U.G.Krishnamurti Quotes

A messiah is the one who leaves a mess behind him in this world.

Religions have promised roses but you end up with only thorns.

Going to the pub or the temple is exactly the same; it is quick fix.

The body has no independent existence. You are a squatter there.

God and sex go together. If God goes sex goes, too.

All experiences however extraordinary they may be are in the area of sensuality.

Man cannot be anything other than what he is. Whatever he is, he will create a society that mirrors him.

Love and hate are not opposite ends of the same spectrum; they are one and the same thing. They are much closer than kissing cousins.

Gurus play a social role, so do prostitutes.

By using the models of Jesus, Buddha, or Krishna we have destroyed the possibility of nature throwing up unique individuals.

It would be more interesting to learn from children, than try to teach them how to behave, how to live and how to function.

All I can guarantee you is that as long as you are searching for happiness, you will remain unhappy.

You eat not food but ideas. What you wear are not clothes, but labels and names.

The plain fact is that if you don’t have a problem, you create one. If you don’t have a problem you don’t feel that you are living.

That messy thing called ‘mind’ has created many destructive things. By far the most destructive of them all is God.

Atmospheric pollution is most harmless when compared to the spiritual and religious pollution that have plagued the world.

Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, where as culture has invented a single mold to which all must conform. It is grotesque.

Useful links for Advaita Vedanta

1.Advaita Vedanta Library
http://www.geocities.com/advaitavedant/index.htm

2.Sankaracharya page
http://www.sankaracharya.org/index.php
This site has also works of Ramana Maharishi and Nisaragadatta Maharaj.

3.Realization
http://www.realization.org/

4.http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/avhp/one-many.html

5.One of the best sites...from modern writers of Advaita
http://www.advaita.org.uk/

6.Vedanta for Beginners
http://www.geocities.com/neovedanta/index.html

7.This site has Sanskrit verses of Sankara
http://www.shaivam.org/ssdashashloki.htm

8.http://lists.advaita-vedanta.org/

Illuminating Tribal India

I came across this article which talks about other natural forms of energy.As a electrical engineer,solar energy has always been my main interest.
So nice to know there are good people like Prof.Shrinivasa who work for the "poorest of the poor".

http://goodnewsindia.com/index.php/Magazine/story/biodiesel-chalbardi

I love trees

I was 8 years old and I remember the day, when one of the oldest trees near my house was cut down, to build a house.I shed silent tears for my forgotten friend.Sometimes I felt that I suffer from a mental delusion or I am too Over- Sensitive towards living beings.I have spent countless hours on the terrace...alone...gazing at stars, moon and infinity.Learnt a lot about life from the silent green beings which surrounded my house.

I am quite grateful to my parents that they never pushed me into any extra curricular activities.I was left on my own to explore.I feel as a kid when we explore the world on our own ,nature gives us the best gift.
Creativity!!!

The silence of the heavenly bodies taught me music.Silence is the most important aspect of music.Years later when I took piano classes to study Beethoven and Mozart..I was amazed at the similarities.

Observing nature is so important in painting.I used to always feel that I am reproducing nature in my paintings.But now I realize that I reproduce what I absorb.Its a honor to imitate nature in its splendid glory.

We create reality every instant.Words are just a small percent of reality we absorb.
Silence is again fundamental to words.If we don't have a period of silence in a day we ruin the mind with too many thoughts.Most of our words are repetitions of everyday incidents.We ask everyday the same questions.How are you,How are you doing,what happened, joys , sorrows,limitations...These words take away chunks of our time...We never dive deep into ourselves because all day long we are telling each other how we are doing.Few of the courtesy calls cannot be avoided,they come with our jobs.But when it comes to our personal space we can transform it into a knowledgeable experience.Once the words stop we realize the power of words.The external world then slowly crawls into the internal self and hopefully we find a calm/peaceful mind.

Useful Links !!!

Ngo/Social Entrepreneurship

1.NGO post
http://ngopost.org/
This site gives the various ngo activities in India.

2.India Together
http://www.indiatogether.org/
A good list of articles for anyone worried about social/economic issues in India.

3.TED
One of the best sites I have come across!!!

www.ted.com
Few of my recent favs...
The myth of violence
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/163

Working of the mind by neurologist Vilayanur Ramachandran
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/184

Habit of Happiness by Matthieu Ricard(Buddhist monk)
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/191

There are other beautiful speeches which are present in the archives...

