What does it mean to be Hindu ?

shekhar59 Comments
I am Hindu, and very proud to be one .. but I have often wrestled with that question. What does it mean to be a Hindu?
I have spoken to some of the best minds, the most spiritual minds.  I have journeyed to many places in my quest. and I have to come to believe that the best way to describe Hinduism is to say what it is not. For how do you describe a ‘teaching’ that encompasses all possibilities and all of eternity, refusing to describe the infinite in finite terms ? That describes all of life and all thought as both illusion and reality at the same time ? There is no science , no thought, no possibility that Hindu thought does not embrace ? So there is only one way to describe Hinduism for me – although it may mean many things to other people – is that Hinduism is a search, a yearning, to find that which is infinite within ones own self, a yearning to experience that which is Eternal…


…So what is Hinduism not ? It is not centralized, it not an organization, it is not political. It can never be. For every time there has been an attempt to organize Hinduism as a political force, it becomes by nature a finite structured force that bears no relationship to the idea for a search for the infinite.
So to those people that ask why we cannot declare India a Hindu state I ask them to understand and trace back to what a Hindu state is ? And they will soon realize they are looking for an identity. And the very basis of Hinduism negates the idea of identity. For it is a search for ourselves beyond that which is called ‘Identity’.

Which begs the question, why we cannot accept our identity as just Indian ?

Islamabad bombings, is this really about Bin Laden anymore ? where are we headed ?

shekhar25 Comments

How many people need to pay with their lives for the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre ? What started as a hunt for the few people involved in that attack to bring them to justice has ignited into a fire that has spread and threatens to gradually engulf half the populations of the world. The US over reacted by invading Iraq in what will go down in history as one of the most misjudged attacks in the history of modern warfare, and now the world has been polarized into Islamic fundamentalism vs capitalism, threatening to bring down the very fabric of civilization. This is now no longer a hunt for Bin Laden, it has encompassed and exposed pressure points between religion, social structures, philosophies and between the haves and the have-nots. Proving that harmony and peace is such a fragile concept, one that needs constant nurturing.
And as Pakistan falls to fundamentalist forces, what we mistakenly call Talibanization ( it is really just fundamentalism) – everything points to that India is the next target. I am a complete liberal, and I stand up and say that we must protect ourselves. Any one indulging n terror activities that targets innocent civilians is a terrorist. Be they Muslims, Hindu’s Christians or Agnostics. The Bajrang Dal that desecrates and kills nuns and attacks churches are terrorists too.
The war in India is no longer on our borders. Why are we spending half our defence budget on the Siachin Glacier – when the real war now is inside India ? Inside Pakistan ?

Is this the end of Capitalism ? An Open Forum for debate

shekhar13 Comments

The headlines everywhere, over dramatic as usual herald the end of an era. Perhaps this is the end of an era. But the era of what ? What was so different here from the few times it has happened before ? Like the Great Depression ? or Black Monday (or was it Tuesday ?). I am not sure I get it all, and I do believe no one does. But lets hear voices and lets find a way to lead this into a healthy debate, so we all can hope to make some sense of the free fall that is taking place in the financial systems of the world.
First, what is Capitalism and what are it’s assumptions ? At it’s most simplistic level It assumes a free market economy where individual (even though selfish) actions ultimately pan out for the good of the larger collective or economy. So that s one rule flouted in any case ! We all accept that individual actions bordering on greed have in fact sucked enough wealth out of the system to completely dis-balance it,
Second, Capitalism assumes an equality of market information. It assumes that everyone has the same information and understanding of the market situation, based on which they will make decisions beneficial for themselves. That is patently not true anymore, with financial instruments so complex that individual decisions are heavily reliant on advice and more so, advertising that provokes dreams and fantasies to people. Capitalism will never take into account that people can be encouraged to create debt through a multiplicity of credit card transactions, or over-leveraging through re-mortgages of equity in home values. The over creation of debt fuels the artificial creation of money supply that is NOT backed by an increase in productivity, because a large chunk of this increased mney supply is being sucked out of the system by few very wealth individuals and organizations.

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Sonya’s Picks: Dreams from my Father

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Dreams from my Father
There’s a story, in Barack Obama’s ‘Dreams from my Father‘ of the day Obama joined school in Hawaii. After the introduction from a teacher who talked kindly about Kenya, he says, “I spent the rest of the day in a daze. A red headed girl asked to touch my hair and seemed hurt when I refused. A ruddy faced boy asked me if my father ate people.”

