not created. We already have a purpose; we have to discover it. We have always had a purpose and it has always been the same. Our purpose for the remainder of our lifetime remains the same.
When we become consciously aware of our purpose, it's easier to choose actions and our goals and reach them. The litmus test of any action is simply to ask the question: "Does this action fulfill my purpose?" The answer may be yes or no and we always have the option of choosing whether we want the action or not. But it is always wise to remember that there is a certain value to being ‘on purpose.’ Once we discover this value through the practice of staying on course, we will always act to fulfill our ‘purpose.’
How do we discover our purpose? If we listen carefully, we will hear or sense a voice inside ourselves. It's the voice of our inner teacher. We must train ourselves to listen to it. Amidst all the din of the other voices in there, the inner teacher reminds us constantly: "I am here, very close to you. I'm your friend and I love you. If you listen to me, I can guide you." We have to listen to this teacher if we want to lead a purposeful life.
It is necessary to seek this guide; a navigator cannot steer course without a compass and a knowledge of the destination to reach. Religion/philosophy is the book of instruction which assists us in this seeking.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
EMPOWERING QUOTES
Short Empowering Quotes
What you think, you become.
यत् भावं तत् भवति
yath bhavam tath bhavati
You shall be,
What you determine to be.
What is the process?
Start believing in yourself.
A musician must make music,
an artist must paint,
a poet must write;
What you can be, you must be.
Begin doing what you want to do NOW.
Remember, We are not living in eternity;
we have only this moment,
sparkling like a star in our hand
and melting like a snowflake.
Cultivate the 'Beginner's Mind';
ask yourself:
How can I be a beginner in each moment --
even in situations where I am doing
what I have done before many times?
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
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 !
*****************************************
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.
*****************************************
No one can make you feel inferior
without your consent.
*****************************************
Everybody exists.
It is only the few who live.
*****************************************
The past should be a springboard,
not a hammock.
*****************************************
In the confrontation
between the stream and the rock,
the stream always wins,
not through strength,
but through perseverance.
*****************************************
There is no such thing as a problem
without a gift for you in its hands.
You seek problems
because you need their gifts.
=========================================
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear
--not absence of fear." -- Mark Twain
"A man with outward courage dares to die,
one with inward courage dares to live." Lao-tzu
Monday, August 4, 2008
The center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days
Ten Thousand Acts of KindnessHistory is made by warfare, greed, lust for power, hatred, and xenophobia (with some other, more admirable motives thrown in here and there). We therefore often assume that these obviously human traits define our essential nature. How often have we been told that "man" is, by nature, aggressive and selfishly acquisitive?
What do we see on any ordinary day on the streets or in the homes of any American city -- even in the subways of New York? Thousands of tiny and insignificant acts of kindness and consideration. We step aside to let someone pass, smile at a child, chat aimlessly with an acquaintance or even with a stranger.......Many of us have the impression that daily life is an unending series of unpleasantness ......but think about it seriously for a moment. Such levels of nastiness cannot possibly be sustained. Society would devolve to anarchy in an instant if half our overtures to another human being were met with a pinch in the nose
Why then do most of us have the impression that people are so aggressive, and intrinsically so? The answer, I think, lies in the asymmetry of effects -- the truly tragic side of human existence. Unfortunately, one incident of violence can undo ten thousand acts of kindness, and we easily forget the predominance of kindness over aggression by confusing effect with frequency. One racially motivated beating can wipe out years of patient education for respect and toleration in a school or community. One murder can convert a friendly town, replete with trust, into a nexus of fear with people behind barred doors, suspicious of everyone and afraid to go out at night. Kindness is so fragile, so easy to efface; violence is so powerful.
This crushing and tragic asymmetry of kindness and violence is infinitely magnified when we consider the causes of history in the large. One book burning in the library of Alexandria can wipe out the accumulated wisdom of antiquity. One supposed insult, one crazed act of assassination, can undo decades of patient diplomacy, cultural exchanges,peace corps, pen pals -- small acts of kindness involving millions of citizens -- and bring two nations to a war that no one wants, but that kills millions and irrevocably changes the paths of history.
The alternative view might grant that stability must rule at nearly all moments and that much rarer events make history. But perhaps this stability arises by predominant behaviors of geniality only in relatively free and democratic societies. Perhaps the stability of most cultures has been achieved by the same `dark' forces that make history when they break out of balance -- fear, aggression, terror, domination of rich over poor, men over women, adults over children, and armed over defenseless. I allow that these forces have often kept balances, but still strongly assert that we fail to count the ten thousand ordinary acts of non-aggression -- done if only because people know their places and do not usually challenge the sources of order -- that overwhelm each overt show of strength even in societies structured by dominationTo base daily stability on anything other than our natural geniality requires a perverted social structure explicitly dedicated to breaking the human soul -- the Auschwitz model, if you will.........Obviously, both kindness and violence lie within the bounds of our nature because we perpetuate both, in spades. I only advance a structural claim that social stability rules nearly all the time and must be based on an overwhelmingly predominant (but tragically ignored) frequency of genial acts, and that geniality is therefore our usual and preferred response nearly all the time.
This is not an essay about optimism; it is an essay about tragedy. If I felt that humans were nasty by nature, I would just say, the hell with it. We get what we deserve, or what evolution left us as a legacy. But the center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days. Nothing can be more tragic than that this Everest of geniality stands upside down on its pointed summit and can be toppled so easily by rare events contrary to our everyday nature--and that these rare events make our history. In some sense, we do not get what we deserve.
The solution to our woes lies not in overcoming our `nature' but in fracturing the `great asymmetry', and allowing our ordinary propensities to direct our lives. But how can we put the commonplace into the driver's seat of history?
