Meditations on Transcendence

Last week we saw lots of bombs and bomb scares across Indian cities. Enviousness or misplaced religious ideologies are the heart of such destructive actions. Religious identity has lead to perpetration of violence. How do religion and spirituality differ? Are these the same things? Spirituality is the essence, the core and religion the vehicle. The inherent essence of spirituality is same across all religions - only the body, the vehicle carrying this essence varies. Its like using a Tata safari or Scorpio to come to office. The essence is traveling and one need not get fanatic about belonging to a safari or a Scorpio club. Today's civilization has totally forgotten the essence and carrying on a specific set of meaningless rituals, customs in the name of religion. We all sometime or the other have taken pleasure in thinking ourselves superior to others. Religious identity is used as a tool to enjoy the kick of feeling superior to others. But spirituality teaches us to be humbl...

Monsoon is out here in bangalore ...........I left early in the evening from office suspecting downpour. I usually have the option of taking either the old Madras-lifestyle-Ashoka pillar-4th block route or the inner ring road-Koramangala-Silkboard route to find every evening nirvana at home. I hugely rely on my intuition to make the decision at the breakaway point. Its this belief in the predictive capability of the subconsious faculty. Somewhere a hidden inner energy guides us, hints us about the right choices. As it is we have complex innumerable possibilities, with our finite resources has to be supplemented by tuning in to the inner voice - the voice of the infinite. Its simple when the mental faculty is in alignment with the inner voice. The test of faith comes when it is in crossroads with the innervoice. Everybody at some point in their life have to make this leap of faith in investing and acting on the innervoice. Faith and immense belief in the innervoice takes one to unknown ...

The other day as i was wading thru the morning traffic, i couldnt help but notice the new big billboard on MG road opposite HSBC bank. The vibrant dashing colors attracted my attention. The bangalore metro in construction slows down the speed after one crosses the Raheja tower circle on MG road. This makes it easy for one to catch glimpse of huge billboards on both sides of the road. The billboard read -'Kahani Hamare Mahabharath ki' with a very attractive huge cutout of the Pandavas. A new serial during everyday prime time 9PM on 9X channel. I became very excited due to my new found resurgent interest in knowing Mahabharatha in detail. My old college pal rekindled this interest in me after he showed a very authentic translation by Kisori Ganguli hosted for free on the internet. Also i became happy for my kids that they can sleep off the day by remembering the woderfully divine characters of Mahabharath rather than the Rajiv Sharmas of 'Minchu'. We wanted to come out of...

We had not seen a movie for a long time. Its almost like an addiction - one starts getting the urge to see a story sitting still for 2-3 hours - and then the excitement of the post movie crtique discussion - We decided to catch up on the 'Namesake' by Mira Nair. This was a long pending movie on our list. Namesake is about discovery of ones roots. In the globalised era, trends sweep the globe and many times the youth are caught in this wave of culture trends. These waves bring in the initial excitement of something new but over a period of time one goes so far way from his original cultural roots that one starts suffering from a identity crisis. This is the beginning when one starts feeling something amiss. The protagonist in 'Namesake' undergoes this cultural turmoil until he finds his roots and the freedom, joy that accompanies when one is in harmony with one's roots. What is a root and why one finds comfort being there? Root is our inner pe...

Love is beyond everything - beyond just plain existance and knowledge - Infact knowledge is needed to pave way for true love - to understand pure love and obtain nature, attributes in relation to pure love, one has to go thru various experiences in this world with Sri Krishna as our guide, charioter - This is that Arjuna did - Escaping from the world is not advised but at the same it is foolishness to face with world without taking inspiration from the Gita - One has to be armed with the wisdom of the Gita and face life's various intriguing situations - Is our confusion greater than Arjuna's? - who was face to face to kill or get killed by his own Grandfather and cousins, nephwes? We have to encouter such innumerable confusions armed with Sri Krishna's divine wisdom and come out victorious like Pandavas. If one observes the progression in the Gita, the initial chapters stress on knowledge of the soul, its existance uninfluenced by time. Knowledge of the soul is the foundati...

Want to understand Importance of keeping good company - go and see Spiderman 3 - Its Aunt May's affection, religiosity, his pure innocent love for MJ and his faith in divinity which makes Spidey get free from the Green thing. Are we all overcome by the green thing similar to Spidey? Yes says Sri Krishna in the Gita. The Green thing in our life is association with mode of passion (Rajo guna). We develop lust in contact with mode of passion and lust is the all devouring enemy in this world. Chapter 3, Verse 36. Arjuna said: O descendant of Vrsni, by what is one impelled to sinful acts, even unwillingly, as if engaged by force? Chapter 3, Verse 37. The Blessed Lord said: It is lust only, Arjuna, which is born of contact with the material modes of passion and later transformed into wrath, and which is the all-devouring, sinful enemy of this world. Chapter 3, Verse 38. As fire is covered by smoke, as a mirror is covered by dust, or as the embryo is covered by the womb, similarly, th...

Arjuna was local and family conscious. Due to illusion his systems and cosmic thinking was covered. Confusion is a result of lack of systems thinking. Sri Krishna thru his friendly discussion elevates Arjuna from a local thinking to cosmic thinking which brings clarity to him on his purpose, duty seeing himself as a component in the cosmic setup. Armed with Cosmic thinking, illusion shattered he gets energised to fight .................... Quite often when we are confused and in a decision junction like Arjuna, systems/cosmic thinking can help us to choose the right path. its true for individuals, relationships, corporations, business decisions etc........ Being Stitha Prajna is a result of training the mind to always live in Cosmic thinking and acting as a component contributing to the cosmic goal. Following are some of the conversation snippets from The Gita: 2.17 -> Arjuna said Now I am confused about my duty and have lost all composure because of weakness. In this condition I am...