ViprasCraft

Understanding GOD beyond the empirical Reality and Religions

2013-05-21T20:45:00.001+05:30

It is widely believed that God is a topic related to the subject religion. But some religions don't accept the existence of God, for example Buddhism, Carvakam, etc. Buddhism deals with this world and ethics of the person to have a comfortable evolved life of this world.

The religions which speak of God are also not of a single univocal opinion. Some say that He is all pervading i.e., He is everywhere and in all static and dynamic things, where as some say that He is ruling the whole universe sitting in a separate world other than this earth.

Some say that He is the judge to deal with our acts - good or bad - and gives rewards or punishments. But some say that He is the Creator, and all the creatures do whatever they like and get punishment or reward according to their deeds automatically and this process they call it as 'Karma Siddhanta' and God has no interference in this process. Simply God witnesses whatever is going on. He is neither for nor against to anybody, irrespective of a person who worships Him or not.

Though there are number of concepts regarding God spread all over the world, there is no one who claims that he has seen God. Simply the preachers of God tell so many stories in which we find some characters that have seen God. Some people claim themselves as witnesses of God's grace and go to the extent of making exclusive claims about divinity and the correctness and miraculous nature of their prophets and holy books. But using your natural intelligence and analytical brain with a knowledge of science and rationality in your mind, if you go deep into them and analyze reasonably, you find them as simply emotional and illusory feelings having no clear cut proof to explain.

By this we have to think that the existence of God is still a questionable thing and a subject to debate. But we must be unbiased. We cannot say `No' because we have got no proof before our eyes. There are so many things which we see clearly with our eyes and appear as facts, but they are totally wrong (only apparent facts) when evaluated with absolute references.

Some examples:

Sunrise and Sunset. They appear as facts but really they are false. Here witnessing with our own eyes is false. Sun neither rises nor sets. It is all due to the revolving of the earth. Even we cannot see or feel the rotation of the earth. It appears as static which is really false.

Earth appears flat to the naked eye from the surface of the ground but when viewed from a space shuttle or a rocket from a farther distance, it appears like a sphere. We all know that today due to the established scientific facts and evidences available now.

A person sitting in a jet airplane feels static unless if there is enough turbulent wind outside, but that doesn't deny the fact that the aircraft is moving at 900 km/h speed at an altitude of 10 km! A person in a moving train feels that the surrounding objects outside are moving while he is static, but a minimum common sense will make it clear that it all depends on the relative movement of the objects and the observer.

An ordinary flower like a rose or a tulip appearing yellow for a human eye will appear blue or with a different color while the nectar in it appears with a completely different color under ultraviolet light and insects like honeybees experience that due to their eyes capable of looking at the ultra violet spectrum. That is how the insects identify and spot the flowers which contain the nectar while the humans can't. There is scientific evidence for that.

The school children read about sound in their science lessons that animals like bats, dogs can hear the sounds above the range of 20,000 Hz beyond which the human ear can't identify the audible sound. That is the reason why these animals behave differently at times for instance, during the onset of some natural calamities like earthquakes or tsunamis.

So at the outset we cannot say that God doesn't exist because nobody saw him with what we perceive as vision with our normal eyes.

This is because whatever we observe with our sensory organs, in most of the cases, is an apparent observation instead of the absolute observation. As said above the Sunrise and Sunset, the earth appearing static, outside objects moving when seen from inside a moving train, etc are all apparent observations. Those who don't make an attempt, to come out of the relative observing point or source and try to understand the reality from an absolute point or source, can't ever deny the absolute truth.

Man is a thinking biological animal, not only a thinking animal but also a living being endowed with discriminating faculty. He has got the capacity to derive benefits even from the disadvantageous moments. If such is the case, let us then think for a while and contemplate over this issue. If you say that there is no God, there ends the matter, and thereby you may lose so many benefits if there is a God and after life after death.

Instead if you say yes, the first benefit that you get is, you develop a confidence and a faith that you are under the protection of a savior. Even if you want to say that it is not right and it is merely a self hypnotism. Let it be. A person is being benefited by this so called self hypnotism and gaining will power within himself. See how nice it is? One is being benefited thinking that there is God. If he exists well and good. If he does not exist even then it is good. It is always good to proceed on with positive thinking. One should always start with 'there is' and march to find it with his available ways and means. After all finally you to decide whether it is ` Yes or no'.

Leaving aside the fanatic cults, irrational and weird extremists, generally we find people having real belief in God are good and law abiding. They are afraid of doing sin and also helpful to others. God fearing makes a person kind and less harmless or if not harmless, less harmful. Thereby we can hope for a peace and harmonious world from the believers of God.

And there is this argument that these theists are being blinded by the religious superstitions which contradict with the truths discovered by science and technology, and are increasingly becoming harmful both to themselves and to the others. Even terrorism is also the outcome of this strong gross meaningless religious fanaticism. Yes, why not we agree with it?

But belief in God is not the belief in religious superstitions, it is not becoming stubborn like a rock having no kindness and being aggressive. And it is also not developing hatred towards other religions. To tell the fact, belief in God is becoming mild natured, kind and pious. In other words we can say that belief in God is overcoming religious harsh boundaries, and becoming reasonable, humanely thinking and also developing internal purity devoid of selfish feelings.

As per the great philosophers of India, God is the love that demands nothing in return (unconditional love). God is a thing not to be seen. Just like we know that there is electricity in the air, metals and in other types of matter but we cannot see it in its absolute form, we can by far only see the effects of electricity when it transforms into other forms of energy like visible light, audible sound and heat which can be sensed by our organs. Even when we get electrocuted, it is not the real feeling of electricity, but pain in our body we experience due to the effect of electricity.

Similar is the case with this world. We see so many 'effects' like welfare, sorrow, rains, droughts, prosperity, destruction, peace, wars, happiness, illnesses, joyful events, terrible accidents, charities and terrorist activities, etc happening in this world, but in a normal condition, we can't really understand and see the 'cause' behind every single event.

But our intellect provides us an opportunity to understand that the 'effect' can't exist without the 'cause' and that kind of reasoning is a proactive approach of trying to understand God.

God can be understood as a thing to be felt and understood. It is a purest condition pervading with in and out. It can be achieved by continuous meditation with selfless, harmonious unbiased thinking. In other words God can be called as a balanced condition, neither less nor more. It is neither liking nor hatred, neither emotional nor passive. It is as it is. It is a condition to be aspired for by one and all and it should become the target of every human being. How nice to think about it in these lines. Is it not worth consideration? Think over it and be benefited.

Have you ever wondered why the most exemplary and oldest texts ever conceived by the human mind, the Vedas also at one point said that if you define God, He is no longer God?

There is a greater sense of wisdom in this declaration. Let us say a person is happy. Whatever be the language used, 'happy' denotes some positive feeling. Then comes the question - How much happy? Which are the units to measure happiness?

To elaborate further, if you give a toffee to a child who wishes for it he will be happy. You can't define it, you can somehow observe it. But if the child wishes for something else, and if you give a toffee he would not be happy now. The action is the same, but the result will be different. Or let us say, there are many children to whom you have given the same kind of toffees. Can you guarantee that all are equally happy?

The same thing holds good for many things which are not tangible objects like tranquility, grief, ecstasy, which can't be universally quantified. And when we can't define to quantify what we know and have already experienced, how can we define something like God which is beyond our rational human mind?

The very basic word 'define' means to 'confine' something with some limits. And so can we limit a limitless God by trying to define with our limited capacity of human knowledge, human mind and human languages?

Now, let us have a look at the wisdom of some great personalities/religions/holy books/organizations:

God is (Satchidanand) existent, intelligent and blissful. He is Nirakar (formless), all powerful, omniscient, just, merciful, beginning less, endless, unchangeable, unborn, faultless, omnipresent, immanent, immortal, eternal, holy and the maker of all. -- Agniveer.com inspired by Vedas and Satyarth Prakash written by Swami Dayanand Saraswathi)
The entity (God) which feels pain/pleasure is soul and manager of conscious and unconscious (non living entities) is `God' -- The Vedas
The Vedas (sacred books) cannot show you Brahman (GOD). You are that only. Think of God all the time and that will purify you. God is explicable, inexpressible essence of love-to be known but never defined, God is present in every jiva, there is no other God besides that. Who serves Jiva serves God indeed. Hindus believe in one Supreme god who created the Universe and who is worshipped as `Light, love and consciousness'. They believe that there is one all-pervasive God which energies the entire Universe. We can see Him in the life shining out of the eyes of humans and all creatures. They also believe in many Devas who perform various kinds of functions, like executives in the large corporation. These should not be confused with God. There is one supreme God only. From whom all beings are projected, in whom all live, and unto whom they all return, that is God. The whole universe is a symbol and God is the essence behind. -- Swami Vivekananda
Know God as undual, endless, permanent, only one Satchidanand, filled with totality of pure sacred thought. -- Sri Adi Sankaracharya
From which everything emanates, by which everything is sustained and that into which everything returns is God. He is the source of all existence (Sat) and is characterized by consciousness (Chit) and Bliss (Anand). He is always exists in inseparable relation to individual souls and nature. -- Sri Ramanujacharya
Abstaining from theft/ sensuality/ falsehood/ slander is God. Suppression of unkindness is God, avoiding gossip is God. Letting go off envy is God, diminishing hatred is God and obedience to truth is God. -- Lord Gautama Buddha
God is one, but His aspects are many. As the master of house, is father to one, brother to another and husband to a third and is called by different names by different persons, so the one God is described in various ways according to the particular aspect in which He appears to particular worshippers. -- Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
God is within you. Otherwise it can be said that He is you yourself. For him you need not search in the outside world. -- Sri Veerabrahmendra Swami
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whoever believes on him should not perish, but have eternal life. God is all powerful, able to perform any possible act or cause anything to occur and that He is the creator of heaven and earth. He made everything that exists. -- The Bible
Allah is the Lord of the worlds. The beneficient, the merciful, owner of the Day of Judgment. Thee we worship. Thee we ask for help to show us the straight path. No vision can grasp Him, but His grasp is over all vision. God is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things. God is the all powerful and all-knowing creator, sustainer, ordainer, and judge of the Universe. -- The Quran
God is God. He is neither Sakar (with form ) nor Nirakar (without form). He is as it is. There is nothing to explain. God is the personality whom we do not know. He is. But we do not know. Feeling is the language of God. Be active in inactivity. Unconsciousness is the characteristic of soul. It is felt when we get rid of worldly ideas. This unconsciousness goes on increasing till we get ourselves totally merged in God. -- Sri Ramachandraji Maharaj

An Indian dimension of Spirituality to understand Human behavior and methods of Self control

2013-02-28T20:06:00.001+05:30

This Indian (Hindu) dimension of Spirituality is our small effort to make our readers know something about ancient India’s wisdom which was precisely preserved in the form of Vedas, Epics, Puranas, Upanishads, etc, all of which at more than one occasion have never refrained from the discussion on the Human behavior and the methods of Self control. A little consideration will explain the fact that with the gained material knowledge on any subject, people try to do different things and in the process of doing things people make mistakes and those mistakes teach important lessons to improve our life, if those underlying lessons are understood properly.

Our experiences both good and bad will give way to the critical thinking and the process of critical thinking more often is linked to our intellect and to our minds which in turn connect us with our own true selves to let us understand our true nature and the natural principles of this world. So if the culture is very old and ancient like that of India, which is very evident from the Indian history, there are certain things which are very wisely defined due to the ancient Indians’ vast knowledge and experience over hundreds of generations. The sacred Hindu scriptures like Vedas, Puranas, Upanishads, etc are derived in the same way and are composed by great sages. They are sacred because they speak about the simple and great things to improve our lives.

If not looked with a stained glass approach – an approach which stains the viewing glass as per the existing problems modern India is facing today like poverty, mediocrity, corruption, crime, terrorism, etc – Indian history during the India’s glorious period was always great. It has shown that India was more prosperous that time like the USA and some European countries are today. (The world’s recorded history clearly shows the reasons for India’s downfall and whoever is responsible for such downfall. Now India is reviving herself but there are gigantic problems like poverty, corruption, crime, terrorism, etc and however it becomes another lengthy topic not suited in this context).

Through this article ‘An Indian dimension of Spirituality to understand Human behavior and methods of Self control’, we would like to share some views about Human behavior, Personality development, Mind power, Spirituality. These following words, phrases and paragraphs are not new altogether but are a selective blend of the Indian Philosophy, Spirituality and some Mythology.

Personality

The word ‘personality’ is often misinterpreted by a majority of the people as something related to good looks, physique, body building, fashion and so on. But only such features can’t fully make a person.

There are other important qualities like Emotional balance, Intellect, Spiritual dimension to be added to the complete personality of a person. Many of us think that we need physical development during the youth and that the development concerning the emotional balance, psychology or spirituality are needed at later stages of life but in the eyes of a wise man the best stage to develop on different dimensions and directions is from the student life itself. Many books say it is wise to improve one’s intellect staying in the company of great people (wise and pure–hearted persons) than to read many books because it gives you more wisdom and thereby knowledge within a short period of time.

Personality development means the development of thoughts in a productive manner too. It doesn’t mean only to develop the physical dimension but more importantly it refers to Physical, Emotional, Spiritual, Intellectual dimensions. A mere body builder or a fashion model is not to be called a personality.

A great Personality may be someone like Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Einstein, Leonardo DaVinci, Abraham Lincoln, APJ Abdul Kalam, etc because all these persons possess these above mentioned qualities.

Human Behavior due to senses

To start with the understanding of the basic human nature, we have five senses namely Drishti (Vision), Shabda (Sound), Vaakh (Speech), Ruchi (Taste) and Sparsha (Touch) which influence the human behavior. The Atman (Soul), the Manas (Mind) and the Buddhi (Intelligence) drive us to perform our regular tasks.

There are six senses (traits) that destroy the man if they are not put under control. These six senses are referred as ‘Arishadvarga’ in Sanskrit. They are:

1. Kama (Sexual desires, Passions or Obsessions),

2. Krodha (Anger),

3. Lobha (Greed),

4. Moha (Attraction),

5. Mada (Ego, Pride, stubbornness) and

6. Matsarya (jealousy).

This is only some brief introduction about the enemies of Mind. In the Hindu epic ‘Bhagavatham’ it was explained that these six traits depict the six gates of Vaikunta (Heaven, the abode of Supreme God) and the seventh and the last is Ahankara (Pride), the most dangerous one. In the macroscopic point of view the ‘Ahankara’ can also be referred to as a constituent of ‘Mada’.

The need of Meditation

First of all, we should know something about our own mind. Even from the scientific point of view, today it is said that our mind has three stages of consciousness as described by many scientists and psychologists. They are Conscious mind, Subconscious mind and the Unconscious mind. Out of these Subconscious mind is the most powerful phase of consciousness. Our brain has mainly two hemispheres (lobes) left and right. The left-brain makes you think laterally and logically. It needs reasoning. The right-brain listens whatever illogical you say. When you are in meditated state the right brain works and Subconscious mind comes into play. In such a state you can be able to visualize the thoughts that creep into our mind. Right brain accounts for the noble ideas and creativity. This was also proven from the biographies of great people that they used to have the habit of some form of meditation in their lives. Knowingly or unknowingly they were doing the Creative Visualization and achieved in reality all those they visualized with their creativity.

Swami Vivekananda explained about the power of the mind very well in his book ‘Brahmacharya’. We are responsible for everything that happens to us. Everything happens for a reason, purpose and it serves us. The mind acts in a dual manner, it acts like a servant if controlled and as a master if uncontrolled. The only thing is you should direct your mind properly by practice and effort and then it acts as a servant. For achieving this, the process of Meditation is the ultimate means. A sound body contains a sound mind. For a sound body, we need good health. And the good health is maintained by proper breathing. So first you concentrate on your breathing, so you control your health, and if you control your health, you control your mind, if you control your mind you will know about your mind better. If you understand your mind better, you will also understand the ‘Universal Mind’ which is unique. That Universal mind is the Supreme God.

The mind is like a garden. The thoughts are like plants and weeds. A useful thought (positive thought) is a plant and is a good Idea. The positive thoughts are like useful crops and the negative thoughts are like weeds. We should not cultivate bad thoughts because they will spoil the ‘mind garden’. You might have studied in physics that when a water bubble is inside or at the bottom of lake it size is small but when it comes to upper surface its size increases enormously and it finally bursts when it reaches to the surface of the water. In the same manner the negative thought is so small but when once enters the mind and gets stuck in the mind, its impact is very high and it ultimately spoils the person. The best method to control our mind is through Meditation. As each thought is associated with some brain wave frequency, the process of meditation reduces this frequency because meditation. In the modern personal development programs, there are some techniques developed such as SWOT analysis though their core principle is the same old method of meditating and discovering one’s self to improve good habits and to eliminate the bad habits. This will help in reaching the goal.

Creative Visualization is the one of the best methods of meditation. Close your eyes and sit in a comfortable posture, it is effective when your backbone is straight. Visualize your goals to be achieved and the appreciation you get after reaching your goal. Mind has such a power to make dream into reality. Remember psychology effects physiology and physiology effects psychology. Thought always gets transformed into physical form. You are what you think. Visualize that you are strong, healthy, genius etc. Swami Vivekananda explained about the mind in his book The Powers of Mind.

Finally you are what you think! If you think you are a winner, you are! If you think you are weak, you are! Whatever you visualize in your mind about yourself, you get directly affected in the reality. So by controlling your thoughts in your mind, you are actually controlling your reality too!

Importance of Spirituality

Let us talk about the powers of mind and the character of a yogi and about open–heartedness. To know well about our own mind we should have faith in the divinity and the religion. Many people think that belief and faith are the same. Swami Paramananda in his book ‘Faith is Power’ explained that belief is different from faith. For instance we generally listen to our friends or well wishers and took advices from them. We start our investigation on the things we don't know based on the observations of others, if the given data is correct then we believe it firmly or else we lose belief on the person who has suggested it. So first we believe the things and make research on it with our intelligence and reasoning, and if it is reasonable we will then get faith. So belief is superficial. When we come to know about a certain thing on our own we strongly say we are right and it is called faith. When a person has a doubting mind he will certainly lose his idea on the task which he is performing.

