Sometimes we wonder why God does not grant us a life of ease, free of burdens.
Life is filled with many problems. Why do we struggle with health problems, financial, relationship and emotional problems?
Here's an example from nature. The eagle finds the tallest tree or highest mountain ledge to build its nest.
The eagle lays the first layer of the nest with sharp objects such as thorns and stones. Next, the eagle covers the layer of sharp objects with soft material, such as wood, feathers, and animal fur. As the baby birds hatch, the soft layer of the nest surrounds them.
After they grow a bit, the mother eagle takes the nest material and mixes it up. The jumbled mass becomes a mixture of sharp objects and soft ones. Some of the sharp edges even cut the baby birds' skin. Soon, the mother stops putting food from her mouth into the babies' mouths.Suddenly , their comfortable world has become painful. They are hungry and in pain from the sharp edges cutting into their bodies. The discomfort becomes so great that the babies begin to fly away to get out of the nest.
This beautiful analogy from nature explains the value of suffering in our lives. If people were too happy and comfortable in their physical existence, they would never seek God. Most people turn to God only in times of trouble.
When they are faced with intolerable pain, an incurable illness, a devastating loss, or a financial disaster, they find that life is not as great as they thought it was. Suddenly , life becomes difficult. It is during those times of pain and crises that we begin to question if there is a God, and ask, what is the purpose of this life?
Suffering has the value of turning our attention to the Lord. Without it most people would not give God a second thought.They would live and die without even thinking about God. Suffering makes us pray to God to help us.
When we are rich and living in the lap of luxury , we do not think about God. But when we suddenly lose all that we own, our stocks drop, or we lose our home, we begin to seek God. Misfortunes make us turn to a higher power for help.
Sometimes when we become too complacent, God may shake things up a bit to make us do our spiritual work.
God wants all of the baby eagles to soar. God wants us to soar from this physical region to the astral, from the astral to the causal region, from the causal to the supra-causal region, and from there to return to the highest spiritual realms. God may do whatever it takes to help all the eagles fly and return home through meditation. It is a wake-up call to teach us that we should not be too comfortable in the physical world.
We can wake up to the sharpness of life so that we can rise from this physical world and soar into spiritual realms within. At times, God removes the soft coverings so we can be reminded that this life is painful and full of suffering.
This realization will drive us to put in greater effort to meditate more and to soar to our home of true peace, the lap of God.
Follow Sant Rajinder Singh at speakingtree.in
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Friday, September 12, 2014
Saturday, August 16, 2014
The PM knows he is the servant!
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's maiden Independence Day speech from the ram parts of Red Fort was a departure from earlier speeches by earlier prime ministers on many counts. However, from a philosophical viewpoint, him saying, “Mein pradhan mantri nahin, pradhan sevak hoon“ “I am not prime minister; I am first servant“ could restore to public memory , the true place of elected representatives, as servants of the people who have chosen them to act on their behalf. Gandhiji was the one who first said, “President means Chief Servant.“ And in the 1970s, Robert Greenleaf, with his book on servant leadership, brought the issue of good leadership back into public discourse.
Clearly, those in governance are not meant to ride roughshod over people and exploit them for their own personal beliefs and ends or exult in the power that such positions bring, or see it as one more ac complishment to include in a CV , memoir or biography . Leaders are meant to take their responsibilities seriously , whether the position has come through popular mandate or nomination. In a democracy , the keyword is `service' just as seva or service is an integral part of any spiritual seeker's path to salvation.
“I'm not here to rule; I'm here to serve,“ said Modi, implying that he is different. If you have doubts, he would articulate that fact, to convince you. “I came here all prepared to crit icise Modi's speech,“ confessed M K Gandhi's grandson Tushar Gandhi to the moderator on a TV show that was analysing the I-Day speech. “But i can't find fault with the speech!“ Most Modi bashers and those who Modi re fers to the as the `elite who hate me' might be upset that Modi's speech presented him as a Mr Goody Two-Shoes, with a fabulous Humility Quotient full of good intentions.
Sages have advised seekers that when you lack a certain virtue, try , try and succeed.
