A musing of రామ ShastriX

Spiritual Classics on the Kindle

2012-01-27T13:08:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxKinClass

Was feeling a bit tired to do the puja this morning. So i read a few snippets from these spiritual classics on my Kindle.

Shri Sai Satcharita (PDF and Kindle)
Sai Baba The Master (PDF and Kindle)
The Power of Arunachala (Kindle)
Swami Ranganathananda (PDF and Kindle)
The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (PDF and Kindle)
The Gospel of the Holy Mother (PDF and Kindle)
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi (PDF and Kindle).

You can download all these from Google Docs by clicking the above links and using the Download button at the top-right of the screen. All downloads are 1 MB or lesser.

Apart from the above links on Google Docs, you can also download the Kindle versions of all these and then some from my Kindle download page.

There was a nice point of similarity during the readings. From Visit to Vidyasagar in the Gospel:

"Once a salt doll went to measure the depth of the ocean. ( All laugh.) It wanted to tell others how deep the water was. But this it could never do, for no sooner did it get into the water than it melted. Now who was there to report the ocean's depth?"

while from Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi:

Talk 5. Mr. M. Frydman, an engineer, remarked on the subject of Grace, "A salt doll diving into the sea will not be protected by a waterproof coat". It was a very happy simile and was applauded as such. Maharshi added, "The body is the waterproof coat."

On G+

Playing Second Fiddle

2012-01-24T15:04:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxSecondFiddle

Q: Which is the musical instrument that is most difficult to play?

With devotees thronging the Sadguru, i am always intrigued by the sideshows along the way. How does one devotee react when another is shown, say, more grace?

Ramana Sadguru was quite nonchalant about it. He would say that He couldn't do anything if one devotee brought a small cup to the ocean and another a large one.

There are a couple of instances in the Shri Sai Satcharita where devotees raise such issues with Baba, who then clarifies (but that's besides the point). From Chapter 11:

Dadabhat worshipped Baba. Nobody until then dared to apply sandal paste to Baba's forehead. Only Mhalsapati used to apply it to His throat. But this simple-hearted devout, Dr. Pandit, took Dabadhat's dish containing Puja-materials and taking sandal-paste out of it, drew a Tripundra, i.e. there horizontal lines on Baba's forehead. To the surprise of all, Baba kept silent without uttering a single word. Then Dababhat that evening asked Baba, "How is it, that though You object to the sandal-paste being applied by others to Your forehead, but You allowed Dr. Pandit to do so now?"

and, from Chapter 27:

Mrs. Khaparde was faithful and devout, and loved Baba deeply. Every noon she brought naivedya herself to the Masjid, and after it was accepted by Baba, she used to return and take her meals. Seeing her steady and firm devotion, Baba wanted to exhibit it to others. One noon she brought a dish containing Sanza (wheat-pudding), purees, rice, soup, and kheer (sweet rice) and other sundry articles to the Masjid. Baba, who usually waited for hours, got up at once, went up to His dining seat and removing the outer covering from the dish began to partake of the things zealously. Shama then asked Him - "Why this partiality? You throw away dishes of others and do not care to look at them, but this You draw to You earnestly and do justice to it. Why is the dish of this woman so sweet? This is a problem to us."

~~~*-*~@~

The incident that moves me the most on these lines is this from the Gospel: (page 705, bottom)

Sri Ramakrishna took some refreshments and handed some to Narendra.
JATIN DEVA (to the Master): "You always say: 'Narendra, eat this! Eat that!' Are the rest of us fools? Are we like straw washed ashore by the flood-tide?"

The Master is at a loss for words and sidesteps:

The Master said laughingly to Narendra, "He is talking about you."
Sri Ramakrishna laughed and showed his affection to Jatin by touching his chin.

The Arabs say:

Better the ganji in the house than the feast in the neighbor's.

Feynman, the Comic

2012-01-20T21:36:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxFeynmanOM

Late the night of 17th January, saw this on an Oprah mailer:

This 248-page graphic bio will keep you entranced from start to finish, mostly because Ottaviani (writer) and Myrick (illustrator) tell the very human story behind Feynman, who, it turns out, did everything from help create the atomic bomb to unearth the causes of the Challenger space shuttle disaster all with a sense of humor so goofy and endearing that you can't help falling in love with him.

Very unusual, a comic book on the life of Feynman, one of my idols! Always fooling around, he should have been called Feignman.

Immediately, checked it on amazon.com and, closer home, on flipkart.com. The USD 18.93 vs. INR 1351 difference wasn't too much and it's, well, instant gratification with Flipkart ;-) Got it within two days, last evening.

Guess you'd appreciate the book much more if you have read the earlier books:

Some of the stuff that's more or less fully covered as described in the above books are:

Safecracker meets Safecracker
His inability to write to Arlene, his dead wife, as he doesn't know her new address (very touching).

His Stream of Consciousness experiment with sleep is one of my favorites: (snipped from Fearless in Siesta)

This "stream of consciousness" reminded me of a problem my father had given to me many years before. He said, "Suppose some Martians were to come down to earth, and Martians never slept, but instead were perpetually active. Suppose they didn't have this crazy phenomenon that we have, called sleep. So they ask you the question: 'How does it feel to go to sleep? What happens when you go to sleep? Do your thoughts suddenly stop, or do they move less aanndd lleeessss rraaaaapppppiidddddllllllllyyyyyyyyyyy yyy? How does the mind actually turn off?"
I got interested. Now I had to answer this question: How does the stream of consciousness end, when you go to sleep?
I also noticed that as you go to sleep the ideas continue, but they become less and less logically interconnected. You don't notice that they're not logically connected until you ask yourself, "What made me think of that?" and you try to work your way back, and often you can't remember what the hell did make you think of that!
So you get every illusion of logical connection, but the actual fact is that the thoughts become more and more cockeyed until they're completely disjointed, and beyond that, you fall asleep.

On G+

Swami Ranganathananda

2012-01-18T15:38:00.001+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxSwamiR

Earlier this week, i revisited a lovely little bio of Swami Ranganathananda (aka Mini Vivekananda), whose guiding philosophy in life was:

Godward passion transmuted into manward love

It's very inspirational and i felt that some of the snippets should be shared:

This love of adventure and dislike for an easy life, or as the German philosopher Nietzsche expressed in his dictum, "live dangerously" had been his trait from boyhood.
…
When Shankar [Swami R.] was 12 or 13 years old, once in his mother’s presence, he used some foul words against a person. His mother immediately reprimanded him, lovingly saying: "My boy, your tongue is the abode of Vâni or Saraswati, the Goddess of knowledge and wisdom. Don't soil it by using foul language against others." The advice, he said, went straight to his head and heart. Little wonder then that the Goddess manifested so tangibly through his blessed tongue for over eight decades.
…
One particular sentence in this book left a lasting impression on Shankar: "Young people seek praise; but it is better to seek to be praise-worthy."
…
Sometime later, volleyball too captured his imagination. Even when he was a trustee of the Sangha, he would play volleyball with the brahmacharis of the Training Centre at Belur Math. A senior monk recalled that once, when Maharaj saw a volleyball match in progress, he immediately adjusted his dhoti and joined the players!
…
Here perhaps were put together the chemicals for evolving Vedantic Thought Bombs (his words) which, in the not-too-distant future, he was to throw at unsuspecting audiences the world over, regardless of religion or caste, gender or nationality, civilian or military, young or old!
…
In 1942, during the Second World War, when Japan bombed Burma (Myanmar today) and the centre had to be wound up, Maharaj came back to Dhaka preferring the adventurous land route trekking along with thousands of other refugees, although more comfortable alternatives were available.
…
Madhavanandaji did attend Maharaj's lectures subsequently and commented to another sadhu, Thakur Shankarke kole niye khela khelcchen [Taking Shankar on his lap, Thakur (Sri Ramakrishna) is playing].
…
Sri Ramakrishna used to say: "A man may live in a mountain cave, smear his body with ashes, observe fasts, and practice austere discipline, but if his mind dwells on worldly objects, on lust and gold, I would say 'Fie on him!' But I would say that a man is indeed blessed if he eats, drinks and roams about but keeps his mind free from lust and gold." The truth of this statement was seen in Shankar Maharaj. He never cared for austerities or external observances. But he built a strong character based on absolute purity. This gave him not only great inner strength but also inner freedom. Because he was inwardly free he was always happy, could mix with all freely and do all his work with innocent cheerfulness. He maintained this innocent cheerfulness throughout his life.
…
"I have always maintained that I am a Swami of the Ramakrishna Order. Nothing more can be added to that. It is the biggest title."
…
Study was indeed a passion with him. He would often remark that if the Goddess of wealth, Lakshmi, was invoked alone she might run away after some time. But if the Goddess of Learning, Saraswati (Vâni, as she is also known, was a word which Maharaj liked very much) was first invoked, Lakshmi also would come, and the two sisters would stay with us always.

Once again, here's the bio (just 44 pages). Here's the Kindle version.

On G+

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

2012-01-18T15:11:00.003+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxTCCoBB

Even though it's been quite a while since it was released, i had the exquisite pleasure of watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button last Saturday (14.JAN) evening.

Started the DVD as a lark, but was hooked throughout. Even popped a beer in between.

Brad Pitt was, as usual, eminently watchable, but i loved his voice even more. The scene where Cate Blanchett dances for Brad Pitt strongly reminded me of that GBSism:

Dancing: The vertical expression of a horizontal desire legalized by music.

The pace is all relaxed, and great thoughts / quotes shimmered right through the movie:

Benjamin Button: It's funny how sometimes the people we remember the least make the greatest impression on us.
…
Mrs. Maple: [at piano] "It's not about how well you play, it's how you feel about what you play."

That last one brought back fond memories of Mallikarjun "Anna" Mansur: (snipped from Musically Yours)

Someone asked Anna, "Anna, isn’t the pursuit of music full of hardship?" Anna replied, "Hardship? How can music have hardship? It is my good fortune that I became a singer. In our world, there are no hardships, only pleasure."

On G+

Innativity

2012-01-16T15:57:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxInnativity

Some of the elements of this post came from the deep early this morning

Over the weekend, kiddo was wondering about RAR files and how they are used. There was some discussion going on among his friends, and he wanted to get to the bottom of how they worked.

In my Engineering days at AU, there was this Civil Engg. professor who used to be interested in English as well. So i would bother him about words like naïve/té and how they were pronounced. Indian languages are WYSIWYS (What you say is what you see) but the Roman languages have many idiosyn-crazies. I used to think that was a big deal when i didn't know any better, but now i feel it's just plain silly, esp. the intellectual snobbery / superciliousness that people generally exhibit when you say foreign words the wrong way: "Oh, you don’t know how to say that whatchamacallit, you are a hillbilly." Sivaji Ganesan was wonderful in that sense: "I can speak my mother tongue correctly, but it's too much to expect me to speak other languages the same way" (see Blindspotting as well).

So i told him there was nothing to it. All it required was a Google Search and some amount of working with .RAR files.

Of course, there are things that one can never understand due to the intellectual bandwidth: once i saw a one-line piece of code with a self-referential expression to check whether a file was properly named; it scared me. And even if i grow to be old as Methuselah, i don't think i will get to first base with the Google Search algorithm.

But RAR files are OK.

