Sacred Trees

Last Saturday morning, i was ferrying the kids from PM to SPT, just behind Decathlon India.  This drive is one of the greenest and i just love it as i end up seeing some majestic trees, which get me to think of the Great Infinite Spirit.

On the second round, there were some bee-hive "mongers" trying to collect some honey from this tree near Dommasandra Circle.  This is about the only tree with bee-hives on that route and, sometime back, we counted up to 17 on it!



Incidentally, a massive bee-hive triggered the first spiritual ecstasy of Swami Vivekananda. From Early Years of his biography:

At the age of fifteen he experienced his first spiritual ecstasy. The family was journeying to Raipur in the Central Provinces, and part of the trip had to be made in a bullock cart. On that particular day the air was crisp and clear; the trees and creepers were covered with green leaves and many-colored blossoms; birds of brilliant plumage warbled in the woods. The cart was moving along a narrow pass where the lofty peaks rising on the two sides almost touched each other. Narendra's eyes spied a large bee-hive in the cleft of a giant cliff, and suddenly his mind was filled with awe and reverence for the Divine Providence. He lost outer consciousness and lay thus in the cart for a long time. Even after returning to the sense-perceived world he radiated joy.

On the way back there was this Sacred Grove. A mysterious place, just after and on the same side (right) as Inventure Academy:

Once in a while, i wonder whether one could change one's consciousness and XP that of trees, as Swami Ashokananda did. Sister Gargi writes in A Heart Poured Out: (page 63)

When he (Swami Ashokananda) was near trees, his mind would sometimes grow very quiet, and his ordinary consciousness, human consciousness, would be obliterated, as it were, and tree consciousness would take its place, a consciousness entirely unlike our own—a different time sense, a different way of knowing and feeling, indescribable in terms of human consciousness. He felt at one with trees, just as we feel at one with human beings. He knew trees to be very happy, peaceful beings. He could almost hear their laughter. It was, he said, like the laughter of young girls around sixteen or seventeen years old, and yet restrained.

Trans-litter-ate

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxXla

A couple of days back, there was an article on Swananda in a Kannada paper called Sanje Karnataka titled:

ಸಮಾಜ ಸೇವಯಲ್ಲಿ ಸ್ವಾನಂದಾಶ್ರಮ
Swananda in the service of Society

So quickly i rendered the same with Baraha and sent the article off to the Swananda Google Group as well as to a couple of hundred email IDs, including the Kannada script in the subject of the email message.

Later in the night, there was some feedback: (bad news does indeed travel fast)

The spelling of Swanandaashrama in Kannada in the subject is spelt wrong.

I was surprised.  When i checked, it was indeed so:

Since i had copied the script into both the header as well as the body, there was only one explanation: GMail (or the browser) was screwing around with the display.

When i hit Reply, the script was again displayed properly in the Subject:

Felt happy with that cracking, w/o getting hot under the collar!  It reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from The Catcher:

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

~~~*-*~@~

For a while, my blog header in Apple Safari used to be displayed in an unusual manner: the Telugu rA was a combination of both ra and rA!

That always used to remind me of that kid in Mrs. Doubtfire, who catches their caretaker peeing in the men's loo:

Lydie: She's got 'em?
Chris: She's got everything.

వరుణ + వాయు = మరణవ్యుహ

Or, Hard Flat Rain

We were watching Armageddon and the mood outside was equal to it.  The skies opened up and poured their guts out.  Vayu teamed up with Varuna and sent the rain flat into the house.  The French windows had to be battened down and i went out front.  What a sight!  The rain swirling like a dervish.  I just loved it.

I didn't go back into the house after the French windows were secured.  I just hung around there and enjoyed the show that the Old Mother was putting on.  There was no fear, just joy.  It was being one with the Great Infinite Spirit.  As Swami Ashokananda found out, after touching the Holy Mother:

The Power of the Holy Mother
...
"All day long", he said, "I felt and saw a tremendous living power working through the universe, turning it topsy-turvy, kneading and molding and giving a different shape to the world.… It was fearful, and at the same time there was a sense of great attraction and love and a sense of unity and nearness. Here was a little indication, a little perception of the aishvarya aspect, the power aspect, of God. I had touched Mother's feet, and she made me feel she was that power.

Opened my jaws as wide as possible, remembering the Master:

The Durga Puja Festival
…
I would open my mouth, touching, as it were, heaven and the nether world with my jaws, and utter the word 'Ma'.

Got totally drenched in the process and felt like Andy Dufresne at the end of The Shawshank Redemption, with the cleansing rain after his "shitty pipedreams".

The whole upper floor got flooded but, what the heck, haven't had an XP like this in the years we have been here.

Godplay

Last night, when i got a Google SMS Channel alert that synthetic life had been created, i had my doubts.

This morning, it was all over the front page.  When i delved into the inner pages, there were some sane voices:

Artificial life or plain genetic engineering?
…
But even back home, India's premier geneticist Dr P M Bhargava, who set up the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad, was categorical that Venter, though a fine scientist, had this time around overstated his work's significance.

"Venter's team took a cell, removed its DNA and replaced it with a host of other material. This can at best be called a massive bit of genetic engineering," he told TOI over telephone from Hyderabad.

I am surprised by the lack of rigor in Western circles of late.  Earlier, it would be very difficult to spot, say, a spelling error in the NatGeoMag (though there was one in the July 2001 editorial), but nowadays things aren't that difficult.  Blame it on globalization!

~~~*-*~@~

Anyway, till man can get a cell to start beating by itself for the first time in a lab dish (the petri kind, not the pretty types), i will not believe all this malarkey.

As usual, i offer my INR 1 million to the folks who do it first.

From What Defines an Incarnation?:

Edgar Cayce says that the soul enters the body at the time of delivery, not at the time of conception. From a design standpoint, this makes a lot of sense (based on the condition of the body, allocate the soul). So, naturally, one person wondered who sustains the fetus. Edgar Cayce answered that it was the Spirit.

The Case of the Sniffing Boss, Redux

Sometime back, i had blogged about The Case of the Sniffing Boss, wherein the double-SOB (backwards), on the sly, puts in a FWD rule on his subordinate's GMail ID to his own.

Of late, i noticed that's no longer possible in GMail, due to the following:

Forwarding mail to another email account automatically

1. Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page, and open the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
2. From the 'Add email address" drop-down menu in the Forwarding section, select 'Add new email address.'
3. Enter the email address to which you'd like your messages forwarded.
4. For your security, we'll send a verification to that email address.
5. Open your forwarding email account, and find the confirmation message from the Gmail team.
6. Click the verification link in that email.
7. Back in your Gmail account, select the 'Forward a copy of incoming mail to...' option and select your forwarding address from the drop-down menu.

It's sort of nice to think that the GMail folks added this safety feature after i sent them my blog post ;-)

Much To-Do about Nothing

People are forever telling me, "Please do this if you are not doing anything", but they don't understand that doing nothing is exactly what i want to be doing.
—From an old RD

One of the things about hanging around home for 3+ years has resulted in my inability to understand folks who are forever seeking something to do, something to finish.  They are on a perpetual adrenalin rush and seek completeness in some work done.  If you removed the work component out of them, it was as if they'd just collapse, as written in The Razor's Edge: (page 252, middle)

Marionettes that the showman had thrown into the discard.

The ocean-wave metaphor for Satchidananda seems to be much more in the background.  The wave seeks to split away from the ocean, but it can only do so, to an extent.  Then why struggle so much?  Simpler to follow Ramana's injunction:

Be still and know that you are God.

