Indians dont value freedom

"Indians dont value freedom" - aptly said. I think, most of us, dont know that such a thing exists. The only way we know (atleast try to) that it does is by looking at other cultures, and instead of understanding, we copy their external appearance expecting to be free.

And I guess that this is one reason why we value our history so much and continuously brag about it. Our forefathers were freer than us and we can see that, or feel that but don't know how to be that or get that. Ah! I now see light!

namami.org

I wish we can somehow catalog all the vedas. We have lost huge chunks of it they say.

Like a candle light in the darkness, I found this website called namami.org which is a database of manuscripts. Its a website created and maintained by Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Govt. of India. They store all kinds of manuscripts not just the vedas or hindu scriptures. They are into conservation, digitization and publication of all the old manuscripts found in this ancient land. So if you find any manuscripts at home or your grandpa's attic, please send them across to namami and they will preserve it.

Go to Him

A friend of mine, Srikanth, forwarded this story -

A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed. As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation. They talked about so many things and various subjects.

When they eventually touched on the subject of God, the barber said: "I don't believe that God exists."

"Why do you say that?" asked the customer.

"Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn't exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can't imagine loving a God who would allow all of these things."

The customer thought for a moment, but didn't respond because he didn't want to start an argument. The barber finished his job and the customer left the shop. Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long, stringy, dirty hair and an untrimmed beard. He looked dirty and un-kept.

The customer turned back and entered the barber shop again and he said to the barber: "You know what? Barbers do not exist."

"How can you say that?" asked the surprised barber. "I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!"

"No!" the customer exclaimed. "Barbers don't exist because if they did, there would be no people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man outside."

"Ah, but barbers DO exist! What happens is, people do not come to me."

"Exactly!"- affirmed the customer. "That's the point! God, too, DOES exist! What happens, is, people don't go to Him and do not look for Him. That's why there's so much pain and suffering in the world."

Great Story!! Its normal to feel the way the barber did, since we look at the Lord as our parent (atleast most of us) and expect Him to help us out at all times. Among all the other things, He has given us a tiny bit of free-will as well (remember we are like Him, like the saltiness of the sea water drop), and he respects that to the core. So like a dad who will stand back and not really meddle into His teenager's life, He will stand back and watch. At the same time, He will feel real bad if his son/daughter treads in the wrong direction. He even tries to tell us, but we normally don't listen to our dad, do we? So if you don't choose to go ask Him, He will stay out of your way. However if you just choose to cry out loud once for your dad, He will appear out of nowhere and pick you up in an instant and console you. Love you Dad!

Code for Indian National Flag

This august I saw a lot of people (I guess unknowingly) disrespecting the Indian flag. I even saw one instance of a guy who was drapping the front hood of his car with the flag. I guess his patriotism was overflowing out of his engine. I think the best way to avoid these acts, is to include an instruction sheet along with the flag when its sold. By the way, please say no to plastic flags. They are not all that beautiful and harmful to the environment as well.

From Flag.de

The Chakra on the National Flag was officially defined at 75% of the white stripe in 1947 (taken from specifications issued by the Indian Standards Institution), but according to William Crampton (1993) this has largely been ignored in practice ever since. To quote from Dr Crampton's notes: "...in practice the Chakra occupies 98% of the white stripe (or thereabouts)", and the spec he drew up shows it at exactly that.
Christopher Southworth, 23 May 2004

Flag code as defined by Ministry of Home Affairs - http://www.mha.gov.in/nationalflag2002.htm

From the wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_India

Read Gita even if we can't understand everything.

Everytime you read, you find a new perspective and a new meaning. I better finish reading it atleast once. A story forwarded by a friend -

An old Farmer lived on a farm in the mountains with his young grandson. Each morning Grandpa was up early sitting at the kitchen table reading his Bhagavat Geeta. His grandson wanted to be just like him and tried to imitate him in every way he could.

One day the grandson asked, "Grandpa! I try to read the Bhagawat Geeta just like you but I don't understand it, and what I do understand I forget as soon as I close the book. What good does reading the Bhagawat Geeta do?"

The Grandfather quietly turned from putting coal in the stove and replied, "Take this coal basket down to the river and bring me back a basket of water."

The boy did as he was told, but all the water leaked out before he got back to the house. The grandfather laughed and said, "You'll have to move a little faster next time," and sent him back to the river with the basket to try again.

This time the boy ran faster, but again the basket was empty before he returned home. Out of breath, he told his grandfather that it was impossible to carry water in a basket, and he went to get a bucket instead. The old man said, "I don't want a bucket of water; I want a basket of water. You're just not trying hard enough," and he went out the door to watch the boy try again.

At this point, the boy knew it was impossible, but he wanted to show his grandfather that even if he ran as fast as he could, the water would leak out before he got back to the house.

The boy again dipped the basket into river and ran hard, but when he reached his grandfather the basket was again empty. Out of breath, he said, "See Grandpa, it's useless!"

"So you think it is useless?" The old man said, "Look at the basket."

The boy looked at the basket and for the first time realized that the basket was different. It had been transformed from a dirty old coal basket and was now clean, inside and out.

"Son, that's what happens when you read the Bhagavat Geeta. You might not understand or remember everything, but when you read it, you will be changed, inside and out. That is the work of Krishna in our lives."

One question: If reading was the act of dipping into the water, What is the equivalent to the "wish of bringing some water home" to reading Bhaghavat Geeta? I do agree with one anology here. Our brains are as perforated as the coal basket. It cannot hold water.

Complementarity of Truth

Read this story.

