Spirituality and philosophy Archives

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Prosylatism: A bane on humanity

On March 11, 1689, on the eve of the auspicious Gudi Padwa, Sambhaji Maharaj, the second Chhatrapati of the Maratha Kingdom and eldest son of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, was brutally murdered under the orders of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. As we celebrate the Hindu New Year at our homes, places of worship, and with friends and

Who is Dnyaneshwar and why his buffalo?

Dnyaneshwar was a thirteenth century saint and philosopher from India. He was a great proponent of Advaita, a very popular Hindu philosophy, which for in simple words professes that GOD is everything. Using a common metaphor, the GOD is the potter, the intelligence of making pots, the clay, the pottery wheel, the land on which

Goals of life

In Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Hindus, there is a term called Simhavalokan – Lion’s gaze. When a lion is walking, after covering a distance, he will pause and turn back, as if contemplating where he came from, and then charting his future course. In short Simhavalokan is ‘in retrospect’. This year as I

Debts of Humans

Yesterday, I was at a dinner hosted at a friend’s house when the person sitting opposite me introduced himself. In turn I introduced myself by just the name and expected to return to casual polite conversation with everyone. But he looked at me, and he repeated my name. He exclaimed, “You may not remember me,

Sewa – Selfless service

Sewa is selfless service performed without expecting anything in return. It is an act performed by humans as a basic property of being a human, not guided by the expectation of joy dependent on desire fulfilment. As a human we feel compassion, which is a state in which one sees all life forms as part

Hindu perspective on discrimination

A Hindu perspective on discrimination Recently, I was fortunate enough to be on a panel discussion on the topic of AntiSemitism at B’Nai B’Rith senior housing apartment. As I heard the speakers voice their opposition to Anti-Semitism and support the people of the Jewish faith, the words of one of the adages of Hinduism reverberated

Darshana, a glimpse into the Hindu civilization

In our daily life, many of us interact with a Hindu in one way or another. Either your doctor, a coworker, a classmate, a close friend, a…

Raksha Bandhan – A potential world festival

I am an optimist. I sincerely believe that if every human felt a bond with another, we may be able to overcome greed, lust for power, and insecurities and end all wars and resultant carnages. The more things we have in common, the better chance of this being possible (although all of us being humans

Non-Anger (Akrodha)

There is a fable of a boy who is prone to angry outbursts. His father tells him to hammer a nail in the wooden fence post every time he is angry and abuses someone, and then remove that nail after he has apologized and made amends. After a week the boy proudly shows his father

Lighting the light within

My family has had some ancestors who were highly spiritually evolved individuals. My paternal grandmother’s father was a householder yogi (yogi- one who seeks union of individual consciousness with the Universal consciousness) who held a day job as a government employee and raised a large extended family, but he was also an advanced yoga practitioner.

The wish granting tree (Kalpataru)

In prehistoric times the good and the evil forces churned the ocean of the cosmos, and one of the unique objects which the Divine granted to the churners was a wish granting tree. One day a traveler comes across this tree and sits down in the shade, not knowing the special nature of the tree.

Guru

My salutations to the guru who opens the eyes of the one who is blind due to the darkness of ignorance with an ointment of knowledge. The first full week of May is celebrated as Teachers Appreciation week in USA. I fondly remember Teachers’ day in my school in India when the graduating 10th grade