Stephen Jay Gould (September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was a prominent American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science and taught in Harvard University.
(The article was published in "Natural History" magazine)
What do we see on any ordinary day on the streets or in the homes of any American city -- even in the subways of New York? Thousands of tiny and insignificant acts of kindness and consideration. We step aside to let someone pass, smile at a child, chat aimlessly with an acquaintance or even with a stranger.......Many of us have the impression that daily life is an unending series of unpleasantness ......but think about it seriously for a moment. Such levels of nastiness cannot possibly be sustained. Society would devolve to anarchy in an instant if half our overtures to another human being were met with a pinch in the nose
Why then do most of us have the impression that people are so aggressive, and intrinsically so? The answer, I think, lies in the asymmetry of effects -- the truly tragic side of human existence. Unfortunately, one incident of violence can undo ten thousand acts of kindness, and we easily forget the predominance of kindness over aggression by confusing effect with frequency. One racially motivated beating can wipe out years of patient education for respect and toleration in a school or community. One murder can convert a friendly town, replete with trust, into a nexus of fear with people behind barred doors, suspicious of everyone and afraid to go out at night. Kindness is so fragile, so easy to efface; violence is so powerful.
This crushing and tragic asymmetry of kindness and violence is infinitely magnified when we consider the causes of history in the large. One book burning in the library of Alexandria can wipe out the accumulated wisdom of antiquity. One supposed insult, one crazed act of assassination, can undo decades of patient diplomacy, cultural exchanges,peace corps, pen pals -- small acts of kindness involving millions of citizens -- and bring two nations to a war that no one wants, but that kills millions and irrevocably changes the paths of history.
The alternative view might grant that stability must rule at nearly all moments and that much rarer events make history. But perhaps this stability arises by predominant behaviors of geniality only in relatively free and democratic societies. Perhaps the stability of most cultures has been achieved by the same `dark' forces that make history when they break out of balance -- fear, aggression, terror, domination of rich over poor, men over women, adults over children, and armed over defenseless. I allow that these forces have often kept balances, but still strongly assert that we fail to count the ten thousand ordinary acts of non-aggression -- done if only because people know their places and do not usually challenge the sources of order -- that overwhelm each overt show of strength even in societies structured by dominationTo base daily stability on anything other than our natural geniality requires a perverted social structure explicitly dedicated to breaking the human soul -- the Auschwitz model, if you will.........Obviously, both kindness and violence lie within the bounds of our nature because we perpetuate both, in spades. I only advance a structural claim that social stability rules nearly all the time and must be based on an overwhelmingly predominant (but tragically ignored) frequency of genial acts, and that geniality is therefore our usual and preferred response nearly all the time.
This is not an essay about optimism; it is an essay about tragedy. If I felt that humans were nasty by nature, I would just say, the hell with it. We get what we deserve, or what evolution left us as a legacy. But the center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days. Nothing can be more tragic than that this Everest of geniality stands upside down on its pointed summit and can be toppled so easily by rare events contrary to our everyday nature--and that these rare events make our history. In some sense, we do not get what we deserve.
The solution to our woes lies not in overcoming our `nature' but in fracturing the `great asymmetry', and allowing our ordinary propensities to direct our lives. But how can we put the commonplace into the driver's seat of history?
Stephen Jay Gould (September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was a prominent American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science and taught in Harvard University.
(The article was published in "Natural History" magazine)
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Solar Eclipse - 1 August 2008
Very good pictures of the total solar eclipse can be viewed at:
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/080801-solar-eclipse-rao.html
Two pictures below:
As the sun's "diamond ring" appears, the total phase of the Aug. 1, 2008 solar eclipse is about to commence. Note the Moon's dark shadow on the lower right beginning to encroach on the cloud deck below.
A total solar eclipse is seen in Jiuquan, in China's western Gansu province Friday Aug. 1, 2008.
Below- Extract from Space.com. http://www.space.com/spacewatch/080801-solar-eclipse-rao.html ABOARD A JET ABOVE THE ARCTIC OCEAN – A total of 147 observers from around the world had a perfect view of this morning's total eclipse of the sun, thanks to an 2,189-mile airlift to a grandstand seat 36,000-feet above the Arctic Ocean at a point between the uninhabited northern coast of Greenland and the Norwegian island group of Svalbard.The contingent of eclipse watchers were onboard an LTU Airbus A330-200 long-range jet, racing the moon's shadow like paparazzi scrambling alongside a celebrity's passing automobile. The aircraft's 555-mile-per-hour speed (mach 0.85) provided 175-seconds of total eclipse for the passengers to take pictures and record other data. In contrast, persons on a stationary ship on the Arctic sea below would have seen – provided no clouds blocked the view – the moon's 139-mile wide shadow speed past them at 2,740 mph, providing a noticeably shorter total eclipse lasting 132 seconds.Unique observing location
No planetarium in the world could have produced so impressive a natural spectacle as the sun and moon did in the cobalt-blue heavens; although the sight lasted less than 3 minutes, the fantastically beautiful skyscape more than repaid the participants, many of whom were already up before dawn to ready themselves for a round-trip flight of 12 hours.
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Friday, August 1, 2008
The Dual Citizenship - for all.
Illness is the night-side of life,
a more onerous citizenship.
Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship,
in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.
Although we all prefer to use only the good passport,
sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell,
to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.
************************************* - Susan Sontag
a more onerous citizenship.
Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship,
in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.
Although we all prefer to use only the good passport,
sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell,
to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.
************************************* - Susan Sontag
Thursday, July 31, 2008
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.
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