My piece in Faking News!

Hi! I got published in faking News! http://my.fakingnews.firstpost.com/2016/05/25/jayalalithaa-ends-freebies-announces-path-breaking-new-tn-scheme/

Balika Vadhu 2028

The Indian TV industry is all abuzz with excitement waiting for the new Balika Vadhu 2028,remade as a 20 year celebration of India's biggest soap that happened  a long time ago and went on with pretty much immortal characters for 3000 episodes. Set in rural Rajastan it showed gutsy women who took bullets as easily as men took bribes. The child bride syndrome was a nominal thing as stories were all about evil adults.

Now,  after 20 years, a lot has changed. Under Modi, India has become a superpower not only in software apps, but solar power and much else. And everything is once again made in India. Mud Ganeshas are no longer imported.from China. People are no longer ashamed to buy for their children pencils and pens made in India. In other words,  Made in India is as famous as Bollywood.

ISRO has invented new technologies to regenerate ground water. BARC has met India's power shortages with hybrid atomic solar power.

India's demographic dividend has given jobs  to teenagers who pass out of Medicine and Engineering as early as at 14 years. It is due to some huge innovations pioneered by HRD Ministry. Every child learns Sanskrit, Yoga and cooking to be proficient by the time they are ten.

What will be the storyline of the Balika Vadhu 2028?The director has tears of nostalgia as he answers: it will go back to the most glorious traditions of the first one. The heroine is a child bride,  married off at 8 to a doctor who is 15. The family  khaandaan is all about organic agriculture, but goons are smuggling Monsanto/Bayer GI food at one tenth the price. Thanks to India's liberal intellectuals,  everyone has full freedom to burn the Indian Flag,  shout for Kashmir's freedom, and carry India-made guns for freedom of political expression. The police are masters of investigation, but there is a lot of  criminals out there hacking bank accounts, robbing people of their gold through dubious schemes, and destroying peace.

The 15 year old doctor finds a more attractive girl of 12 online and ditches his bride. She is undaunted and sets up a women's group for the greenification of Rajasthan. Camel smugglers constantly trouble her but she has mastered martial arts and defends herself.

The script writer, like the one in 2008, is a nervous wreck. He has to produce a new kind of mayhem every week. Anandi is dead by the 2000th episode. Dadima has benefited from Baba Ramdev's rejuvenation therapy and at 120, she rides a 500 HP solar hybrid bullet motorcycle and singleghandedly defeats the camel smugglers and saves the greenification project of Rajasthan. She is nominated to  be the first woman to travel and unveil a new township on Mars in the Mangalyaan reusable space vehicle. She is asked,  as she dons her spacesuit,  what's her message for the planet back home. She says, "Everything may change, but we remain the same back home."

Gurudev introduces Chapter Six: Meditation

CHAPTER VI
Meditation

With this chapter we are coming to the close of a definite section in the scheme of thought in the Geeta. This is the opinion of some of the well-known critics and students of the Lord's Song. According to them, the eighteen chapters of the Geeta fall into three definite sections, each of six chapters, and they group themselves to expound the implications and significances of the sacred Vedic mantra "Tat Twam Asi" --- THAT THOU ART. The first six chapters together constitute an explanation of the philosophical significance indicated by the word "Thou" (Twam). In the general scheme of thought developed in that section, the contents of the sixth chapter constitute a fitting conclusion.
In Chapter II, in a language almost foreign to Arjuna, in quick strokes, Lord Krishna painted the philosophical perfection which is the theme of all the Upanishads. He concluded that chapter with a vivid and expressive picture of a Saint of perfection and mental equipoise. Naturally, the interest of a seeker is excited and he seeks to find means and methods by which he too can grow within himself and reach those diviner heights of self-control and equipoise.

The Geeta is personally and specifically addressed to Arjuna, a confused average man, at a moment when he felt completely confounded by the problem that was facing him. Naturally, the highest methods of subtle meditation, the mental drill by which one can renounce all one's preoccupations, etc., are not easy methods that can be practised with confidence. At the same time, it will not be true to say that Vedantic methods are meant only for a few; if they are immediately useful only to a few, there must be, in Vedanta, preliminary techniques by which everyone can steadily grow to become fit to enter the Hall of Perfection.

