LEFT HAS NOTHING RIGHT IN IT ...... REALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I GRABBED THIS ARTICLE FROM NEW YORK TIMES, THANKS TO THE COLUMNIST DAVID BROOKS AND NEW YORK TIMES

The Neural Buddhists

In 1996, Tom Wolfe wrote a brilliant essay called “Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died,” in which he captured the militant materialism of some modern scientists.

To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. Instead, everything arises from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behavior. Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion. Human beings are “hard-wired” to do this or that. Religion is an accident.

In this materialist view, people perceive God’s existence because their brains have evolved to confabulate belief systems. You put a magnetic helmet around their heads and they will begin to think they are having a spiritual epiphany. If they suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy, they will show signs of hyperreligiosity, an overexcitement of the brain tissue that leads sufferers to believe they are conversing with God.

Wolfe understood the central assertion contained in this kind of thinking: Everything is material and “the soul is dead.” He anticipated the way the genetic and neuroscience revolutions would affect public debate. They would kick off another fundamental argument over whether God exists.

Lo and behold, over the past decade, a new group of assertive atheists has done battle with defenders of faith. The two sides have argued about whether it is reasonable to conceive of a soul that survives the death of the body and about whether understanding the brain explains away or merely adds to our appreciation of the entity that created it.

The atheism debate is a textbook example of how a scientific revolution can change public culture. Just as “The Origin of Species reshaped social thinking, just as Einstein’s theory of relativity affected art, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see the world.

And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.

Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.

If you survey the literature (and I’d recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the wider discussion.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.

My Thoughts: pretty soon science would realize the eternal truth..................

Time by Chinmayananda

It's been a long time since i posted anything.........
atleast lets see what chinmayananda has to say about time

Fantastic Five

Train: it fascinates me every time I see it. Never have I got a full view in a single instance, it’s an engineering marvel. I am unable to distinctly define which one of these I like the most, is it the sound of speeding train or is it the wind blowing through window or is it the relative pace at which we move or the prospect of meeting new people and interacting or the thrill of starting your holiday or meeting the family back home or may be all of these. I will write a separate post on my recent train episodes.

Elephant: have you watched this animal closely? It never stands still or even sits. It always active shakes the legs, sways the trunk or swaps the ears which is kind of cute. From my childhood like every other child I have a great liking and a small fear at the sight of this animal. No other animal can replace it in my mind.

Night sky: one thing that is new every night. Yes the night sky is a good way to spend time thinking about god and his creation. The stars which twinkle like a smile, beautiful face like moon and the dark back background. The blackness of nothingness, the empty space that prevails everywhere and the mind boggling vastness makes me feel how simple yet intricate this world is. Just try to picture it in your mind and you will stand confused and fall asleep soon.

Beach: no words could explain my love for beach, it makes people forget everything and enjoy themselves. The waves which comes on and on! What else could a better place to understand nature and its secrets? Waves make you feel light and sand makes you feel very young. How often I have played in beach sand as time pass by without any worries and even without worrying about time. Being from Chennai I like the marina beach, worlds second longest beach, very much.

Child: “How to name it?” the state of happiness you attain just by watching a child. Their inept activeness, sweetness of their smile and naughtiness in their eyes cannot be found anywhere else. My heart goes with them………….

Tamil MA - great picturization

september 24th ..............................

Indians for a long time to come would remember this date for winning the twenty20 world cup. I too would like to remember this date for my life time but for entirely different reason. I finished my masters (unofficially) on the same date.
I had planned to present my practicum on 24th sep at 2 p.m. without knowing that the twenty20 final was on the same day in the morning. I would have certainly postponed my defense had I known it before. Believe me I didn’t know that India and Pakistan played a league match, when I was seriously writing my report until one of my friends said we won the match by bowl out.
Rest in the next………………..