~~~*-*~@~

Anyway the very first chapter (after the massive Introduction) of the Gospel shows the path:

After a few minutes Sri Ramakrishna looked at him [M., the author of the Gospel] kindly and said affectionately: "You see, you have certain good signs. I know them by looking at a person's forehead, his eyes, and so on. Tell me, now, what kind of person is your wife? Has she spiritual attributes, or is she under the power of avidya?" M: "She is all right. But I am afraid she is ignorant."
MASTER(with evident displeasure): "And you are a man of knowledge!"
M. had yet to learn the distinction between knowledge and ignorance. Up to this time his conception had been that one got knowledge from books and schools. Later on he gave up this false conception. He was taught that to know God is knowledge, and not to know Him, ignorance.

Swami Ranganathananda (here's a lovely little bio of this Mini Vivekananda) explained this in a most elegant manner: (from "I am Thee; I am Free")

Einstein said: "Science can denature plutonium, but it cannot denature evil in the heart of man." So, there must be another dimension to science and truth-seeking; something experiential. Vedanta says that in the inner world, all knowing tends to being; when you try to know your own true nature, you realise that you are That. In the external world, it is never so. I study a star, I do not become a star; if I study a table, I do not become a table. But when you study yourself in depth, you become That. A wonderful change comes over you.

So whether you are interested in how to pronounce naïveté or the innativity of the Christ Consciousness that pervades everything is something to make up your mind about.

On G+

No Pussyfooting

2012-01-12T15:20:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxNoPf

Celibacy is not hereditary.

—637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said

Today's AHAM has Ramana Sadguru saying it as it is!

Q: At Sri Aurobindo's Ashram there is a strict rule that married couples can live there on condition that they abstain from sexual intercourse.
M: What use is that? If it exists in the mind, what use is there in forcing people to abstain?

Ramana used to say that Brahmacharya meant moving around in Brahman, and not celibacy as commonly understood.

The birthday guru, Swami Vivekananda, makes a wonderful point. In Life of Swami Brahmananda, we read:

Rakhal: "Many people mistakenly imagine that it is enough if one avoids the company of women, but Naren expressed the truth beautifully last night. He said: 'Woman exists for man as long as he has lust. When you are free from lust you do not see any difference between the sexes.'"

In the Shri Sai Satcharita, Shirdi Sai Baba advises Nanasaheb Chandorkar, agitated on seeing the rare beauty of a Muslim lady who had come for Baba's darshan: (snipped from Horse Sense)

"Nana, why are you getting agitated in vain? Let the senses do their allotted work, or duty, we should not meddle with their work. God has created this beautiful world and it is our duty to appreciate its beauty. The mind will get steady and calm slowly and gradually. When the front door was open, why go by the back one? When the heart is pure, there is no difficulty, whatsoever. Why should one be afraid of any one if there be no evil thought in us? The eyes may do their work, why should you feel shy and tottering?"

Related: Love Gurus

Books: Thinking, Fast and Slow

2012-01-11T21:49:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxTFaS

Thanks to this DelanceyPlace post we are blind to our blindness, i have been introduced to Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

An intriguing book that sort takes off from Malcolm Gladwell's Blink (on Amazon.com).

It introduces us to the fast and intuitive System 1 as well as the slow and deliberate System 2. System 1 can't be turned off, while System 2 is all about ensuring self-control. Check out what happens when System 2 takes a back-seat. Some great dancing perhaps ;-)

Downloaded the free Kindle sample (USD 9.99), but the hardcopy on Flipkart was going for cheaper (INR 349). Also, there was a review on the Kindle page that the eBook wasn't that properly formatted.

Though the book keeps saying that it's easier to see the biases [everyone's bi-assed ;-)] of others, i am trying to understand System 1 and System 2 from a spiritual viewpoint.

For instance, System 1 can be thought of being about reactions while System 2, being deliberate, is more about responses.

Can one reduce the System 1 reactions that one is hardwired with and adopt the more responsive actions of System 2?

Or does one need a solid jolt to the system? As the Master says in the Gospel: "Once lightning hit the Kali temple. The points of the nails and screws were flattened."

Anyway, the book is looking very interesting. Let's see.

On G+

Terms of Endreament

2012-01-11T21:40:00.001+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxEndreament

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to receive

Wonder whether this has ever happened to you, but every once in a while, a disconcerting thing keeps occurring: my dream memory gets mixed up with my regular life memory.

Since cues are used to fire memories and they are normally very short in duration (time-slice), IMHO that's what creates the confusion. It's not clear to the system where that cue occurred and the memory thread that it retrieves could be from either the dream database or the real-life database.

As it is, i don't really believe that real life is any different from a dream. It's just that it's phenomenally long (~14 billion years at last count) and detailed. More in Is the Universe a Dream of God?

Wonder whether such beliefs have any effect on what's retrieved. But the head becomes a confusing miasma in a very short time.