In Bhagavadgita, Lord Krishna says that a man should develop himself on his own and there is no one to rescue him. We generally believe in God but we don’t have faith in God. Religion is a philosophy or a path to reach god, the rituals we perform are only meant to pay attention and discipline towards reaching the God. In Bhagavadgita it was clearly said that a man has to work only to fulfill his responsibility without getting influenced expecting the out come. Man has the authority only to do the things but not on the results. God is indirectly responsible for all the thoughts either good or bad because the entire world is run by Maya (Illusion existing in the form of nature) which is the cause for all the thoughts and the Maya is one superficial form of the same supreme God in the materialistic sense. Those who have faith in God can come out of this Maya. Only the God is eternal and the entire world is perishable. God is the soul of our soul, the Supreme soul. In Sanskrit, ‘Atma’ means ‘Soul’ and ‘Paramatma’ means Supreme soul meaning Supreme God.

With great faith we can reach god. Lord Sri Krishna said that a man can get him by two ways. One way is by adopting Karma Yoga (Path of Action) for those who work sincerely and the other way is Dhyana Yoga (Path of Meditation) for the sages. But the lord says Karma yogi is better than a Dhyana yogi. Karma implies the work we do - we have to perform our work with devotion towards God. Every work we do is to be dedicated and offered to God with ‘shradda’ (faith). The qualities of a yogi are patience, balance of mind and desirelessness. Yogi or a Sanyasi doesn't mean a person dressed in a robe and/or wearing a turban. A person can’t become a Yogi simply by attire. A real Yogi or a Sanyasi is a person who always keeps his heart filled with Bhakti (devotion). A man who has attained such a state of intellectual equilibrium about happiness and misery, joys and sorrows, friends and enemies, rich and poor, etc is called a Yogi.

Many of you may question as how it would be possible to treat our own self and others equally! Swami Vivekananda, in his works, has used the word ‘Non–Attachment’ to explain this point. The Atman (soul) is bonded to the universe. The entire universe has only one soul and it is spread in all the living beings. The man's soul is a part of the unique universal soul. This is what Vishishtadvaita speaks about. Some scholars explain in a wiser way that if we are not born from the unique infinite source (Supreme God) then how can be it called as infinite, because we are different from it and are independent of this infinite source. So there is no other possibility and there is only one soul in the entire universe and the whole of it is you itself if you explore yourself spiritually. This can be explained with an example that when sun rays fall on the water bubbles we see the image of sun on each bubble, but they are not many suns, and the sun is one and the same for each bubble, but each bubble is different with its size and lifespan. Likewise we are all the images of god. That is why the great sages of ancient India said to love everyone equally because every living being is a form of the same God. So a pure Brahmin has the same respect for all the people and all the living beings. Hence meat eating is considered to be a sin by the real Brahmins, because it involves violence like the killing of animals for pleasure and taste.

The reason behind the philosophy of Vishishtadvaita is that all the living beings are from the same divine source, so if you love anyone you indirectly love the God and yourself. For example there is a pile full of clay and many pots of different shapes are made with from it, if you study the properties of clay you can say the properties of pots without studying them individually and vice versa. In the similar manner if you purify your soul the entire universe is purified for you. But for this you need pure heart which is devoid of hatred, jealousy, selfishness, etc. The heart should have the feeling of oneness. When the thought of self enters a mind it leads to selfishness, selfishness spoils the heart by creating hatred towards the other humans, hatred creates jealously and jealously leads to greediness, this in turn increases ego in man, ego spoils the thinking ability of man and thus the downfall of man starts.

Bonding with other Humans is like bonding between different waves and bonding with the Supreme God is like bonding with the ocean.

Another analogy is that the humans are like waves in the sea and the Supreme God is like an ocean. The waves are busy bonding with other waves thinking that their bonding is permanent. And very soon they perish. This is how life goes on. The waves must understand the bond with the Ocean and not with the other waves. So the real happiness lies in understanding of the bond with the ocean which is permanent while bonding with other waves leads to sorrow. But till this ignorance is not broken, the waves only see the other waves and not the ocean. In this way, a human must understand that the bonds with other humans are just like the waves bonding with other waves and the bond with the ocean is like bonding with the Supreme God.

Wandering mind and its control

The mind is not stable like a chair but it wanders all through out the world and provokes you with many useless thoughts. In Bhagavatham it was clearly said that a man has Buddhi (intelligence) Manas (mind/heart) and Atman (soul). We have organs for each and every function. Man should control his organs from the worldly pleasures with patience and practice, he should use his Buddhi to direct his mind and in the process when the mind becomes stable he can find his soul inside his physical body. Soul then attains the state of happiness and reaches the super consciousness state which we call as the God.

In BhagavadGita, Lord Krishna said that the sole aim of man is to reach him. Those who deviate from this path will not attain Mukthi (liberation) and should reenter the cycle of birth and death. Kindly remember that God has no Manas (mind) so he neither loves you nor hates you. If you pray him with devotion he will definitely help you, all you have to do is pay attention at your work. When Arjuna asked the lord, 'What happens if a man fails to move in a right path even though he tried effortlessly?”, then Sri Krishna answered to Arjuna that mind is not stagnant, it gets attracted to the perishable world due to the effect of Maya, so man should be careful. Like a tortoise dragging its body parts under its shell for protection in times of perils, man should divert his attention from worldly pleasures using his Buddhi (intelligence) and should concentrate on God with the efforts through Bhakti (devotion). Despite such efforts, if a man fails to reach God he has to take the next birth, but as he made an effort in last birth there would be some effect of his deeds and he will be born in a family with good customs and culture, so he will be diverted again towards Bhakti or Devotion.

We can see the evidence of the above said statement in our daily lives, like for instance, we see some rich and prosperous people living their life harmoniously and peacefully and they get good fortunes, while some others lead their lives with misery and still suffer from more setbacks. Some are born in great families while some are born in the starving families. Some are born in great and prosperous countries while some are born in troublesome countries.

If according to any other religion there is no birth and death cycle, then the above real life events we are witnessing everyday would not justify the presence of God as we describe Him because God should not be partial to anyone. Differently, Vedic culture of India believes in this birth and death cycle, so we can easily understand that the differences in the fortunes of the people are just the results of the deeds of their past births. Every body in their life will do certain activities and in this process accumulates the results and to experience their results, they would take the next birth. At a certain stage, when they don’t accumulate any bad results, they attain the Mukthi (liberation) and their soul will be united with the Supreme soul. In this materialistic world, there is no real enjoyment other than Bhakti (devotion) because apart from the devotion, there is no other thing which only gives happiness.

When a man has more attention towards enjoyment it will lead to lust. Man needs money only for his needs, but when Lobha (blind attention towards making money and passion for amassing wealth) enters the mind it will transform into Moha (Attraction), Moha creates Kama (Passions, obsessions, sexual thoughts) and Kama transforms into Krodha (Anger), Anger destroys Buddhi and man loses his memory power, common sense and thinking ability, thus man gets destroyed by choosing path of enjoyment.

Occasionally, in this article we have used the word ‘Purity’. The purity is attained by humans when their hearts are filled love. The purest form of devotion again is love. The two great qualities of love are that Love doesn't bargain, and, Love has no fear.

Love is not to be understood only in the sense of attraction towards a man and a woman. Love is always divine and universal as it exists between couples, between parents and children, between humans and animals, etc in different forms. When we love someone we try to do anything for them, we serve them selflessly. When we love something we try our best to safeguard it.

Many people pray the God asking something they require by offering some valuable things in favor of God and they believe that their wishes would become true. This is a common practice by majority of Hindus due to their sentiments (though it gives a wrong impression about real Hinduism). This is principally wrong because if you try to worship God only for getting some returns, then it is a form of bargaining but not real devotion. This way of blind devotion (though it is not at all to be termed as devotion) is of no use in any kind. This will not liberate anybody from this life and death cycle. Not only a majority of Hindus but also in other religions, this practice is found that by offering something to the God, people expect that they are getting rid of all their sins. For our actions, we need to experience the results and there is no escape. Nobody knows how the results of our actions would occur in our real life.

We should pray to God only with pure form of devotion by doing right things and offering our efforts to God.

God never gives what we want, but he always gives us what we need.

He has created this world and if he accepts offerings then there is no difference between man and god. Love is giving but not taking. We can see many persons saying I had did so and so but in return they give nothing. The problem here is everyone expects something from others, if they are dissatisfied their minds will fill with misery. Expectation always reduces joy , so if you love any one truly then if you want to give them something give it without expecting anything in return otherwise it is more a shop keeping rather than love . Do the things without selfishness. If your heart is pure you can get everything you need. When you are pure the universe is ready to open its secrets.

The best Mantra during our prayer:

Kayena vaacha manasa indriyairva buddhyatmanaava prakruthe swabhaavaath

Karomi yadyat sakalam parasmaihi narayanaa ithi samarpayaami

The meaning is, “Whatever I do (Karomi Yad Yat Sakalam) with my Body (Kaya), Voice (Vaacha), Mind (Manasa), Senses (Indriya), Intellect (Buddhi), Soul (Atman), Behavioral tendencies (Swabhava Prakruthi), hereby (Ithi) I offer (Samarpayaami) to the Supreme (Param) God (Narayana)”

When you have faith in God you need not worry about your life. Even you should not have fear about death. All the divinity is within you, you only have to ignite the spirit inside you. Shatter all the fears and have faith alone as it is enough to give you everything.

Finally the wisdom we can learn in this modern generation (also based on our previous posts) in simple terms is this:

God is unique and only one. The whole universe is itself derived from the same and unique Supreme God.
Energy is Magnetic and all the thoughts have some energy associated with them. Thoughts can be controlled by practice of Meditation and worship, by controlling your thoughts, you control your mind, and by controlling your mind, you achieve the control over this physical world.
You are what you think. If you think you are divine you are! But the thinking must be pure and honest and relating to your inner self.
Every thought by proper empowering transforms into an Action.
Trained mind acts as your slave and untrained mind acts as a master. You can’t resist your thoughts, but you can control your thoughts and thereby your actions which will provide the results to be experienced.

Christmas, a festival to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ - one of God's incarnations

2012-12-25T10:00:00.000+05:30

The 25th of December, the Christmas day is a day every year during which many countries of the world are in a festive mood. It is all about celebrating with the families, exchanging gifts, the children getting their dream list manifested in front of them. Behind all this, lies the theme of Jesus Christ and the people in Jerusalem celebrating his birth for what he would become and stand for in his later part of the life.

I, as a Hindu from modern India, would like to use this opportunity to share my views and also to say something 'real' about the Hinduism (it is 'ism' as you know like Socialism, Nationalism, etc) because I believe in the Syncretism of various religions as supported by a great Indian leader and monk, 'Swami Vivekananda' back in 1893 Parliament of World religions. He said, "It is foolish to think that only one religion should exist exclusively of the others for the sake of the world's good. There must be different religions for different parts of the world and cultures, but what is important is the syncretistic philosophy found in all of them".

I don't know much about Bible except that it contains Old Testament and New Testament, but I know considerably well about the life of Jesus Christ from some movies and TV serials in India I have watched in my own mother tongue 'Telugu'. The way he stood up for sacrificing his own life for the sake of Truth, Love and Service to others, is very courageous despite the pain he has endured.

If these are the qualities we need to look in a person to be called a follower of Christ, then all the good people in the world are Christians. I feel the same about myself. I really enjoyed my time with other Indian friends on the Christmas day of the year 2005 in Vatican Church during our vacation at Rome, Italy.

Because back in India we Hindus don't have an organized religion with a single religious head, we have too many gurus, some great ones and many fake ones, but that doesn't affect us so much as there are open options for anyone to chose their preferred path.

The words I said about Jesus with my meager understanding of his life, are also the principles that have been taught by our own ancient culture.

Our wisdom comes from 'Vedas' (written and revised by many sages over 1000s of years) and we believe in "Sanatana Dharma" (Eternal Principles) which is the basis of Hinduism and that is what the world calls today as so called 'Hindu religion'.

Ancient Indians said, "Satyam Gynanam Anantham Brahma", which means, "That which is True (Satyam), which showers knowledge (Gnyanam) and which is Infinite (Anantham) is the Supreme God".

Again in the real sense, we worship idols only as symbols of God which remind us of the Supreme God and not just with the belief that the idol is a God. It is similar to identify ourselves with various photographs, and our photographs are not the real people but remind us of the people.

And to me as a follower of the "Advaita" (Non-Dualism) philosophy, Jesus Christ is not just the Son of God, but by principle, he is the Supreme God Himself in the form of a Human! That is why he was able to resurrect and appear before his followers after crucifixion, which is not possible for a rational human being like us.

We in India believe the incarnations ('avatar' in Sanskrit) of the God in the human form. Like we have had Sri Rama (10000 years ago) and there is an epic 'Ramayana', then 'Sri Krishna' (5110 years ago) and there is an epic 'Mahabharata (includes BhagavadGita in itself)' in the Indian subcontinent, and I believe Europe had Lord Jesus (2000 years ago) and there is the 'Bible' after that!

Merry Christmas to all our readers!

Mathematics and economics of Vegetarian and Meat based diets

2012-11-09T01:59:00.001+05:30

Continuing the insights shared in this post, “Is the violence in the vegetarian diet the same as that of meat?”

we share some insights/ideas about this debatable topic of vegetarianism.

A person is said to be following the Vedic way of life, if he just follows ONE rule – ‘Accept the Truth, Reject the Falsehood’. For that one need to question on everything be it religion or the parents or the society and finally don’t simply believe in certain things just because you were asked to believe.

At the same time the basic human endowments like mind, intellect are directly given by God. We need not join a religious organization to buy and install them in our bodies. Then, why you always need references from religious books when these tools in you can help you in realizing the truth?

It is something like you don’t need to put your hands in every type of fire to understand if the fire burns, when you can simply experiment on a candle and can know the properties of the flame. Or you can simply avoid doing this also, by observing other people doing the same. But the search for the truth doesn’t stop until you are convinced about a thing. And tomorrow if you have a new question, again you continue your exploration until your knowledge grows to a higher level and you get convinced again, with facts in front of you. This is an iterative process and is a continuous process and the very basic idea of development.

All educated and wise people would not get hurt or take any discussion too emotionally. We have to be as scientific, rational and cost conscious as possible. We should evaluate this topic based on the following rules:

We accept the truth and reject falsehood. And truth is something which should not change with a person, place or a time.
No meat eater is with perfect health, so do are the vegetarians. But for the same amount of oil, salt and pepper used, meat causes more harm than vegetables, fruits.
Meat gives a complete protein – a myth. When human body can develop complete protein by itself from eating various things, why should we eat complete protein made outside our body? Most of the corn, soy, wheat, oats, barley, etc are eaten by animals raised for the meat industry as the animals there are force fed. But we don’t find all these stuff in places like India, so many of us have malnutrition.
Killing plants and killing animals is the same – Another myth. There is too much of evidence to prove that wrong.
Vegetarians are holier than Meat eaters only in one aspect of food. That doesn’t make a vegetarian a pious being, higher than a meat eater. At the same time, it the net ‘Karma’ on our heads which decides our fate, not just food though it has its share in determining our net Karma! Considering that two persons are perfectly the same in all other matters except food habits, only then the vegetarian could be a relatively better being.
Even if you consider point-4 is still a fact and not a myth, read the following:

Questions first:

First, if killing a mosquito is the same as killing a chicken or a goat, then how is it different from killing a man for food? If animals would become overpopulated if we don’t kill them, why can’t humans be killed today to avoid poverty? But no religion insisted on killing fellow people, at least for food! Why?

Unless meat is manufactured in a laboratory using the chemicals available, we have to consider the following points as facts. Aren’t they?

A majority of all the butchered animals for meat are herbivorous animals like goat, sheep, etc. There are also few carnivorous animals killed for meat - birds like hen, duck, etc – or sea food like crustaceans or fish, etc.
All meat is derived either from other meat eating animals or herbivorous animals. Finally in the food chain, somewhere (even if in the sea or on earth) there is a herbivorous animal depending on a plant.
All the meat is a product of conversion of materials like oats, barley, grains, grass, water into muscle in the bodies of various animals. And for that, acres of land, minerals, water, time and effort are needed which is nothing but consumption of natural resources.
So we have to chose a method which is more effective, more eco-friendly, more econimical and more non-violent.

Proof now:

Let us say there is a utilization factor UF of 80% for getting useful material (mass in kg) from both the plants and animals. So we have two UFs.

UFP - Utilisation factor Plants - assuming 80%

and

UFA - Utilisation factor Animals - assuming 80% though in reality in would be much lesser than UFP.

In reality, all the waste of plants can be almost 100% utilized as manure or as animal feed, but animals bones, carcass, skin, etc aren’t really used to that same extent of the plants utilization, at least in relative comparison.

So, assigning 80% of UF for both is not correct. However for a vague calculation, let us consider this as follows:

Veg food = Plants killed x UFP = 80% of killed plants. ------- (1)

Meat = Animals killed x UFA = 80% of killed animals. ------- (2)

Applying equation (1) in equation (2), we get

Meat = 80% of killed animals

= 80% x (useful plant mass converted by animals as meat)

= 80% x 80% killed plants = 64% of killed plants ------------ (3)

Comparing equations (2) and (3), even if we consider Rule-4 as truth and not a myth, meat is more violent than vegetarian food, as more number of living entities are being killed.

Therefore for the same number of plants killed, a vegetarian diet has less wastage and feeds more people. And from the spiritual point of view, a Vegetarian does less violence than a meat-eater! Just think about this!

Is the Violence in Vegetarian diet the same as that of the Meat?

2012-10-17T02:48:00.002+05:30

"Ah, nowadays Vegetarianism has become a movement or a cult, as people tend to label the meat lovers are ruthless people."

This is the common argument when a vegetarian or a vegan tries to educate the meat lovers about the need of being vegetarian for various reasons.

Some of the meat lovers are fooled by the so called nutritionists and doctors who make them believe that meat can’t be totally avoided to get complete protein. People simply feel convenient when they hear this from their doctors and take pride in believing in science and technology and tend to ridicule the noble concepts of vegetarianism and ahimsa (non-violence).

And when some people get cancer kind of diseases at some later phase of their life, they tend to blame the God, the environment, the pollution, the drugs and all other stuff, but conveniently forget their past actions of eating big macs, burgers, cheese cakes, microwaved or grilled red meats which had increased their total and bad cholesterol levels.

In view of the above points, we deal with the basic issue of violence involved in the vegetarianism and then leave it to the readers to use their intellect about choosing to be a meat lover or a vegetarian.