Secular Artist M.F.Hussain

Please click on the photo to read an article by S.Gurumurthy which appeared on INDIAN EXPRESS newspaper, the article describes the arts of secular M.F.HUSSAIN.
If this is called secularism, then I am happy and proud to be spiritual and religious

journey

I travelled from Shreveport, LA to Chicago. I travelled in a small flight with just 32 seats. The flight attendant was serving good but looking normal not an air hostess stuff anyway it was comfortable for 2 hours flight. The flight was one hour late so I had to rush up in Chicago with just one and a half hour for the next flight. I made it to the gate in 20 mins. The flight wasn’t comfortable because I was seated in the middle of a five seater with guys on both sides. I was talking with the guy next to me for an hour but then he started listening to music and that’s the end. I asked for asian vegetarian food but what I got was just cheese and biscuit. I arrived in London an hour early. I went through customs check to board my connecting flight but to my astonishment they said I can carry only one carry-in bag. So I had to check in the other bag I was carrying with me all along. The immigration queue was very long but It did move fast and I went to a lady called Maheswari. I was happy that I will not have any problem since I saw the name to sound very much Indian but I was bombarded with unnecessary questions and It went for 20 mins before she finally said that I am good to go. I came to the gulf airlines counter to put my baggage in where I was informed about the cancellation of my flight. I was irritated to the core when that guy took more than 45 mins to arrange a hotel room and other necessary things for me to stay in London. I had to stay in London for 10 hours, the hotel was good and sandwich was awesome. I slept for some time and started back to the airport. I had to board a jet airways flight to Bombay and from there I had to go to Chennai. I was happy that I will travel in an Indian crowd as expected I talked with a guy from Bombay for quite some hours even before boarding the flight. We asked for side by side seats and I felt comfortable travelling with him. I was all along cursing myself and gulf-airways for the change of plans, myself for opting to a cheap trip and gulf-airways for cancelling the flight. Jet airways started a bit late about an hour (IST). I am not able to describe in words the happiness I felt at seeing the flight in that good a condition against my own prejudiced thought about jet airways. The air hostesses were young, good looking and in a way smart which made the window a distant object. They were all along serving some juice, so one or other was moving all the time. I even went around the plane just to have a look. At last I came to Bombay, the customs check went on and she asked for some money which I denied. The international airport wasn’t that inviting but the domestic airport was so good that I couldn’t believe my eyes. The flight from Bombay to Chennai was smooth and my parents and relatives were there to receive me…….

I wish i could have coffee with her!!

I am not whining about having coffee with my imaginary GF in Chennai, INDIA where I will be moving in the next few weeks to be exact on 19th of May. The newspaper heading as you are doing now made me think of a variety of things and situations within the span of a minute, before my browser could open the hidden secret. But to my bad luck the heading wasn’t related anyway to my thoughts and even if I ever had coffee with that one girl in my life that would never make the headlines. By the way I will be going to my home town, Chennai just 16 days from now. I will be staying there for three months, a very long vacation but the time as I know will melt like ice in hot sun even before I could just recap what I have done all these days. I will be spending time with my family after a brief gap of 21 months. The first time I have been out for months together all on my own.
Right now I am back to working a bit everyday which I hope will make my final project and reading “midnight’s children by Salman Rushdie”. I have gone through 100 pages which makes one fifth of the book all along I was cursing this guy for writing the book in Hinglish, mixture of Hindi and English but at last I came to grips with this guy’s way of writing which I would say is a bit different and only Indians can relate to book. As he says it in the preface it is like a history book written in bollywood style narration which makes the next scene a simple guess without any difficulty, all along feeding with me with historical facts which I would have never listened from the best of teachers. Hope to complete this book soon and planning a post on lines of this book very soon.

Till then signing off
sankar

Borifying week

I stared blankly at a white wall for about 45 minutes that was less boring than what I have gone through the whole week. I have always enjoyed being all alone, reading books, watching tv and working by the side of it. But whole through the last week I was at the peak of frustration doing nothing. I have been through 6 hours of monotonous lecture while in B.E.; I would have loved that better than last week. Even an hour long bus travel, which I hate the most, would have been thrilling. I assume walking in a desert, just watching hot sand to the end of my eye’s limit, searching may be for water and landing up in a mirage would have been more interesting. I have even enjoyed the two months when I was bed ridden due to typhoid. It would have been a rich experience to just copy text from some book to a notebook which I did for years in my school in the name of homework or better reading what I have just written, the toughest job of all. This week is one hell of a week in my borifying past and hope it will be the best in that category for the rest of my life. Borifying, a term coined to make you feel the height of my emptiness this week.

