Three Lessons Life Taught Me Recently

“Hello World”…err….if you thought I was learning some scripting language, you are mistaken. I actually meant to say "Hello Word". Now if you are wondering why, the reason is I took quite a big break in writing something and opened my MS Word after a long time ;-)

Alright, if you have survived my first paragraph, you can be proud of belonging to a rare breed (I always try to weed out the lucky in my first paragraph)! On a serious note, I felt I should write about certain things which have put me in a whirlpool for the last two months. These have put me in great pain; made me think; got me angry; made me halt from the race called life (we do this very rarely) and ponder on my life’s goals/priorities.

If you are asking me as to why on earth should you be reading this? Well, we always have something to learn from others experience, more so if it is not so pleasant. Most of these things you might be knowing, even I did! However, when it comes to putting them into practice we forget them or fail to execute. Theoretical knowledge alone does not help, now I am able to relate more with companies asking for experience and rejecting my resume!

Lesson 1: Never outsource your happiness or sadness
Lot of times (or all the time!) I tend to depend on external objects/events/people for my happiness. When things don’t happen the way we expect it to, I am dejected. That occupies most of my thoughts and I feel emotionally drained. More important things in life are put to the backburner. Moments of solitude are a pain and moments with friends/family are devoid of the usual fun. It was then that lesson 1 was reminded to me by a talk I heard. Well, how exactly do we do this? I myself am figuring this out but atleast reminding myself that my true nature is “Sat-Chit-Ananda” or eternal bliss helps. Also, reminding myself that I am the soul which cannot be wet by water, burned by fire, cut by sword, leave alone getting troubled by these events is a big help.

Lesson 2: The other side is always green!
Wondering what this strange lesson is? Let me tell you what happened. I went to the house of “A” and while casually discussing something, I said that a particular person was “not of any use” because they had a different set of thoughts/tastes. “A” very quickly asked me “So, that means the person is not required? Is he/she not one among us? Do we leave them and march ahead?”

When he said that I remembered the words of Guruji (or may be Swami Vivekananda, not sure). I don’t recall the exact words but it was like this “the signs of a highly evolved society depends on the role of the lowliest, weakest in the society. “ The emphasis was on the importance of everyone in the society, be he someone subscribing to our viewpoint or not, whether he is intelligent or not, whether he is strong or otherwise. Though I have read this before, it made a mark in me at this juncture. I realized that every person has something unique to contribute to the society, if we see someone as “not of any use”, it is because of our failure to see that uniqueness in the other person. Now do you get it, the other side is always green!

Lesson 3: Constantly search for the “I” hiding in “You”.
This is the most important thing I learned about myself. While speaking to “A” again, I told him how I had reacted to someone. That person had come to offer me help when I needed it. I on the other hand declined their help. In spite of that, the person “walked that extra mile” to help me out. What did I do? I got angry with them, and even decided not to speak again and ironically “walked that extra mile” to return their favor! Three words which “A” said struck me as a bolt from the blue “This is ego”. I never ever heard anyone in my life say that to me before. I was taken aback because I never realized that I was so.

In fact, I tried to explain my behavior to him and “A” said “Don’t cover your ego with flowery language”. If that was not enough, he then used the Brahma Astra by saying “You talk so much about Guruji and you are acting like this, what Sairamji?” A continued “Let me ask you one more thing, let’s say you meet a swamiji whose principles , ideas you don’t agree. Will you fall on his feet?” I was acting like a rabbit staring at a pair of blazing headlights on a highway. After some thinking I said “It is difficult” and thus proved! I never realized that I had this in me. Though lot of times, I read about how ego and how it can destroy one, I never stopped to introspect whether I was egoistic. Now, I learnt that I should constantly search for the “I” hiding in “me”.

The past few days have been very eventful with lot of learning about myself and life in general. I have been reading Guruji’s “Bunch of Thoughts” for quite sometime now but I realize that the same words appear more potent now than ever before. The tremendous potential for improvement in us makes life so exciting and worth living. At the end of this long read, if you feel you have gained something out of my little experience, I am happy. If you felt that you have wasted some valuable time reading crap and feel sad, read Lesson 1 again - Don’t outsource your happiness!

We Shy But Not Mongolia and Bolivia

Any country will prosper only if its citizen actively participate in the nation building process. Now, what actually triggers citizen to actively involve oneself in this? Our most common answer would be love for the nation. Love, for sure gets people to do great things but like everything, love has its limits. Correspondingly, our acts or work inspired by that love also has limits.