There are two kinds of logic - 1. Blind logic and 2. Intellectual logic. I belong to the second category. All the vegetarians belong to the second category.

1. Wicked Logic/Blind Argument

This category people don't have control over one of their senses - their taste and craving of the tongue. So they make wicked logic like plants have life, animals have life, so taking life for food is just common as other animals like lions or tigers do the same in a jungle.

Rebuttal:

Ah, killing a plant or a hen is the same. It is taking life. And aren't we living in a jungle, not of trees but of concrete? Aren't we still animals as we fight better than them for various silly reasons?

While there is no denying of this fact it is killing in either cases, by their logic, killing a mosquito or a man should also be the same. But then why no culture or religion or holy books or ideology on Earth doesn’t promote cannibalism, as the logic of meat lovers is that if we don’t eat meat the cattle would be overpopulated. Biologically we are also animals called ‘Homosapiens’ or some other.

Aren’t we overpopulated as humans? All poor people in Africa, India and in other developing countries should be eaten up in this case, as they are hardly making their ends meet in a day or they have hardly any goals in life. Their lives are simply not enjoyable. Isn’t it?

These people could be atheists or they find some silly logic in some religious books that animals are created by God to allow the men to eat them. They don’t give a thought to any scientific advances and discoveries in the current generation that animal based foods like red meats, fish, sea food, other types of even lean meats, dairy products like milk, butter, cheese, yogurt all are high in saturated cholesterol and their consumption should better be avoided or done carefully. Very few vegetable sources are as high sources in LDL cholesterol as are animal based foods.

However those people who are stubborn and who wishes not to understand can never understand the philosophical things.

2. Intellectual logic/Wisdom

Fruits are to be eaten and seeds thrown so that the new plants emerge from them. But if animal parts are eaten and bones thrown, no animal’s offspring emerges from them. This is the summary of all the logic given below.

Explanation:

Being vegetarian or a vegan is not just about nutrition, taking life for maintaining life. There is a great philosophy and a stricter moral code of life involved in vegetarianism. Religious books are to be respected no doubt at them when it comes to philosophy behind eating particular types of meats or abstaining from meat consumption.

However better than the religious books which could be present today with/without adulteration from the original concepts, we have to depend more on the intellect aided by the sole principle of exploration of truth and rejecting all falsehood that doesn't stand by the logic and reasoning.

While doing that, examining on a deeper sense, we have the following viewpoints.

Plants and all animal species are in this world in a particular hierarchy set by the Nature (which is God’s creation). Scientifically they have varying degrees of the complexity of their nervous systems. Let us recollect the fact Anesthesia is given to make a person forget the pain of a surgery or any cuts involved during a medical intervention.

There are plants with weak nervous systems, single celled organisms also with weak nervous systems and we have higher order of animals with more bones, brains and most complex nervous systems.

Now killing a plant or killing a mosquito or killing a hen or even killing a man has nothing to do with the souls as souls are eternal, but there are nervous systems and it causes different levels of pain and suffering as there are differences in animal kingdom.

Killing the plants for sure is a form of violence, but this violence is negligible compared to that performed by killing of animals and is again different ranging from a microbe or a mosquito or an ant to a cow or an elephant.

Are we really killing the plants/trees causing a suffering to them?

Another point to look at is, almost all the plants and trees never resist any animal or a man if they are plucking the fruits or flowers or even killing them by uprooting them as a whole. This is a natural law and is a fact based on observation. They are not given mouths to shout, nor are they given limbs to fight or resist.

However the fact remains that many of the plants or trees are not killed in entirety to get food from them. All fruit bearing trees aren’t killed at all for just one yield. The grain producing plants are of course killed, but each plant gives back hundreds of seeds to be planted again. After reaching the yield point for harvest, many of them also die naturally. A fully ripen fruit detaches itself from the tree.

Some stem or root tuber crops also won’t die completely as the off-springs develop from the parts of these plants. Some plants like those of rhizomes known for vegetative reproduction don’t even die when their roots are cut into two. Examples are hops, asparagus, ginger, irises, Lily of the Valley, Cannas, and sympodial orchids. Some examples of rhizomes that are used directly in cooking are ginger, turmeric, galangal, and fingerroot.

Is there any animal in this world that invites its death voluntarily being fully aware of it in any circumstance?

Coming to the animal kingdom now, a small ant or a mosquito tries to escape from its predators just like how goats, sheep, pigs, elephants and even a man do when their life is in danger. They protest violently to safeguard themselves. Examples also include honeybees, wasps, sea animals and many wild animals. Even a cow, a bull or a goat tries its best to protect its life. Again there is a natural law based on observation.

Animals and birds are given mouths/beaks, teeth, jaws, sharp claws or stingers, not only to catch their prey but also to resist themselves and use them as tools to fight with their enemies or predators.

Animals cry in pain, show their helplessness when captured and slaughtered and show their unwillingness by moving their limbs, groaning in pain till their last breath.

To go green, we must eat green!

There is a silly logic mostly of satirical nature that people who are vegetarians or vegans eat all the greens and there by contribute to greenhouse gases and so the meat lovers are correct as they eat meat to keep the greens intact.

This is too foolish to understand with an intellectual mind unless if this metaphor is used just to crack a joke to ridicule a vegan or a vegetarian in a crowd of meat lovers.

All the animals slaughtered for meat production are extensively fed in captivity too much of corn, soy, oats, and many kinds of grasses and in some extreme cases, they are force-fed through mechanical feeding guns to make them attain fat bodies and develop fatty livers, brains, etc., which are then slaughtered as more meat is obtained.

And these animals won't eat that much in the natural way of their living. Meat production is a too much ineffective process in terms of cost of production and the nutritional needs obtained from it with respect to the vegetables/grains production.

Various scientific studies done on these aspects and observations point out to the fact that the too high consumption of meat in the developed countries is one of the reasons of the world's poverty.

Why intellectual/philosophical people abstain from meat?

Intellectual people or those who are well versed with Hinduism know it clearly that the Soul as an entity is the same in all and is eternal, but it is bound with three types of Shareer (body) due to the influence of Maya (the Nature):

1. Bhoutik/Sthoola Shareer (Physical body) made of five elements (Fire, Water, Earth, Sky, Space) which we have during our life on Earth.

2. Sookshma Shareer (Subtle body), which contains our Buddhi (Intellect), Manas (Mind), Chitta (Free will) and Ahankara (Ego/Identity of self)

3. Karan Shareer (Causal body) which has to undergo punishments or rewards in other worlds, and which carries forward all our vices and virtues from different births based on the ‘law of Karma’

Soul is different from all the three above and it doesn’t have any attachment with any of these bodies or senses and it can be known only when we get rid of all these attachments.

So by killing or preserving any life on this planet, the actions are performed on those living beings which deserve equivalent results.

All the actions and the results we get based on our actions aren’t affecting the soul directly but are affecting the Bhoutik Shareer and at a subtler level the Sookshma Shareer, and the Karan Shareer. As long as we are bound with these, we can never get to reach our soul. So we have separate identities as people, and as animals too based on our balance sheets of ‘Karma’!

As we are not aware of our Karma under normal circumstances, any intellectual with the wisdom on the above shall strive for nullifying the effects of bad karma and should take a vow to follow a vegetarian diet.

So we have the past karma both good and bad to be experienced in the form of pleasures and pains, but we ensure that we can assure ourselves of avoiding bad karma by sticking to a vegetarian diet with as little consumption of animal based foods like milk, butter and yogurt (which are obtained without taking the life of an animal) just to maintain a balanced diet for a healthy living!

Doing Meditation either for Spiritual progress or for Peace or for Health is most beneficial

2012-07-26T16:07:00.003+05:30

Those who MEDITATE regularly and do a little bit of Yoga and those who eat SAATTVIC food (food that causes Serene Behaviour) like Vegetarian or Vegan diet, will need less sleep, not more than 6 hours a day! We don’t make a scientific claim here, but based on the widely available information to the public on internet, we just put forward our observation based on experience.

There is a lot to be known about meditation for spiritual progress. There are many articles written on ViprasCraft about Philosophy and Spirituality.

Meditation as many of us know is a good and free medicine also for the ailments like Stress and Strain, to keep the problems like Blood Pressure (Hypertension) and Blood Sugar levels in control.

Meditation is a form of breathing exercise even if we do it unintentionally because, when you are RELAXED (as you reduce your brain wave frequencies by meditating) there is a natural phenomenon that causes you to breathe deeply which is good for health.

So Meditation aided by Pranayaama (direct breathing exercises) and a little bit of Yoga will make us PEACEFUL, healthy and make us consume less MEDICINES!

In Ashtaanga Yoga (8 phases Yoga) prescribed by Maharishi Patanjali, the order of Yogic phases for complete SALVATION were mentioned in this order.

1. Yama (Don'ts),

2. Niyama (Rules to be followed),

3. Aasana (Most of Hatha Yoga),

4. Pranayaama (Breathing exercise),

5. Pratyaahara (Restraining senses),

6. Dhaarana (Taking up an initiation),

7. Dhyaana (MEDITATION), and

8. Samaadhi (Nirvaana).

So MEDITATION is of utmost importance and it is said that by regular meditation we get the effects of the previous stages sooner or later! For more details about spirituality and the importance of meditation, you can read more in this post on Real goal of Human Life

Raising your inner happiness raises the happiness in the World

2012-05-25T18:11:00.001+05:30

Raising your 'Real inner happiness' raises/increases the happiness of the World. Every one of us has the potential to raise the inner happiness in the mind of self first, and thereby increase the happiness of the world.

Real happiness won't come just by the accumulation of the wealth, fame or material prosperity. There are innumerable examples in the world and in the history for this. Real happiness only comes when we contribute, mark it, when we contribute only.

A quick remembrance of all the so-called influential people both good and bad, in the annals of history, reveals the fact that those who contributed for the good, to the world at large, have been hailed as heroes and role models while those others who were fascist or authoritarian in their approach have been denounced as disgraceful people.

Most of today's politicians in almost all the countries of the world are also good examples of people who were popular, but not of them were regarded as heroes and role models. Have you really seen the happy faces of any current generation politicians? No. If there are, they are countable on our finger tips! Isn't it? But aren't they popular? Of course, Yes!

So attaining popularity and living with pomp and glory make the life of a person luxurious, but won't make those people happy and can never make the world around them happy. Maybe some of their sidekicks, kith and kin could be happy. These selfish people will only add up to the misery of the world.

Contribution is always a Service to others. The quickest way to accelerate your real inner happiness is to dedicate yourself to growing the happiness of others. There is more joy in giving than in receiving, in almost anything.

Not all of us can contribute to the society. We have be truly inspired for this to happen. We'll be inspired only when we follow true principles, have selfless thoughts and leadership thinking. And finally when we contribute we derive that inner happiness.

Reading philosophy, getting connected with Nature, identifying how blessed we are in our lives are all the simple techniques one could follow to attain inner peace at first, and this will be followed by integrated actions which really benefit the world, and thereby this inspiration helps us to contribute to the world.

If there is our strong will, we can always find a way to increase the happiness of others. Most of the times, all good people around us will be happy if we just do our work in the best way we can, so that those who are linked to us directly or indirectly will be happy.

Work could be anything something like a husband taking care of the family, like an employee dedicated to the cause of the company, like a social citizen doing his part to the country's benefit and so on!

Ancient Indian philosophy had already stated, "Manava Seva Madhava Seva" which literally means, "Service to Mankind is Service to God".

Therefore, if the people are with a little philosophical mind, they could really be leaders in their professions and their contributions are always going to make the world happy. And by their efforts to make this world a happy place, they too derive immense happiness and peace of mind.

For example, the great visionaries like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and like, have all derived their happiness at some stage of their business careers, by creating foundations that truly serve the society. Just question yourself as how many politicians have the value similar to them?

And we have the greatest visionaries like Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, APJ Abdul Kalam, and many others, who have put the country first even above the luxuries of their lives. The world needs such people.

And we have to truly appreciate the leadership maestros like Robin Sharma, Stephen Covey, Anthony Robbins, John Maxwell, etc, who are constantly striving to guide the business world to embrace the true leadership and for bringing in a beautiful change in this world!

God bless all of them and may their efforts reach every nook and corner of the world soon!

Create unique Login Password for every site without the need of special password management software

2012-05-16T22:17:00.000+05:30

If we are a bit creative (which everyone of us is capable of), there is no need of any special password management software to generate the unique password for every site which needs you to login with some username and password. Let us share some ideas in this post.

As we all know almost all the important sites - like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc, - all banking sites like ING, SBI, ICICI, HDFC, Citibank, etc, - many federal government operated sites like the Income Tax Department, etc, - all travel websites like makemytrip, yaatra, etc - all of them need us to have a unique username and password.

Some of these sites are also particular about using the password of a particular length like 8 characters, some even more specific and require us to include special allowable characters like '_', '@', '*', etc.

Some companies using the Microsoft Exchange Servers for office mail recommend to change the password for every 45 days or months. So it will be even more hectic to write and remember all these login passwords.

And if we need to have a unique password for every site we use, we are surely going to be in trouble and confusion as it is impossible for us to remember these passwords if we are not going to login into these very often.

If we write all these passwords on a paper, it would be fine as long as we don't lose this paper, but then there are many chances that someone gets hold of this paper and do all the damage one could do to you! Also this is a risky affair.

Then we may think of having a special software which needs one master password so that this program can always be used and it will serve the purpose of storing unique passwords of your sites on a particular computer.

Still we have some more constraints, if we need to use more than one computer and at various locations based on our profile. While there are pros and cons with every method possible, in this post, we give you some practical tips to create such creative passwords which are unique for every site and you won't forget them.

Creative steps to generate as many unique passwords for as many sites needing the user name and login password:

1. Generate your unique password string which you can’t forget

The idea is to have a unique password string which you can't forget and work around it to generate unique password for each site.

For example, if you prefer your birth date in full let us say 25051985, or you can write it in reverse 19850525 or you can use your employee number or passport number or the PAN card number to identify one suitable unique password string which is hard for others to guess.

2. Using special characters, split this unique password string

You can use your preferred special character (say ‘_’) and insert it at a particular location. Various possible options are 2005_1985 or 20_051985, etc. Or it could be something like 20*05*1985 or 2005*1985.

Using your passport or license or some other employee ID number would be of great use as people hardly remember those things unlike your birthdate.

3. Find a logic based on your wish, to identify some letters of each website making a rule

For example, you can use FB or fb for Facebook, gm or GM for Gmail, if you prefer two first letters of independent words or the first and last combinations. Like fk or FK for Facebook, GL or gl for Gmail, YO or yo for yahoo, etc.

4. Establish your rule and insert the part of the string where you want in your password string

It is always better to use this site related string at the beginning because the hackers can’t guess your password so easily as each first letter would be different for each of your various site login passwords.

For example, you can use the combined password like FK_20_051985 for Facebook or YO_20_051985 for FK*20*05*1985 or YO*20*05*1985, etc. Some other combinations of the passwords could be like FB_20@05@1985 for Facebook or YH_20@05@1985, etc.

Conclusion:

With this method, a simple password string like your date of birth which is possibly known to many, one can’t guess it so easily as they won’t know where you inserted the special characters and which special character you have used and how exactly you have split your password string.

Once you make it a rule, you won’t change your basic password string, but will only work over it to identify a unique logon/login password for each site.

The only care you need to take is to remember your password string carefully (as with any other software used too, they need a master password) so that the work you did around the basic string will be easy for you to remember with little practice.

With this method, you can also write your basic password string on a piece of paper without the unique ones meant for each site. As you remember your basic string, the only work you need to do is to use the websites name as defined by your rule and then inserting the password in the same style for each site.

This method is as good as using any password management software, but actually not needing any software, and your computer needs to be free from viruses and Trojans. This also holds good for special software though. Moreover this method also works on corporate computers or laptops where the users are allowed to use the browsers but they aren’t allowed to install the special software.

Wishing our readers a Happy and Safe internet Surfing!

Disclaimer:

This post is only meant to be a guide for the dummies or newbies or those people in need towards the creation of better passwords, if not the best. The ideas presented in this post shouldn’t be used for hacking other’s usernames and passwords and any such criminal action is a seriously punishable offence by various federal governments according to their cyber laws.

As with every other method, also this method has its own limitations as these passwords are not encrypted. The basic strength or weakness of this method lies in the selection of the basic password string which should be easy for you to remember while it should not be available in the public database. However such availability of the public information is still not risky as the insertion of special characters and the addition of text strings based on website names will make the passwords more complicated and be an added advantage with this method.

The user should also make his/her own rules for step 1 to step 4 without forgetting their own logic used in these steps.

Need of Human Relations and Inter-Personal skills in the Office/Work environment

2012-03-07T22:25:00.000+05:30

To explain better about the Human Relations, ie., the Inter-Personal Communication skills in a work environment, we present to you a letter written by a colleague 'Anand' to his friend and co-worker 'Vikas' as the latter was often suffering from low self-esteem, a little bit of Superiority complex due to his Ego and also a little bit of Inferiority complex due to the insecurities he had in his mind.

In this real life story (names changed and alias names used to protect privacy), the person Anand is always looking for continuous improvement and evaluating his performance based on the values he learnt from various leadership and personality development books, while his friend and colleague Vikas was obsessed with Self-doubt and he always expected others to appreciate him, and he hadn't made an effort to realize his own weaknesses, let alone the conversion of such weaknesses to strengths. He was never happy with the responsibilities he got in his job though he and his colleague Anand were paid the same salary at the and of the month without a single penny difference.

Both were working for a company DUK based in Baroda, in a Project Engineering team in Baroda under their boss 'Maninder', and they were sent on deputation to a job site where a new factory was being setup in a very remote place of India. These two guys are supposed to mingle up well with the local team and carry on the assignment towards the objectives of the parent company.

On the personal front, both Anand and Vikas were living in a rented house along with other Indian friends. During the evenings they used to cook their dinner together, they all used to go around to different places on the weekends for recreation. Despite all this, Vikas was tending to be alone not mingling up with his other friends.

As they both were from the parent company they naturally got a good responsibility to lead the local team, and Anand, by virtue of his previous hardwork, his recognition in the company and his total experience, was offered a position to lead the site team under the title, 'Site Team Leader'. And Vikas was offered to work as a deputy to Anand.