Spirituality

1.Sanskrit movie on Adi Sankaracharya

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=
1047087149251803384&q=adi+sankaracharya+movie&total=12&start=0&
num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

2.I am that

http://www.sankaracharya.org/i_am_that.php

The transformation

The hardest part for any person trying to contemplate the truth is that they have to shift from the state of meditation to the state of reality.For people who have reached truth have no problems.Every moment for them is the one moment of truth.But if we have to function as mortals in the world it is so hard to shift.The calmness which we reach when we let go and the next moment when we have to drive our self into work to meet a deadline seem contradictory.May be this is one of the reasons that isolation has been the first medicine given to a patient when they are going crazy.Getting used to silence is quite difficult but after you discover silence ...the noise becomes unbearable.In essence it should not disturb us because we hear noise because we have experienced silence.Buddha used to say if their was no illusion then there would be no enlightenment.So its a reverse process we should get used to.First accept silence and then accept noise.If you say one does not exist or you won't surrender to it,then we are not growing,we are not transforming.

Courage

I feel meditation is looked upon as some great halo generating process which tells you to be silent and then generate loads of peace..
Every person who is developing awareness will frankly say "No"
Meditation leads you,its a journey but it requires lots of courage.The lies you tell yourself and others start pricking you.Many people leave you as they get scared of your insistence for knowing the truth. But if you are creating awareness for yourself it does not matter.You realize that everything has to die.You don't argue for what you feel is right because everyone is right in their own way.But the best thing which I feel awareness teaches you is "not being desperate"for anything.
Money,success,love or other things which you are supposed to pray and hope for does not trouble you.
Personally I feel the honesty which comes up can be quite painful if we don't check our standards.Judgments and identity are the root cause of all pain.

Break!!!

I am taking a break from blogging ..I dont know when I will return to blog world...

Marraige...........

Is marriage really the end of love?
By Swami Chaitanya Keerthi


Socrates had a quarrelsome wife but when disciples asked him whether they should marry, he always advised them to. "If you are fortunate you'll get a good wife. If you get a wife like mine, you'll still be fortunate as she will help you become Socrates!"

But people like Socrates are rare. Most men cannot handle the misery, and either escape or get frustrated. The same goes for women as well. In her marriage, a woman may find the most terrible person who makes life hell for her. In fact, in most Indian marriages, women suffer more than men. What is the way out of this misery?

German politician Gabriele Pauli recently proposed that marriage contracts should be valid for seven years; after that couples who didn't feel the proverbial itch could renew them, else walk away. This may sound radical but it isn't.

People are divorcing faster today and most of the marriages in the so-called first world don't last more than three years. Those that last have little life in them.

Love is like a real flower. It doesn't live longer than it's meant to. But when love is converted into marriage, it starts to lose its tenderness. It acquires a plastic nature; plastic lives for as long as you wish it to but doesn't pulsate with life.

Love, like life, is always insecure. It cannot promise to be forever. That's why it is really very precious. One moment of real love is more valuable than an eternity of plastic life. But most people with deep insecurities go for a plastic marriage rather than wait for the real throbbing life of love, for they are scared to live alone.

Osho calls marriage the ‘coffin of love'. He says: "They all say that love is eternal, never dies. Absolutely wrong. Real love dies sooner than unreal love. Unreal love can live long; it is unreal, how can it die? If you are pretending, you can pretend as long as you want to."

Osho also tells us: "Love needs only one thing, and that is courage. Courage to die into the other, to drop your own identity, your ego. Millions have decided not to love, but then life is misery, life is hell."

"If one really wants to live, one must be ready for insecurity, and love brings the greatest insecurity in the world because love cannot promise tomorrow. Love is of the moment, for the moment, in the moment. Love can only speak for this moment, not for the next; the next remains open, vulnerable, insecure." "Love may be, may not be. Love has no guarantee whatsoever. Which is why people choose marriage over love. Marriage is secure and safe, guaranteed by the law and the government and the society and the church-something they can depend upon. But in that very choice they commit suicide for they will never really live."

"Life itself is insecure. Life knows nothing of security. Death is very secure, so those who are cowardly choose death instead of life. They choose the false and the plastic instead of the real. And those who are courageous, they choose the real. They go with it, wherever it may lead. They surrender to it. They are ready to go into the uncharted and the unknown and the unseen." And they truly live...

WORDS OF WISDOM

"Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry." - Tom Mullen, author.

"Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other who never forgets." - Ogden Nash, author & poet.

