Who let the dogs out???? Sunday, Dec 9 2007

This article has been moved to the location below

Who let the dogs out?

2 Responses »

 

A Musical Marvel called Ilayaraja Wednesday, Oct 3 2007

This article has been moved to the location below

A Musical Marvel called Ilayaraja

21 Responses »

 

Mokshapath – Snake and Ladder Thursday, May 31 2007

Snake and Ladder is an ancient Indian game which was brought to west by the British in 1892. It was called Mokshapath meaning Path to Salvation. In sanskrit Moksh=Salvation and Path=Path !!

Let us understand its basics.

The vedic (hindu) belief about life and death is of rebirth. One life form might be reborn as any form of life after its death. A human in this birth might be reborn as an insect in his next birth. A frog in this birth might be reborn as a human in its next birth!

This cycle of life and death and rebirth continues, which is why the vedas say that ‘soul never dies’! Depending on how well a soul spends its life doing good things, it can be freed from this cycle of life, death and rebirth and attain Moksha (Probably enter heaven and live happily ever after!).

So the aim of life is to attain this Moksha or Nirvana! Vedas say that it is extremely lucky to be born as a human and that one should not miss this opportunity to get the most out of it. One has to use this to get Moksha where a normal soul (Aatma) gets united with the Universal soul (Paramaatma) and is freed from the cycle of birth and death! There are stories in vedas where even other life forms like animals attained Moksha by their good deeds! So its not limited to humans alone!

Well, these things interest me from a point of enquiry as to what we really are? Where did we come from? What is all that is going on here

In kannada there is a poem which says
‘Allide Nammane Illi bande Summane’
which means ‘My house is out there, I came here just for some time pass’

Well, another kannada poem says
‘Niddegomme Nitya Marana Edda Sala Naveena Janana’
which means, ‘A daily death every night we sleep, a new birth every morning we get up’! What a wonderful thought!

Coming back to the original topic of Snake and Ladder, this game originated in ancient India and was called ‘Mokshapath’ which means the path of salvation. The ultimate goal of the game was to achieve salvation by reaching the top. Every time a person does a bad deed, he ends up at the snake’s mouth and is demoted in the game of attaining salvation.

Every time a person does a good deed, he ends up at the ladder’s bottom and is promoted upwards in the game of attaining salvation.! The aim of this game was to teach children the basic tenets of hindiusm that lies in the vedas. Good deeds we move up in life. Bad deeds and we move down in life. The ladders represented virtues and snakes vices.

The game was drawn out on a cloth divided into blocks called houses, each representing emotions. For ex: the snake at hinsa (violence) would take one down to mahanarak (great hell) while ladder at Vidyabhyas (education) would take one up to the Shastras (knowledge). The game was played with dices and cowrie-shells.

In the original game, these were the squares where ladder was found to move upwards.

• 12 was faith
• 51 was Reliability
• 57 was Generosity
• 76 was Knowledge
• 78 was Asceticism.

Snakes were found at the following squares.

• 41 was for Disobedience
• 44 for Arrogance
• 49 for Vulgarity
• 52 for Theft
• 58 for Lying
• 62 for Drunkenness
• 69 for Debt
• 73 for Murder
• 84 for Anger
• 92 for Greed
• 95 for Pride
• 99 for Lust

1oo was the square of Moksha or Nirvana! The ultimate goal of the game. You win when you reach the 100th square!

The british took this game to England from India in 1892 and called it “snakes and ladders” (which I feel is a rather very uninteresting name, compared to Mokshapath – Path of Nirvana )

5 Responses »

 

Root of all evil Tuesday, Apr 24 2007

Religion as the root of all evil on this planet ?

One cannot disagree more with the above statement after viewing the below mentioned thought provoking documentary videos.

Part I – The God Delusion

Part II – The Virus of Faith

When I say ‘east’ below, I mean ‘India and towards the east of India’
and west means ‘the world towards the west of India’

Interestingly after going through the documentary I find that the aspect of violence is not present in the eastern religions all of which have their origin in India -Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, or say in the related variations like Zen, Taoism, Confucianism etc

Unlike the western religions, in the eastern religions good and bad people are distinguished not based on whether they are believers or non-believers. According to the ancient vedic teachings of hinduism, those who help others in need and do their duties are good (Vedas say ‘Dharmo Rakshathi Rakshithaha’ -which means he who performs his moral duties, helps those in need is in turn protected by his deeds). Those who hurt others are considered evil.

For that matter intentionally hurting ourselves is also evil says hinduism, buddhism and Jainism. So you will never find a suicide bomber in these religions 

Also, unlike christianity which I feel has a negative effect as it says ‘We all are sinners. And son of the god came to pay for our sins’, which I strongly disagree with, for I am no sinner, and I dont need anybody else to pay for it even if I ever commit one.