As usual, you might have understood by now that Anand, being more positive and proactive, was quickly liked and appreciated by the local team so much and he was an active member in the Site Project team, while 'Vikas' with his negative attitude was doing entirely the opposite. He, in his mind, never accepted Anand to be his superior, though he knew that Anand was one year senior to him and he achieved many things with respect to him.

Instead of being proactive, he had chosen to be reactive and further he also started attacking his good friend Anand emotionally by sending a string of personal emails.

Anand at first thought to pacify his friend positively by verbal discussion, but then felt that if the person on the other side is not in a position for a fair discussion, there is no point talking to him. So he too replied back to him as follows:

*********

Dear Vikas,

This is yet another mail, you have sent to me with your normal procedure of misunderstanding people and jumping to conclusions with your own customized ‘Stained glass window’ concepts. Hence I decided to reply to your mail in two possible ways. One is negative and the other positive. For the negative reply, I need not explain to you anything apart from asking or telling something. For the positive reply, I need to answer with my justification.

My Negative answers first:

In any company’s hierarchy, a boss can interfere in what a sub-ordinate is doing whereas a sub-ordinate can’t interfere in what his boss is doing, because a boss has the responsibility of the things including those of his sub-ordinates and the vice-versa can’t happen in any management.
As Maninder told me personally and according to what he said to you in front of me, we two are not here with the same hierarchical level. According to Maninder, I am a project engineer and you are a Project engineer assistant, and this change happened when I was not in Baroda and without my involvement. So I am your immediate senior/boss. This is also true as per your experience in this company and as per the differences in your problem solving/coordinating capabilities compared to those of mine. I don’t need to give you any proof for that.
And Maninder also told you in front of me before our departure that he will seek my opinion or feedback about your performance. Why you couldn’t prove yourself before Maninder is not something I need to bother.
Do you think that you have always done some greater and useful jobs than me or Ram or Harsha or Salim? If yes, then list them out and show it to me personally. We discuss that. In comparison with me, how many times did you get up from your seat and walked to others like Harsha or Ram or any other to have any friendly chat during the office hours?
Relations are to be made by spending time with the people and by trying to understand them. This world is like a mirror and it reflects what we truly are. Read any good personality development book and you will find it. If you have a personal good relation with any colleague, then only you can make a good professional relation.
Please note that if I behave negatively, I can instantly complain about you to Maninder as according to him, you are not equal to me and he would be in my favor. I didn’t care a bit about the consequences, once I was frustrated, when I was complaining about Sagar or about Siddhu. Can’t I do this for you if I want????? It is only because of our relation (still existing though it has weakened so much) that I am still waiting for you to change your ways and paradigms.
Have you read my previous mail properly? Have you understood the meaning in it apart from understanding each word separately? I even doubt if you had just deleted it after sending a read receipt and a ‘Thank you’ mail to me.
From my personal experience and understanding during our stay, I know that you would be the first person to laugh at my failures. I experienced that through your gestures and body language though I never told you about that. This happened many times during our cooking sessions and on many other occasions. You are indifferent to sense the feelings of others. God knows how you would behave with your wife once you get married???
And finally in spite of all the above said points, I have spent some hours of another Sunday’s time to clarify your doubts. This is the second time.

My positive answers now:

People have perceptions, they are mostly imaginative, and it is difficult for any other person to change them unless they change by themselves.

You have your perceptions (mostly negative and a few positive), I may have my own (mostly positive and a few negative). I am always validating and changing my perceptions as and when required. I don’t know about you.

If you think Harsha, Salim (Salim not even a junior to me, moreover he is AM here), Narayan, etc are juniors to you then who are you to me? I am your senior too, and Ram or Seenu are my seniors too.

Whenever I say seniors, I am considering their complete work experience. So when it comes to relations of the current generation, we should not look at these things. Otherwise we will also end up showing our ego or bossism among ourselves and may spoil our office relations. Just think, who among we two are maintaining good office relations and if not, what the reasons are.

Coming back to your point, the following issue was brought to my notice by Mohan and he repeatedly asked me to share with M/s. CEPM on the same day and so I did. I don’t know why he wanted to leave you though you two were moving around in the site. Because he asked me, I did and nothing else. If you want to know why he avoided you, you go and ask him. I am 100% transparent and I am not having any personal discussions with Mohan to grab some work from you.

As I said to you earlier, we are here (and I am here) to settle the problems as early as possible. These days whenever we have any issue, I am just thinking about the solution regardless of who is solving the problem. According to me, it is not Anand alone who is solving the problems, it is the ‘Engineering Department’ which is solving the problems.

If you look at my mails with my eyes, you can understand that in many cases, I use the word ‘we’ instead of ‘me’ though I might have done the work by myself. “TEAM WORK MEANS MORE WE AND LESS ME” and I love this principle. And it seems you are out of this team, as you distance yourself from all of us.

If people are only referring to me for any issue, that is because of Maninder’s official stand about my presence here. You can take part of what I am doing, I welcome it, but if you think I am grabbing your work, you are mistaken. I don’t need to prove myself in front of others who are here at Yerraguntla. I work for my principles and assigned responsibilities.

And about your feeling, “Will I not be involved in any engineering activity here at site, in that case my stay here is useless for me” it is your own mental block you are consistently creating and nourishing. If you have such thoughts in your mind, your body language will be affected and your results would be similar.

Because, now you have a defined responsibility (Designs control), all of us may presume that you are busy if you keep seriously typing something on your PC. Actually I always want to delegate some work to you, Narayan and Chandran. But I need to take the blame from others if some or all of you are not meeting the deadlines. So I need to think for a while before I delegate something to you. If I can do it by myself, I am doing it. That is all.

Here are a few points you have to understand:

I am not here to interfere in your matters, but you see as per the organization chart, I can check whatever you are doing. Maninder himself told me over phone that I can filter what you are doing.
Appointing you as Designs coordinator was not done by me. It was some understanding between Maninder, Preetam and Chandran. How is it related to me? I know that you have a doubt that I and Ram did something against you? I don’t want to worry for those things for which I am not responsible.
You are also free to tell anyone that you are now free if you don’t have some designs control job, so that we can share some of our work with you. Are you doing that?

Note: If you keep sending this kind of mails with your misunderstanding, from the next time onwards, I only give you my negative replies, because I have my own limits of patience and positive thinking.

And finally, I take responsibility for whatever I have written here and I belive these points are true to the best of my knowledge and my understanding of the various situations, and I'm open to discuss with you if you too are equally honest. May be if there is a honest discussion, you could clarify to me where I'm wrong and where I have misunderstood you.

Best regards,

Anand.

Simple Facts of Life but with Great Meaning and Philosophy

2012-03-01T20:00:00.002+05:30

The following sentences are a rough translation in English of a Telugu song sung by Swami Sundara Chaitanyananda, in his audio series of 'Chaitanya Gaanam' which is mostly the Absolute ancient Indian philosophy sung in simple Telugu for the common public.

*****

"Who knows what results they get for their actions!

Who escapes their fate when it is too late (to correct their actions)!

Invisible are the winds that shake the trees, Invisible are the results of 'karma' that drive the people!

That which is not and can't be yours can never be yours, That which is yours, and is for you, can never leave you,

Don't ask for those which are not yours and don't cry for losing those which are yours (all are there for a reason)!"

Without knowing why and what you get or what you lose, Don't lament for your fate!"

*****

These sentences sound so simple and so insignificant probably for many, so though these are very basic fundamentals, many people often fail to understand the same in their lives.

Few others who are wise enough learn this very early in their lives and they live in accordance with the correct principles, the everlasting principles, which we can call as 'Sanathana Dharma'.

To understand these points in a better way, you must know about the ancient Indian philosophy and how it explains about the Life and the Karma philosophy (the Natural law of Actions & Results). Everything happens for a reason whether we agree or not, because if there is no reason behind all the events in this world, the whole concept of God and the 'All Merciful' and 'All Powerful' and 'Omnipotent' kind of qualities can't be the true attributes of God, as almost all of the world's religions describe the God to be so.

And Karma philosophy is easy to understand. "What you sow, so shall you reap!" And a person who really understand this, will control and puts his actions in the right direction so the right results are guaranteed. The vice versa also holds good.

But Many people fail to understand the point that a majority of the people living today still suffer from the miseries of the world, though they think about themselves as good persons who are doing all possible good actions as mentioned in their religions or religious books and they are living by such code of conduct.

The answer for that in Indian philosophy is quite simple. "Like you say in the affirmative about the present actions leading you to the future results, this analogy is also true that all your present results are also based on your past actions, not just of those in this present life, but also of the previous lives (births)."

Without Punarjanma (Rebirth), the logic simply fails. If you believe in a concept of only one life and obtaining either Heaven or Hell eternally, is quite doubtful because it contradicts with the other sayings from the same religions which condemn Punarjanma!

Let us find it out how considering a simple real life example.

We have various industries making mechanical goods like machines, tools, cars, bikes, utensils, etc, and process industries which make commodities like sugar, salt, consumable items, consumer goods, etc. We know that there will be various departments like the Raw materials procurement, various processing machines in a sequence, and all the raw materials start from the first phase to the final phase going through the same processes. Despite being perfectly organized, there is a need of quality control, due to the differences in the inherent qualities of these materials. So they are to be discarded or to be recycled. We all agree to such a system, which we call industry. We know that it is man-made and is just perfect. We call it industrialization, development and set benchmarking standards based on the established manufacturers in those sectors.

Alright! Now coming back to the God's creation, or let us say some Super natural power's creation, we are living in this world or Nature! But we see that there are too enormous differences or the variations of the living conditions, climate, and many other factors like social status, color complexions, etc among different people in this world. Why?

Not only the physical attributes, but also many other factors like, misery, happiness, wealth, education, health, fate, etc. are all different for every single individual. Why? If you don't believe in Punarjanma concept, then could you answer why the Supreme God, the Almighty, the All Merciful, the Omnipotent God is so partial to a few people of his creation, while he intentionally designed the lives of many others which are destined to Hell for no fault of theirs or without giving them equal chances? Is that fair? No.

So in this case, the definition of Supreme God by those religions is wrong! If not, the false notion that the Punarjanma can't be justified is wrong!

However, we urge our readers to read the article of 'Cycle of Births and Deaths' already posted on ViprasCraft. We leave it to the intellect of the readers and may the Truth prevail. "Satyameva Jayathe!"

Constructive comments are always welcome and we request you to leave us a comment in case you were inspired by this post. Thank you.

Swami Vivekananda, the legendary Monk and evergreen leader of Youth

2012-01-12T05:00:00.000+05:30

Swami Vivekananda was not just a traditional monk or sage of India, as many of us remember about him, but was an investigative spiritual seeker at first, who later turned out to be a great modern sage of India.

His works are complete of powerful thoughts, great spiritual wisdom and yet practical to be put to use by the modern people who live in this scientific age, for transforming their chaotic materialistic lifestyles by imbibing the very basic human need - the spiritual wisdom - in all the activities they do in their routine life.

He commented very seriously all the orthodox approaches of the so-called higher castes who were least bothered about the genuine spirituality in those times and were rather interested in castes, creeds, cults, fighting on the differences in their chosen methodologies and much above all of these, their lack of will power to dethrone an enemy, with a bunch of deceitful people, who had fully controlled their motherland and the millions of countrymen as slaves with an iron fist.

He had strongly advised for the need of syncretism among all the religions. He was perhaps the first monk to say, "If anyone thinks that their religion should only exist exclusive of all other religions, it is foolish and just not possible."

He was a great explorer of everything he came across in his life including spirituality. He questioned many and he asked many the questions about God and when he was not satisfied he simply left all that stuff which was beyond logic and reasoning. He never used to accept something just because it was a belief. He needed the evidences for everything.

His quest to find the truth finally led him to find a great Guru in Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and eventually a monk was created out of Narendranath and was revered thereafter by whole of India as Swami Vivekananda.

He was a genius in terms of memory, an expert in logic and reasoning, and was perfect in his understanding of spirituality, the Advaita Vedanta philosophy of ancient India. It is world renowned fact that he opened the flood gates of dormant ancient Indian philosophy to the western world while by that time India was a poor country of 30 million beggars, due to the poverty stricken, weak-minded, largely illiterate and dejected souls of India.

From the inspirational and lifestyle points of view, it is not exaggeration to say that if Swami Vivekananda's complete works could be introduced as the syllabus of the primary school in India, we could have a whole new generation of Indians in a decade who would strive for the development of their motherland, first developing themselves as visionaries for the good of mankind.

Due to the current political situation in India and due to the illiterate masses being influenced by the fundamentalists (bad term in use today, as these fundamentalists don't even know the fundamentals!) of almost all the religions, at the outset, everyone would protest that this kind of idea (even terming it weird) to make the children read Swami Vivekananda's works is saffronising (another stupidity and invention by Indian politicians) of Indian education.

These are indeed the weirdest times of modern India where some religious clerics urge the people to stop wearing jeans, stop watching telivision, order to stop manifacturing firecrackers, while the same religious heads go into hibernation when there are terror strikes and no one calls for a ban on bombs, smuggled weapons, etc. This is the height of religious hypocrisy!

And India today needs a revival to go back to its old, good and prosperous ways, and there is a way!

If saffronising of Indian education is aimed at developing individuals who think and question to find out the truth, to discard the outdated beliefs, who love their country, who revere their masters, who develop tolerance for other religions, who don't preach anymore that the messenger of their religion only is correct and all others are wrong, then it is better if we saffronise the education system instead of making it pale, with no color to observe!

12th January marks the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, who should be an inspiration to all the Youth of India, his books are available in all the cities, towns and even in some villages of India in many different Indian regional languages, and it is a pity that the Youth of India today don't take the example of Swami Vivekananda but bow down to some of the incompetent, coward politicians who kept India illiterate and under the control of few power-hungry selfish families, and who made the majority of masses of India live like frogs in a well for decades with low self esteem, lower aspirations and lowest character with respect to the great culture of ancient India!

The great souls like Swamy Vivekananda are so wise and they knew that the sufferings of the people are based on their past actions and if they deserved them they should experience them. But the same great people are kind enough that, if the people realise the higher goals of life and if the people are ambitious about positive change and spiritual upliftment, they had left behind their legacy along with their great works in the form of books, to serve those who deserve that help.

People don't even spend an insignificant amount of money to buy such books and try to improve themselves but spend so much on liquor, drugs, cigarettes and many other stupid stuff, thanks to the blind faith on their beloved politicians due to their caste, religion, region, corruption and any other silly reason.

The so called youth leaders are to be abandoned at the earliest as they are not leaders at all. A person who inspires and lets others grow by themselves just guiding them in the right way is a leader, and not a person who becomes a hindrance to the growth of his fellowmen.

And Swami Vivekananda was a great monk, leader, patriot, and a modern face of revived Hinduism. Hinduism by definition is Indianism. Because in Sanskrit it was Sindhu river which was for Persians the Hindu river, and for the English it was Indus river.

And we as ViprasCraft editors being the people inspired by the works of Swami Vivekananda, salute him and to our motherland India for having given to us a link of nationality common with Swami Vivekananda and an identity to proudly say,

"We belong to a country which has produced the noble souls like Swami Vivekananda in the recent centuries who inspired the greats like Mahatma Gandhi, Netaji Subash Chandrabose who finally achieved their goal collectively to pave the way for a free India which was also the call to the nation by Swami Vivekananda."

ViprasCraft recommends to their readers, the "Complete works of Swami Vivekananda" and all other booklets published by Advaita Ashrama.

Vandemaataram! Jai Hind!

If you are inspired having a Blogger's Mindset, you help the internet and also the World

2012-01-12T02:18:00.004+05:30

Inspired Bloggers are always the builders of information knowledge base that could help millions of people who use internet for various activities in their daily life.

Bloggers are actually involved either knowingly or unknowingly in creating a great value to create such knowledge base, and as the saying goes, "knowledge is power", they are actually creating an artificial mind power, in other words, artificial intelligence.

Are you a person who is generally inspired and interested in helping others and would like to have your present felt? Then Blogging is for you, at least as a hobby!

Today in the actual life we don't need to know everything to take up a job in a certain profession. In most of the cases, if not all, we can at least get some guidance from different sites or blogs ranging from the advanced science or mathematics to the basic needs of living like cooking, health, etc.

That guidance could be in any form. It could be to share an idea or experience or information about the books or some products from which the consumers can benefit so much, etc.

But for those who are looking forward to becoming Bloggers, there should be a mindset.

In fact all professional bloggers have this kind of mindset.

It is as simple as to say that to be in a particular profession, you need to have the mindset for that particular profession. It is not anymore a flashing or breaking news today that Blogging has become a profession for many and many more professions need blogging to reach a wider audience.

What is a Blogger's mindset?

It is to simply record, each and every good idea that comes out of your mind, which has the potential to help others in some way.

An idea is the skeleton of any blog post. Then you add good descriptive content as flesh, inspiration as blood and good formatting and communication skills as the beautiful body for your blog posts. Pictures, colors you use for your post are like the dress for your blog post.

For instance, this blog post is an example of such mindset. ViprasCraft is committed to provide value and ideas to their readers and as we do, we inspire others to become bloggers to make the internet a great knowledge pool and in turn the world a better place.

So the advice here is to keep a journal - like a physical notepad and a pen or a pencil, one word file or a notepad in your personal PC, or some notes in your mobile phone - always handy so that when something good flashes in your mind, record it. That is important. Record it!

As the Chinese proverb goes, "the weakest ink lasts longer than the strongest mind".

And internet is definitely going to stay longer than our lifetime (if we aren't superstitious about 21 Dec 2012! Or about any religious books!)

You may need to revisit what you record many times and you might add a lot of things around one good idea, its practical implementation and its use to someone who isn't educated about it. Finally you will have your draft for a good blog post. Who knows which idea from which book or a website or a blog can change somebody's life?

"One idea from one book or one site/blog can change somebody's life!"

Why to wait? Start blogging today, and bring some change and improvement to the internet world as much as you can!

And if this post really inspired you, please do leave a comment/compliment/constructive suggestion. Thank you!

Best 15 Tips about Blogging for Beginners and Dummies

2012-01-09T23:39:00.002+05:30

While the internet today is abundant with number of sites explaining in very minute details about Blogging, we would try to just guide you showing you a route map for exploration if you are a new beginner and probable Blogger in the making! Over 5 years of our occasional Blogging and much more research done on this interesting topic of Blogging, its scope, its advantages and the competition involved, and many other features, finally we came out with these 15 useful tips for ‘Blogging for Beginners’:

1. Good hobby: Blogging is a good hobby for many who are interested in writing. But all that we write should be our own content, we should not copy it “as-it-is” from other Bloggers. This leads to infringement on their copyright. As I read from some professional bloggers, all that we write on our blog is copyrighted to us.