Neils Bohr was a famous Danish physicist, instrumental in the development of Quantum Theory. One day, he was giving a lecture on "Complementarity". The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a famous example of complementarity. It states that the more you know about the momentum of an electron, the less you can know about its position, and vice-versa. In other words, two qualities have complementarity if the closer you get to knowing one, the further you are from knowing the other. Got it? Here's the point.

During this lecture, a student stood up in the back of the room and said, "Dr. Bohr. What is the complementarity for 'Truth'?"

Bohr replied, "Clarity."

The more clarity you have the farther you are from truth. If Truth were to be defined as a perceived notion, a belief, then I agree. But I thought Truth has nothing to do with perception. Searching for the definition of Truth gives you the following results on Google.

• a fact that has been verified;
• conformity to reality or actuality;
• a true statement;
• accuracy: the quality of being near to the true value;

Clarity brings knowledge. It defrosts your windshield and shows the path ahead. And truth is knowledge, a destination you want to reach. How can they be opposite? May be once you reach the destination you dont need the clarity anymore, because you are not driving anymore!? Makes sense in a very weird way. Hope I get some clarity on the issue.

Creators and Maintainers

On a mental activity level, there are two kinds of people - creators and maintainers. Actually there might be a third category called the destroyers which I don't consider as a separate category. They are basically negative creators. (Hence the belief of some in Hinduism that Shiva was born from Brahma)

Anyway the creators are the people who have this innate urge to create, to grow and to design. They want to develop solutions to every known problem, sometimes going to the extreme of "creating" problems in the first place. The maintainers are people who want to maintain status quo. These are the people who love equilibrium and will go to lengths trying to maintain it. They carefully watch any imbalance in the mix and quickly fly to the rescue. We as humans like everything else, carry these two (actually three) propensities in varying degree. Some have a fountain of creativity flowing endlessly while some are excellent administrators bringing order to the chaos.

The point is that hard core creators don't make good doctors in the sense that they might not be too happy with what they do. They are better off being developers/designers/architects etc., where they are paid to create. To some extent they are better off not getting into system administration as well. Admins on the contrary may have one additional advantage over the developers for becoming good doctors. I am in no way saying that doctors are not creators, but they don't normally use that faculty too much. One of the reasons why I think that doctors are afraid of technology or atleast resistant to their use.

So before you choose what you want to be, an engineer or a doctor (those are the current major alternatives), know yourself. Know where you heart is and then choose. Not on somebody's advice that becoming a doctor is difficult or there is a lot of scope if you study computer science. If you are good at what you do, there will always be scope and the future will always be bright.

Idealism vs. Realism

I get this from time to time that I am a very idealistic person. People say that I should be a lil' more realistic in my thoughts and approach. I thought about it for a while and I believe I look at things a little differently. Atleast thats what I think.

I believe that everything is a possibility. Some ideas are more probable/doable/achievable than others by some. So realism or idealism is an individual perspective. Its not the idea or the thought that is realistic, rather the person thinking that thought who decides according to his understanding and thought process whether something is real or idealistic. So I believe that if you stop categorizing an idea as idealistic or realistic then there is a chance that you might think of a way to achieve it. Its a possibility and sometimes answers lie outside the boundaries.

Another difference I see is that ideas become idealistic when people donot see ways of realizing them. Just because there is no path up the mountain doesn't make a mountain unclimbable. The brave and courageous still do it. They create a new path. But if you think right at start that the mountain is unsurmountable then you will never even try.

Happy Ugadi!

Wish you a very happy Sarvajit ahead!

"bevu bella thinni olle mathaadi" - bevu is neem and bella is jaggery. It signifies dualities. Somehow I look at it a little differently. Rather than dualities I see it as what we get. Neem signifies the work which is good for our souls and the sweet (jaggery) signifies the pleasure that we get out of it. So let there be a lot of work and happiness to everybody around!

Am I Dreaming?

How would I know whether I am in a dream or not? How can one know that for real. Is this blog i am creating right now actually exist?? How can one distinguish between wake up state and dream state. No I am not saying its from the matrix movie. Matrix was not a dream. It existed as a collective interaction between the minds of people. I recently read there is a kind of spectacles which you wear and go to sleep and it will partially wake you up when you are in a dream state. You cannot get out of a dream, but you know you are awake. Scary!

Hate and Love

Engineers marry engineers and doctors marry doctors. Why could it be? Just plain old convenience or something else? Why would you sneer and call it racist when a brahmin wants to marry a brahmin? Varnaashrama was established not to belittle anybody but to separate different types of people according to their mentality, style of living and their profession.

Hate is not inverse of Love. Its not even absence of love. So love is the bigger concept than hate. In the set of integers, Love is to the full set while Hate is to negative integers.

List for 2007

Questions to answer this year.

• How does Madhva describe and prove the existence of Free-will? How do you define free-will?
• How do you grow a team in India.
  

List of places to visit this year

• Mysore and everything surrounding it like Bandipur, Ranganathittu
• Hampi
• Mantralaya

List of things to do this year

• Read atleast a bit of Nyaya sudha
• Start and release atleast one simple widget
• Stop talking too much

Random sightings

Some Americans are so fearful! :(
http://jillosophy.blogspot.com/2006/12/oh-and-by-way-we-are-indeed-being.html
This fear of loosing ones freedom might be the cause of (or atleast the weapon used to motivate their troops) terrorism in this world.

"Persuasion promotes understanding; understanding breeds acceptance; acceptance leads to action."

Selfishness is compassion towards yourself, so its not necessarily bad! Is it?