Does it mean people can continue to commit sins, since their sins have already been paid for? Doesnt it sound absurd? The very thought brings the picture of a crime filled society in front of our eyes. Thank god not all are taking these teachings that seriously  How on earth can a inncocent new born baby or a child be considered a sinner?

Now look at the eastern religions, say hinduism, the thought of each human being here is as a pure soul, a clean spirit, and this has so positive effect on our morals. In hinduism ,we are not considered sinners, instead vedas say ‘Aham Brahmasmi’ which means ‘I am the God’ or ‘God lives within me’. The whole thought is so positive in spirit and encourages a person to do all good deeds like a God. NO negative or inferior feelings about ones ‘self’ are allowed here. In my language Kannada there is a hymn ‘Enna Kaale Kambha, Dehave Degula, Shirave Honna Kalasha’ – which can be summarized as ‘My body is a temple where God lives’. What a pleasant feeling it is..

This is the major difference between western and eastern religious cultures. In the west people celebrate their birthday by putting off the candles ‘which is a symbol of desctruction, the light is put off’

On the contrary, in the east, we celebrate every occassion by lighting lamps – the symbol of spreading light, being constructive. Vedas say – ‘Tamaso Ma Jyotirgamaya’, which means ‘From darkness towards light’
In the eastern religions putting off a lamp or any other source of light is considered bad, negative, as it introduces darkness..

Well I am not against any religion, but this is just a analysis of what I have seen and understood about the cultures. I am definitely proud about my ancient Indian culture. though I am not deeply religious. I dont go to temples and pray to god asking ‘give me that, give me this’, if God really exists, I think he is intelligent enough to know my needs and will definitely give me the best what I really need, there is no need to pamper him with offerings, prayers and what not, I dont think God thinks so cheaply that you have to bribe him to get your things done. Yes, but I do thank God for this wondeful universe, for the food I eat, for the nature I see, for the good health I have, for the great friends I have and for everything else that I have.. 

In fact I love to converse with God on the nature of the universe, as to why do we exist (not in a spiritual sense, but in a scientific sense), about the laws that govern the universe and what not.

I do feel that there is a great need in the west to become more spiritual (which preaches love NOT hatred, enquiry and thought NOT faith) than blind religious. I suggest people to try out the Art of Living, though I am not associated with it in anyway.

Faith is dangerous because it doesnt allow you to question it. The church does not want scientists to enquire into Big Bang bcos it feels that since God created universe we should not enquire into that creation!! Nothing sounds more absurd to me. Did God tell them that ‘Dont enquire into my creation, I fear that you will then understand everything about the universe, and then what will my value be?’ Well, if God did not wanted us to enquire into the creation of the universe, he would have simply not given us that intelligence at all, right ?

In fact I was so surprised when I saw the video, that in the western world (which many people in the east think as a well developed and more civilized and well educated society) they teach children that the universe is only a few thousand years old and all of us were created in 7 or 10 days or whatever ! I couldnt control laughing and really felt sorry for those kids who study in these educational(?) institutions.

As an observation, divorce rates have increased in India in those urban places where western culture has creeped in. Otherwise, you will rarely hear about a divorce in India.

Faith is dangerous because it does not allow you to question things, and when you cannot question things you dont enquire into it, and when you dont enquire into it you wont understand it, and when you wont understand it you wont invent anything new. If all humans had been strictly religious, we would have been still living in old stone age. Thank God (:0) there are thinkers too on this planet who would love to enquire into hows and whys.

More than a thousand years before Galileo was humiliated and giordano was burnt alive in the west by the church for having declared Sun as the center of the Solar system and earth to be moving, in India Aryabhatta wrote a book on the same subject saying ‘Sun is the Center of the Solar System and earth revolves around it’ and lived the life of a great scholar. I really feel proud to be an Indian.

The church said Earth doesnt move. Science proved otherwise! Yet they humiliated Galileo, burnt Giordano alive!

Then they said Earth is the center of the Universe! But then science proved otherwise, earth is nowhere in the scene and even for our local solar system Sun is the center!

Then the church said God created universe in some 7 or 10 days. Science proved otherwise. Universe has been there for billions of years and life on earth also evolved over millions of years, not like an instant coffee in 7 or 10 days!

Just imagine where we would have been if some of the humans had not taken those steps of thinking instead of blindly believing what religions say! I am glad that I was brought up as a thinker and not a blind believer of some faith.