To extricate oneself from implosion, have to do some pinching of the self: such as blog/g+ing :-)

On G+

Arunachala Magica

2012-01-06T23:18:00.003+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxAcMagic

Sometime back, PrasanthJ sent me some radical stuff:

Deepak Chopra Says there there is no way to prove existence of an outside world
Any neurologist will assure you that the brain offers no proof that the outside world really exists and many hints that it doesn’t.…
The cortex doesn’t inform us about this never-ending data processing, which is all that is happening inside gray matter. Instead, the cortex tells us about the world—it allows us to perceive sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and textures—the whole array of creation. The brain has pulled an enormous trick on us, a remarkable sleight of hand, because there is no direct connection between the body’s raw data and our subjective sense of an outside world.

This dovetailed very neatly with that Superparadigm article by Peter Russell, which convinced me of the Formless:

All that I see, hear, taste, touch, smell and feel has been created from the data received by my sensory organs. All I ever know of the world around are the mental images constructed from that data. However real and external they may seem, they are all phenomena within my mind.

What happens when some of the sensory organs go kaput? PSM sent me a very interesting XP on that recently:

Expansion and Dr. Jill Taylor's Talk
Are Brains Wired for Enlightenment?
A stroke shut down half of a brain scientist's brain. Cornered in the other half, she plunged into a samadhi-like state of love, bliss and insight

~~~*-*~@~

Albert Einstein observed that the most incomprehensible thing about the Universe was that it was comprehensible.

But, if it's all happening within, there's really no big deal about understanding it. This was why Ramana Sadguru said: "It's not the Universe that's vast but the human mind".

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj took it one step further with His searing observation in I Am That:

"I am not a part of the world; the world is a part of me".

~~~*-*~@~

So how does one see things? Ramana says: (Who Sees?)

You alone exist, O Heart, the radiance of awareness! In You a mysterious power dwells, a power which without You is nothing. From it [this power of manifestation] there proceeds, along with a perceiver, a series of subtle shadowy thoughts that, lit by the reflected light of the mind amid the whirl of prarabdha, appear within us as a shadowy spectacle of the world and appear without as the world perceived by the five senses as a film is projected through a lens. Whether perceived or unperceived, these [thoughts] are nothing apart from You, O Hill of Grace.

If you feel all this is a load of baloney, here's a simple test. The next time you fall into deep sleep and wake up fully refreshed, try to ascertain where you were during that period. You can't, because your mind was totally subsumed into the Great Infinite Spirit in your (spiritual) Heart.

No mind, only the I, and its accompanying Bliss.

In fact, reading the above by Ramana makes me wonder why Arunachala is regarded as the Sahasrara Chakra:

Kenneth Grant on Arunachala… In his work The Magical Revival Kenneth Grant writes of Arunachala as one of the global chakras.
"The supreme seat of energy - the Sahasrara Chakra - is not located within the physical body at all, but above the cranial suture, where, figuratively speaking, the Lotus of Infinite Light blooms and bathes with its perfume the subtle anatomy of man. The Sahasrara is the seat of the Atman, the True Self in Man which is known as the Brahman in the Cosmos. It is the Abode of Siva and is represented on earth by the Sacred Hill of Arunachala in South India. This is the cult-centre of the most profoundly spiritual Path now open to humanity, i.e. the Advaita-marg or Path of Non-duality.

A నామ for రామ

2012-01-03T22:06:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxNama4Rama

With the change of year, it's back to the start of Discourses and some profound stuff on nama:

Nama Imparted by a Sadguru
The question is often raised if one may begin to repeat a nama of one's own choice, or must one be first initiated by a sadguru and assigned a specific nama which he should then repeat? Nama is self-existent and complete in itself, and needs nothing else to make it perfect. And yet, nama imparted by a sadguru certainly is something very special, distinctive, in that it is reinforced by his spiritual strength and support, and consequently there is no scope for pride of doership to rise in the sadhaka's mind. When a sadhaka repeats nama imparted by a sadguru, he gradually develops a relish, a zest for it, and in due course, derives a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction. It is therefore highly desirable that nama should be obtained by initiation by a spiritual master, a sadguru. However, till we meet a sadguru we must keep on repeating the nama of our choice; for, this itself will expedite our meeting the sadguru.

Ever since i got this wonderful book in DEC.2008 from Raavel via Sri BC Prasad Gaaru, i experimented with various nama, each one leading to the other.

On the Master's birthday (18.FEB) in 2010, i got How to Live with God:

Exactly one month later, on March 18, the birthday of Edgar Cayce, i was feeling, as Larry Darrell put it, "spiritually waterlogged". It was a Thursday and i decided to skip the daily puja and read some stuff from HtLwG in the backyard.

And soon i found what i was looking for at the bottom of one of the pages:

M.* said: "Late in the evening the Master would chant this mantra, …. One can attain perfection or see God by repeating this mantra. The Master said: 'This is a mysterious mantra.'"

When i toted it up, it came to 41, that even more mysterious number. What more can one ask for? A magical mantra from the Master Himself.

f2012

2012-01-01T16:31:00.002+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxf2012

f for FAQ, figurative, function,…

Finally, THE year is here. Instead of getting ribbed by all and sundry about the end of the world, here's a FAQ about what i feel about the year 2012:

Q. Will the world come to an end this year?
A. AFAIK, the world as we know it will come to an end. But IMHO it's impossible to predict when that will happen. In 1936, Edgar Cayce suggested 1998 as the year California will get inundated, but that date has come and gone. I am more in sync with Peter Russell's idea that the 2012 date is figurative. He says that it's any date:

2012 ± 18 years.

Q. Why should the world come to an end?
A. John Ross observed:

Underground nuclear testing, defoliation of the rain forests, toxic waste ... Let's put it this way: if the world were a big apartment, we wouldn't get our deposit back.