That there are graded lessons for one's spiritual unfoldment is not really understood by the modern lip-Vedantins. It is this general ignorance that has brought about the misconception in Hinduism that the study of the Vedas is the guarded preserve of some rare ones. But, Vedanta would have been an incomplete science if it did not contain Upasana methods for purifying the students' inner equipments.

Krishna, as a true teacher, understood Arjuna's mental debilities and intellectual incompetency at that particular moment to start right away upon the arduous lines of pure meditation and clear detached thinking. In order to bring him to the level of perfection, various lower methods of self-integration had to be prescribed. Thus in Chapter III we found an exhaustively scientific treatment of the "Karma Yoga" --- the Path of Action.

Activities in the outer world, however noble they may be in their motive, cannot but leave deep ulcerations and painful restlessness in the bosom of the worker. To mitigate the "reactions" of action (Karma-Phala) and as a balm to soothe the bleeding mental wounds, new methods of maintaining the mind in quietude and ease have been expounded in Chapter IV under the title "RENUNCIATION OF ACTION IN KNOWLEDGE." It is the theory of Krishna that, constantly maintaining in the mind the awareness of the Greater Principle that presides over all human endeavours, the worker can, even in the thick of activities, maintain a healthy and well-ventilated inner life.

Naturally, the limited intellect of Arjuna got extremely confused, since the teacher argued in the beginning for "action," and in the conclusion, for "the renunciation of action." In Chapter V, therefore, the "Way of Renunciation" is explained and the technique of guaranteeing to our mind immunity from reactions, even while it is engaged in activity, is explained. The "Yajna spirit" --- the spirit of dedicated activity for the benefit of the larger majority and not for any self-arrogating profit --- is the antiseptic that Krishna prescribes for a mind and intellect that are to work in the world. In Chapter IV is prescribed an unavoidable treatment for curing the mind of its own pox of painful "impressions of the past" (vasanas).

In Chapter V, the "WAY OF RENUNCIATION" is explained under two different categories, which show the two methods of achieving the same goal: renunciation of (a) our sense of agency in activities; and (b) our unintelligent anxieties arising out of our thoughtless preoccupations with the fruits-of-our-action. The chapter exhausts these two techniques and explains how, by the renunciation of agency or by the renunciation of our attachment to the fruits-of-actions, we can come to gain a release from the vasana bondages which generally shackle our personality during our activities.

One who could faithfully follow the technique so far unravelled by the Lord, should have thereby come to a condition wherein the insentient and inert mind has been stirred into a field of intense activity. A mind developed through this training, is taught to come under the intelligent will of its determined trainer, the seeker himself. The mind thus gathered and trained, is certainly a better-equipped instrument for the higher purposes of Self-contemplation and Self-unfoldment.

How this is done through the famous technique of meditation is, in a nutshell, the theme of the sixth chapter. During our discussions, we shall not stand in sheer surprise and wonderment and swallow down the ideas in the verses without dissecting, discovering, analysing and understanding every facet of each of those ideas. This chapter promises to give us all the means by which we can give up our known weaknesses and grow positively into a healthier and more potent life of virtue and strength. This technique is called meditation, which in one form or another, is the common method advocated and advised in all religions, by all prophets, at all times, in the history of man.

|| Chapter-6 ||


Source: The Holy Geeta

End of Fifth Chapter

Om tat sat iti śrīmadbhagavadgītāsu upaniśadsu brahmavidyāyām yogaśāstre śrīkṛṣṇārjunasamvāde karmasanyāsayogo nāma pancamodhyāyaha

Translation

Thus in the UPANISHAD of the glorious Bhagawad Geeta, in the Science of the Eternal, in the Scripture of YOGA , in the dialogue between Sri Krishna and Arjuna the fifth discourse ends entitled: 
YOGA OF TRUE RENUNCIATION. 