Ignorant minds

In India most of the people want to be fair.Let me be "advertising-ly" correct..Fair and Lovely...
But in USA there is the reverse problem.Most of the Americans want to be tanned.Most of the Indians torture a dark skinned female...The same woman in USA is actually the most popular.I once saw a episode of DR.Phil (show) in which an American girl was on the verge of getting skin cancer because she was using all the harmful techniques of tanning.(chemical and other poisonous ones)
In normal discussions with my friend's I start blaming the celebrities who endorse such product and ruin millions of lives.Then I blame the government for actually allowing such ads to be run on television.Its partly their fault.Mostly it's the fault of the ignorant minds.Most of the educated people are also so unconscious to their own needs.
They believe ads and adjust their life style according to that.Wearing branded clothes is seen as a status issue.I have met so many people who think buying clothes from a smaller shop/mall/sales is beneath their dignity.
They forget that the Mahatma Gandhi,Mother Teresa ,Rabindranath Tagore became famous not because of their specific clothing brand.The outer self is just an appearance.The skin colour cannot be changed.You can lighten it...but if the person does not like you (for what you are)then its better to be yourself and find someone else.Wearing good clothes does not alter your inner self.Good looking people have specific advantages.Studies have showed that taller boys are preferred by most of the girls in the world.Beautiful girls are preferred by most of the boys in the world.But there are other things by which a person is also judged and chosen.By showing good looking(smiling and happy) people endorsing the product does not mean that a person who is not attractive will suddenly become very charming.It just a marketing strategy.I hope people realize and spend money on products bit more carefully!!!


other articles on Fair culture in India.
http://vsequeira.blogspot.com/2005/07/fair-lovely.html
http://dcubed.blogspot.com/2005/07/fair-empowered.html
http://diproject.squarespace.com/weblog/2005/8/19/are-you-white-or-wheatish.html

Situation in Vidarbha/Suicides

This is one of the documentary which tells about the suicides of Vidarbha.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/vidarbha/index.html

A story about non violence

How my father taught me non violence

By Arun Gandhi

I was 16 years old and living with my parents at the institute my grandfather had founded 18 miles outside of Durban, South Africa, in the middle of the sugar plantations. We were deep in the country and had no neighbors, so my two sisters and I would always look forward to going to town to visit friends or go to the movies.

One day, my father asked me to drive him to town for an all-day conference, and I jumped at the chance. Since I was going to town, my mother gave me a list of groceries she needed and, since I had all day in town, my father ask me to take care of several pending chores, such as getting the car serviced. When I dropped my father off that morning, he said, 'I will meet you here at 5:00 p.m., and we will go home together.'

After hurriedly completing my chores, I went straight to the nearest movie theatre. I got so engrossed in a John Wayne double-feature that I forgot the time. It was 5:30 before I remembered. By the time I ran to the garage and got the car and hurried to where my father was waiting for me, it was almost 6:00. He anxiously asked me, 'Why were you late?' I was so ashamed of telling him I was watching a John Wayne western movie that I said, 'The car wasn't ready, so I had to wait,' not realizing that he had already called the garage. When he caught me in the lie, he said: 'There's something wrong in the way I brought you up that didn't give you the confidence to tell me the truth. In order to figure out where I went wrong with you, I'm going to walk home 18 miles and think about it.'

So, dressed in his suit and dress shoes, he began to walk home in the dark on mostly unpaved, unlit roads. I couldn't leave him, so for five-and-a-half hours I drove behind him, watching my father go through this agony for a stupid lie that I uttered.

I decided then and there that I was never going to lie again. I often think about that episode and wonder, if he had punished me the way we punish our children, whether I would have learned a lesson at all. I don't think so. I would have suffered the punishment and gone on doing the same thing. But this single non-violent action was so powerful that it is still as if it happened yesterday. That is the power of non-violence.

Words

I feel we live in the culture of words.Everywhere we are demonstrating our love/hate through quotations and expressions.I don't react to compliments or insults.Because both cause us grief in different ways.We someone says us something we mix it up with our own insight and then examine it.We all are the masters of our own selves.We can easily know what our negative and positive points are.Many people feel an extreme need to praise others because they are dependent on the person.When we are in a bad mood we insult others vehemently.All judgments also come from lack of self esteem/self confidence.All labels which cause so much hurt also come from people who are not comfortable in their own skin.

Most important use of words is to ask relevant questions.This questioning ability which was the most important thing in Indian culture has been lost.To analyze ourselves rationally and to realize the truth ...which is the corner stone of spirituality.Most people go to temples,follow blind rituals without questioning the reason behind it.They bribe lord to get what they want.

One of the books which talks about the relation between Self and the God is "When bad things happen to good people".It is written by a Jewish Rabbi Harold Kushner.He explains that Nature and God are two separate entities.What we should not ask is "Why did God do this to me"...Because according to him nature has its randomness which causes misery.But he goes further and explains that God gives us strength and courage to withstand the assaults of nature.

Silence is the only solution to knowing the effects of words.When we gradually become silent for particular periods of time we realize what our words mean to us.How important are useless chats ???
The impulses of anger and misery.... and also our own voice which gets lost sometimes.

Nature and Spirutuality

A spiritual seeker becomes naturally conscious of nature and its effects.Our external environment becomes our first teacher.Most of the complaints we have are the ways in which people behave.
Trees gives shade to everyone.
Flowers impart perfume to everyone.
There is no partiality towards anyone.We expect a lot from everyone around us.But we forget that all of us reflect our inborn nature.The inborn nature is sometimes hidden against other qualities.When some person is rude to us and we know that essentially that person has a bad attitude towards everyone ...we don't take it personally.
Every living thing has the same amount of truth as us.