This is not just a good hobby, but you can also signup to money making programs like Google's AdSense, Chitika, and many other affiliate programs. But all those work varyingly depending on the type of your blog and depending on the quality content and interesting content on your blog. The money you earn may range from $0 to $0.10 to $1 to $100 or $100,000 depending on how well you construct your blog, how well you write to help and guide others, and on many other factors. You will explore all that later, once you take the first step of making a blog first!

2. Link to your Profession or Interest: Blogging should be linked as much as possible to our profession, because we need some niche topic like ‘management’ or ‘engineering’ or ‘digitial photography’ or ‘architecture’, etc. At the same time we can have many niche topics as possible.

Have something which gives you lots of insights to create blog posts and systematically guide your readers. But it is not advisable if you expose your office secrets, business plans, etc which could put you in trouble. The sensible matters are not directly to be written without the expression permission of your company. Further you may lose an opportunity to use your blog to bring readers to your business as customers!

3. Have a brand name: Blog’s name should be like a brand name if you would like to make it professional. Unless if you are in a manufacturing industry producing a tangible product, it is always better to have a brand name like ‘ViprasCraft’ which should be entirely unique or a combination of words easy to remember. That was the reason why named our blog as ViprasCraft because people won't feel uncomfortable in joining with our team as it is not based on a surname or an individual.

4. An aim for your blog: The blog should have an aim. For ViprasCraft, it is to help others in many diversified areas. We write what we know very well, so we write with inspiration. So our tag line is “Works of the Inspired”. In fact, we chose the name ‘Vipra(s)’ not just because it is a name that sounds like VIP (very important person) but also because it gives the meaning ‘inspired’ in Sanskrit.

5. Inspiration and Consistency are important: We as bloggers should have so much of inspiration to write. At the beginning we will have so much interest, but for many people who just create blogs and leave them, it is because the interest dies down sooner or later. The best way to not let this happen is to always maintain a journal or a word file offline in which we record our ideas as we think. And we should keep many ideas even if each of them just contain a single phrase. When we have good mood, we can keep writing about them as much as we can.

6. Quality content and number of posts: To make your site more successful is just by writing quality and unique content, even if small paragraphs on a regular basis. As a thumb rule, if you write one post a day for your blog, in 3 years time, you make it reach a large number of readers. Just a simple math, if you write 365 posts in a year, you’ll make 1680 posts in 3 years. By that measure ViprasCraft just made 101 which is far below par, but we at ViprasCraft are all part time bloggers and are not full time or professional bloggers!

7. Gain Backlinks: Backlinks are the life of a blog. But it is not so easy to get them. That means if someone else links your blog’s homepage or any other page to their page naturally, you will have a bonus. For that our website must be really genuine. And if a site which refers our blog on their site is a popular website than ours, then it is a huge plus for us. In that way, ViprasCraft is very new and hasn’t got sufficient backlinks yet.

8. Give proper Credit: We should provide proper reference to the others’ pages or sites if we have no option but to copy some of their content but that should be limited to few paragraphs and we should provide a backlink to their website. If we fail to do that, they could even complain about us to the search engines like Google.

And basically, it is not fair and not ethical. Apart from that if you simply intend to copy the stuff from other sites, the search engines like Google will brand your site as 'supplementary' which is detrimental to your site's performance with the Search Engines.

9. Think about your strengths and try to help others: One way to get some topic for writing a blog is to think about your strengths, even if you are just sending a mail to your friends for helping them out in some issue, you should think of making the same in a generalized way so that it also serves the public who are at the same state of mind as your friends.

10. Submitting your site to Search Engines & Social Networking for promotion: When you finish writing your important posts, it is important to inform various search Engines like Google, Technorati (Technorati claim token for ViprasCraft 39FGSPBK2FWT for verification), Alexa, etc.

Another important way to promote your site is to start a Twitter and Facebook account for your blog and then start posting only the URL (website page path) on these social networking sites, which grab the attention of the readers so quickly.

11. Have something to sell: It would be a great idea to use the blog to sell something. This would generally drive more traffic as your product becomes more popular. Many professional bloggers have something to sell.

12. Topics to attract readers: Political issues or news related to celebrities or sports, etc generally drive more traffic. But as blog authors we should be careful not to land ourselves in trouble. Probably stressing on the topic instead of the individual pays us good dividends in terms of number of readers and traffic to our blog.

13. Evergreen posts: Evergreen posts which unlike current affairs are the foundations of your blog. You can keep your blog rolling with fresh updates everyday maybe on political articles, but there must be some evergreen posts like tips for the freshers’ jobs, tips to make a food item, tips about beauty, health care, etc would greatly help.

14. Proper keywords in URLs: When you finish writing some quality articles, it is important to chose proper key words for each of your blog post. This generally happens when you post your article keeping a post title. In some blogging platforms you will have the option to select those keywords.

In Google’s Blogger platform such provision is not available currently because it generally takes the keywords based on what you type in the title. While you are free to change the description of the post title, the words that got entered into the URL of that page wouldnot change. Hence the tricky way to do this is to first create your post using four or five keywords for your blog post and later when the URL for that page is formed, you can go back to settings and then change the post title with a meaningful sentence.

15. Offline copy of your Blog: Always think of maintaining an offline version of your blog posts along with the URL you have created for each post because, once in a while you can have a lot of opportunities to publish a book from a category of your blog posts.

The “Noble Thoughts, for the right way of life” book published by ViprasCraft is just the same tweaking a little bit all the posts to make them suitable for the book. Probably when you create a book, you can reedit all such posts making them short and creating the references in those old posts to your new book.

Expense Organizer for Employed people now available on ViprasCraft

2012-01-05T22:39:00.000+05:30

As ViprasCraft has announced recently through our earlier post, we are excited to further inform our readers, that the expense organizer which is mainly aimed at helping the employees to track their incomes, expenses and savings in a year, on monthly basis and subsequently on yearly basis is now available.

Those who are interested to buy this at a nominal price of € 5.00 (FIVE EUROS only including VAT and other taxes! Payments currently accepted only through Paypal) can send an email to:

sales@viprascraft.com with the email subject, "ViprasCraft Expenses Organizer"

for first receiving the invoice to your specified email address from which the request mail is sent to us. On successful receipt of the payment within the time specified, in 2 business days, the excel utility will be sent to the Customer.

What is special in ViprasCraft's Expenses (Expenditure) Organizer of the Year?

While you may get many organizers on the same issue on the internet even for free, we have worked closely with a team to actually verify with them if our expenditure organizer could be used effectively used by them! This was not developed just theoretically, but it took a real effort to understand the needs of the customers and needed flexibility so that each customer can properly categorise their expenses in various cells.

In fact we were thrilled by these private users responses, and we really thought to make this available to public, and that too with a good cause. All the money we accumulate with the sale of this Organizer will be spent for Charities!

We keep posting the updates about the same once we do it.

Coming to the actual excel utility file that runs on Microsoft Excel versions 2003 and later, these are the salient features:

Expenditure (Expense) Organizer is fit for use for any year by just chaning the year name in 'Jan' month sheet!
You just need to enter the income earned, all types of expenses in various preset categories available in the utility.
The Income, One-Time expenses, Daily-Expenses & Savings are recorded on daily basis giving you basic statistical & graphical analysis of the same like bar charts, pie diagrams.
The customization if any, required by you, can be easily done (but only to the descriptions) for adapting this file to your daily use, by just chaning the preset information (except those which are appropriately fixed) in January month of every year, which get autofilled for other months.

More Details:

1. Income Sources: Your salary, the salary of your spouse are the fixed items, while you are free to change according to your requirement the categories like Dividend / Shares / Mutual Funds, Rental Income, Interest from Savings, ATM Withdrawals, Credits (from others), Debits (to others)*, Bonus & Other Perks / Benefits.

2. One-Time Expenses: These are the expenses you would have on any date in a month but what is more important is the value of the item rather on the exact timing of such expenses. For instance, if you buy a TV or a refrigerator or some other Home Applicances, you should enter those expenses in this Category. These aren't the Daily items like Provisions, Travel Expenses, etc.

In these common things like House Rent / Maintenance, Gas, Electricity and Muncipal Taxes (Garbage, Water) are fixed, as everyone will have some expenditure on these items, while Cable TV, House maid / Servant, Phone/Internet, Automotive / Vehicle, Home Appliances / Furniture, College / School fees, Newspaper, Insurance Policies, New House (Engr & Other Staff), Special Items of the month, and Miscellaneous can be changed* according to your will.

3. Daily Items: These are the expenses you would have on a particular day of the month but there is a possibility of buying this item anyday or everyday. And generally these items are moderately expensive items. Again only a few categories of items are fixed, and all other preset items can be changed by you based on your requirement.

In these commong things like Vegetables / Fruits / Flowers, Provisions, Milk / Cheese / Butter, and Travel are fixed as everyone will have some expenses on these items, while Birthday / Wedding Gifts, Medicines / Doctor fee, Petrol / Diesel, Mobile phone expenses, Clothes & Accessories, Parties / Dinners / Eating Out, Books, Stationery, Office Use, Temple / Charities donations, Children's Expenses, and Miscellaneous are the preset items that can be changed* by you based on your requirement.

4. Yearly Summary: The last sheet after the December is not only useful to you to have a basic global (macroscopic) analysis of your expenses, but also is helpful during the year, as all the data you enter just as sources of income and various one-time and daily expense are automatically reflected in the Summary page.

The share of each month in your total expenditure, the distribution of the one-time and daily expenses are in the form of pie diagrams along with the summarised values, which give you a quick and instant feedback about the pattern or trend of your expenditure and gives you a fair idea of your life style.

Appreciation:

As a mutual reciprocation and loyalty building, we would like to appreciate our first 20 customers for their loyalty and the subsequent versions will be shared with them for free. The first 20 customers names will be displayed publicly (only their names or maintaining Anonymity) at the same post soon after we share the expense organizer with them!

Regards,

Moderator,

ViprasCraft.com

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*Notes:

Please note that the values to be entered in the corresponding cells should be negative (typing "-" character before the number) for 'Debits (to others)' if you intend to maintain the same cell in your Sources of Income. Because of the flexibility provided, it couldn't be programmed as you may relatively change this item in any order in the list.
When you change the descriptions of the items, please try to avoid long phrases, as the format was developed through various internal revisions of the file by trying hard and the widths of these columns are reasonably fixed. But in case you need to keep long phrases, no problem, the file works well, but only the legends in the graphic representations might get affected and could not look good while printing. It was a more challenging task to fix these widths to suit the entire utility to be printed on the A4 paper size.

Disclaimer: While we took many efforts to include all types of expenses into this utility, we can't stand guarantee and are not liable legally for any claims, for any expenses that you find are not properly categorized (though we provide enough flexibility), or for any expectations on the statistics which you haven't found in this utility. If you order this file at the nominal price mentioned, you agree to our terms that it was based on the efforts the people have put into creating this useful utility that you are paying back as a support for the services. This utility file isn't a tangible product and can't be replaced or returned back for the returning of the funds. This utility file being developed in Microsoft Excel will have all the limitations a general Excel file could have, in terms of usage with the application program, or in terms of printing options, or in terms of Security against the Malwares, Viruses that destroy the Software programs. We deem that once the utility is requested by the user according to the procedure mentioned above, the user is fully aware of the above mentioned points and so there wouldn't be any disputes arising out of such communication with ViprasCraft.com. However in case of any dispute, all such claims are subject to the jurisdiction of Kadpa, Andhra Pradesh, India.

'ViprasCraft' and 'Works of the Inspired' are the trademarks of ViprasCraft.com. Microsoft Office and 'Microsoft Excel' are the trademarks of the respective owners of Microsoft Corporation.

One good New Year Resolution is to plan for reading a number of books, get inspired and inspire others

2012-01-01T01:14:00.001+05:30

We celebrate the New Year on 1st January bidding farewell to the year ending on 31 December, almost as a ritual every year, but very few of us actually make some time to think and look at the year just passed by.

While we needn't worry about our past as we can't make changes to it at any cost, we do need to have some sort of introspection and must not lose the sight of our achievements and drawbacks related to those goals that were met and of those that eluded us.

We are all human and are not the perfect beings, but striving for continuous improvement isn't a bad thing either. What we need to really check about ourselves is whether we have made our presence felt to this world, or not!

Again trying to become 100% perfect is just impossible for the human being. Maybe we need to have some mystic powers for it.

The whole scientific world has been believing for many decades that the great eminent scientist Albert Einstein's work about the theory of relativity was just perfect, but the recent experiments tend to find something new which could disprove or might change or correct the same work.

But why Einstein is great is because his work was so genuine and such a benchmark that everyone who worked on the same subject later took it as a standard or a base for their works.

This is more important, the standards we set for others to follow.

And such performances can be made in any profession - be it a sport or a fitness trainer or a massage therapist or a statesman or a leader of a country.

Look at the history of Mahatma Gandhi. He is great today worldwide despite a number of critics in modern India which became an independent country much due to his efforts! Again he might not be a 100% perfect being liked by every Indian as there were differences of opinions between Gandhi and others like Netaji Subash Chandra Bose, Bhagat Singh, etc who were themselves great freedom fighters.

But what made Mahatma Gandhi great is his sound belief on his principles. He developed great qualities in him first and it is said that he never advised anyone about anything which he himself hasn't followed.

Today any Indian politician can't think of attracting public attention without declaring himself to be a Gandhian (who follows his path). It is again the standard set by Gandhi that was great for Indian politicians.

And in the west, there was the great American president Abraham Lincoln who set his standard and has left a permanent mark on USA's next generation of leaders. But his life was full of failures one after the other. He got affected with paralysis also at one stage. With each defeat, he rebounded even higher in terms of determination, and he at last has become the President of one of the greatest democratic countries, the USA which eventually became a super power.

India's former president Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam has left his mark in contemporary Indian politics as the best president of India which even the children never fail to remember. Being a scientist he proved India's potential to the world with his involvement in National defence systems development.

Coming to iconic Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, we are witnessing his achievements live even today. His world is only Cricket and upholding the honor of India. We all know he made innumerable records in his own style and some of his shots are generally referred to as trademark shots, by the commentators.

All of these above weren't/aren't 100% perfect. They were just as normal as we all are!

The difference between average people and these greats is that they had a different attitude and passion about what they wanted to do. And their goals were not made out of their selfishness. Their goals were just higher and nobler than those of many others.

But they all started off small at the beginning, they were not disturbed by their critics or by the intermediate failures.

So confidence on ourselves, our dreams, and some benchmark is needed for all of us to set such goals and we too can do our bit to contribute to this world's progress in a way to provide a better future for our future generations.

To start with, ViprasCraft recommends to all our readers to start investing on books as such a small investment on leadership books will have a profound effect on our lives!

We can't inspire others unless we feel inspired ourselves.

Check the page on the list of Recommended books by ViprasCraft from the navigation bar. Read the books of great Leadership trainers like Robin Sharma, Stephen Covey, Napoleon Hill, etc.

As Leadership maestro Robin Sharma tells us, "If we breathe Oxygen, we all have the potential to become leaders".

When the whole world is full of genuine leaders, there won't be selfishness and corruption in our societies irrespective of the countries we live in!

Hence our message from ViprasCraft is to request our readers to start thinking about the leadership as the new year resolution.

Wishing you all a happy and prosperous New Year 2012!

Plan and Analyze your Yearly (Annual) Expenditure with ViprasCraft's "Expenditure Organizer of the Year"

2011-12-30T21:35:00.000+05:30

ViprasCraft's "Expenditure Organizer for the Year" is an excel utility file which is mainly intended to let you keep track of your daily seemingly insignificant but real expenses which often go unnoticed. While people should not stop spending, it is worth knowing where we are spending and how best we can consciously plan our expenditure.

For example, let us say, we spent mostly on 'Parties/Eating Out' and less on 'Vegetables/Fruits' in a year, it will ring an alarm in our mind about our stressed and flamboyant lifestyle and reduced personal healthcare.

In 'Jan' month sheet, many of the descriptions in 'Sources of Income', 'Daily Expenses', 'One-Time Expenses' can be customized by you that would remain the same for all the other months throughout the year. The emphasis was mainly to contain all the data to be printed for an A4 paper and to generalize the categories of expenses to keep it simple.

The Summary page will show the expenditure distribution and highs and lows of those expenses.

This file has been prepared over months of personal experience and receiving feedback from various wellwishers and friends for continuous improvement that today we have put it for informing our readers to know their opinion and interest for this file which will be sold at a very minimum price of equal or less than $5.

You can download this file very soon from this post (please bookmark here if you are interested!), for the moment, we provide you the access to the PDF version of the same file to let you know how it looks like.

ViprasCraft Expenditure Organizer of the year - PDF sample format

So no hidden conditions and no gimmicks! You get what you see, if you are willing to buy.

The file will be locked (to preserve our intellectual property) for editing except that you will have the full flexibility to change descriptions for many 'One Time Expenses', 'Daily Expenses', 'Your Name', 'Your profession', currency to be used, etc.

We are eager to receive our readers comments and suggestions on this so that we would try to develop further versions of this utility in future.

Related post: Buy ViprasCraft Expenses Organizer!

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Disclaimer: ViprasCraft doesn't accept any responsibility whatsoever if the contents of the same are coinciding with any of the utility programs developed elsewhere by someone else, and we declare that it could be a case of sheer resemblance and coincidence. No claims whatsoever will be entertained in this regard.

Our file is developed based on our knowledge of Microsoft Excel using the Microsoft Office version 2007 and is totally indigeneous property of ViprasCraft.com.

Smartphones or Tablets versus Laptops or Desktop Computers

2011-12-13T00:15:00.000+05:30

As many of us know Smartphones and tablets like Apple's iPad, Samsung Galaxy tab, etc., can almost replace the desktops and laptop computers in terms of the number of different things you can do with them, not entirely though. They are mostly handy when you are on the go.

Further they can even do few other things which the stand alone computers can't do directly (being static/non-movable), like the capturing of photos and small video clips, etc. They have some unique features like GPS (Global Positioning Systems), Geotagging of photos and finally that feature for which the smartphone is primarily in your hands - Voice calls & SMS. These can't be available in any computer except by having some attached auxiliaries. Even then the size matters when you want to go fully mobile.