Om Om Om Om Om


Commentary

Chapters III and IV have described the 'Yajna' and Chapter VI will explain the Path of Meditation. Therefore, this, the fifth chapter, has been rightly named "the Yoga of Renunciation of Action." What is the spirit of renunciation, how the "Yoga of Renunciation of Action" can be practised, what would be the result of practising this way of activity in this special mental attitude, and how far that could contribute to the inward development and growth of the human personality --- all these are discussed in this chapter. In fact, Chapter V stands as a bridge between Karma Yoga and Pure Meditation. In the Vedas this subtle point in the chain of discussions is almost missing. Chapter V of the Geeta rediscovers for us this 'missing link' in the Vedic thought. I have said 'rediscovers,' and not 'deliberately created' or 'originally supplied.'


As Shankara puts it, in many places the Lord has spoken of the renunciation of all actions and at the close of the chapter, Krishna has advised Arjuna to engage in Yoga in the "performance of actions." When thus viewed, there is, in the last chapter, a perceptible inconsistency according to Arjuna. Hence the doubt with which he opens his discussion with Lord Krishna in this chapter.

Sources: vedabase.com; The Holy Geeta

A few favourite things

A Few Favourites

Waking up to a cool morning, fragrant
After an overnight cool shower,

Not to rabid mosquito bites
Aided by a cruel power cut.

Taking a walk on my favourite path,
Untroubled by potholes and smoke.

Listening to my favourite music or radio,
Unfazed by stupid ads and interruptions.

Browsing on my beautiful phone,
Untrammelled by the much-touted 4G.

Watching some beautiful videos,
Unencumbered by ads.

Applauding some great cricket,
Unworried by match fixing.

Eating my favourite dosa,
Unconcerned about transfat and stuff.

Putting up my feet and saying, "Thank You
Oh Lord, these are a few
Of my favourite things."
And being heard.

Hail the Guru! Unto Him our Best

Today is the Birth Centenary of Pujya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda. I resolve that I will study and follow his Geeta teachings! May He guide me and give me strength.

Bg 5.18

vidyā-vinaya-sampanne brāhmaṇe gavi hastini
śuni caiva śva-pāke ca paṇḍitāḥ sama-darśinaḥ

Bg 5.19

ihaiva tair jitaḥ sargo yeṣāṁ sāmye sthitaṁ manaḥ
nirdoṣaṁ hi samaṁ brahma tasmād brahmaṇi te sthitāḥ

Translation

18. Sages look with an equal eye upon a BRAHMANA endowed with learning and humility, on a cow, on an elephant, and even on a dog and an outcaste.

19. Even here (in this world) , birth (everything) is overcome by those whose minds rest in equality; BRAHMAN is spotless indeed and equal; therefore they are established in BRAHMAN.

Commentary

The wise cannot but see and recognise the same presence of Divinity everywhere. The ocean has no difference in feeling for different waves. Gold cannot recognise itself as different in different pieces of ornaments. From the stand-point of mud, all mud pots are the same. Similarly, an egoless man, having recognised himself to be God, can find in no way, any distinction in the outer world of names and forms. The distinctions generally recognised, are all the distinctions of the containers. Man to man, there may be differences in form, shape and colour of the body, or the nature of the mind or the subtlety of the intellect. But as far as Life is concerned, It is the same everywhere, at all times.

Therefore, it is said in this stanza, that the Self-realised cast an equal eye on a Brahmana endowed with scholarship coupled with humility, on a cow, on an elephant, on a dog or on a pariah. Everywhere he realises the presence of the same Truth, whatever be the container.

Equal vision is the hall-mark of Realisation. The perfected cannot make distinctions based upon likes and dislikes. In and through all forms and situations, he sees the expressions of the same dynamic Truth which he experiences as his own Self.

In stanza no.19, almost a whole Scripture is indicated. In the context of the development of the theme, Lord Krishna had to show, first of all, that the Perfection, described in the previous few stanzas, is not a Godly idealism to be experienced after death, in a specialised world beyond the clouds, called the Heavens. Pauranic Hinduism and all Semitic religions promise a Heaven as the glorious goal of existence and spiritual effort. However, to an intelligent man; this promise is nothing more than a charming hallucination, and not a positive gain. Such a vague goal cannot be sufficiently encouraging to coax out of an intelligent man all his enthusiasm and sincerity.