Very soon, if not already, it will be Oceans of Nothing:

After studying, among other things, global catch data over more than 50 years, he and a team of 13 researchers in four countries have come to a stunning conclusion. By the middle of this century, fishermen will have almost nothing left to catch. "None of us regular working folk are going to be able to afford seafood," says Stephen Palumbi, a Stanford University marine biologist and co-author of the study published in Science. "It's going to be too rare and too expensive."

How long will any any intelligent being such as Mother Earth allow this sort of "snuff" to continue? If the parasite is threatening to overrun the host, the host will shake it off like so many fleas of its back. Check out George Carlin's riff (at 4:24) in the video below:

Q. Will the end be sudden?
A. Yes, i feel so. From 2012: The Tipping Point:

As a system undergoes changes, it keeps trying its best to jiggle back to an equilibrium state. But after a point, it sort of can't do that. Even when you think the system has sort of stabilized (as i was thinking at the end), it might just be preparing for an explosion (as it eventually did).

Q. Are there any triggers/indicators?
A. In Reading 270-35, given on January 21, 1936, Cayce had said: (from Vesuvi-US)

If there are the greater activities in the Vesuvius, or Pelee, then the southern coast of California--and the areas between Salt Lake and the southern portions of Nevada--may expect, within the three months following same, an inundation by the earthquakes.
…
There will be upheavals in the Arctic and Antarctic that will cause the eruption of volcanoes in the torrid areas, and pole shift.

Q. How will the world look?
A. This is, of course, very hard to say. But here's one suggested map of the US post "2012":

Q. What are the danger areas?
A. Apart from those indicated in the US map above with the usual suspects (LA, SF, NY), Scandinavia will have to watch out. Cayce said that "Northern Europe" will change in the twinkling of an eye. My own reason for that will be a megatsunami, which has been known to circle the globe many times!

Q. What can one do?
A. Guess there's hardly anything that one can do except prepare oneself mentally. Reduce materialism. Pray more. Serve your fellow man/woman. Get in sync with the Formless that's always there in the background, as a witness to phenomena. Try to implement that great observation by Ramana Sadguru in Who am I?:

The mind should not be allowed to wander towards worldly objects and what concerns other people. However bad other people may be, one should bear no hatred for them. Both desire and hatred should be eschewed. All that one gives to others one gives to one's self. If this truth is understood who will not give to others? When one's self arises all arises; when one's self becomes quiescent all becomes quiescent. To the extent we behave with humility, to that extent there will result good. If the mind is rendered quiescent, one may live anywhere.

Here's a quote from Swami, from Dreams of 2012:

The dawn of the Golden Age is at hand. But not everyone will experience it. The age of preparation precedes the Golden Age and it is during this time that the sorting-out process takes place. So seize the opportunity that all of you have been given to rise above the material level and manifest once again in the divine state. Only then can you enter the Golden Age and experience the omnipresence of the Lord.

Peace be unto You!

Bhagavad Gita Abhiyana

2011-12-27T23:08:00.002+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxBGAb

Photoset on Flickr

Last week of November, our baddy Kumar was mentioning that some action was on this weekend at Vagdevi Vilas School, Munne Kalolu and that Swami Sukhabodhananda was coming over. It turned out to be the Bhagavad Gita Abhiyana.

There was no way i was going to miss that talk by Swami Sukhabodhananda! I first saw Swami Sukhabodhananda in action in 1990 at Chennai and i have always enjoyed his fun way of giving spiritual messages.

He didn't disappoint me today as well. It all made beautiful sense. He said that the message of the Gita could be condensed into three stithi (state):

Paristithi (the current situation)
Manostithi (the state of the mind)
Atmastithi (the state of the atma).

The best way to interact with the world was to act from the Atmastithi. You are inherently blissful. You don't have to become happy, you already are. If you act from that state, whatever you do will turn out beneficial to the world.

You can listen to his wonderful words in English, with Samskrit slokas, Kannada, Telugu, and Hindi liberally thrown in as only a Bangalorean can do: (in four parts; you can download the *.3GP files and use QuickTime to listen to them):

Here's the folder on Google Docs.