For mobility reasons we have evolved from using Desktop computers to laptops, to palmtops and recently to tablets and smartphones.

But have you ever thought or wondered as why there are still the new models of desktops, laptops and palmtops still coming up? The numbers in terms of sales and prices may be entirely different now but the need of those devices still exists!

With a little common sense and a little technical knowledge, it is easy to decide if a prospective buyer can go for a tablet PC or a Smartphone or a traditional laptop or a desktop computer.

Many of us are non-IT personnel and so we maynot clearly understand if what we see in the new ads on the TV or on the internet, is actually the way of the whole world to adopt the new technologies and to discard the old ones.

For the dummies, this post might be useful so that they decide what to buy based on their need rather going by the trend.

Despite the popularity of the social networking sites and the amount of information available from various sources, there are many people among us who are always confused to decide what they want and they need some advice.

To help such people, we make an attempt to give some guidelines for buying these gadgets:

Pros:

1. The Smartphones & Tablets consume less power

The Smartphones like Apple's iPhones, Samsung Galaxy series, Nokia N-Series, E-Series and newly launched Lumina, HTC Android phones, Blackberry Curve and Bold series of phones, and many others all running on latest OSs and high end devices have smart processors which consume less power while providing you immense satisfaction for your money spent.

You can buy something like a 'Solar Monkey' kind of solar chargers and can keep using your mobile devices running. So you go green. That is not possible with traditional desktop computers and even with laptops.

2. You can take photos and shoot videos

Obviously we don't need to think too much about this point. Nowadays, the Smartphones and tablets are like "all-in-ones" without even compromising on the features. Compared to yesteryears, you now have great cameras with resolutions of more than 5 megapixel (not on low end devices though) and up to 8 MP or more for still photos, while the video resolutions are also improving fast.

3. You already have a music player in your Smartphone and also in tablets (though heavy)

You can always enjoy the music players in your Smartphones and not that comforably on tablets, but yes, when you are traveling in a bus or a train, why not on tablet? Only when you feel like going for a running session, you may need to think about having an iPod Shuffle.

4. You can work while having breaks as you wish

The long tedious jobs of mailing to so many clients or customers, or some important decisions need not be done sitting in the office cabin or in nervous environments. You may need to send some personal mails to your friends or family. You need not use the office resources to do that. You can sit in a garden and can do these jobs while relaxing. You work better when you relax and feel refreshed.

5. Social Networking is more fun on smartphones and tablets

Social Networking is a must these days though you need not be addicted to it. This is because our hectic work schedules make it difficult for personally meeting our friends and well wishers on a regular basis. While we can also do Social Networking accessing the sites like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter on your desktop computers, there are certain features which are more fun to use only on mobiles.

For example you go to a restaurant or a pub or to a picnic spot, you can checkin on your Social networking applications like Facebook so that your friends can find you and can actually meet you.

6. You have Maps and GPS on many mobile devices these days

Something is better than Nothing. With Google maps, you can be spotted anywhere in the world except where there is no mobile signal. In the Nokia phones, Nokia maps is an excellent tool, and the best thing with that is for all important locations and cities and countries, you can download once the full map into your mobile through the desktop or using a broadband internet connection, and then it won't even need the 3G or GPRS internet to navigate the routes for you.

7. You spend less money

With mobile devices you spend substantially less amount of money than you would if you go for a desktop or a laptop, and you keep spending additionally on accessories for them. With smartphones or tablets, it is a bundled pack.

Cons:

For all the good things regarding the technology out there in this world, there are also negatives associated with them.

1. The smaller the screen size, the greater the strain on your eyes

You can go for a tablet or a smartphone thinking that you don't need an expensive laptop for reading your mails and for accessing the internet. This is true but if you work a lot, due to the nature of the job, beyond 20 hours a week (as Safety standards suggest), it is an extremely tiring thing for your eyes even if you work on a computer with a big screen of 17''. Now think about doing all that on your tablet or on a smartphone.

Probably a CEO doesn't need to spend so much time reading content on the computers or smartphones or tablets, because they have lot of appointments or meetings on their schedule and they automatically spend less time on electronic devices compared to a low level staff like a CAD draftsman, or a secretary who need to spend most of their office time on computers. So they need big screens and more comfort.

2. Many advanced software applications won't work or fit on the Smartphones or tablets

If you are a person working in an industrial environment, where it is necessary for you to use high quality softwares like AutoCAD, Catia, ProE, Solid Works, or Animation softwares for your work, the same applications can't run on the Smartphones or tablets. Even if they run, it is highly impractical to think about actually working on the mobile devices. You can't draw an AutoCAD drawing even if you have a full touch screen on a Smartphone or tablet even in your dreams because, not only the ability to give the input is important here but also the bigger preview of your task is equally important.

3. Radiation is dangerous for health

Though the recent smartphones and tablets have extremely less amounts of radiation (electromagnetic/radio waves), again we have to think that it is better not to expose ourselves too much, as we can't work without holding these mobile devices.

Except if you are working most of the time typing emails, or using the applications that won't use so much of the network data access, there is always the data transfer and so the radiation to your mobile device from the network towers. And never use your mobile devices for talking when the signal strength is too low.

4. Problem of theft

Though anything can be stolen in this world, the frequency and probability is more for any mobile device. It may seem to you that this point is immaterial here, but beware, you have put our life on your mobile device. Just think that you have your emails and passwords remembered on your device by various applications, and you may have your personal and confidential information on these devices and in case you lose your smartphone or a tablet, it is not just the mobile device you lose. The loss is manifold.

We hope that you have got various insights for you to think well before you carefully evaluate your requirements and then proceed to buy the needed devices. Or if you can afford to have both kinds of devices, stand alone and mobile, you can well do it. But the care has to be taken to be aware of the pros and cons with any of your choices.

Why Social Networking is more Effective on mobile devices like Smartphones & Tablets

2011-12-09T03:56:00.001+05:30

As many of us know, online Social Networking has fast become a daily chore for many of us in the world today. For some businesses it is a part of their business strategy to utilize Social Networking to interact with their customers and hear their voice, for some it is a full time job as they run these social networking websites, for some Social networking is just a free-time job and for some celebrities it might be a way to reach out to their fans and followers.

Though the real time Social networking (physical) can't be replaced by online social networking, a part of the objective is at least achieved through the use of Social networking sites like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, etc.

And our busy lives in this world have made it impossible for many of us to personally meet our friends or our near and dear or having get-togethers on a regular basis.

Being online today is not just confined to a place or your desk at home or office with the advent of Smartphones and their integrity with Social networking applications (apps).

The smartphones like Apple's iPhones, Google's Androids, Microsoft's Windows Phones, Samsung's Galaxy phones, Blackberry's phones, the tablet PCs of the these companies and many others have made Social Networking so integral and easy that those who buy these devices just can't wait without these applications.

Compared to the comfort of internet browsing thereby Social Networking on a desktop computer and the less risks involved as regards to radiation, vision, ergonomics, mobile devices fare very badly but these devices like smartphones, tablets come handy in certain situations.

Anything should not go to the extremes and the same applies to Social Networking also. Having said this, the mobile devices have certain advantages over the traditional desktop computers as we all know or sometimes we fail to notice:

They consume less power. All mobile devices consume less power than a desktop or a laptop computer.
They stay with you and can be readily available if you want to text some status update or upload a photo. You may lose interest in doing the same if you postpone thinking to do it later on your desktop.
They allow you to check in at various places when you are on the go so that your friends can actually meet you personally.
Your moods and your travel time can be effectively used for social networking compared to a standalone PC.
With social networking from mobile devices, the time spent at office would be more productive as you need not necessarily allocate some time to check your facebook, Google or twitter updates. The filters set by the office at your work won't disappoint you as you do these things on your mobile device like a smartphone or a tablet PC without restrictions!
So by any standpoint the social networking on a mobile device like a Smartphone or a Tablet actually helps us be productive in our relations, be smart, be more expressive and it has to be done consciously with some moderation about the health factors and the surroundings.
Even if you have internet at home and could do the social networking from a desktop, the mobile way is a great way!

Sent from my BlackBerry®

Child care in various phases of their growth and Parent's responsibility

2011-10-02T22:57:00.001+05:30

As per Indian ancient Tradition, a child up to five years should be treated as God, and from five to ten it should be treated as servant and after sixteen we should treat him/her as a friend. See the below sloka (verse) from 'Neeti Sastra':

"Bhagavatpancha varshani, dasa varshani daasavath,

Praptetu shodase varshe, putram mitra vada chareth."

It is a valuable advice applicable even today. Up to five years, we should keep the surroundings of the child clean and neat as if it is a secured place. This may be to protect the child from infection. Even our behavior and talks before the child should also be pious, because the effects of surroundings will make impressions on the tender mind, which may expose and show their results at his/her advanced age. There are proofs for it in Indian epics like Bhagavat and Mahabarat. Prahlad learnt devotion and Abhimanyu learnt war strategy while they were in their mothers’ wombs. By this we should know that even when a lady is pregnant, we should not talk rubbish before her. It seems that the modern people have also understood this, and that is why we find some special centers opened in cities where proper training is imparted to the pregnant women regarding their behavior during pregnancy apart from medical checkups.

After 5 years of age, the child becomes a school going boy/girl and receives instructions from parents and teachers. At this stage the boy/girl becomes helpful to the parents in day to day routine house hold activities. A girl child may assist her mother in cooking; a boy may go for shopping of certain petty things. This and that they will do according to the orders of parents. But a father should not send the boy to bring beedies, cigarettes, gutka packets etc., Parents should think at least once while entrusting work to the children. In some rich families the parents may feel that they need not ask the children to do any thing for them. But they should feel it as their responsibility to treat them as servants for the children’s benefit. At this stage the children learn how to live in this world in future.

After 10 years of age, the boy/girl begins to think individually. While doing so he/she may do some wrongs and rights. Here the parents have to correct them and guide properly. If the boy/girl do some thing good, the parents should appreciate them and even they can offer some gifts for promoting the good attitude of the boy/girl. For example if the boy/girl helps an old man to cross the road or he/she may expend his/her pocket money to dress up a wounded classmate, then the parents or the teacher should appreciate and encourage the boy/girl, even if there are some losses in doing so. We should not feel for it, instead we should feel proud of it.

If the boy shows interest in games it is better to encourage him. In case when boy/girl shows interest in a particular subject, do not divert him/her. Let him/her study according to his/her own zeal, but not according to the vested interest of the parents. Otherwise the boy/girl may get disgusted and develop suicidal tendency. Now a days we are frequently coming across so many cases where the parents are forcing the children to study only a particular subject thinking that their age is not sufficient to take a decision. This is not right. By such forceful attitude we get only negative results. So better try to plan the children’s future according to their interest.

One more thing we should pay interest is Ethical values. Unethical attitude should be curbed at seedling stage itself. We should aspire that our children should become good citizens, patriots and pious minded. Otherwise they will be of no use to the parents in their old age or to the Nation. Making them mere money minting machines is not good in any aspect. Because of our greediness we encourage our children for malpractices (Ex: - Some Parents themselves are engaged in supplying copy chits to their children in the examination halls) thinking that we should keep them in higher positions somehow. But in return they will become dishonest and inhuman citizens and spoil all the fields’ viz., politics, business, services etc., during their life.

Now-a-days we generally throw blame on the youngsters saying that they are spoilt and non-courteous to parents. But for that, the responsibility lies with parents only. They are sending the parents to Old Age Homes means; it is the result of the parents brought up only. So be cautious and see that our child should become a man with humanity rather than making him a mint where coins are molded.

After sixteen the boy/girl develops decision making capacity. Discriminating faculty dawns in them. But they lack in experience. So as a parent one has to guide him/her with proper advice. The boy/girl may hesitate to approach the parents for each and everything. He/she will be afraid thinking that his/her father may find fault with him/her. So the father must develop a friendly atmosphere in between him and his son/daughter. Free and frank discussions between son/daughter and father will make a family cool and happy. Our thinking may differ with our children. But think a minute. Our resolutions may be right, but they may not be suitable to this present time. We might have solved so many problems with our decisions. But that is past. Now the same decision may not work out for the same problem now arisen. So to the extent possible let the boy/girl solves his/her problems with his/her own talent. But we must watch and advise them whenever he/she goes out of the way.

Most of the parents are admitting their children in corporate colleges by paying huge amount towards fees bearing so many financial difficulties with a fond hope that they may become Doctors/Engineers/Officers etc., and feel that their responsibility is over. They are forgetting that the age between l6 and 20 is the turning point in their children’s life. During this period if they have friends with good habits, they will also become good citizens, otherwise they will be spoiled. There are so many activities where the students participate with their friends viz., seeing bad films, viewing obscene pictures in Internet cafes, taking intoxicated drinks and participating in ragging etc., will spoil their carrier even without their awareness. So the parents must keep an eye on their children (who are away from them), by frequently visiting their hostels and enquiring about their behavior and studies from the concerned institutions apart from enquiring about the comforts given to their children in the said institutions.

The govt. is also not taking sufficient interest on the welfare of the students. So many punishments are there for the culprits. This is like giving a medicine after the attack of a deadly disease. But we should know that prevention is better than cure. Juvenile homes are full with the children below 16 who committed crimes. This is only due to non-injecting the moral values in to the minds of children from their school life.AT any cost we should save our children from the present bad environment. The Govt. should also see that importance should be given to introduce at least a class in each day relating to spiritual and moral values from school education itself so that the future will be filled up with responsible, honest, pious and good citizens for the country. There is no other good option like this before us. To tell the truth the expenditure incurred on school education by the Govt. is not at all an expenditure, but it is an investment for future of the Nation.

The proverb ‘Child is the father of man’ is right and yes, a seed is the mother of a tree. If the seed is good, automatically the tree will become a good fruit bearing. Similarly the personality of a person definitely depends upon his childhood. But some people say that nothing depends upon us. It all depends on jeans and some may say that it is all his fate or karma. May be, but we cannot throw everything on fate or karma and escape from our responsibility. Even karma theory also tells that we should not neglect our duty. So let us do our duty as a best parent and leave the result to God. There is another proverb ‘God helps to those, who helps themselves’. Forget not this. The karma theory also says that by neglecting our duty, we have to reap its consequences (karma phala bhoga). So we must be dutiful always.

Courtesy: Sri. P. Subbaruyudu and Sri. B.E. Sampath Kumar

Noble Thoughts for the Right Way of Life

2011-08-11T22:23:00.000+05:30

ViprasCraft has now published the paperback limited first edition of its English book titled 'Noble Thoughts for the Right way of Life'.

This book is composed by Sri. P. Subbaruyudu, Sri. B.E. Sampath Kumar and Sri. Ashok Kumar who are the members in the editorial team of ViprasCraft.com.

Currently this edition of the book is meant for Indian customers only and very soon we will make this book available in PDF form for the readers in the other parts of the world also.

Any reader who wants to have a single copy of this book or in multiples in a single dispatch for shipping to their home or business address, can contact us at the phone number +91 8562 240092 or write an email to 'customercare@viprascraft.com'

More Details:
Title: "Noble Thoughts"
Subtitle: "for the Right Way of Life".
Copyright (C): 2010-11 ViprasCraft.com
No. of Pages: 88 (excluding the two sides of front and back covers)
Dimensions: A5 Portrait

This book is about the spirituality which is above all the religions. Religion is only a set of outward formalities, whereas Spirituality is more about connecting ourselves to our soul and to the Ultimate.

This book provides various insights about understanding the religion, problems linked to the outdated formalities of the religion, and how a person can get out of the confusion and the differences among different religions.

First of all, the modern day world throws many challenges on us, there are too many things to do and very less time to achieve all of them. With such a situation we have grown very impatient, always running after the results and finishing the tasks at hand. All related to the materialistic development and progress.

Spirituality, irrespective of any religion, is definitely needed for any person in this world now, because with this spiritual knowledge and wisdom, we always take right decisions, we put our efforts in serving this world better and we try to make this world a better place to live. With the spiritual wisdom, we connect ourselves to our mortality, we begin to think about our legacy and we begin to think about what the real goal of human life is.

And Spirituality in no way is a barrier to attain materialistic development. Instead, it guides our properly to lead a better life inspite of our day to day activities related to the wealth generation and possession of other worldly things.

This book contains the discussions on many of the important topics linked to the Spirituality. There is also emphasis on how to think beyond religion, what the real Guru does to the mankind, how to understand this creation in the true sense, why vegetarianism is a good practice and is the closest path to non violence, etc.

Table of Contents

Religion
Purpose of Religion
Ahimsa (Non violence)
Vegetarianism - Need & Importance
Purity
Raja Dhandana and Yama Dhandana
Bhagavadgita - An insight
Cycle of Births and Deaths
Is Death a Misery?
Simplicity
Reality and Bliss
Penance
Spirituality
God's Love
Duty
Tapatrayam
Satya tatvam (Truthfulness)
The Real way of Life
Real Goal of Human Life.

Develop Renunciation for Spiritual progress

2011-08-11T22:08:00.007+05:30

Renunciation is not a desire to abandon our kith and kin, friends, home, wealth, job etc., It is only to reduce and eventually stop undue attachments to worldly pleasures and that seeks liberation from the cycle of rebirth. It is included in the four-step practice of Rajayoga. One has to take up this practice after developing Viveka (discriminating faculty). That is after knowing what is good and what is bad, what is true and what is untrue and what is eternal and what is temporary. One has to leave bad, untrue, and perishable things once for all, so that he may turn towards good, truth and eternality. This is called renunciation. One has to cultivate this non-attachment for proceeding on the path of spirituality without which one cannot attain higher stages. We cannot achieve progress on the spiritual path if we are tightly tied down by the chains of attachment.

Lord Sri Krishna taught Geetha to Arjuna only when Arjuna developed this renunciation. On seeking his kith and kin before him to fight for land and for worldly riches, he became sad and developed aversion towards the benefits derived by winning the war. He came to the conclusion that the result of war is only despair. Having developed this condition, Arjuna became fit for attaining higher stages. At this stage Lord Srikrishna imparted training and took selfless work from him to control the nature. So to become a selected one by God one has to develop this condition of Renunciation.

Mahatma Sri Ramchandraji says that this Renunciation (vairagya) is not a practice by itself but it is the stage resulted by the practice of Meditation and by the support of the great spiritual Master. In this stage one may come across many worldly things/affairs, but gives no weight to them that means no object in the world attracts him.

