Paulo Coelho

What is a Good Teacher:
"It is someone who examines everything he teaches, Old ideas can't enslave men because,  with time, they have to be adapted and be given new shapes. So let us take the philosophical riches of the past and keep in mind all challenges the present world offers us".

And What is a good student?
"  It is someone who listens to what Isay, adapting my teachings to his life, but never following it literally. It is someone who doesn't look for a job, but looks for work that dignifies him. And lastly, it isn't someone who seeks to be noticed, but someone who seeks to make something notable".

Here are some of the proverbs by Confucius:-
"In order to know a man, see how he acts, find out what he seeks, examine what makes him happy".
"Those who ask are fools for five minutes. Those who don't are fools for ever".

- Paulo Coelho

Mother of all Scams

Their previous complacency brought to mind the performance of Robert Clive, in 1765, before a parliamentary select committee: Questioned about the wealth he had amassed in India, he replied memorably that considering the opportunity open ti him, he was amazed by his moderation.

Oliver Cromwell's admonishing words of 1653 to the Rump Parliament,for its myriad failures to build the New England after the civil war.

"It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your practice of every vice; ye are a fractious crew, and enemies to all good Government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage.... Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your god; which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes?... Ye have grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; ye were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed and are yourselves gone.... In the name of god, go!"
 -from Mother of all scams in Britain by Premen Addy. 'Pioneer, page 9,May 26, 2009, Bhubaneshwar

Just a Mom!

Just a Mom!

While applying for her driver’s license, Deepa was asked by the clerical  staff to state her occupation. Deepa hesitated, uncertain how to clarify herself. “What I mean is” explained the clerk. “ Do you have a job, or are you just a …”

“Of course I have a job.”snapped Deepa.”I’m a mother.”

“We don’t list ‘mother’ as an occupation… ‘housewife’ covers it.”  Said the clerk emphatically.

The next time Deepa found herself dealing with a public office, she again encountered a clerk who asked,  “What is your occupation?”

“I am a Research Associate in the field of Child Development and Human Relations,” Deepa ventured confidently. The clerk paused, his pen froze in midair, and he looked up as though he had not heard right.  Deepa repeated the title slowly, emphasizing the most significant words.

“Might I ask,” said the clerk with sudden interest, “just what do you do in your field?”

Coolly, without any trace of nervousness in her voice,Deepa replied, “I have a continuing program of research (which mother doesn’t?) in the laboratory and in the field (indoors and outdoors). I’m working for my Master’s (the whole family) and already have three credits,( a son and two daughters). Of course, the job is one of the most demanding in the humanities (any mother care to disagree?) and I often work 14 hours a day (24 is more like it). But the job is more satisfactory than just money.”

There was an increasing note of respect in the clerk’s voice as she completed the form. He stood up and personally ushered Deepa to the door.

As Deepa drove back, buoyed by her glamorous  new career she was greeted by her lab assistants – aged 8 and 5.Upstairs,Deepa could hear her new experimental model (the 2 – year old) in the child development program testing out new vocal patterns.  Deepa felt triumphant. She had gone on official records as someone more distinguished and indispensable to mankind than ‘just another mother’.

Does this make grandmothers ‘Senior Research Associates in the field of Child Devlopment and Human Relations? Then the aunts – ‘Associate Research Associates’.

Motherhood… what a glorious career!

It is not what you do but how you see what you do that makes all the difference. 

The Paradox of Our Times

The Paradox of Our Times

Is it that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers

Wider free-ways but narrower viewpoints

We spend more but have less

We have bigger houses but smaller families

More conveniences but lesser time

We have more academic degrees but lesser sense

More knowledge but lesser judgement

More experts, more problems, more medicines but lesser health

We have multiplied our possessions but reduced our values

We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often

We have learnt hoe to make a living but not how to live

We have added years to life but not life to years

We have been all the way to the moon and back,

 but have trouble crossing the street to meet our new neighbour

We have our space, but not inner space

We have cleaned up the air, but polluted our souls

We have split the atom but not our prejudice

We have higher incomes but lower morals

We have become long on quantity but short on quality

These are the times of taller men and shorter character

Steep profits and shallow relationships

These are the times of world peace but domestic warfare

More leisure but lesser fun

More kinds of food but lesser nutrition

These are the days of two incomes, but more divorces

Of fancier houses, but broken homes

It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom

A time when technology can bring this letter to you and a time when you can choose, either to make a difference….or just hit Delete.

                                     -His Holiness, The Dalai Lama

Aurobindo on Spirituality in India

Spirituality is India’s only politics, the fulfillment of the Sanatan Dharma is its only Swaraj. You can’nt cherish these ideas, still less can you fulfill them if you subject your minds to European ideas or look at life from the material stand point. Materially you are nothing! Spiritually you are everything. It is only the Indian who can believe everything, dare everything, sacrifice everything, First, therefore, become Indians. Recover the patrimony of your forefathers. Recover the Aryan thought, the discipline, the character, the life. Recover the Vedanta, the Gita, the Yoga. Recover them not only in intellect or sentiment but in your lives. Live them and you will be great and strong, mighty, invincible and fearless. Neither life nor death will have any terror for you. Difficulty and impossibility will vanish from your vocabularies.

-Aurobindo.

Pt. Nehru at Aligarh Muslim University in 1948

Speech by Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru at the convocation in Aligarh Muslim University in 1948

I am proud of India, not only because of her ancient, magnificent heritage, but also because of her remarkable capacity to add to it by keeping the doors and windows of her mind and spirit open to fresh and invigorating winds from distant lands. India’s strength has been twofold; her own innate culture which flowered through the ages, and her capacity to draw from other sources and thus add to her own. She was far too strong to be submerged by outside stream.-(pp. 335)

I have said that I am proud of our inheritance and our ancestors who gave an intellectual and cultural pre-eminence to India. How do you feel about this past? Do you feel that you are also sharers in it and inheritors of it and, therefore, proud of something that belongs to you as much as to me? Or do you feel alien to it and pass it by without understanding it or feeling that strange thrill which comes from the realization that we are the trustees and inheritors of this vast treasure? I ask you these questions because in recent years many forces have been at play diverting people’s minds into wrong channels and trying to pervert the course of history.-(pp. 335)

You are Muslim and I am a Hindu. We may adhere to different religious faiths or even to none; but that does not take away from us that cultural inheritance that is yours as well as mine. The past holds us together, why should the present or the future divide us in spirit?-(pp. 335-336) 

Prayer is Calling Back Home

Prayer is calling back home

Prayer is, in essence, coming home,

for it brings us into connection with our deeper selves.

It is the way we speak to God,

and its beauty and poetry and devotion should match that in our hearts.

Prayer is the broom that sweeps out our hearts,

so the home we offer to God is an immaculate and pure one.

Prayer is a time when our mouths, our minds and our hearts

are filled with the glory of God,

when we simultaneously speak, think and feel our love for Him.

Prayer is the blanket that wraps itself around our souls.

Prayer is the water that quenches the thirst of a man lost in the desert.

It is the stars that glisten in the dark of night,

giving light to all those who may need it.

It is the sun that shines  in middle of winter,

coaxing the flowers to open their petals.

It is medicine to the sick, food to the hungry, and shelter to the homeless.

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