Is there something else which extends this limit (of love)and inspires us to do something great for our nation and its people? In our opinion, the only other thing is P.R.I.D.E. Yes, pride definitely helps us expand our horizon by a large extent (definitely, even this has limits). If Swami Vivekananda was able to take the West by storm and enlighten them on Hindu dharma, it is not just out of love for our nation but also his pride in the achievements of our ancestors.

This pride is possible if each nation is taught of the gigantic achievements of its ancestors. Bharat has no shortage of such greatness but there is definitely a huge shortage in educating the people on our glorious accomplishments. How many of us know about Baudhayana, Kanada, Sushruta, etc? The core reason for not teaching these is that it will be "non-secular". However, it has been forgotten that unless this pride factor is felt in each Indian, our achievements and drive will be limited. On the other hand, when we realize that our ancestors scaled such peaks, we their sons and daughters can achieve the same, if not greater.

Bolivia's population of 8.5 millions is entirely Christian. In December 2005, Joan Eva Morales was elected as its President with 54% votes. The past European proselytizing colonisers reduced all faiths and cultures of Bolivia into archaeological ruins. Morales’ tribe Aymra’s are only 25 per cent of Bolivians. Obviously he got more votes from other tribes. Not this, but what happened after Morales won is more important. He wore the traditional dress of the priests of his ancestral faith and commenced a pilgrimage. Where?

To the sacred site where the archaeological remains of the Tawanku civilisation that flourished around 500 BC to about the 13th century. That is where his ancestral temple, ‘Kalasasaya’, stands in ruins. He was ‘showered’ with flowers, ‘blessed by the priests’ all the way.

Morales addressed thousands in front of the temple, thanked ‘Mother Earth’ and ‘God’ for his victory and promised to do away with the vestiges of the colonial past. By showing reverence to the ruins of the 13th century temple, Morales was recalling the hidden, suppressed spirit of Bolivia. His pilgrimage to Kalasasaya temple is national programme to rebuild the confidence of Bolivians in themselves and their economy.

Now coming to what is happening in Mongolia. Buddha dharma, the practice, suppressed for decades by the Communist Party, is being reclaimed by Mongolians as an integral part of their national identity. In 1578, Genghis Khan's descendent Altan Khan made Buddha dharma the official religion, installing the Tibetan Sonam Gyatso as Dalai Lama and conscripting males to monasteries instead of into the army.

In 1937, the Soviet-allied Mongolian Communist Party banned Buddhism and persecuted its 100,000-strong priestly class. The government executed nearly 20,000 lamas, and at least 10,000 educated monks. Another 10,000 were sent to Siberian labor camps. Most of the country's 2,000 monasteries were destroyed. But now, the Mongolians are reviving their past glory and culture by reviving Buddha dharma. They are doing what India has been shy to do.

See in contrast the way secular India handled the revered symbols of Indian spirit after freedom. The Indian Cabinet presided by Jawaharlal Nehru decided, as proposed by Sardar Patel, to rebuild at Government’s cost and as a symbol of recalling the spirit of India, the Somnath temple, that was repeatedly devastated by religious intolerance. This was something similar to what Eva Morales is doing now. But Mahatma Gandhi advised Sardar Patel that the people, not the government, should fund the construction.

Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the then President of India, was invited for the consecration. But Nehru objected to the President of ‘secular’ India attending a temple consecration. It turned Somnath temple, a symbol of India’s struggle against religious fanaticism, into an objectionable icon. But Rajendra Prasad defied Nehru and attended the consecration. Not just Somnath. Identical is the Ayodhya issue. The Hindus wanted a temple to be constructed on the spot where they believed Rama was born. Rama was always and is still the greatest symbol of Indian values.

Gandhiji died uttering ‘Hey Ram’. A structure, a mosque, unused from 1936 stood on the spot. Suddenly that unused structure became the symbol of secularism. Secular polity set upon Hindus. The courts and laws were moved against them. Eva Morales goes to the ruins of an ancient civilisation in a cent percent Christian nation. Here Somnath temple becomes an objectionable symbol and Ayodhya temple becomes a target of ‘secular’ India. The contrast is obvious. We do need an Eva Morales to detoxify ‘secular’ India, make them understand that geo-politics is becoming geo-civilisational politics.

Source: LA Times
Gurumurthy.net

Are you Ready to Roar?

Last post, we discussed about the partition and all that it meant for Hindus and to the world. If the word Hindu seems to be anathema to you, refer to our previous post "I am a Hindu YUVA" and understand what we mean by Hindu. To avoid something similar from happening to Hindus again, we need to understand the cause of these partitions.