Generally people think that one has to resort to the forests leaving his family for developing this condition of non-attachment, but such opinion is wrong. One can develop this condition without resorting to forests and leaving the family by taking up the right ways of spirituality and following the guide lines of great Masters. Having things is not bad, but having undue attachment towards them is bad. If one is blessed with wealth by God, it becomes his duty to utilize it properly. Otherwise he will be called a miser. So one can rightly earn and have so many things and should not develop undue attachment towards them. That means one should not become restless by their non-availability. At the same time one should get on with the things available smoothly. This human life is a great opportunity for us to improve both our renunciation and our compassion. We should not waste this precious life.

Once, poor ‘Sudhama’, the classmate of Lord Sri Krishna met his friend Sri Krishna to beg some wealth on the instigation of his wife to suffice his poverty. When Lord Srikrishna saw Sudhama, at first sight itself told him, “I and you are in the same condition of non-attachment”. He also says, “I am having much but you are having none, but both you and I are not longing for anything”. This is the real condition of Renunciation. Because of this real condition of renunciation, Sudhama did not become disappointed when Lord Sri Krishna sent him with empty hands. He did not also become proud and very happy when he saw abundant wealth at his home sent by Lord Sri Krishna. He felt that he is simply a trustee for that wealth. There are so many examples of saintly people who lead this kind of life. Gora, Kumbar, Tukaram and Kabir are a few among them. They lead their worldly and family lives without caring their poverty and difficulties.

After crossing this condition of renunciation under the guidance of right Master, one enters a stage where the seeker finds neither attachment nor detachment. He enjoys the balanced condition, which is a worthy one to be attained by seeker. In that condition one lives in tune with nature, having no pain or pleasure with the losses and gains of this world. He remains in an ever satisfied condition with what he gets from the Lord. That means he treats that whatever he receives whether good or bad are boons from his Lord and they are all for his evolvement only.

Courtesy: Sri. P. Subbarayudu (Preceptor) and Sri. B.E. Sampath Kumar (Abhyasi) of Sri Rama Chandraji Maharaj Seva Trust, Kadapa.

New mobile phone (Smart phone) - Buyer's Guide, tips and advices for choosing a smartphone

2011-05-21T14:23:00.003+05:30

As we all know a mobile phone nowadays is no more a luxury or a comfort but has become a necessity. And there is so much to choose in a mobile phone than to just considering it as a replacement to a landline phone or to think of it as a device to make and receive calls on the go.

This is the decade or era of the Smartphones and that day may not be so far when people may think about people having Smartphones as Smart people and those not having them as foolish people.

This is not an exaggeration looking at the revolutionary changes that had taken place in the last 5 years in the development of Smart phones and the abundant features they have today.

Even the PC manufacturing gaints like Dell, HP, etc have already entered into the mobile phones arena. This tells you how big impact the mobile phone market is causing to the PC market though everybody agrees with the fact that a mobile can do so many of the tasks a PC can do but at the same time it can't entirely replace a PC in terms of functionality and comfort in some ways.

But then there are some 100s or 1000s of mobile phone models with a lot of variations and unbelievable features getting added day by day.

If you keep comparing the various mobile phones available today and if you wait to get a good mobile when its price drops down too much so that it falls into your budget range, then you are never going to buy a new mobile phone. This is because the mobile manufacturers come up with new models almost every month and the prices only go down due to the technology becoming obsolete. So if you wait too long you end up getting an obsolete mobile phone for a price not worth its value even if you get it for a cheaper price.

So a wise decision would be to select those options you would like to use on your mobile phone and then fix your affordable budget too.

All the major mobile device manufacturers like Nokia, Blackberry, Apple, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, LG, Sony Ericsson, Onida, Videocon, Micromax, Maxx, Karbonn, etc., generally boast about their latest mobile phone models and encourage you to buy their latest releases.

But everyone can't afford the price of latest mobile phones from any manufacturer. And not all the people think about their mobile phone as a status symbol and crave for the brand or for having the latest mobile phone in their hands.

So the practical and wise people consider some selected features and a fixed budget before looking out for any purchase of a new mobile phone.

Here are some tips from us which may guide you make a better choice based on your requirements:

1. Read as many reviews as possible

Take your time, read as many reviews as possible on all your wishlist of new mobile phones (You are doing the right thing here reading the review on this site).

The reviews we generally come across on various internet sites are of two types - of the editors of good mobile review websites, of the actual users.

Both are equally important because editors' reviews are generally available soon after the new model phones get launched in the market. Sometimes the reviews are available well before the launch of those mobiles in a particular market. This is due to the progressive launches made in different countries for the high end devices by the companies like Apple, Nokia, etc. And so by the time a mobile phone is released in a country the review is already there.

This will guide you better and you won't repent later for chosing the wrong mobile phone that is not for you or it doesn't cater to your requirements.

2. Enquire with your friends

If you have a large set of people in your neighborhood who are tech savvy, then you probably have the direct possibility to access your dream model of a mobile phone already being used by them. You can directly experience the phone using it for a while and can discuss its pros and cons with your friends.

The only disadvantage by this option is that if your friend had got an odd piece which has some problems with it, you form a bad opinion about that particular phone.

Always remember the fact that any electronic product produced in large numbers will statistically falls under the 'Bath tub curve' concept even if they follow the '6 sigma quality control', and more failures will be detected in the early stages for some number of those devices. Once a device overcomes this stage it works very satisfactorily till the end of its useful life. The failure rate the will be very low.

That is why all the manufacturers give the warranty for 1 or 2 years depending on their product's estimated life cycle to safe guard their reputation. They won't mind replacing their devices because they know their devices' performance based on their statistical data. Oh, we have gone deeper into 'Manufacturing lessons' here!

3. Select your features based on your requirements

The very basic features of any mobile phone without any doubt are voice calls function, SMS, call log, contacts list, etc and we don't need to discuss about them here.

The various other features which we commonly find today in almost all smart phones are touch screens, QWERTY keypads, UMTS, inbuilt modems, Bluetooth, infrared, WiFi, FM radio, GPS, in built camera, etc., in terms of hardware and OS, music player, internet browsers, email applications, various mobile applications for social networking like Facebook, Twitter, and so on.

These additional features are the ones that cause a lot of difference in the pricing of the phones.

Screens & Keypads: For sure everyone of us wants a great screen and an equally great keypad as these are the components (being input and output interfaces) of the mobile device that form the interface with us while using them.

Here the decision to be made is simple. If you are a business person mostly interested in checking and writing mails, you may want to go for a QWERTY keypad in your mobile phone which generally reduces the screen size. Then you just need a good resolution screen insread of an 'all touch' screen.

In general for the same size of the screen, the touch screens are costlier than the normal screens irrespective of the resolution because of the integrated sensors installed to identify the touch.

Again when you have a touch screen you don't get a hard keypad, as some portion of your touch screen acts as the virtual keypad depending on the application you are using on your mobile phone. So if you are using your touch screen phone for mostly typing mails, there is no point in spending more for a touch screen. Moreover a touch keypad never gives a good feel like a keypad on Nokia E72 or that of a Blackberry Bold 9700.

Small screens are fine as long as you use your mobile phone for business applications as you need to send many mails for corporate communications and you know what you are typing. You just need to see few lines on your screen to check what you have typed. For this you can go for the phones like Nokia E-Series phones like E72, E71, Blackberry phones like Bold 9700, Curve, etc.

If you want to browse a lot of internet sites for accessing information then you may want to have a big screen because you need not scroll up and down many times to read the information. And the you can also use the touch features to type mails, not like a business user though. For this, you can go for Apple's iPhone, Samsung Galaxy series, Nokia's Xpress music, some N-Series phones, HTC phones using Android OS.

Differently some mobile phones like Nokia N8, Nokia E7, HTC Desire Z, etc have both big and excellent touch screens at the front while the slidable hard keypad is also available at the backside of the main screen when you slide the phones and expand them for a lot of texting. But these are heavily priced as these are still the latest phones (at the time of writing this post).

Memory: Memory is the important component which however is not complicated to understand and to choose. As we all know, the rule is the higher the memory, the greater the performance of the phone and the storage capacity.

Again memory is of different types, the in-built memory, RAM and the external memory.

In-built memory is the memory which is used by the phone to store your information also including your SMS, photos, music, etc. This will generally be limited but there are some Nokia phones containing some gigabytes of in built memory.

RAM is useful to run the applications faster, and without enough RAM onboard, even the best processor installed will be of partial use or of no use. But RAM is not for permanently storing the information just like the RAM on personal computers.

External memory is what the mobile manufacturers leave the micro SD slot for. As of now there are phones capable of having external memory (flash memory cards to be used) ranging from as less as 2 GB (Nokia N73 had this constraint of 2GB maximum memory) and as big as 32 GB.

But with the current trend of the business phones, you don't need a memory of more than 8 GB and having something around 16 GB is good enough unless you are thinking to use your mobile phone as an USB driven external hard disk only to store some DVD movie files.

Camera: Camera in a Smart phone these days is a compulsion. There is even the demand for the front camera apart from the rear high resolution cameras. This is particlarly needed for the video calls using a 3G connection. However most phones available today in the market are still running on 2G technology and they do have excellent rear cameras.

Any camera resolution above 3.0 megapixel can be considered very good for a beautiful photo shot which can fill your desktop screen resolution of 1024 x 768 and can offer a 'good to print' quality. Nokia N73 was good at that as it had Carl Ziess optics in its camera which was better than the camera of an Apple iPhone of earlier versions while the iPhone was costing more than double than that of a Nokia N73.

Today the established and successful mobile phones like Nokia E72 have 5.0 megapixel cameras with dedicated flash too, while the latest phones like N8, E7 boast of some 8.0 megapixel cameras.

So virtually the mobile phones are giving a tough fight to the digital cameras. Just 5 years ago, you were buying a 5.0 megapixel camera for not less than Rs. 15,000 ($ 400) and now you get a phone like Nokia E72 for Rs. 17,000 (at the time of writing the post).

Internet Connectivity: Internet usage on Smartphones can't be ignored as it is a must on any Smartphones, otherwise these are not to be called Smartphones.

Many Smartphones have the inbuilt modem in them so that you can connect your phone to the PC to use the modem and can access high speed internet at the speed of a broad band connection.

For instance Nokia N73 was released in 2006 but it was a 3G compatible phone with a front camera too. Today N73 can't perform better than some phones because it has a slow processor and a limit of 2GB memory.

We have personally tested a Nokia 73 phone using a Vodafone 3G connection in Europe and it was excellent in speed and downloading capabilities.

But beware, there are many brand new phones by Nokia in C-Series and X-Series which are not 3G phones. They have been released, most probably to clear their inventories of old and obsolete technology by adding some flavor like more memory for music lovers, for by offering a better camera. Of course any manufacturer does the same. They are also honest enough as they provide comparisons in their websites of their own various mobile phone models.

Nowadays the Nokia E-Series phones like E71, E72, E7 are all capable of delivering the internet speed (provided we use 3G and not 2G connection) better than a Nokia N73.

Again by comparison, it is even found that the Nokia E72 has the 3G (UMTS - HSDPA) configuration and speed better than the competing equivalent models from Blackberry.

Data: There are various Data Transfer speeds and technologies available which are network-dependent like EDGE, GPRS, 3G for you to explore on your dream mobile phone and check if you need all of them. More information can be obtained from various other technical websites on these terms, here we just would like to give you a rough idea only.

Apart from these, there are just the Data Transfter methods and technologies for offline use which are network-independent like the Bluetooth, WiFi LAN, Infrared and USB, for exchanging data between various compatible devices that use the same technology. However the trend is that the recent phones are not having the Infrared in them. Of course with an USB connection you never wish to have an Infrared connectivity which is very slow for the huge transfer of the data.

Battery: This is the only important thing for many people who are on the go for most part of their daily work life. For example if you are a marketing person and need to do a lot of travelling, then you must look for a good battery in your mobile phone.

As we all know, mobile phone batteries come in different shapes and sizes and they are not the old traditional AA or AAA size batteries which are universally adapted. Nokia phones are always the front runners ahead of their competition in terms of talk time and the stand-by time on their batteries. There could be many other new smartphones too in these days, but we have not done much research on this aspect, to be frank.

But our intention is to say, "What is the use of your mobile phone even if it has excellent features like 'Touch screen', great Operating system and an excellent user interface, a lot of applications, if it doesn't serve you when needed due to the low battery very often and you need to keep searching for a power point for charging your mobile phone?"

Music & Headphones connectivity: Many Smartphones these days have the standard 3.5 mm audio jack for the use with their mobiles. Few years ago, this wasn't the trend, the mobile phone manufacturers were too concerned about their own spares to be used with their phones.

But then due to the competition and probably due to their customer experience surveys, all the higher end Smartphones today have a 3.5 mm audiojack so that you can connect any earphones or headsets of your choice to listen to the music.

Now coming to the music player, people don't expect much as now the digital music like mp3, wma king of files don't get damaged over time unless the memory card that contains them has a problem.

So any music player from a good company like Apple, Nokia, Blackberry, Samsung, Motorola, etc can deliver a great quality music. However if you are a music lover and would like to have lot of features on your music player, you need to go for a music based phone like Nokia Xpress music series. Or you already might have an Apple iPod.

But as the mp3 files have an universal standard to contain ID3 tags which can be edited by any program like Apple's iTunes, Nokia Ovi music player, or Winamp or Windows media player, organizing the music is not a problem and it is totally irrelevant with the selection of your mobile phone.

The only thing you may need to look in your mobile phone is that you can use your mobile phone as a mass storage device when you connect it to the computer, so that you can dump all your music at one go, then your music player should auto-detect the music.

While some of the iPhone users said to us that is it not possible with Apple's iPhone due to their policy, we have our experience on Nokia phones and they do have this functionality.

4. Fix your budget though with a little flexibility

As we discussed the various features above, the final pricing of the phone depends on the features the mobile phones contain in them. Hence you can't think to have the best of all the features, as you may not find one single phone as such or you can't afford the final price more than Rs. 30,000.

Why we say this, imagine that you got a phone for a higher price. Then what happens. You enjoy it for sometime that your new mobile is the best in its class and it is the envy of your friends and colleagues. But you have paid a whopping 1000s of bucks only to get this feeling.

The mobile phones continue to improve further, if today it is 3G tomorrow there can be 4G or 5G or 10G after 5 years from now. So whatever you have spent is on a rapidly changing technology and it is all spent money. You should be ready again after 5 years to change your phone though you maintain it in an excellent condition.

Otherwise you should be a millionaire who just doesn't care about money and who just wants every best thing in his/her hands.

The problem with many electronic equipment is this, today's technology becoming obsolete for tomorrow. So it is always wise to spend cautiously and then spend according to your numbers in your monthly pay slip.

We also invite you to consider this. Why to spend thousands on a single phone only to serve one person in your family instead of going for a 'great but not the latest' phone available at half the price of a latest phone. You can get two such phones to gift one to your family members.

5. Check for compatibility to various networks

Once you are ready to buy a mobile phone, you need to also think about the compatibility of the new mobile phone in various places or in various countries if you are a frequent traveler for any reason.

There are various networks like GSM 850/900/1800/1900 worldwide for 2G networks, while there are HSDPA 850/900//1700/1900/2100 for 3G networks depending on the country. You must check these specifications on your wishlist mobile phones before proceeding to buy them.

6. Think about practical use of your phone on every feature you spend money for

You can discuss about the features available on the mobiles for any number of hours or even days but finally to buy a mobile phone you need to be practical about the features you need to actually have in your phone to use them.

For example, GPS is great when you need to travel more to different new places for the sake of your job or because you travel a lot personally during your vacation. But if you are not such a person today or won't think to be in for the next few years, you need not have GPS in your mobile.

For example, Nokia E72 has the GPS which works excellently even on 2G networks, but E5 has no GPS. So E5 is cheaper too, and it has all the other features similar to E72 and it even has more memory than E72, moreover E5 is a new release compared to E72. But the people who want GPS can't go for Nokia E5 and at the same time people who want more memory and who don't need a GPS can opt for Nokia E5 to save substantial amount of money.

Another example is to choose between a QWERTY business phone like E72 and a full entertainment like an Android phone. Both types of the phones considering Nokia E72 as QWERTY phone and HTC Android as an entertainment phone, are great in their own ways and for the intended purposes, but is finally upto you to decide what you are going to do with your mobile.

There is no point in spending money for a QWERTY business phone when you don't even think of sending many mails in a day. Similarly there is no point in going for an entertainment phone with all touch screen if you are business person, as you can't type more comfortably on such kind of phones.

Differently if you can afford much cost, you can go for the phones like Nokia E7 or Nokia N8 which have both touch screens and full QWERTY keypads.

7. Don't get carried away just by brand names, beautiful looks and fun features

Many of us tend to take others opinions and give undue value to their opinions. Instead the best policy always would be to listen to all the people, but to finally make a decision independently.

Knowing things from others is good, it gives you awareness, but you know better what you need than others telling it for you. This also applies to the reviews written on the websites like ours.

So we advise you to take all the inputs from various sources and then decide yourself.

There could be many established brands selling a lot of varities of new mobile phones. But there is always a chance for a new mobile phones company to come up with a new idea and start revolutionizing the particular field. Research in Motion is one such company which came into existence after Apple, Nokia and others, but it had made wonders and it had mad Blackberry a name associated with all business people. It had defined the way the mobiles would be used in the next few years after it had launched Blackberry.

Similarly Apple's iPhone is such a marvellous achievement. And what to say about Android operating system by Google. They have outdone so many existing players and they just pushed their OS ahead of others in a very short time.

So when you have a clear picture of a particular model of a mobile phone, the branding, the looks, and all bells and whistles are not so important compared to the functionality of the mobile phones.

8. Think about the application store available for your new mobile from the manufacturer

Nowadays there are applications like Snaptu for social networking which integrates the Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc into a single application which works wonderfully.

Similarly there are chat clients like Fring, ebuddy, etc which are all very much useful as they are specially built by their programmers to suit the families of particular operating systems.

The companies like Apple, Nokia, Blackberry, etc, which maintain their own oeprating systems, offer hundreds or thousands of mobile phone applications which they call in short as mobile apps as they have an online store of such applications. The exception is Google's Android OS which is used by the players like HTC, Samsung, Motorola and others. Android too has many excellent applications and the list keeps growing.