This week I have not moved an inch ahead and to say frankly I have moved backwards doubting myself a bit. I know with my faith in god and self, I will move forward quickly and confidently.

Objectivism vs. Bhagavad-Gita

The following excerpt is from AYN RAND’S book Atlas Shrugged
“Philosophers have cut man in two, setting one half against the other. They have taught him that his body and his consciousness are two enemies engaged in deadly conflict, two antagonists of opposite natures, contradictory claims, incompatible needs, that to benefit one is to injure the other, that his soul belongs to a supernatural realm, but his body is an evil prison holding it in bondage to this earth—and that the good is to defeat his body, to undermine it by years of patient struggle, digging his way to that glorious jail-break which leads into the freedom of the grave.

Philosophers have taught man that he is a hopeless misfit made of two elements, both symbols of death. A body without a soul is a corpse, a soul without a body is a ghost—yet such is their image of man's nature: the battleground of a struggle between a corpse and a ghost, a corpse endowed with some evil volition of its own and a ghost endowed with the knowledge that everything known to man is non-existent, that only the unknowable exists.

Do you observe what human faculty that doctrine was designed to ignore?
Mind”

After reading this part of the book, I compared it with my own Hindu philosophy. In Bhagavad-Gita, god says he is everywhere but nowhere to be seen by ordinary humans. It goes on to say that all the world is MAYA (illusion) of the mind and the real truth lies within ourselves which we ourselves deny to understand. The self is covered by a screen of materialistic thoughts. To really understand the self, one should be truly devoted to god. The human body holds the soul in it unaltered, Unaffected and untouched by human actions and thoughts. Understanding of the soul gives a complete knowledge of everything in the world and it relieves the soul from this material bondage.

I really don’t understand whether I am taking all these stuff in right sense i.e., both the philosophies. I am confused but all along while studying my own philosophy I was reading simply through it without any direction but after reading Ayn rand’s philosophy, the answer to one important question that I really need know better and completely is
“what is the relationship between mind and body in Hindu philosophy (any philosophy)?”

ANUGITA

I was searching for something related to BHAGAVAD GITA and by chance I looked upon this story called Anugita. I think I have read about this previously in some blog, I don’t remember exactly and I wasn’t interested at that time to look into it completely but this time I did read a part of it. The story goes like this…
As we all know Bhagavad-Gita was preached by Krishna to Arjuna in the battlefield. The battle was won by the pandavas and everything went on well for them. On one occasion Arjuna and Krishna were talking, Arjuna said I completely forgot whatever you taught me in the battle field and asks Krishna to repeat it for him once again. But Krishna says that it is not possible to say the whole gita again and he himself cannot recollect the whole thing. But Arjuna being a close friend of Krishna, he persuades Krishna to say the core meaning of bhagavad-gita. Krishna says the whole gita in the form of a story to Arjuna. The story said by Krishna to Arjuna is called Anugita. Anugita is a shorter version of gita which gives the substance of gita in a few pages. If you would like to read a translated version of Anugita(click here).

TAMIL NEW YEAR

Tamil New Year falls on Saturday April 14th 2007. The Tamil name is Sarvajit meaning victory and prosperity for all across the globe.

Why this year is called sarvajit? What is the significance of this year??

Goddess Parvati is responsible for this year being named as Sarvajit. She did severe penance for a number of years with an ambition to marry Lord Siva, giving up food and sleep. Lord Siva was pleased with her penance and appeared before her.

He enquired, “For whose sake are you doing this penance?”
She replied, “Oh! Lord! I am doing this penance to win your grace.”
Lord Siva then informed her, “Your wish is fulfilled today. You can join Me now.”

