Worship, what should we worship?

I know that some people will already know/understand what i am writing here, but there are also others.

‎"worship" is just a word, what you should worship is the question, if it is god, what is god should be the question??. if belief in god is just the fear of the unknown and worshiping him for luck to overcome your anxiety problems, well then you need to grow up,(but that doesn't mean we can look down upon such people, we can only gently tingle their interest with rational questions).

Worshiping or reminding ourselves of nature and or forefathers & who discovered,fire,wheel,language,agriculture, etc etc.. then.. There is the beautiful sun raising everyday giving earth all its life energy, that everyone should worship..also as per evolution humans ate from forest and animals and we destoryed forest and killed animals for agriculture to grow(we are still doing that for living), so there is nothing wrong in respecting and revering and reminding ourselves us of some of these things. Worshiping our origins and what currently sustains us and stop us from becoming arrogant with your knowledge,power and strength is in my opinion Right.

"work is worship" and anyone who does not appreciate work, cannot/should not get respect in society as far as society goes there is nothing other than morally appropriate work. Women/men who worship their other halfs(in marriage) or honestly their relationship do so because they give them so much of what they badly need and (become dependent in the process, to the point where they can't imagine a life without them). Just like people used worship their kings, as they could not imagine/think a life without his protection and control and law and order.

I can understand if you u don't like the old rituals,(i also don't like a lot of them, idiotic brahmins say they should

not even transulate them into tamil that people can understand) but there are rituals even in work, there are rituals everywhere..I am against all rituals without a meaning/reasons, or doing them without a rational or psychological basis,even religious rituals for various events in human's life (birth,death,puberty,seemantham, marriage,etc) have psychological and moral importance,at least they had meaning in the past feudal world(it does not mean that world was totally good or bad).. it just means that in the new world, new scenarios, they may not be valid anymore,we need to transform these rituals. to social-economic and political settings..(there is ritual way in which even self-respect marriages, political meeting of DMK,ADMK etc have a pattern/rituals).You can do yoga in a ritual way or just watch your breath to calm down in anxiety,or anger or tune your mind in the morning for the day's work. you can be against all god based rituals, The only problem with Hinduism is all these psychological needs were inter woven with society in the name of Divine inspiration or god or the fear of the unknown,When fear starts ruling that is when, everything becomes a problem and people start using stuff and vested interest start, now that science has cleared us of a lot of doubts about ourselves, we need to change these systems.. as cultural practices with freedom to practice rituals, not imposed by the society, well there are so many conventions in sciences, we just need to be aware that these are conventions, but conventions are need, but with for creativity sake conventions should not become rigid.

There was a psychological need for god in the old society, for it to organize itself.. for order and preventing lawlessness etc etc...There was no police in India...before the Britishers..no big bureaucratic system..we had one of the richest thriving economy till about 1800. We also need to understand that India did not have renaissance, which gave birth to science., more liberal,critical and lateral thinking. we are going through a huge transition at very fast phase, with a huge population that is still rural. Apparently still there is huge need, as there is no escape or resuce that lot of people who are unable to change or be flexible or adapt to the changing senarios,people become cynical of the future and want to go back in time,which is imposible, so they escape into god/spiritual mysticism. One cannot deny that this is also good adaptation or a existential need. You cannot underestimate the courage needed to change our own ideologies,thought patterns or adopt new ways of thinking.

We have the basic human right to choose/reject what we deem you think is right/wrong or like/dislike.So no one can dictate terms to you, on what ever is legaly fine. In case of parents, close relatives it gets tricky,they get hurt and it hurts you back, So i just drill them with questions and when imposed on me, i do it as some plain favor, so that they don't sit and cry, but slowly but steadily they themselves have left me alone. I myself suffered some divine inspiration problems,during the process of rationalizing all the practices, So i can relate to people's problems in this adaptation and how difficult it is actually. Can you believe that a somebody who went upto phd in evolutionary biology giving up all that because christianity rejected it?.