The foremost important reason is that our leaders at the helm of affairs had washed themselves off their Hindu roots and looked at everything through a foreign prism. Also, they had neither the far sightedness to see how all these would fit into the grand scheme of things. Secondly, the Hindus were not united and they were just Hindus in name but never in spirit. In the words of Shri Sita Ram Goel Ji “Hindu society forgot how it had to struggle ceaselessly and very hard against horde after horde of Islamic invaders who not only slaughtered, burnt, pillaged, and enslaved but also tried to foist by force its own brand of barbarism.”

As Hindus, we need to understand Hindu dharma and its real history. In parallel, we should strive to Hindu-ise the Hindu minds (ourselves included!). It is our personal experience that most Hindus, thanks to years of slavery and continued distortion of history are tragically Macaulay’s children: Indians in skin and color but Englishmen in thought, opinion and morals. This needs to be undone. We need to strive hard to make every Hindu say with his chest puffed up and head high “Yes, I belong to the glorious race of the Hindus”. This can be done by making Hindus aware of the achievements of their ancestors and bring them to their senses on the present plight of the Hindu community. In fact, the Hindu is presently in a deep state of dream (than the one in Inception!) and he needs to be given a gentle kick in the form of “Hinduising” him to be brought to reality.

As today’s Hindu, we need strive to become a complete personality. A Hindu should have all the four varnas in him. When need be, he needs to act knowledgeable as the Brahmin, brave as the Kshatriya, generate wealth as the Vaishya and work tirelessly as the Shudra. All this should be directed towards the good of Hindu dharma. This will make sure that not one person dares to raise an evil eye on a Hindu.

In addition, Dr David Frawley Ji’s concept of Intellectual Kshatriya is the need of the hour. We need Hindus who are absolutely unsparing in their attack on whatever obstructs the growth of the nation, and never be afraid to call a spade a spade. As Sri Aurobindo says, what we need is “aggressive virtues, the spirit of soaring idealism, bold creation, fearless resistance, courageous attack; of the passive tamasic inertia we already have too much.”

It is time that each Hindu takes a vow to take his race and nation back to its pristine glory, not just for our good but for universal well-being. We have to awaken the lion in each one of us and once the Hindu lion roars, the jackals of other evil forces will automatically become silent and dare not look at the lion with wrong intentions. Are we ready for the roar?

Mother or Land?

Once upon a time, there was a family living peacefully and prosperously. One fine morning some street thugs barged in, occupied a portion of their house and lived life in their own “style”. The family though initially resisted the invasion and aggression of their home gradually began viewing the invaders as their own people. Now that these “weeds” were acknowledged as being an integral part of the garden, they demanded a ‘rightful’ share of the house, to which the family accepted. Similar is the story of Bhaaratvarsha where we began viewing the invaders as our associates and finally even made them owners.

Bhaaratavarsha - the land that lies south of the Himalayas, east of Sakadvipa (Seistan), south-east of Vãhlîka (Balkh), west of Burma and between the two seas is verily the punyabhoomi, karmabhoomi and matrubhoomi for millions of people. To us, Bhaaratvarsha is not merely a clod of clay, she is verily the manifestation of Shakthi and rightly worshipped as Bhaarat Mata.

On August 15 1947, she remained stripped of her limbs in the form of present day Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, etc. Shri HV Seshadri Ji in his book The Tragic Story of Partition says “In the [past] one thousand years many parts of our country had been ruled by the Muslims and then by the British, but the nation had never compromised, in principle, its sovereignty over any part of the motherland. As a result, our nation had never ceased to strive for throwing out the aggressors and liberate those parts. And history tells us that ultimately it did succeed in freeing the entire land from the clutches of foreign invaders. However, for the first time, Partition conceded the moral and legal right to them over certain parts of the country and declared an ignominious finale to the one thousand years old heroic struggle for freedom.”

The effect of this inglorious partition of our nation has been tremendous. The partition displayed for the first time that we have surrendered a national principle that the present day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc., are all an integral and inseparable part of Bhaaratvarsha. It is interesting to note an event during the First World War. Germany was defeated and President Berg accepted the authority of France over many German territories in the Treaty of Vermont, as there was no other option. But the same day, he wrote in his diary “My heart will find solace only when the Eagle flag of Germany will flutter there again. Today the land is lost, but this aspiration is inscribed on the heart that is ours.” In the same way, what is sad is not the loss of territory but it is the mindset that caused the loss.