To do is to be—Socrates
To be is to do—Sartre
Doo bee doo bee doo—Sinatra
Scooby doobee doo—Hanna-Barbara

Greasy does it

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxGreasy

Note: Jiddu means Greasy in Telugu

Coming to my idol born today, Jiddu Krishnamurti, some of the things that i learned:

Pathways to Gratitude
…
Jiddu said that one's brain circuitry gets changed with one's thoughts. To me, that makes a very good case to have gratitude as one of the focal points of life.

His great summary of why i have so many gurus and have quaffed (faffed?) at Their wellsprings:

"If the water is clean, drink it"

The secret of his equanimity:

Jiddu's Secret
…
At one of his talks in the later part of his life, he surprised his audience by asking, "Do you want to know my secret?" Everyone became very alert. Many people in the audience had been coming to listen to him for twenty or thirty years and still failed to grasp the essence of his teaching. Finally, after all these years, the master would give them the key to understanding. "This is my secret", he said. "I don't mind what happens".

His love for Nature:

Tree Consciousness
…
Once, when walking across the Brockwood Meadows behind the "Grove", I was about to pass between a group of five tall pine trees. He caught me by the arm and said: No, around them! We must not disturb them.

Based on feedback from Alpesh, i went and bought his Notebook last afternoon; unusual stuff, with frequent references to the vastness of the Great Infinite Spirit:

For June 24 (1961):

Without experiencing the essence there is no beauty. Beauty is not merely in the outward things or in inward thoughts, feelings and ideas; there is beauty beyond all thought and feeling. It's this essence that is beauty. But this beauty has no opposite.

Finally, wrt his insistence that: (source)

'Truth is a pathless land…. Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley. If you would attain to the mountain-top you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices. You must climb towards the Truth, it cannot be "stepped down" or organized for you.'

i'd say:

If you organize religion, you don't go to the Gods, you go to the dogs.

Feign, man!

Freeman Dyson once wrote to his parents that Feynman was "half-genius, half-buffoon", but has recently changed this to "all-genius, all-buffoon".
—Christopher Sykes in the preface to
No Ordinary Genius, The Illustrated Richard Feynman

Today's the start of an unusual run, with the birthdays of four of my idols on consecutive days:

• Feynman (11.MAY)
• Jiddu Krishnamurti
• Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
• Ed Ricketts (14.MAY).

Some of the things that i have learned from Feynman, the so-called Einstein of the second half of the 20th century:

• You don't have to live up to other people's expectations; that's their problem. This was what Feynman figured out when he was offered a role at Princeton, offering more pay than that of Einstein!
• You are not socially responsible for the world. You do your bit, of course, but, after that, you forget about it.

The Glory of the Gloaming

Or, The Fiesta after the Siesta

"Sir, what's the secret of your longevity?"

"I slept when I should have sat up and worried."

Of late, in the hot afternoons, i try and grab some shuteye from 3:30 PM to 4:55 PM.  When i wake up, as Sammy san used to say, the mind would be in the alpha state.  Hardly any thoughts come.  The latest NatGeoMag that i received this morning sheds more light on this: (Secrets of Sleep)

Such studies suggest that memory consolidation may be one function of sleep. Giulio Tononi, a noted sleep researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, published an interesting twist on this theory a few years ago: His study showed that the sleeping brain seems to weed out redundant or unnecessary synapses or connections. So the purpose of sleep may be to help us remember what's important, by letting us forget what's not.

I repeat the mantra of the Master along with any activity to be done around the house.

Then i read a bit of How to Live with God.  Came across two startling things this evening:

• The Master appearing to a lady in the American Mid-west and giving her a mantra
• The reason for crying while thinking of God: "When wood burns, moisture comes out the other end"!