Humans brain do need pattern to make things easy for them in life, but we also need some chaos, and questioning all sorts of patterns,critically frequently, laterally and be open to change and adapt ourselves..In there lies our salvation and further evolution, to know more about everything..still be humble and patient.so that we evolve together..and not destroy each other, hurt sentiments or destory everything in arrogance of our knowledge,power,technology or even apparent divine inspirations. Not denying that you can also learn a lot from them in the process, as each human being is special and has adapted and is adapting himself in his mind to live,everyday. More often than not,there is this learned helplessness also, where you know you need to change/adapt but are still stuck in patterns of thinking and are unable to change yourself. This is actually quite hard to deal with, as you keep failing at something many times, you either give-up or something become absolutely necessarily and you don't adapt your thinking to that,as it can lead to depression(quite a painful thing), then you become a misfit, hence not giving-up,courage and determination become virtues and have to be worshiped? don't they? and Hero's who epitomize these virtues have to be worshiped don't they?

corruption, Lets us be ants and worship our fellow ants

Corruption is definitely not receding, it has changed its form, become sophisticated, and has become accepted as part and parcel of life. It frequently raises criticism only when it becomes huge in numbers to digest.Only a tribal society there won't be any corruption, where almost everyone has to work for his food and fend for himself most of the time.

Corruption will always exist in some form or the other in our society, it can only be so. Any value accrual to one person, disproportionate to his effort can be termed a form of corruption or to simply put it "Value erosion is Corruption", there is probably nothing absolute about corruption, except in definition,value itself is relative. To an extend getting money out of inheritance is also a form of injustice or corruption. we have to live with some injustice in one form or the other. There is no real escape from injustice and corruption right from the day we decided to have settled life with agriculture. If you can't make your own food or protect your own self, then there will be corruption always in the society, no matter how much ever values you infuse into the blood or semen or what ever.. It is a part of the price we pay for having a settled and secure life that a majority of the society life. Those who ensure security of any kind are bound to have more power and hence will like to acquire more power to secure themselves. The need for security & privacy has some corruption built into it.

In the case of telecom fraud, nobody says raja is not a fraud, but stake sale by corporates, to get a benifit of 70,000 crores or more.. within 6 months, i am sure corporates got a lot more benefit out of this than raja. vodophone recently involved in $2.5 billion tax evasion. This thing of going behind money has to kind of stop. Money is starting to rule us. It was tool but this tool has become dangerous. anything invented for operational quickness, falls into bad hands and makes life difficult for everyone.One terrorist and everybody has to be checked, one thief and everybody doors have to be locked and everybody have to by lockers, one rapist and all women have to walk in fear in bad areas and bad times. Fear of these guys seem to rule us. Only a fearless society can eliminate such people and all the pain one needs to take to protect ourselves...can we be one? same is the case with UID issue.

Sonia Gandhi got into politics to save her husband's name in bofor's case. a weak congress would mean rajiv gandhi was not so great, not even good sometimes, but strong congress would mean he was always good and great. It would mean narasimha rao does not even deserve a mention. Now This same lady has to render justice to other people involved in corruption in congress and UPA, what do you expect from her??. Hypocracy is the order of the day in everything. A government which is supposed give education is involved in liquor sales in tamil nadu, and people who were selling liquor,tobacco& drugs are now rich guys giving education. It was goldman sachs which was involved in converting black money to white money for mafia in Newyork, now you got a great chance of becoming Fed back gov or lead a lot of govt and international financial organisations if you have experience at goldman. Even recently goldman had to pay huge fines for mall practices. But still all the big advisors to the US government have come from this greatest of all investment bank. Basically you have to master the art of hyppocracy to become super rich or super powerful and to keep it, much more than any other art.

There are people debating as to whether, I can buy insurance on your asset? in germany. It is like i can destroy your asset and make money out of it. It is called credit default swaps(CDS). They have invented instruments like that during the financial crisis, so that somebody like J Paulson can make $20 billion for his clients and $ 6 billion for himself. This the ideal and ambition of many people who get into MBAs who want to enter wall streets, investment banks etc..QUICK MONEY..NOW J Paulson is a hero in the financial world..and he gives a talk to fed bank and other financial world people, how to prevent a crisis. I were there, i would ask him put down all the money he made before he can give a bloody talk to me.Derivative traders out there.. please go and get some real job for heaven sake, lets us find some better ways of price discovery. they are like snakes entering a ant hill. sorry people i don't worship snakes.

Lets us be ants and worship our fellow ants.

sathya on Inquality and human values

Whenever I used to contemplate about the “economic imbalance” in society, i.e. many are poor, whereas a few are rich, it always occurred to me that lack of Human Values is the fundamental problem. And I used the oft-quoted paradigm of “IT industry pays best than rest” to conceptualize this.

To illustrate this, let us take a case study of a super market. Let us describe the services / transactions / stakeholders in a diagram as follows (sorry about the pathetic arrows!).