These kind of mobile apps are very much needed for the smart phones, as these phones are just like miniature computers and they need good application programs for better functionality.

So it is always wise to choose such a phone whose manufacturer provides you access to these applications.

9. Think about the after sales service for your new mobile phone.

Buying the phone after much thinking and decision making is not the only thing to be done. There is another step beyond it. That is the after sales service.

Just like the service needed for automobiles and the personal computers, the mobile phones, which are smartphones these days, need to have the after sales service for any issues with the hardware or with the software.

Though it is relatively easy for fixing the software bugs as the companies often provide free access to the upgrades of their operating systems, it is harder to fix such problems related to the hardware. So if the service centers are available in your neighborhood, then you are free to choose any mobile based on the points discussed above.

10. Think about the recycling options as a responsible citizen

And the last, but not the least, think about the recycling options for your mobile phone once you think to discard it due to a permanent damage or if you are unable to sell it to someone due to the phone getting obsolete in technology.

The companies like Nokia are creating awareness that they are concerned about the environment and so they encourage you to dump all such electronic waste in their assigned centers through which the recyclable materials will be carefully recycled for further use by these companies.

Throwing the mobile phone or its components into the dust bins against the local muncipal regulations, may not penalise you, if you are intelligent enough to escape from the authorities, but it is morally and ethically a bad thing to do to spoil our environment.

All electronic waste has to be recycled more cautiously than the household organic waste. Most of the electronic circuits contain heavy metals like Arsenic, Lead, lot of plastic, few components contain minute amounts of precious metals like Gold, Silver, copper, etc. In one way recycling a phone always contributes to saving some of our natural resources and avoids excessive mining for the sake of these metals.

At the end of all this discussion, we wish you a happy exploring on your new mobile handset. Please do leave us the constructive criticism or comments on this article, if you were benefitted by our work. Thanks & Cheers!!

Nokia E72 - User review and basic comparison with other Smart phones

2011-05-17T18:53:00.002+05:30

Nokia E72 is one of the best Smartphones available in the market today competing with the likes of Blackberry Curve, Bold models, Samsung Galaxy Ace, Sony Ericsson Xperia, HTC Desire Z, Motorola Defy, etc.

Keeping aside the brand values or the trends or the looks or the too minute technical differences, from the practical usage point of view, infact choosing Nokia E72 over others is neither a compromise on features nor a strange decision taken. At the same time Nokia E72 gives the other phones a run for their money.

By surfing the internet, you can compare the operating systems Symbian OS, Blackberry OS, Mac OS, Android, Bada, etc., and can read 1000s of comments about the pros and cons of all the models of the phones from Nokia, Blackberry, Apple, HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, etc.

But finally to choose a phone, you need to understand few points that suit your requirement and a phone that has those features.

Again, you have 1000s of websites providing reviews of mobile phones as their business, so we don't intend to match our review with theirs in this post.We write this review keeping an average non-techie person in mind.

Nokia E72 is an excellent business phone with lots of features for business use as well as for entertainment. It has QWERTY keypad which is one of the very best in its class which is even compared and is said to be at par with that of Blackberry Bold 9700 which is a phone priced higher than Nokia's E72 for more or less the same set of features.

It is not surprising hence to mention at this moment that this blog post is entirely typed on Nokia's E72 using its beautiful and comfortable QWERTY keypad. However you are wise enough to agree that no phone's QWERTY keypad can beat a computer's standard keyboard in terms of comfort and speed of typing.

If you need a lot of typing on your phone especially for a large number of emails or for social networking like using Facebook, Twitter, etc or for Blogging and all these at a mean budget, probably you won't find a better phone than Nokia's E72 at its price range (at the time of writing this post).

But if you are not into so much of typing on your phone probably you may go for touch type phones like Nokia N8 or Nokia E7 which have both touch on the main screen and the type on the slidable QWERTY keypad.

Or if you are not a Nokia fan, you would go for an iPhone or Android phones which are known for their touch screens and fun features.

The GPS (Global Positioning System) in Nokia E72 is with Nokia maps preloaded (you can also update over time by downloading them). It has all the national and state highways loaded into this memory depending on the country's map you

got preloaded into it.

It is great to find the navigation even for a few Indian villages too using Nokia maps. Though we have tried the GPS with a 2G Airtel connection, the positioning and accuracy was perfect. The Nokia maps uses the Auto Zoom feature, which we think works on the speed of the automobile, with which you are properly shown the right directions.

However in rural India we found a few roads not being updated on Nokia maps. So for the areas which are far away from the State or National highways, Nokia maps is not accurate. However you can always zoom in and zoom out to verify in which direction you are heading on to reach a national highway.

However if you are a Google maps lover, don't worry, you can also work with that using the GPS hardware on this phone without any extra effort as Google too is intelligent to make their software compatible for many Nokia phones like E72 including old models like Nokia N73.

The total memory for Nokia E72 can be up to a maximum of 16 GB while the phone comes shipped with 4 GB or 8 GB, depending on the place you buy the phone from. With our experience we can say that for the next five years or so, as a business person you don't need anything higher than this 16 GB, unless you are thinking to treat your mobile as your TV. We don't think you should have come to read this review keeping a

QWERTY phone in mind to use it for watching full length movies instead of a few video clips from your mobile's memory or on video sites like Youtube, Metacafe, Google videos, etc.

If you don't believe us please compare the memory of Blackberry phones with that of Nokia E72 and you will find the answers on your own.

Nokia E72 has an excellent 5.0 megapixel camera with a good flash. The photos generated are of print quality. However you are not going to think about printing the photos of a size of an advertisement hoarding with 5 MP from any camera on earth today.

Having said this, we confirm that the photo quality is excellent for business presentations, as well as for personal albums. We can say it safely that you don't need a digital camera if you have a Nokia E72 phone.

For high speed internet, the phone works like a modem as by functionality it supports 3G with a front camera for video calls, besides contains 256 MB of RAM. We have the experience of how fast the internet was on Nokia N73 with a 3G connection and so this phone will not disappoint and will exceed your expectations.

The Music player in Nokia E72 is with various preset equalizers including the option to create your cutomised ones. Though you have Nokia softwares to use for the music, you can simply use this phone as a mass memory storage unit while connected to computer and you can dump all the music you need. Later the music player can refresh the library, if you ask it to do, to find all the music loaded into your phone. Of course, this is a great feature in many Nokia phones. I was using this feature in my Nokia N73 too.

Coming to the physical aspects of the phone, it is very slim and sexy in size, measuring only 10 mm in its thickness and the form factor similar to Nokia's E71. It gives a strong and rigid feel when you operate the phone which is a great thing. Nokia claims this phone to be in all steel construction and it appears true except at those parts where steel can't be used.

Few other websites have commented on the optical navi pad not so useful, but you are not talking about a 21" screen here, how many thumb moves you need to do in reality to move the cursor across your Nokia E72 screen?

And there is so much to learn about Smart phones and you have many websites which explain about each technical term in great detail and we leave this part to you to explore, for your exploration makes you think better, check better and finally to choose better.

Finally the bottomline is "Nokia E72 is an excellent business phone for a lower to medium price range for a business person while its features match the best of the industry in its range. Nokia E72 has to be more reliable like anyother Nokia phone. In its price range, it is probably the best smart phone available".

Escape the Punishment on the Earth and also in the Hell by following the Real Spirituality as defined by Sahaj Marg

2011-04-22T10:15:00.000+05:30

'Raja Dhandana' and 'Yama Dhandana' ('Punishment on the Earth' and 'Punishment in the Hell')

Almost all the religions on the surface of earth believe in Heaven and Hell. Good and pious people will go to heaven and the bad and wicked will go the hell after completion of their spell of life on this earth. They get rewards and comforts in heaven and punishments in the hell according to the individual acts (Karma) on the earth during their life time. This is the concept of the people of the main religions, 'Heaven-Hell' concept.
But there is another concept prevailing in the humanity (especially among Indians) and that proclaims that the living beings are not born on the earth accidentally. They are born for the purpose of undergoing the effects (results) of good and bad deeds of the past and present lives. They consider the earth (this world) as the field of enjoyment in the shape of pleasures and pains. God gives a chance of this life on the earth only to undergo the pleasures and pains according to their past deeds and thereby they become clean and pure. And it is believed that the purity and piousness observed on this earth qualifies to reach the Ultimate (God) which is beyond heaven and hell. This is 'Karma-Phala' concept.

In observing the above two concepts one may think that one among the two might be right. It will generally be difficult to accept both at a time. If we say the 2nd one (Karma Phala concept) is right, then the existence of heaven and hell are meaningless. But there is heaven and hell too. On deep pondering over the matter the wise men came to the conclusion that the existence of heaven and hell are meaningful.

Look at the children. They go in the morning to the school and return in the evening. But after a refresh, they are again sent to some other place for study in the name of tuition. Why so? Because it is felt that the study in school is insufficient to get through the examinations of the course which they are pursuing. In the same way the hell and heaven are needed. To those who cannot complete their process of undergoing the effects of vices and virtues, a hell or heaven like tuition (intensive study) is required to complete the course and to pass on to the next spiritual state. This is one kind of explanation.

Keeping this concept in view, let us go to the epics to search in depth for a sentence in support of it. In Mahabharata chapter l2 in Santhiparva we come across a sub-story in which two saintly brothers lived on the banks of the river 'Bahuda'. The younger brother 'Likhita' went to the place of his elder brother 'Sankha', where he found an orchard with a number of trees full of fruits. He was hungry and attracted on glancing at the orchard. He picked up some and ate. After a while his brother came and remarked about his misdeed of eating the fruits which does not belong to him and that too without prior permission. Likhita cut a sorry figure and asked his brother what to do to get rid of this act of theft? Sankha suggested to go to their king Sudhyumna and be punished by him according to the rules in force. He obeyed his brother and received the punishment of cutting off his both the hands from the king. After undergoing the punishment he again visited his brother and stood before him. At that instant the elder brother announced that ‘ Oh Likhita, my brother now you are free from Yama Dhandana (Punishment from the ruler of Hell) which is more severe than Raja Dhandana the punishment imposed by the King. Though the latter story is unconcerned, let it be completed to suffice the curiosity. Afterwards Likhita on his brother’s advice goes to the river nearby and by taking a dip in it he gets back his two hands as before and there ends this tale.

By this story it is clear that the Hell is in existence to punish the individuals who escaped from the punishment of the ruler of the place where he lives.

In the Indian epic Ramayana in 4th Chapter ‘Kishkinda Kaanda' there is a sentence supporting the above concept. Lord Rama hiding behind a tree shoots 'Vali' by his bow and arrow, while Vali was fighting with his brother 'Sugreeva'. Vali fell down and finds fault with Rama who came near him. He argues that he is not right to attack on him indirectly hiding behind a tree, that too when he is engaged otherwise (i.e.,) in war with Sugreeva. He also reminds that he belongs to monkey kingdom and no king will hunt the monkeys. In reply to Vali Lord Rama says that he has punished him on behalf of king Bharath (brother of Rama) who is presently ruling the country) for his number of misdeeds (sins). He has developed unnecessary enmity with his brother without even trying to know the truth and teased him like anything. He with his might taken over all the properties including the wife of his brother forgetting the least etiquette. Rama after putting forth all the sins committed by Vali says that he has given punishment (Rajadandana) in this earth itself to save him from the punishment of the hell (Yamadhandana). At last Vali confesses his sins and extends his thanks to Rama for giving the right punishment on the surface of earth itself and thereby stopping the more severe punishments of the Hell. Accordingly Vali after leaving the body enters the brighter worlds (uttam lokas) directly without passing through Hell and Heaven.

In this context a view on the present day attitudes is needed. Now a days many people’s goal of life is to earn money. For which they are adopting dishonest and illegal methods. Even number of high professionals and business people are also on the same way. Though they are liable for Rajadhandana(punishment on the earth) they are escaping the said punishment by their intelligent behavior, tactics and with the help of political leaders. But they are forgetting that Yamadandana(punishment in the Hell) is reserved for them.

Some people with their might, money, power, political background and status, take the law into their hands, commit crimes, suppress the facts and escape from punishment (Rajadhandana) and feel that they are above all. They also help their supporters, kith and kin in escaping the punishments. Some other people help the above sinners with their false evidence . There are some others who keep themselves silent to the atrocities and even accidents happened before their eyes forgetting their minimum responsibilities . All these types of people, the sinners, the supporters and the silent spectators will be subjected to the manifold punishments in the Hell (Yamadhandana). They may think that they are brave ,intelligent and wise. But in fact they are greater fools because they invite more severe punishment of the Hell in place of simple worldly punishment. In one way the prisoners are fortunate, because they become clean and pure by undergoing their punishments in jail for the crimes committed by them and thereby avoiding the Hell. Some may think that how punishment will be imposed in the Hell when the physical body after death will be buried or burnt, on the earth itself. For this our scriptures say that a Special body called Yatana Sareera ( body for receiving punishments) will be provided to the soul in the hell for implementing punishments.

On observation of Indian epics, we find another greatness of this earth viz., it is a place where one can take up penance (tapam) and qualify for the brighter worlds. The Hell and the Heaven are the places where one can undergo punishments and pleasures respectively. That’s all. After undergoing these pleasures or sufferings one has to born again on the earth to gain real qualification to enter into the kingdom of the Lord. The Gods and Goddesses of the Heaven are also bound to be born on the earth to take up penance with the help of Master(Guru) for their evolution. There is no chance in Hell or Heaven to take up penance i.e., Tapa for evolving spiritually and to go to the state of mergence with the Ultimate . Earth is the only fittest place for this. One can mould the life in such a way that it gains no effects of vices and virtues, good and bad. This can be achieved by performing everything in the sense of duty taking no credit of anything on himself. Having balanced condition with no attachment and detachment towards the happenings in the life is the best. Better to think that all the happenings are according to the will of God and the only thing remaining is to adjust oneself to the will of God. Leading this kind of life having continued dependence on God(ultimate) is itself a great penance and by which one can achieve the real goal of life. Because of this selfless real life, one need not go to Hell or Heaven or to take rebirth on earth. Such a pure person merges in the ultimate at last.

To lead a pious, peaceful and real life with the guidelines of Sri Ramachandraji Maharaj(founder of Sahajmarg), please see the other spiritual articles of this Web site.

Courtesy: Sri P. Subbarayudu (Preceptor) and Sri B.E. Sampath Kumar (Abhyasi) of Sri RamaChandraji Maharaj Seva Trust, Kadapa.

Wants and Desires

2011-04-22T09:58:00.009+05:30

Generally we have some desires. It is quite natural. But we should not become slaves of our wishes. That means we should not have undue attachment towards the things. We see so many things with the idea of having them. This is not correct. To live in this world we need few things. Aspiring for them is not a vice. Food, water, clothes, shelter, education - all these things are necessities. We can aspire for them. So having things is not bad, but having undue attachment towards them is bad. If you are economically sound, you can have some more comforts. Otherwise you will be called a miser. But you should be in a position to live even without those comforts. That means you should always be prepared to live in all the circumstances i.e., in both favourable and unfavourable ones with utmost satisfaction and contentment. A happy man is one who lives happily in all circumstances.

Some people say that free from desires is a high condition. May be. Is it possible? Our personal experience tells that it is not possible, because God realisation is also a desire and everybody accept that it is an appropriate desire. So one thing we should have is control on ourselves. Moreover we should have discriminating power to judge which is required and which is not.
In general people are lacking in this discriminating faculty. We are getting our children educated in so many subjects, which are meant for making money, leaving aside the real education of human life. Thereby people are longing to dump the unwanted and unnecessary things indiscriminately.

Our spiritual leaders have shown a right way to own this faculty of discrimination. They formulated a fourfold method of practice called ‘Sadhana Chathustaya’. This consists of Viveka, Vyragya, Shatsampathi, and Mumukshatva. As stated above, the first one ‘Viveka’ is otherwise called as ‘discrimination’. Sri Ramachandraji Maharaj of Shajahanpur has mentioned that this Viveka and Vairagya are not the practices (sadhanas) but are the results of the practice. He wants to say that if you practice meditation, you will get Viveka, the discriminating power and thereby you develop ‘Vairagya’ i.e., disinterest in mundane, unreal and perishing things. This is the only way of conquering the desires.

Another important thing what Sri Ramachandra Maharaj tells is that we cannot completely wash off the so called vices Kama (desire) and Krodha (anger). But they can be brought to such a finer and finer level so that they may not harm us. Moreover they may help us too. For example, desires of pious people give inspiration to them to do so many good things i.e. service activities. That means they desire to do good. Without desire how can one do even good things? In the same way anger of a pious person will set right the wrongs of ordinary people. Even to send a boy to school some anger is required at times. Is this not a good thing?

But one thing to be kept in mind is that one should cultivate the habit of living with minimum facilities. One should get on with the old things as for as possible. Purchase of a new one should be avoided to the extent possible. As far as anger is concerned one should exhibit it with no cruelty in mind and heart. Only with the idea of correcting others one should show anger.
In practice one may find it difficult to show the above controlled and finer conditions of desires and Anger. Yes it is so because we try to control them. Our trial to control them will meet with failure. They should become our own naturally and automatically. This is possible only by meditation (Yoga). By doing meditation all the above virtues will be developed naturally with no separate attempt for them. In another way we can say that they are all the by-products of meditation.

A matured pious and elevated person wants, begs and prays at the threshold of the great Master for others. He wants that the whole Universe should be in a peaceful condition. See the following versus of RABIA, the Sufi Mystic:-

" O God! Whatever share of this world Thou has allotted to me

bestow it on Thine enemies. And whatever share of the next world

Thou has allotted to me bestow it on thy friends. Thou art enough for me.

" O God! If I worship Thee in fear of Hell burn me in Hell.

and if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise exclude me

from Paradise, but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake

withhold not Thine Everlasting Beauty."

Herein Rabia begs at the door of Great Master of totality for the welfare of others only. There is a fine philosophical point hidden in this prayer. If you pray for others, you are benefitting others by single hand. But at the same time you are being benifitted by the prayer of so may people in turn. This is a very very profitable method in case the majority follows it. So this is a method to be propagated.

For other details of prayer, yoga and meditation see the article "The real goal of human life" in this website.

Courtesy: Sri P.Subbarayudu,Preceptor and Sri B.E.Sampath Kumar, Abhyasi, Sri Ramachandraji Maharaj Seva Trust, Kadapa.