The Swananda Swami (Swami Gangadharendra Saraswati) made a perceptive addition to this later. He said that between the stithi 1 and 2, you have the Deha stithi (the state of the body), as any diabetic would know ;-)

~~~*-*~@~

When i got back home, there was an immediate test on the stithi front. The kakabali offering of rice wasn't made (to the crows and the squirrels). Since we don't eat till this is done, i had to make the offering, keeping my temper in check and my hunger on hold. By the time i finished, i was close to tottering.

Hadn't Srirangam Srinivasa (శ్రీశ్రీ) Rao Gaaru already observed:

ఆకలేసి కేకలేసాడు (He was hungry, so he shouted)

The Master describes this amusingly in His Last Visit to Keshab: (The Gospel, page 322, bottom)

"You may think that everything is going to be over. But God will not release you as long as the slightest trace of your illness is left. You simply cannot leave the hospital if your name is registered there. As long as the illness is not perfectly cured, the doctor won't give you a permit to go. Why did you register your name in the hospital at all?" (All laugh.) Keshab laughed again and again at the Master's allusion to the hospital.

On G+: Bhagavad Gita Abhiyana

Timshel and the Bhagavad Gita

2011-12-26T22:42:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxTimshelBG

There was a very interesting point from Swami in the Sai Inspires of 17.DEC.2011:

Many commentators of the Geeta have interpreted that the giving up of the fruits of one’s actions is advised because one has no right or authority to desire the fruits. This is a great blunder. When one has the right to engage in action, one also has the right over the fruits of that action; no one can deny or refuse this. But the doer can, out of one’s own free will and determination, refuse to be affected by the result, whether favourable or unfavourable. The Lord has said in the Geeta, 'refuse the fruit' (maa phaleshu), which means, the deed does yield results, but the doer should not do it with the results in view. If Krishna's intention was to say that the doer has no right over the fruits of action, He would have said, 'It is fruitless' or 'na phaleshu,' (na, meaning no). To engage oneself in karma, knowing well that the result will follow, and yet being unattached to it or being unconcerned with it, is the sign of purity.—Geeta Vahini, Ch 5

That very nice distinction between maa phaleshu (refuse the fruit) and na phaleshu (no fruit) reminds me of a similar one that Steinbeck uses in East of Eden, which boils down to one word, Timshel.

From Timshel Times:

The American Standard translation [of the Bible] orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in Thou shalt, meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—Thou mayest— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if Thou mayest—it is also true that Thou mayest not.

Intriguingly, i saw the same word (mayest) that very evening during the puja while reading The Life and Teachings of Sai Baba of Shirdi in a translation of the first verse of the inspirational Ishopanishad: (page 133, bottom)

R. E. Hume renders the verse thusly:
By the Lord (Isa) enveloped must this all be,
Whatever moving thing there is in the moving world.
With this renounced, thou mayest enjoy.
Covet not the wealth of anyone at all.

And goes on to explain renunciation in the most wonderful way: (page 134, top)

… is not the negation of something positive; it is quite the opposite, that is, the abandonment of what, being ultimately unreal, is not worthy of our attention.

Saqqara

2011-12-26T09:38:00.001+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxSaqqara

When folks in the US started pushing West towards California, they would draw a line in the ground at the end of the day. Anything to the left of it was the West.

It's almost a year since that trip to Egypt at the end of 2010. We got in and out just before the Revolution hit!

One memory keeps coming back. Visiting the step pyramid at Saqqara and standing on the edge of the Sahara.

Later i checked Google Maps: (Saqqara is starred on the eastern edge below)

It was just a sea of sand :-) all the way to the Atlantic!

The iHole in the Wall

2011-12-26T00:37:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxiHole

"You do away, destroy the Teli's wall (sense of difference) between us, so that we can see and meet each other face to face."

—Shirdi Sai Baba, Chapter 35, Shri Sai Satcharita

The numbers (up to 25) in my head are stored in the same manner as the layout of Sea Sands. So, while repeating Ramana Sadguru, i think of the quarters to keep count, imagining myself as a bairagi in front of each house praying for the welfare of its occupants during my time there.

Though most of the houses face east or west, there were a few that faced South and thus looked into the choppy Bay of Bengal, the largest bay in the world. The breakers during cyclones were something.

Two such houses were 14A and 14B, which were built after the others and which explains their suffixes. On the few occasions i used to visit these houses, i would marvel at the view: deep, blue sea right in your back door!

Since the Bay of Bengal always gave me the feeling of living on the Edge of Infinity, nowadays that view reminds me of this saying of the Master in The Gospel, towards the end of The Master's Reminiscences: (page 760, middle)

"The Incarnations of God belong to the class of the Isvarakotis. They roam about in the open spaces. They are never imprisoned in the world, never entangled by it. Their ego is not the 'thick ego' of worldly people. The ego, the 'I-consciousness', of worldly people is like four walls and a roof: the man inside them cannot see anything outside. The ego of the Incarnations and other Isvarakotis is a 'thin ego': through it they have an uninterrupted vision of God. Take the case of a man who stands by a wall on both sides of which there are meadows stretching to infinity. If there is a hole in the wall, through it he can see everything on the other side. If the hole is a big one, he can even pass through it. The ego of the Incarnations and other Isvarakotis is like the wall with a hole. Though they remain on this side of the wall, still they can see the endless meadow on the other side. That is to say, though they have a human body, they are always united with God. Again, if they will, they can pass through the big hole to the other side and remain in samādhi. And if the hole is big enough, they can go through it and come back again. That is to say, though established in samādhi, they can again descend to the worldly plane."

Thorn EMI

2011-12-25T09:51:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxThornEMI

Had a painful dream this morning.

No doubt a throwback to our Wayanad trip in November, Chery and i were going in a car when we were stopped on the highway by some toll-seeking thugs. There was supposedly some money that we had to repay and the guys dredged up that account.

But they wouldn't let us pay the full amount at one shot; otherwise how were they going to make money (on the interest)?!

Was subjected to more harassment when the leader of the goon-pack wouldn't let go of me and kept giving fundas, over lunch, from my plate.

It was a great relief to wake up.

Some have compared self-realization to the same: waking up from life, but that's another story:

Is the Universe a Dream of God?

Nama O' Roopa

2011-12-21T22:45:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxNOR

This post is dedicated to Sammy San, who says that everything boils down to nAma and roopa

Naren at the baddy courts keeps kidding me that though i might forget a person's name, there's a very good chance that i would remember his birthday, but that's another story.

But, of late, i have noticed something else.

Our Silver Jubilee reunion at IIM-A is just a few days away and responses to the eVites are pouring in thick and fast, though quite a few of them are sadly "No".

Even though i have not been in touch with most of the guys since 1987, the moment i see their names, their faces pop up. It's a mystery; there's hardly any thinking involved, it comes from the deep nice and clear. Pod from our batch used to say that one never forgets the Lotus 1-2-3 menu system (/ followed by the action) as nothing ever interfered with it. Probably it's something on those lines.

Looking at all this, i humbly submit that Sri Brahmachaitanya is right. Nama does come before roopa; the name comes before the form.

There's an excellent exchange between Maharaj and another spiritual teacher; it's right up the alley for folks who love object orientation!

And how does the form draw the name? Steinbeck answers that; more in "The Place Draws the Name":

It doesn't matter what California means; what does matter is that with all the names bestowed upon this place, 'California' seemed right to those who have seen it. And the meaningless word 'California' has completely routed all the 'New Albions' and 'Carolinas' from the scene.

1 + 2 = 4

2011-12-19T14:26:00.001+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsx124

Monday's child is fair of face,

Tuesday's child is full of grace;

Wednesday's child is full of woe,

Thursday's child has far to go;

Friday's child is loving and giving,

Saturday's child works hard for its living;

But the child that is born on the Sabbath day

Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

—Mother Goose (thanks to Suzanne White)

One of the things i notice while doing a quick bit of numerology is that the day of the week of a person's birthday will sort of influence his attitude towards God.

The mental calendar is a big help in that respect as it helps me to quickly calculate the day of the week.

If he's born on a Monday, the day of Shiva, he'd be more interested in approaching the Self through knowledge (jnana).