Before Parvati could join Lord Easwara, several divine ladies tried to dissuade her from marrying the Lord, criticising thus:

Oh! Gowri! You are very young and
Sambasiva is old;
He has matted locks and
wears a tiger skin;
He rides a bull and
is constantly on the move;
He is adorned with snakes;
How did you court Him?
Don’t you know all this?
He has no house of His own and
sleeps in the cremation ground.

They enquired, “Why do you wish to marry such an old man who goes about begging in the streets?” Parvati replied “You do not know, you are seeing only his external form. You are not making any effort to realise the Atma Tattwa in him. I am, in fact, aspiring for the divinity in him. Divinity is changeless and eternal.”
Lord Easwara accepted Parvati as His consort. She was happy in every aspect. The day on which Goddess Parvati could fulfil her desire surmounting all difficulties, is celebrated as the New Year day of Sarvajit. In fact, this name to the New year was given by goddess Parvati herself!

(thanks to astrosites for detailed description of the tamil new year)

Mylapore Kapaleeswar Kovil Panguni Festival March 2007

chat with LK 3

Lk: bandh for wat?

Me: when supreme court called a spade as spade, tamilnadu strikes.

Lk: wat?

Me: when a bill is based on census of 1931, wat will call it then..

Lk: when it all started?

Me: reservation has been there from 1865 to be exact, but in free India it started in 19 51 for the SC/ST.

Lk: any progress in 50 years?

Me: a lot more castes were included to for political benefits by various parties but never for the benefit of people

Lk: r u (in) there?

Me: I am out of it, probably we are a minority

Lk: minority only gets reservation right?

Me: if this bill passes that will be a real limitation on us.

Reservation kindles flashback

“Reservation is not meant for historic wrong doings but to bring up the poor” quoted from Arun Shorie’s book. I am not going to write about my views on that bill as most of you by now know the reason behind these things.

The wheel turns back, with a lot of colors mixing and we go back to flashback…………….

The day was Monday, I went to school lazily whining all along about the first history hour. It was a bit unusual to have a history hour as the first hour on any day especially Monday but most of us liked the way the teacher went through the subject, so we actually kinda liked it (if u believe so…). Social studies had three parts history, geography and civics. The best among the worst was civics because everybody could view their opinions. On that class, the teacher was speaking about human rights, civil laws and caste system. She was saying about caste system in India. She used to go in lengths about the kind of treatment given to untouchables and their equality rights given in the constitution. On that particular day, she talked about the reservation in colleges and government jobs. As usual she was justifying the reservation policies by saying that the upper class Hindu people treated them very badly for centuries in the past.

Suddenly I stood up, she stopped her lecture and turned toward s me and asked what’s my problem. I was half sleeping and suddenly standing with all my friends laughing thinking that I was up from Sunday night sleep. But I was kind of framing a question in my mind and hesitantly said it to the teacher. She couldn’t understand it fully but I could see the expressions in her face which made me think twice about asking that question again. But I had to ask her, at least to make myself clear about the system.

“if my grandfather had killed somebody will the court punish me now?”

Few of my friends started laughing, but I asked again the same question at last the teacher understood the connection and said it is not for the mistakes made by your ancestors but to bring up the underprivileged and give them a fair chance and for the next 10 mins she was lecturing about the system which went into my deaf ears.

My head starts spinning and I come back to the present….

The statement by arun shorie made me think of this incident.

Is money behind indian team's failure?

Everybody including me seems to be talking about money being the major factor behind Indian cricket team’s failure. Cricketers are not only playing cricket for their love of cricket they also earn their bread and butter through cricket. So if u get more money, will you not try and play better to earn more. Any businessman would do that. Right!!