Contrary to this vague hope, here in Vedanta, the naked truth is declared when Krishna repeats what the Rishis had earlier asserted a thousand times. It is expressly mentioned that the relative existence as a limited ego-centre can be ended, and the imperfect individual can realize himself to be the Infinite Godhead. This goal can be reached not only at a post-mortem stage, but in this very same life, here in this very body, among these very same worldly objects, and one can live in the Consciousness of God, evolving oneself from the immaturities of the deluded ego-sense.

Who is capable of gaining this ascendency in himself? What is the secret method by which this consummate self-redemption can be effectively fulfilled? The assertion that man can reach this goal in this very life is made in the first line by a detailed description of how it can be executed and practically lived. It is said that the one, "WHOSE MIND RESTS IN EVENNESS," gains the Divine tranquillity of a God-man.

Patanjali Yoga-Sutra also explains the same fact in different words. Where the thought-flow, which creates unequal and spasmodic mental fluctuations, is arrested, there the mind ends. Where the mind ends, it being the equipment through which Life expresses as a limited ego, this sense of separative existence also ends. When the ego has ended, the egocentric thraldom of samsara also ends. The ego, thus undressed of its samsaric sorrows, rediscovers itself to be nothing other than the Self Itself. Unless one comes to this mental equipoise, one is not capable of experiencing the Samattwam of the Sama-darshin described in the above stanza.

An individual who has discovered for himself a sufficient amount of tranquillity in which nothing dares disturb him any more, is certainly one who has plumbed the depths and touched the bottom. A reed on the waves will be tossed up and down by the waves, but a light-house built upon firm rocks always remains upright and changeless, allowing even the stormy waves to exhaust their anger at its feet. Krishna's argument is thus logically sound when he declares that a mortal among us, who can maintain his equanimity under all conditions as explained in the foregoing stanzas, is indeed one who has contacted the Divine and the Eternal in Himself, "HE INDEED RESTS IN Brahman."


Sources: Vedabase.com; The Holy Geeta

Sanskrit Bashing

(Bhagavadgita manuscript in Kangra Fort Museum)

Sanskrit bashing has become very fashionable, especially after Modi took over. Why?

1. Modi roots for all things good in our country including Sanskrit, Dharma, and Yoga.
2. A number of vocal "Hindutva" voices have become active, expressing many sensible and nonsensical ideas. 
3. Many scholars who make their living bashing Sanskrit and sporting PhDs, sense a great branding opportunity. 

People like Wendy Doniger who says Ramakrishna was a homosexual and Pollock who says Sanskrit is responsible for the Jewish Holocaust, are winning large grants and buying up mainstream media space in The Hindu, Economic Times and so on.

I thought I should place some basic facts as I know them:

1. The threat level of Sanskrit terrorism has been and will always be low, although some fellows say it is as bad as from Daesh. 
2. Sanskrit accounts for over 70% of all our vocabulary riches in most Indian languages. 
3. Reading Bhagavadgita, Adi Shankara, Kalidasa, Ramayana and Bhagavata, in my own rudimentary way, gives me wonderful insight into life and mysticism which thrills me no end. No wonder every great thinker around the world has marvelled at the wisdom of the Orient. It is ALL handed down in Sanskrit from thousands of years ago. 
4. Learning Sanskrit is a wonderful intellectual effort. It is aided by a teaching methodology which is so scientific! 
5. Those who believe in Sanskrit classics and our ancient texts should separate science fiction from science; and symbolism from history. Of course people of those ages had marvellous powers of concentration and contemplation, which could have conferred extra-sensory awareness and power on them. Even their literature would have been impossible without those insights. But it does not mean one could buy a flying machine off the shelf. You should be as savvy buying these ideas as you're while shopping on Flipkart. 

Sanskrit bashing is ugly and shows how vulnerable we are, when we swing from total ignorance of our cultural roots to some jingoistic pseudoscience claims. We better study our classics, practise Dharma, and fight when necessary all this cow-dung throwers called Sanskrit bashers.
Just as ridiculous is the idea that somebody flew around the world in 80 days in a Pushpaka
Vimana, it is crazy to say the Holocaust was caused by Sanskrit. And funding such blatant slogan mongers is truly shameful for anybody.