This reveals that we did not view our nation as Bhaarat Mata but just as a piece of land which can be shared with warring factions of our society. In addition, the partitions are a great betrayal to our great heroes who dedicated their whole lives for the cause of Bhaarat Mata. These heroes laid down their lives in vain not knowing that their future generations would hand over their Mother on a platter to the very aggressors whom they had been fighting tooth and nail for more than 1000 years since 636 AD.

Partitions have only made things worse for our nation as we are now surrounded by hostile forces which are vying for our blood every minute. We have given part of our nation to those people who are in every sense antagonistic to the very ideals and ideas which have sustained our race for thousands of years. Those things which were sacred and a pride to us as a nation are verily the objects of hate for the present “occupants” of those lands. Take the example of the Bamiyan Buddha statues which have been dynamited and destroyed. What about hundreds of temples in present day Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan?

Accepting partition also meant that we have implicitly agreed to the views of the Muslim League. The pamphlet Now or Never published in January 1933 by the Indian Muslim students at Cambridge under the leadership of Chaudhari Rehmat Ali, said “India is not the name of single country, nor the home of one single nation. It is in fact, the designation of a state created for the first time in history by the British. Muslims and Hindus do not inter-dine, we do not intermarry. Our national customs and calendars, even our diet and dress, are different. Hence the Muslims demand the recognition of a separate national status.” Have we not conveyed by accepting partition that this was verily true? Don’t many of our Hindu brethren today still feel that we were never a single nation?

Bhaarat is a nation which has respected people of different faiths. It was this nation which gave refuge to Parsees, Jews and others. Such was the nature of our country that we never bothered about the mode of worship. Islam and Christianity are just other modes of worship to an average Indian and hence it does not bother him. The partition of India made it look to the whole world that the majority Hindus of the nation will crush and wipe out the minorities and cannot coexist.

Most importantly, how can we as a nation forget the fact that Islam came as aggressors on a mission to destroy Hindu dharma and convert Bhaarat from Dar-ul-Harb to Dar-ul-Islam? Nowhere on the history of the world have the aggressors been thought of as brothers and handed over a part of the nation because they have a different way of life or because they are a minority. We are being taken on a ride similarly in Nagaland with captions like “Nagaland for Christ”. Do we give them also a part of the nation because they also have a different set of beliefs or because of their minority status?

Lastly, through partition we have displayed that we have no manliness left in us to fight for something which is rightfully ours. This is the reason that Pakistan right from its birth has been waging a war with us in various forms be it direct or proxy. Similar is the case with Bangladesh which is involved in cleansing itself of the Hindu community. If we had displayed the manliness to stand for what we were, we would not be in the present scenario. Thus, it is clear that the partition has sent a lot of subtle messages to keen pair of eyes and set a wrong precedent for the coming generations.

We will see in the next post what we as Hindus could possibly do to avoid being taken for a ride. Most importantly, Happy Independence day! Let's make sure we remember the sacrifice made by our heroes who fought valiantly against the Turks, Hunas, Mughals, French, Portuguese,British, etc not just today but everyday of the year. Vande Mataram!

I am a Hindu YUVA

Warning: The following content may not be digestible for "pseudo-secular" individuals who may be better off watching some English news channel and satisfy their "secular" urge.

If there has been a word which can cause a lot of discomfort among many Indians, irrespective of their religious affiliations, it is the word Hindu. What an irony that many Hindus wriggle in discomfort when they hear or have to speak that word. When I became part of a student chapter whose name had the "discomforting" word, one of my room mates asked "Why Hindu? Why not Indian? as people may not feel comfortable with 'Hindu' and moreover the term 'Indian' attracts more people".

This made me think of what deserves more importance - is it either being Hindu or Indian? I am putting on paper all that has churned in me for the past few days. If you are thinking whether there wasn't anything better for me to do, the answer is Yes because I am here at work on a Monday afternoon with nothing to do except for those occasional customers. Now you know, I am not at fault for writing this, blame my boss for keeping me idle!

The first thing I needed to know was who is this Hindu? I said "Anyone following Hindu Dharma". Wow, I just answered the question with the question lingering in my answer. If you think I am out of my mind, you may be true but let me explain. There is again this word Hindu, I am trying to define, in my answer "anyone following Hindu dharma". Now, you get it? Thats my point of pondering.

I came across Savarkar Ji's "Essentials of Hindutva". He explains a Hindu as a person to whom India is his/her Motherland and Holy Land. That is those who are Indians and who follow a religion of Indian origin namely, Sikha dharma, Jaina dharma, Buddha dharma, Arya Samaji, Vaidika dharma, etc. Though this definition does have a few missing links, we can stick to this as of now.