As all of us know, supermarket never manufactures things. Assume a poor farmer producing rice/ wheat / vegetables / fruits supplying for this supermarket. If the base amount he would get for producing the commodity is ‘x’, the supplier (whose job is relatively simpler than farmer) gets at least ‘3x’, and the supermarket would sell the product with an equal or more profit. And there are customers, who are ready to pay this figure!

Let us go back to diagram. People do not mind paying 2 rupees for an item, while they could get an equal / slightly low-quality item for Re. 1. Many of them buy things which they would seldom / sparingly use. And the supermarkets price the products based on these “strategies”. Thus, rich people continue to become richer.

Of course, one may argue that it is the so-called “knowledge” which makes people rich (software guys are, after all, smart!!). I have come across many of these so-called “know ledged” whose whole intention is to “Live and Let Die”. They do not hesitate to trample others for their well being. The poor, for the simple reason that they are less / illiterate, inspite of their hard work, remain poor.

A little thought would reveal that if only we practice, what Sathya Sai Baba calls, “Ceiling on Desires”, i.e. putting a stringent limit on our otherwise uncontrolled desires, having a little “discrimination” (what we really need / what we do not), and sharing of wealth (giving back to society from where we got riches), would equalize / balance the economy.

Ethics in marketing and Advertising

What Do Marketers do:

Finding what the customer wants and creating an perceived value(illusion/real) that he is getting it by buying your product is in essence marketing.

That is exactly what Marketers do to conquer potential customers mind spaces and attention keep you in their spells of perceptive value, influence decision to buy and there by makes money(more value compared to the cost)

The fundamentals: The world we see is our Perception; may not be Real.

The fundamentals to life is the urge to survive and then live, when we say somebody is full of life what we are saying is that, they are enjoying all the little pleasures of life and living in the present, having the nostalgia of the past and dreams for the future. Human life that we are so concerned is extremely short/ephemeral 60-70 years compared to the global scale of things(say life of trees, life of mountain, life of river, life of start etc..).. when the cosmos looks at us, we are like a water bubble's life compared to human life(The vedas says this).

Life itself could be a big illusion.. only thing that amazes me is our ability to phantom/understand this. Unable to understand how we are able to understand most things given time and focus.

Coming back to the point marketers are not at fault in seeking way to capture of our attention.. because it is their business to create illusion to sell things for filling up their stomachs..and feed their minds with illusions themselves.

So it is for us to be in awareness. and choose what we buy and not to succumb to the spells that these marketers create to trap us in our fundamental weakness in life Sensual pleasures and fear of uncertainity(INSURANCE- BEWARE THESE GUYS).
If people are not aware, that is not the fault of the marketer

Ideally I don't believe in artificial regulations.. honestly.. it only works to an extend.. self regulation is best form of regulation and most ideal. But we live in a practical world of Notions of ethics(personal ethics, family ethics, caste(occuption) ethics, societal ethics, Religion(path to god), ecological ethics,

Ethics are important for an apparent balanced world, if we think we want to have apparent control over it. So lets be in AWARENESS of Truth and experience the BLISS that is essence of SAT-CHIT-ANANDHA

Ps: -
MARK "APPARENT".. everything is apparent except ourselves.
MARK "Notion" All good and bad is based on our Notions which is based on our samskaras(PAST ACTIONS)

sathya on human values

Human values

At the outset, I wonder the situation that has prompted somebody to create a "blogspot" for "Human Values" as if they are something distinct and different from us! It sounds as though, were fishes use some discussion group, would they discuss about swimming!! Anyway, that is the great comedown, the ground reality for us, the humans.

As for "propagating" / "creating awareness" of these values, I firmly believe that only by living them, you serve as the best example. We have enough scriptures, codes of conduct, etc. as to how to lead life, but it seems we loose ourselves in mere intellectual lexicalization and fail to understand the sublimate stuff. As Sri Sathya Sai Baba says, these human values can never be got from outside i.e. from books, shops, etc. but are something inherent in us. Some techniques, as given by Him are really helpful in adhering to these human values. The first thing is: Follow your Conscience. This Conscience is something wonderful which all of us possess and the most precious gift that one can have from God (and it is the one often being discarded!).The difference between a thief and one who is not is that while the thief knows theft is bad, yet unable to obey his Conscience, the non-stealer implicitly obeys his Conscience. A very simple example to show where the root of our value system is. And this our Conscience is often clouded by limitless desires. It is often our experience that when we long stop listening to Conscience, it will stop speaking to us.