If he's born on a Tuesday, the day of Hanuman, he'd be more likely to follow a path of devotion.

If he's born on a Thursday, the day of the Guru, he's bound to become a leader in some field or the other.

Swami Vivekananda was born on a Monday (12.JAN.1863) and you'd see more of jnana in his sayings and teachings.

The Master (Sri Ramakrishna) was born on a Thursday, and His life turned out accordingly.

There are some who say that while Swami Vivekananda was a jnani, he was a devotee inside, and while Sri Ramakrishna was patently a devotee, He was a jnani inside.

For me, He's both, and what He says in The Gospel appeals to me quite a bit: (page 654, top)

With Various Devotees
…
You may quote thousands of arguments from Vedanta philosophy to a true lover of God, and try to explain the world as a dream, but you cannot shake his devotion to God. In spite of all your efforts he will come back to his devotion. "A man born with an element of Siva becomes a jnani; his mind is always inclined to the feeling that the world is unreal and Brahman alone is real. But when a man is born with an element of Vishnu he develops ecstatic love of God. That love can never be destroyed. It may wane a little now and then, when he indulges in philosophical reasoning, but it ultimately returns to him increased a thousandfold.

Visit to Shani Temple, Budigere

2011-12-18T01:33:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxBudigere

On 08.DEC made a plan to visit the Shani temple in Budigere along with Keshava Murthy of the Palm Meadows Club. He said that it was a huge idol, more than 8' feet high, and i was quite keen to see the same.

This morning, set off with WiFi and picked up Keshav from the PM Club.

Budigere is on the way to the BLR airport, via the Old Madras Road. We reached the place w/o much ado and took a dirt track for a while, before it again opened out into a reasonably good but narrow road.

Soon we were at the temple and the trees out there zapped me.

The temple had a huge Hanuman in front of it. It was very nice but Keshav was against photographing the Lord of the Air as there were explicit boards stating No Photography in English as well as Kannada. I didn't want to push that, but concentrated on committing the wide-eyed look of Hanuman to memory.

We joined the queue for the darshan and soon we were in front of the idols. I got a shock to see Lord V. He's also there along with Mother Padmavati, and a nice Ganesha on the left, as usual. The Shani idol was very impressive. All the idols are decorated with a mix of white jasmine and green leaves, which looks very charming on the dark idols.

Even the navagraha was quite nice with delicately-carved faces, though the one in the Shani Temple Complex at Gunjur is probably the best that i have seen.

We came out and did a quick pradakshina of Hanuman. Hanuman and Shani have a deal as follows: (source)

On seeing this, Sukrachariyar, the Kula guru of Ravana, thought if Hanuman would get the Sanjeevini, then Lakshmanan and all the other Vanara Senai in the troop will regain their lost power and so he thought Hanuman should be stopped.
On thinking this, he sent Sani, one among the Navagrahams to catch hold of Hanuman, so that he could not get the Sanjeevini herbal. Hanuman, after a long search, finally got the Sanjeevini herbal and took the entire mountain instead of taking some herbals. While returning, he was stopped by Sani and said that he was sent by Ravanan to stop him. On hearing this, Hanuman was very angry on the act of Ravanan and chanting the great Rama Nama, Hanuman stamped Sani with one of his legs. Finally with lots of efforts, Sani apologized that he has come wrongly to catch him and asked him to set him free. During that time, on seeing the state of Sani, Hanuman left Sani and ordered that he should not catch any of the bhaktas who chant the great Sri Rama Nama and who worship him. Not even this, even the sight of Sani should not fall on them. As asked by Hanuman, Sani gave the promise what Hanuman asked for and finally, Hanuman freed Sani. And, then Hanuman came along with the Sanjeevini and Lakshmanan and all got their energies and power and had the victory over Ravanan.

While walking back to the parking lot, took one more snap of those monsters:

Trees like these remind me of Swami Ashokananda's experience:

He empathized not only with fish, but with trees as well, and this in a far intimate and complete way. One day, looking at a huge banyan tree, he was suddenly thunderstruck by the tremendous life force manifested there. It was such an enormous living being, bigger than any animal on earth! Later this sense of wonder grew. When he was near trees, his mind would sometimes grow very quiet, and his ordinary consciousness, human consciousness, would be obliterated, as it were, and tree consciousness would take its place, a consciousness entirely unlike our own—a different time sense, a different way of knowing and feeling, indescribable in terms of human consciousness. He felt at one with trees, just as we feel at one with human beings. He knew trees to be very happy, peaceful beings. He could almost hear their laughter. It was, he said, like the laughter of young girls around sixteen or seventeen years old, and yet restrained. Later, returning to ordinary human consciousness, he couldn't remember what tree consciousness was like. "Human consciousness is so very different", he said; "it blocks out the memory." "Don't tell anyone these things", he added when he told of this experience. "People will wonder what kind of man I am. Is that how he teaches Vedanta! Talking about tree consciousness!"

On the way back, we stopped at a DurgaMBA temple.

She looked very regal, reclining unusually at 45°.

As i write this, even though i missed photographing some exquisite dieties, i have very good memories of the white-and-green garlands over the black marble idols.

Of Bikes and Kids

2011-12-12T21:49:00.002+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxOBaK

Twins off M4 amuse me quite a bit on the cycling rounds after baddy.

D… always races me to the head of M4. He challenges me and scoots off. I am always touched by his intelligent look.

Last week, he came in one of my dreams:

We were on a narrow road, on a motor bike, trying to avoid the buses coming in from the other side.

At one point, i had to stop and support the bike at 45°. Thankfully, there was no vehicle coming on the other side.

Why the bike stalled soon became clear. D… was standing in the front of the bike (there's some space). He's fingering the key and said: (i could hear his charming lisp even in the dream)

"My mother says that this [the key] should be removed while driving"!

Still chuckling.

Laying of Hands

2011-12-12T21:34:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxLH

Early this morning, was woken up soon after a nice dream:

I was in the house of some Marathis (probably Suratkars, though can't say for sure).

Folks were talking of Sri Brahmachaitanya.

I was listening when i felt a lady cupping her hands and putting them on my head. She let them be for a while. It felt wonderful. There was no need to say anything else.

Bourne Identity meets Fugitive

2011-12-12T14:04:00.000+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxUnknown

Last afternoon, had the great pleasure of watching Liam Neeson (as Dr. Martin Harris) in Unknown.

Dr. Harris is on his way to attend a biotech summit in Berlin with his wife, when he has an accident (while retrieving his forgotten suitcase at the airport) and spends four days in a coma. By the time he gets back he's disowned by his wife in front of everyone at a big do at the Adlon Kempinski.

So what's up? As the plot unravels, there are hints who Dr. Harris might actually be. Such as the superb fight with one of the killers within the cramped apartment of the unintentionally-funny Diane Kruger. That and some terrific car chases.

Liam Neeson does look quite a bit like Harrison Ford in Fugitive and WiFi suggested the Bourne connection.

A great watch and, IMHO, the 6.9 rating in IMDb is a tad short of my own: between 7.5 and 7.9.

Google Contacts to the Fore

2011-12-10T09:07:00.001+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxGooCon

I have been maintaining my contacts on Google ever since Contacts was available in Gmail in the mid-2000s.

When i bought my SGS and SGTab, all my 2,400+ contacts were synced with the devices in less than 30 minutes!

A nice side benefit is that anyone in your Google Contacts joining WhatsApp (an ode) automatically shows up when you refresh the list in WhatsApp.

Even though Google Contacts was available separately, only of late, due to the rejigging of Gmail and Contacts with Google+, have i seen the interface on Google Contacts the latest & same as what you find "under" Gmail.

Note the birthday and mobile number ;-)

So, needless to say, now there are two (pinned) tabs in my browser, one for Gmail and the other for Google Contacts, so that there's no painful shuffling between the two.

Also, if you lose your Android device, the Contacts are still out there on the Cloud, waiting for you to buy the next best thing ;-)

On G+: Contacts Galore in Ban-Galore

South by Southwest

2011-12-04T13:55:00.001+05:30

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxSbSw

Earlier this week, i had the pleasure of seeing this prison-escape movie called The Way Back:

… is a 2010 drama film about a group of prisoners who escape from a Siberian Gulag camp during World War II.

Their escape is just the beginning. Of hightailing it across Siberia, traveling along the edge of the monstrous Lake Baikal, crossing the Gobi Desert in Mongolia and, after walking some 4,000 miles, landing up in India!

Here's the trailer:

A stellar cast including Ed Harris and Colin Farrell, who, unfortunately, opts out half-way through the journey.