That actually satisfied me. If you think now that since I am satisfied, I will stop here, sorry I would have, if you had prayed that Koenrad Elst's "Who is a Hindu?" shouldn't meet my eye. In one of the chapters, he says "The values of Sanatana Dharma are not tied up with this piece of land, and the Vedas or the Gita, though obviously situated in India, are not bothered with notions of “fatherland” and “holyland”. He quotes Dr. Pukh Raj Sharma, a teacher of Ayurveda and Bhakti-Yoga from Jodhpur saying: “The country India is not important. One day, India too will go." He continues "So, we may question the wisdom of defining a religious tradition by an external characteristic such as its geographical location, even if the domain of this definition admirably coincides with the actual referent of the term Hindu in its common usage."

This lead me to the question as to what's the relation between Hindu dharma and Bhaarat. Let's think that Bhaarat is now "Dar-ul-Islam", i.e. it is now Islamic Republic of India. Hindus in other parts of the world will still be following the Hindu way of life, will go to temples, perform pujas, speak of "Vasudaiva Kutumbakam" and our favorite "Ekam Sat, Vipra Bahuda Vadanti", boast of our rich and varied heritage and carry on our life though missing our beautiful temples (now which would have become mosques) and calling many of our relatives with Arabicised names. Doesn't it look like we can continue to lead a Hindu way of life, independent of the state of Bharat?

At the same time, let's say you have a 8 year old daughter living here in the US. She comes and says "Appa, my friends make fun of me saying I am a animal worshiping Hindu. Why should I be a Hindu?" You are a proud Hindu father and hence you start off explaining to that little girl of those highest concepts mentioned in the previous paragraph and say our way of life has given the world the greatest thoughts in all spheres ranging from Ayurveda to Architecture, Science to Spirituality, Management to Martial Arts, Politics to Philosophy, etc, etc. If your daughter now asks "Appa, if our way of life has given the world so much, why was our way of life not able to protect Bharat Mata from becoming Islamic?" What could be your reply? No reply is going to convince your daughter. No one in the world wants to be part of a lost side. The future generations will not want to be Hindu if that way of life is not able to protect one's Mother and this is the exact reason why I feel that no definition of Hindu will never be complete without including devotion to Bhaarat. In the long run, the absence of Bhaarat will definitely affect its adherents in other parts of the world.

Now, that we know who a Hindu is, comes the second part of Hindu or Indian? When we say "I am proud of being an Indian". Can we stop for a minute and think why are we proud to being Indian or why do we love this nation? Is it just because we were born in that land? Is it because we have some great rivers like Ganga or because we have great flora and fauna, or is it because of the great mineral resources? All these are present in other countries in equal measure, if not more. So, all these cannot be the reasons. As Savarkar Ji says "India is dear to us because it is the land which has been the cradle of our prophets and heroes and gods and godmen."

This covers the entire gamut of not just religious people but our heroes like Aryabhatta who discovered the shape of the earth, Bhaskaracharya who discovered gravity 1000 years before Newton, Charaka who was the first to perform plastic surgery, Baudhayana who found what Pythagoras found 300 years later, Patanjali's yogasutra, Shivaji who defended his motherland from aggressors, The Cholas who spread our way of life in South East Asia, Guru Tegh Bahadur who gave his life for dharma and scores of others.

It is not just these heroes but the global thoughts of our land which drew the apt attention of the whole world, that we are proud of. We may say we are proud of Bharat because we are a "secular" nation respecting the rights of any person to follow a religion of his choice. Now, what among all the above is un-Hindu? Those great men, those thoughts and our culture are all Hindu. Thus, we are proud of India because of its Hinduness. Hinduness covers everything ranging from our culture, religion, languages, society, thoughts, etc. As Aurobindo says "When it is said that India shall expand and extend herself, it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall expand and extend itself over the world. It is for the Dharma and by the Dharma that India exists." It is thus very clear that Bharat and Hindu dharma are inter-twined and none can exist without the other. We cannot differentiate between the two and it is for this reason that I am proud to say I am a Hindu YUVA. Yes, a YUVA whose first devotion is to Bhaarat, my Motherland and my Holy Land.

And The World Remained Silent.....

Why do the secularists and the Human Rights bodies close their eyes on such issues? Why this elective blindness. A story of those who are refugees in their own nation....Shame on us and our silence.

The Video the Meat Industry Doesn't Want You To......

...See. This video shows how animals are treated in the meat factories (called factories because animals are viewed as meat producing machines).
Note: The video as you would expect is gory and violent. Watch at your own discretion.


Find out more at Meat.org.

Let us remember that no amount of lip sympathy or theoretical agreement will help if we do not practice what we believe.