No one's around the house and the mystery of the twilight deepens.

dAna with daya

Give with faith, give with magnanimity,
give with modesty, with awe, and with sympathy.
—Taittiriya Upanishad,

seen in Chapter 14 of the Shri Sai Satcharita

One of the things that stayed with me from that magnificent bio of Ed Ricketts (you can read an except in About Ed Ricketts) is this snippet of Steinbeck writing about his great friend: (source)

I have tried to isolate and inspect the great talent that was in Ed Ricketts, that made him so loved and needed and makes him so missed now that he is dead. Certainly he was an interesting and charming man, but there was some other quality that far exceeded these. I have thought that it might be his ability to receive, to receive anything from anyone, to receive gracefully and thankfully, and to make the gift seem very fine. Because of this everyone felt good in giving to Ed—a present, a thought, anything.

Perhaps the most overrated virtue in our list of shoddy virtues is that of giving. Giving builds up the ego of the giver, makes him superior and higher and larger than the receiver...It is so easy to give, so exquisitely rewarding. Receiving, on the other hand, if it is well-done, requires a fine balance of self-knowledge and kindness. It requires humility and tact and great understanding of relationships. In receiving, you cannot appear, even to yourself, better or stronger or wiser than the giver, although you must be wiser to do it well.

It requires self-esteem to receive—not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.

~@~*-*~@~

JugS blogs of a moving instance when they were down and out in Munich and the Arab-Israeli war put a stop to their airline taking off:

Kindness of strangers
…
But one memory of Munich we'll never forget.

Waking past a street fair one day, Bunny had stopped before a woman selling toffee apples. The woman had smiled and held out two apples. Bunny had shaken her head, held up one finger; we could afford only one apple. The woman seemed to intuit our plight. She accepted money for one apple. Then she'd held out the second apple, indicating it was free. Bunny had hesitated. Hunger is bitter; pride is even more bitter to swallow: Bitte, the woman had said. Please. Please? Why had she made a plea for us to accept her gift? Because, by accepting the kindness of strangers, the recipient gives back the greater gift of trust? Bunny had taken the apple. And by doing so, had perhaps given back something in exchange. A belief in our common humanness, a mutual recognition that the person who receives is also a giver.

The Rapport i've with BumpTop

Came across two lovely utilities this week.

The first one was BumpTop, recently acquired by Google.

Fast Company reports:

It's one of the better implementations of a touchscreen desktop I've seen. It's easy to use, though not all of its gestures and features are immediately obvious, and certainly feels more natural than trying to navigate a stock Windows 7 desktop. 

PC World feels:

But there are some real gems in BumpTop's stash. For example, dragging a finger flat across the screen in BumpTop pushes objects around, and holding one finger in place while dragging another crops images. Even if Google never implements a 3D desktop, these gestures could come in handy for Android or even Chrome OS.

Even if you have WinXP, like i do, BumpTop (BT) is great.

With a 3D desktop, you can arrange the important to-do activities so that they are nearer to you.  You can also make them more visible by simply "growing" that icon (with Ctrl+G).  Once the activity becomes less important, push it to the rear of the desktop and/or shrink it (with Ctrl+S).

Also, activities can have their own icon (created from any image, and not necessarily from a stock set, like in WinXP). I was tracking the delivery of an online order for some Wii games, so i created a shortcut to that Where's My Stuff? page on Amazon.com, and changed the icon of that BT shortcut to this.

BumpTop Sample Desktop

Note: Even though these shortcuts are created through the BT interface, they are still available through the Windows Desktop.

~@~*-*~@~

The second utility that i quite enjoyed was Rapportive, simple social CRM built into GMail.

Once you enable this add-on for Firefox or Google Chrome, the sidebar of an opened message in GMail will show the (social networking) details of the person on the To:/CC: of that particular message.  It's pretty startling, as you can see where all that person is on the Net, with that email ID!

Rapportive also allows you to add notes (visible only to you) for each person.  I normally plonk in the mobile number as well as any alternate email ID.  The mobile number is esp. quite handy, as it can copied and pasted in a jiffy, w/o having to open the GMail contacts or your mobile.