Ok come on to the other side of it. Assume that money is the cause of all these evil happenings. We will go through the cause and effect relation of this whole thing. Cricketers don’t get money simply by playing cricket. So where does cricketer get a lot of money from, it is from these advertisers who sponsor the Indian team, hoping that their product will reach millions of people through these cricketers. How come the sponsors are so sure that they will get return on investment? It’s simple, we fools keep watching match after match even if India lose in the most disheartening way. So the whole thing ends up in people watching the match for the whole day. Srilanka boosted Indian economy by thrashing us out of world cup says a economic times article. It goes on to say how much the productivity will rise due to India’s loss. Some light hearted people get heart attack and even some commit suicide watching these matches, how foolish of them its after all a game. Better stop watching cricket and in a few years the cricket mania will come to an end. It’s not money that is the root cause but we people who should stop watching cricket (at least Indian cricket). Money is just an intermediate form to estimate the real value of invaluable things like human labor, it’s not worth watching Indian cricket. To sum it up all, you know what, world cup 2011 is being hosted by INDIA.

chat with LK - 2

Lk: y did India come out of world cup so early?

Me: to start preparing early for the next world cup

Lk: which one is better politics or cricket?

Me: we hope against hope that both of them would do some good but both of them fail…cricketers fail every 4 years but politicians fail every 5 years, at least on papers, so politicians are better.

Lk: what would lalu say abt shakira stage show?

Me: if she had been in an Indian train she would have shaken hers hips more and they will never lie …

chatting with LK

I logged into yahoo chat as usual in the morning and there was a friend request from someone. The name displayed was “lion king” I couldn’t recognize that name or match it with any of my friends nick name but added it. The lion king, forest, India was given in the profile. I was laughing to myself thinking about this, suddenly a message came from none other than the lion king. The conversation went on like this…

Lion king (LK) : who r u?
Me: m, 22, India
Lk: A, forest, India (A for Animal)
Me: enough of kidding c’mon now who r u?
Lk: lion, king of forest, India
Me: wat u want?
Lk: I want to talk with someone regularly and learn how you people go thru life (social, political, etc)
Me: ohhhhhhhhh kewl
Me ttly
Lk: hey.. hey…………….

I am going to chat with the lion king about everything regularly from now on. It would be mostly about things that interest me especially Indian and tamilnadu politics. Keep watching this space for more conversations.

LIFT .....................

One thing that fascinated me when I was young was the lift. I still remember those five storied textile shops, only place where the elevators were common. We used to visit these shops very rarely, say once or twice in a year. The place will be usually crowded since it would be some festive season and half of Chennai’s population will be in that area frog hopping from shop to shop just to have a look at new designs and to buy nothing. That experience would make a new post by itself, so coming back to topic people would be standing blocking the whole entrance of the lift. No, don’t expect any queues to be formed. It would take anywhere between 10 to 15 minutes for the doors of heaven to open. People would be literally banging on the door till then. My parents would like to continue their shopping and will try to persuade me into going up through the stairs but never I would oblige. They will even go to the extreme of offering me a extra shirt rather than waiting there for the lift but never…….. I would go through stairs.
At last the lift would door open and people already inside the lift will not be able to come out as the way is fully blocked outside but after all pulling and pushing, those luck few try to squeeze into the lift and that experience would be totally different. When I was in the lift for the first time it was like a dream come true for me. I had a slight fear and felt a small thingy rolling just above my stomach. But it was ok …….
In the next few seconds, at least I felt so, the lift conductor pushed you out of the lift and that’s the end. The conductor of the lift would not allow small boys alone since he knows that we will be playing by going again and again in the lift. I still remember me going and pulling my parents to come with me in the lift, just for fun, so that the conductor wouldn’t shout at me.
All these happening are still fresh in my mind even when I read about NASA planning a lift for the international space station. Yes you read it right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
NASA is planning a lift like structure from earth to the international space station using Nano-carbon tubes. The idea was proposed as early as 2001 and research to make it possible is being carried out vigorously.
How happy/fun/joy/great it would for me to go on a lift outside the earth. May be there would be some cute/nice/little girl like sunitha (but not sunitha), who will be dreaming of special Indian(ohhh!!no!! not Indian) recipes. Keep watching this space I will surely say how earth, India and everything else looked like from space.