Nature is sometimes merciful towards us...sometimes it ruins us with floods,earthquakes,volcanoes...Our lives are bounded by the same parameters..To find something in us which never changes is the only guard against anything.

To err is human...

The price we pay of being a human is sometimes we make mistakes...Some so huge ..that it ruins our life,some are so small that we forget minutes after we have committed it.Most of the mistakes which we have committed in our childhood turns into neurosis.This happens only when the adult punishes the child without making the kid understand what went wrong.Hatred towards animals,eatables,public speaking,communication,anxiety are all the gifts of the negligence committed when we were young.Everything is not doomed and I strongly believe that each habit can be re-learned.Most of them help us learn more about life and become channels for self growth.Parents make mistakes with their children and other than forgiving them we cannot have any other good option.

As adults we make loads of mistakes.The basic attitude which we should assume is
"You are not a mistake"
You are a human and Human makes a mistake...
We fail but we are not Losers..

Irrelevant Question

I had gone to one of the best hospitals in Hyderabad(Kims- Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences).
On one of the forms they had mandatory question?

Religion-

Why does the doctor needs a religion to cure me..I am surprised that instead of asking me my previous medical history they asked me my religion...

WHERE IS GOD!!!

Where is God?



A couple had two little boys, ages 8 and 10, who were excessively mischievous. They were always getting into trouble and their parents knew that, if any mischief occurred in their town, their sons were probably involved.

The boys' mother heard that a clergyman in town had been successful in disciplining children, so she asked if he would speak with her boys. The clergyman agreed, but asked to see them individually. So the mother sent her 8-year-old first, in the morning, with the older boy to see the clergyman in the afternoon.

The clergyman, a huge man with a booming voice, sat the younger boy down and asked him sternly, "Where is God?".

The boy's mouth dropped open, but he made no response, sitting there with his mouth hanging open, wide-eyed. So the clergyman repeated the question in an even sterner tone, "Where is God!!?" Again the boy made no attempt to answer. So the clergyman raised his voice even more and shook his finger in the boy's face and bellowed, "WHERE IS GOD!?"

The boy screamed and bolted from the room, ran directly home and dove into his closet, slamming the door behind him. When his older brother found him in the closet, he asked, "What happened?"

The younger brother, gasping for breath, replied, "We are in BIG trouble this time, dude. God is missing - and they think WE did it!"

Taken from Intentblog.com

PAIN

What is pain?

The book "The Prophet" explains it well

And a woman spoke, saying, "Tell us of Pain."
And he said:
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

Dont fight...

Taken from books of Osho
The topic of conflict in the mind is discussed below

Each fragment of your mind wants to become the most powerful one. There is constant inner politics. You cannot find bliss in this constant inner war.

If you repress sex you will be in a constant war, and you can never win. Failure is absolutely certain because the more you fight with sex, the more you give energy to it. The same is the case with anger, jealousy, greed. Fighting is not the way of wisdom; it is the fool's path. The stupid and the mediocre fight. The intelligent ones transform; they absorb.

Deep down you are one person, pretending on the surface to be somebody else. There is a constant conflict between the real and the false. The false is appreciated by society, valued, respected, and the real is condemned. You have to learn ways to be two persons; you have to be constantly on guard. That creates hypocrisy, and you cannot forgive yourself; you feel guilty.

The mind is a chooser – it always chooses something against something else. It creates opposition, it creates contradiction in life. It creates extremes, and through extremes there is a constant inner war, a civil war. Don't choose, remain choiceless.It is man's freedom to choose. We can live an integrated life, we can become an organic unity – that's the whole purpose of meditation.

Why is the world not falling apart !!!

All the stereotypes are produced by a fantasy.A illusion that somewhere far far away there exists a ideal world where only good prevails.Personally I believe in a kind of dualism which equates the good to the evil.I have seen lots of good going on in the world.There are lot more NGO's working for the deprived.Most of the countries have governments run by people.We have the freedom of speech and right to information.These things were something which our ansestors could never dream of.When it comes to evils of the society they can only be wiped out when we take responsibility.Villagers are treated like handicapped people.(without a brain)Everything gets blamed on the government which is run by people like us.We vote and then we blame.We live in space age where our appetites for fast results have seeped in.We don't want five years plan of improvement but we want five minute results.

So coming to the title "Why is the world not falling apart"
because there are people and good stuff happening which helps our lives.We don't know the ways in which gifts are handed to us .Our lives don't tumble down because there are lot of people (invisible)working to make it better.They are not famous because they are not in the movie business.When we search for goodness we end up finding it everywhere.