Three Years of MOPA

It's three years of a very small portion of my retina getting burnt out due to an arterial occlusion, resulting in a blind spot.  Thankfully, it ended up below the fovea, and was not such a debilitating one.  More in My Own Private Arunachala (MOPA).

When i went for the yearly eye check-up last week, Dr. Madhu Kumar at Sankara Eye Hospital said that i was very fortunate that only a minor artery got blocked, otherwise i'd have lost sight in the entire eye.  Ah, well.  As they say: "Luck is when God didn't bother to sign."

One very interesting benefit of MOPA was that my migraines stopped for 13 months!  However, due to some tablets i was asked to take for my diabetes, they restarted.  After a while, i junked the tablets following that French funda:

Mon grand-père a son franc-parler. «Si vous êtes malade, dit-il, allez chez le docteur. Après tout, il faut bien qu'il vive. S'il vous prescrit un médicament, allez chez le pharmacien. Après tout, lui aussi doit vivre. Mais aussitôt rentré chez vous, flanquez-moi tout ça à la poubelle. Parce que vous aussi, vous avez le droit de vivre!

Post that, the migraines became infrequent, though they haven't stopped :-(  Should have followed that adage of the Americans: "Don't fix it if it ain't broke".

One Year of MOPA

Numbo Jumbo శంభో

Noticed an unusual thing last evening:

Each syllable of the word Telugu adds up to a 9, with the entire word adding up to a 27.  Like so:

te-lu-gu
45-36-36  = 27

Btw, Pandit Sethuraman, the great numerologist of Mylapore, used to convert any name to its English [OK, Roman, Lars ;-)] equivalent before doing any analysis.

Don't see this sort of thing often.  The following has been blogged earlier:

The Numbo Jumbo Grid
…
A take on the saying that 666 is the number of the devil is that it actually refers to the www (w=6).

Numerological Values of the Letters of the Alphabet

Demo-lition

This post is dedicated to Dilip Thosar.

Had a vivid dream last (01.MAY) morning at 5 AM:

The Infosys office in which i was working was being demolished!  So we had to collect our stuff before it got razed.  The funny thing was that the demolition was going on cubicle by cubicle, no doubt influenced by a similar exercise that i saw on Hosur Road a few days back.

I was all set to leave the building when i remembered that i hadn't cleared my work area fully.  So i went back up a couple of floors.

There was a large amount of stuff for me to clear, along with some small wooden works of Ganesha and Shirdi Sai Baba.  After a while, i gave up and let them lie in the drawer.  There's only so much stuff that you can take away.

I looked around and noticed that Archie Lal was still busy at work in the distance.  He didn't seem to be in a hurry!  He was working out and getting ready for more coding (it later reminded me of Thosar, who i'd see hard at work in his D-13 room from the big O of D-10).

I saw what i presumed was a bundle of print-outs and hoped that it had the fundoo crossword-generating program that Sukumar Rathnam wrote in VAX/Pascal on the IIM-A computer.  However, it turned out to be a stack of Sanatana Sarathi.

Then i got up and had the following thoughts:

• Ramana Maharshi says that, in the final analysis, even Gods and Goddesses are just waves in the Ocean of Satchitananda and they also have to disappear when you go back to the Source/Self.
  
  When Sri Ramakrishna was dying from the cancer brought on by others expiating their sins by touching  Him, the Holy Mother went to a Shiva temple to pray for His recovery.  But the Infinite Spirit was inexorable and gave Her a vision of a stack of earthen vessels breaking up with a loud thud.  When She went back, the Master smiled and said: "None of this is Real, is it"?
• Reduce the grabbing and hoarding tendencies.  Ultimately, what one can take along is only the qualitative aspect of things, not their quantity.  As Swami says, "Less Luggage, More Comfort", which has been translated into Tamil with a startling double entendre: "chinna sAmAnu periya sukamu"!

Related posts:

• Is the World Real?
• Is the Universe a Dream of God?