~~~*-*~@~

With my first salary in 1987, i bought True Stories of Great Escapes:

One of the feature stories in it was The Long Walk:

which, very interestingly, turned out to be the basis for The Way Back.

~~~*-*~@~

Needless to say, one has to wonder whether a bunch of seven guys from a Gulag prison can do that sort of trek and still make it. It's not surprising that the Wiki page on the movie says much the same thing:

The film is loosely based on The Long Walk, a book by Sławomir Rawicz, depicting his alleged escape from a Siberian gulag and subsequent 4,000-mile walk to freedom in India. Very popular, it sold over 500,000 copies and is credited with inspiring many explorers. In 2006, the BBC unearthed records (including some written by Rawicz himself) that showed that, rather than having escaped from the Gulag, in fact in 1942, he had been released by the USSR. In May 2009, Witold Gliński, a Polish WWII veteran living in the United Kingdom, came forward to claim that Rawicz's story was true but was actually an account of what happened to him, not Rawicz. Glinski's claims also have been seriously questioned. In addition, in 1942, a group of Siberian Gulag escapees is said to have hiked into India. However this too is suspect. Though the director Peter Weir continues to claim that the so-called long walk happened, he himself now describes The Way Back as "essentially a fictional film."

As usual, suspend disbelief and enjoy the movie.