Also its interesting to note that none of the western religions talk about things which would have been a product only of a scientific enquiry. Why doesnt the holy books say anything about quasars, quantum mechanics, black holes, planets invisible to naked eye, doesnt these data makes it clear enough that religions are creation of narrow minded humans and not GOD? Well for those who object for my specifying ‘western religions’ in this paragraph, let me tell you that eastern religions are more scientific and have a spirit of enquiry in them. If you disagree with me, please read ‘The dancing Wu Li Masters, ‘The Tao of Physics’, ‘The arctic home in the vedas’, or look into what great scientists like Neils Bohr, Oppenheimer, Schrodinger, etc had to say about the vedic texts, Bhagavadgita etc…

Now my question is when the religion is so wrong, why on earth do we need it ? Cant we be good to fellow humans beings and other life forms on this planet, do good, progress, be thinkers, make earth a better place to live, and NOT be religious at the same time? Or atleast let us not follow those preachings which encourage us to commit crime, hate or hurt others, consider ourselves sinners, teach scientifically wrong things, suppress the spirit of enquiry and reasoning

43 Responses »

 

Going up? Monday, Apr 23 2007

A friend of mine wanted to smoke a Wills cigaratte and I just created a funny two liner on the fly and warned him about the dangers of smoking saying,

‘Where there is a will there is a way,
Where there is a Wills cigaratte, there is only one way’ and pointed upwards towards the sky’

As we all know ‘going up’ means death. That is what I meant – ‘Cigaratte smoking is injurious to health and may cause death’

Then suddenly I had a thought. Why in most cultures ‘going up’ – pointing towards the sky, is related to death?

Does it mean that our ancients came from some of those planets out there in the deep space? Earth is a matrix environment for their experiments. Death is not the end of life. Souls do exist. Which is why eastern cultures talk about the concept of rebirth. There is nothing called true death of a person. A person ceasing to exist (which actually means his body ceased to exist) is NOT THE SAME AS the person actually dying ??

After death do we all return back to our creator’s planet/s where the definition of life is completely different, say in the form of souls, not in the form of the bodies we have here on earth? That is why ancient vedic texts say that soul is undestroyable and we are just actors in the play of our life. Do we come to earth like how actors sign up to act in a movie? We play our act and then wind up (which other actors here call death?)

Is that why ancient hinduism calls upon us to concentrate on knowing who we really are?? Are we some kind of test cases in the development of a huge software product? Are we some experimental setup in doing research for some kind of feasible evolutionary system?
Or is MATRIX true? Probably this is a good matrix, not an evil one. Thank GOD

There is a wonderful poem in Kannada which says ‘Allide Nammane, illi bande summane’ which means ‘My true house is out there, I came here just like that for a visit’

Now please dont tell me that I am talking about GOD. GOD as we know created the universe. (Well, its different that in hinduism GOD is the universe itself and all its forms!)

But here I am talking about those who were created well after the creation of the universe following the big bang and then that probably they created us. Some kind of Sub GOD or a sub level of GOD

So we report to these people, who in turn hopefully direcly report to GOD

My friend who wanted to smoke only one cigaratte, ended up smoking two more after listening to my thoughts :=))

2 Responses »

 

Sri Krishna Sandhana Friday, Mar 30 2007

A very funny video of a drama practice in Kannada. If you know kannada you will definitely enjoy this wonderful humorous Video. Please do not forget to rate the video by clicking on the stars above the download tag on the right hand side, so that even others who search for funny videos dont miss it.

ಶ್ರೀ ಕ್ರಷ್ಣ ಸಂಧಾನ ನಾಟಕದ ಅಭ್ಯಾಸವನ್ನೇ ಒಂದು ನಾಟಕವನ್ನಾಗಿ ಮಾಡಿ ಅದರಲ್ಲಿ ಹಾಸ್ಯ ಸನ್ನಿವೇಶಗಳನ್ನು ತುಂಬಿ ಈ ವಿಶಿಷ್ಟ ನಾಟಕ ಪ್ರಯೋಗ ಮಾಡಲಾಗಿದೆ. ನೋಡ್ತಾ ಇದ್ದರೆ ನಕ್ಕೂ ನಕ್ಕೂ ಸುಸ್ತಾಗ್ತೀರಿ

ನೋಡಿ, ಮಸ್ತ್ ಮಜಾ ಮಾಡಿ

ನಿಜಕ್ಕೂ ಬಹಳ ಬೊಂಬಾಟಾಗಿದೆ ಕಣ್ರೀ

ಗಮನಿಸಿ: ಭಾಗ ೧ ಅಷ್ಟೊಂದು ಮಜಾ ಇಲ್ಲ, ಬೇಕಿದ್ರೆ ಅದನ್ನ ಎಗರಿಸಿ

ಭಾಗ ೧ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2825489823057723599

ಭಾಗ ೨ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2050170128071471438

ಭಾಗ ೩ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1305017522477168088

ಭಾಗ ೪ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4640443690874195947

One Response »