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Lehman, Merryl Lynch and the crap card game

shekhar31 Comments

I remember playing three card brag, where no one was sure of their cards or strategy, and so everyone played blind. The stakes got higher. And yet the ‘bank’ got richer, and the players, too afraid to now open their cards just n case, decided to keep bluffing their way through, and kept adding complex sets of rules and dealing new cards with new rules. By now it looked less and less a game of chance for the new rules gave it an illusion of structured control. And by now no one really wanted to look at each others cards, or their own, for no one could afford to lose. The game was the tiger they hoped they would never would have to get off. Till one had no choice – or lost faith. To find that no one had any cards to speak off –
This reminds me of what is happening with Lehmann, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Fannie and May, Freddie Mac etc – one great card game that no one thought would end.

The Hadron Collider and the search for the ‘God’ particle

shekhar21 Comments

Scientists have named the so called ‘God’ particle as the most elusive particle in existence. It is the particle that scientists need to explain the fundamental connection between that which is illusory and matter. Between anti matter which no one can find or state, and matter which you can touch and measure to your great comfort. One , in theory, unable to exist without the other. The known is only made possible by the unknown.
Perhaps the scientists are looking for something that is elusive in its very nature, so elusive that it has a duality. It is both there and not there at the same time. That duality is the ultimate nature of the Universe, it exists and it does not, at the same time and in the same moment, and both are absolutely true realities, depending on your imagination, or depending upon the scientist’s case – their experiment,
whch in this caseis a 7 billion dollar experiment (the Hadron Collider) to define a duality as one or the other. It would be fascinating if they came up with a the God particle as it called. They will be one closer to exploring one of the dualities, but each time the scientists try and find a link between the dualities, it will always be elusive, for the link lies in the immense imagination of the Universe that we are part of and often forget, that connection is in it’s nature infinite, so how do we define it ?
look at this wonderful video on youtube if you have not already seen it – it is done by the CERT scientists – proving that do not spend all theri time pondering the theories of the universe !
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM
Often wondered why and how the concept of zero was never questioned in mathematics. It is the infinite number that makes mathematical equations possible, the theories of the beginings of the Big Bang possible, and yet it has no definable existence – it a ‘no number’ or an ‘infinite’ number’ depending which way your imagination turns. Incidentally, ever tried dividing something by zero ?

Aren’t nuclear tests outdated ?

shekhar7 Comments

In the giant Hadron Collider scientists are currently trying to replicate the Big Bang. New molecules are being designed and tested for the latest biodrugs on computers. Computer simulation models can predict almost any known sub atomic behaviiou now. And since an atomic explosion (for peaceful purposes) is way of containing a sub atomic implosion and then being able to redirect the energy from that implosion in a controlled way, why would we need to explode a nuclear device to create the technology ? Give a computer enough data and it will be able to predict the probabilities far more accurately than a crude activity like live nuclear blast, where the conditions can never be completely controlled. So why all this posturing on prohibiting Nuclear testing – the weapons of the future will in any case be developed as complex computer models.

Bihar floods : “I could not find my village”

shekhar18 Comments

This appeal was posted by Abhay :
Dear Shekharji
I have just returned from my home in Saharasa ( Bihar) and could not locate my village easily, forget about exact location of my house. Its just an array of diseases, hunger and depression prevailing in population.
Please do something for us. I know you are a big person. Our history might have been great but the fact today is that we are dying and help from outside is grossly missing. its just visible in roadside areas. I even don’t feel proud of being a part of India which could not give us a life free of floods in these 60 years of independence.

Bihar floods. Do we treat Bihar as a lost cause ?

shekhar29 Comments

The incredible tragedy in Bihar caused by the floods in the river Kosi raises several questions. Close to 3 million people have been displaced from their homes. Over a 100 are dead, but there is no way that figure can be established as much of the flood affected areas are cut off. While several people raised the spectre of global warming, why was there no warning and protection when engineers could see that the Kosi dam in Nepal was under structural pressure before it burst and caused the devastation ? If reports are to be believed, the warning was faxed to an office in Patna where the faxes accumalated as the person in charge was on leave and no one was in office!!!! Fax ? Whatever happened to the cell phone ?
A fundamental question too : why does the rest of India treat Bihar as a lost cause ? Wherever I go there is general lament about Bihari labour creating slums, forgetting that they were there for a purpose. To build our roads, our houses. Why have people got this attitude for a state that was once the greatest centre of learning in the whole world, at the nalanda Unversities. Famous Bihari’s include King Asoka, Chandra Gupt Maurya, Chanakya, Vatsayana, but also Dr rajendra Prasad, Karpoori Thakur, even our current hot favourite – Mahendra Singh Dhoni. And yet if you ask people about Bihar the first name that comes up is Laloo Prasad Yadav. Why not Buddha and Bodh Gaya ?