The second thing is: Integrity (Harmony) in thought, word and deed. The results are amazing if only we make sure that we think only good thoughts and decide to speak only them and put into action what we speak. It is really a very practical solution; try this for sometime. You will know it for yourself.

Gone is gone, at least, if we want the coming generation to preserve the validity of human beings, it becomes our utmost responsibility to see that our children do not get into this mad, material race, chasing after nothings. All the so-called valuables, gold, diamond, currency etc. are given value by US (humans) and apart from that, they DO NOT have any independent value. Thus, if we want to revalue the human values, we necessarily have to devalue these "precious" commodities. These truths must be imparted to the younger generation and it is parents' utmost responsibility to ensure that a being "good" man is as important, if not greater, as being "great" man.

What the hell is this?

I found this as a forward, and I thought it would be appropriate to put it up here.

The photo is the Pulitzer Prize winning photo taken in 1994 during the Sudan famine. The picture shows a famine stricken crawling towards a UN food camp located a kilometer away. The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat it. This picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer Kevin Carter who left the place as soon as the photograph was taken. Three months later he commited suicide due to depression.



This is what the Kevin Carter wrote:

Dear God,

I promise I will never waste my food no matter how bad it can taste and how full I may be. I pray that He will protect this little boy, guide and deliver him away from his misery. I pray that we will be more sensitive towards the world around us and not be blinded by our own selfish nature and interests.

I hope this picture will always serve as a reminder to us that how fortunate we are and that we must never ever take things for granted.

Just two points I want to make:

• What kind of ethics do photojournalists have?
• Why the hell did this photo win the Pulitzer Prize? He should not have been awarded the prize, since he lacked any sense of ethics.

Education

There are two aspects to education: 1. Imparting Knowledge. 2. Instilling character.

It is an age old saying that "If character is lost, evertything is lost". Nobody says "if knowledge is lost, everything is lost". Today, education has become synonymous with gaining more and more knowledge, be it theoretical or practical. This section itself is not very good. What is happening is that the character side of education is facing severe neglect, mainly because the teachers themselves lack them. In the case of knowledge, even if the teacher is dumb, students have other sources like books, internet etc. But for character, the sources of learning for a child are parents and teachers. A parent/teacher of a great character can produce students of great character, even against the so-called peer pressure, because in those cases, peer pressure reduces due to the overwhelming influence of the teacher/parent. Sad part is neither the parent nor the teacher have that character. Where from are you going to select good teachers in this regard?

If you think about it deeply, the philosophy of education itself needs to be modified to not just produce great engineers and doctors, but to produce, basically a good human being who has heart, and not machines that work only for themselves. The present system only leads to the formation of such machines. Unless something is done about it soon, the world will surely be ruled by robots - robots who have flesh around their bones and blood running through their veins. Sooner we act, the better it is.

But the age old question remains: Who will bell the cat?

keep the focus on the goal and move on!

Inter-faith talks are organised by different organisations, i attended one recently.
religious leaders from the various faiths of hinduism,chirstianity,islam,buddism and jainism gave talks, i really really did not see any difference in the way the books treated life on earth and how humans have to live on earth.

The differences come only about life before birth, or life after death. which actually nobody has a real clue about!. while these are important things that man has an unconscious desire to ponder. These are pretty personal questions i believe. nothing can actually truly convince us in this regard, it could at the max be Intellecturally and Emotionally stimulating. Atleast this is my experience, interms of trying to believe something. how can you ever believe anything on earth which is changing all the time. anything can decieve you. (if you don't believe this,shoot a question i can tell how?)

so i don't understand why these religious fights came in today today life. biggest of wars spots are kashimir(hindu * muslim) and palestine(muslim* christian) and potential spots for a 3rd world war.

Material things are associated with spirituality. when rituals are given more importance than understanding the truth. if only we can think for a minute, and ask ourselves "how does it matter?" you will get a resounding "it doesn't matter"

there 2 objectives

1 - To live peacefulling in this world- for which all religions precribe almost the same rules
2 - To understand the truth- which pretty individualistic and personal, where no one can really tell this is the truth.

so religions and difference is truely a figment created because of associations and rituals rather than by any fundamental difference. It is myopic vision of ritualistic people that is causing narrow mindedness that we see.

we are all humans, and we all want to realise or find the truth (if it exists). so no point in fighting over non-entities! why get distracted!

keep focus on the goals and move on towards it!