In the beginning, if you don't feel humble but wish to become humble, then try faking humility . Sri Sri Ravi Shankar says, “If you can't make it, fake it!“ The idea is that with re peated auto-suggestion, you begin to acquire the virtue over time, and lo and behold, one day you are that humble person you have been trying to be. Humility is perhaps among the most difficult virtues to cultivate or acquire at a time when everything is so focused on satiation of the individual's wants or wishes. And hence the aggressive attitude we see all around us.
If you think it is aggression at work, relationships and markets, that makes things work, it is a skewed view. You could be soft-spoken and open and yet achieve results with out getting trodden all over, if only you allow the spirit of service to stay topmost in whatever you do. As Krishna points out in the Gita, Do your duty without an eye on the fruits of your action. Good thoughts and work are bound to produce good results.
Even business models are now being constructed with humility included as a parameter for good leadership; it is no longer considered a sign of low self-esteem or poor confidence.
Dada J P Vaswani points out that humility is an attitude which allows for others' greatness, and thus helps the manager create the right perspective which enables him not just to manage, direct and order people but to help them discover their best potential, by helping them to transform themselves.
The Speaking Tree | Narayani Ganesh
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
In conversation with the Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro team!
Published on 2 Nov 2012
29 years after it's release a
restored version of the cult classic Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro releases in
theatres this week. Anupama Chopra chats with the Nasseruddin Shah and
Satish Kaushik and Kundan Shah about the film's enduring appeal.Monday, June 23, 2014
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Jim Carrey's Commencement Address at the 2014 Maharishi University of Management Graduation!
Published on 30 May 2014
Maharishi University of Management (http://www.mum.edu)
granted degrees to 285 students representing 54 countries. Jim Carrey
gave the commencement address to Maharishi University of Management's
class of 2014. The University Board of Trustees also presented Mr.
Carrey with the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts Honoris Causa, in
recognition of his significant lifetime achievements as a
world-renowned comedian and actor, artist, author and philanthropist.Thursday, June 19, 2014
Buddha Boy! Ram Bahadur Bomjon!!
Ram Bahadur Bomjon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ram Bahadur Bomjon (Sanskrit: राम बहादुर बामजान) (born c. 9 April 1990, sometimes spelled Bomjan, Banjan, or Bamjan), also known as Palden Dorje (his monastic name) and now Dharma Sangha, is from Ratanapuri village, Bara district, Nepal. Some of his supporters have claimed that he is a reincarnation of the Buddha, but Ram himself has denied this, and many practitioners of Buddhism agree that the Buddha has entered nirvana and cannot be reborn.
He drew thousands of visitors and media attention by spending months in meditation. Nicknamed the Buddha Boy, he began his meditation on May 16, 2005. He reportedly disappeared from the hollow tree where he had been meditating for months on March 16, 2006, but was found by some followers a week later. He told them he had left his meditation place, where large crowds had been watching him, "because there is no peace". He then went his own way and reappeared elsewhere in Nepal on December 26, 2006, but left again on March 8, 2007. On March 26, 2007, inspectors from the Area Police Post Nijgadh in Ratanapuri found Bomjon meditating inside an underground chamber of about seven square feet.
On 10 November 2008, Bomjon reappeared in Ratanapuri and spoke to a group of devotees in the remote jungle.
He drew thousands of visitors and media attention by spending months in meditation. Nicknamed the Buddha Boy, he began his meditation on May 16, 2005. He reportedly disappeared from the hollow tree where he had been meditating for months on March 16, 2006, but was found by some followers a week later. He told them he had left his meditation place, where large crowds had been watching him, "because there is no peace". He then went his own way and reappeared elsewhere in Nepal on December 26, 2006, but left again on March 8, 2007. On March 26, 2007, inspectors from the Area Police Post Nijgadh in Ratanapuri found Bomjon meditating inside an underground chamber of about seven square feet.
On 10 November 2008, Bomjon reappeared in Ratanapuri and spoke to a group of devotees in the remote jungle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_Bahadur_Bomjon
www.dharma-sangha.com
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Monday, June 9, 2014
Monday, May 26, 2014
Amazing >> The American President Takes a Surprise Walk!!
Published on 22 May 2014
The President was heading over to
the nearby Department of the Interior and decided to break with
tradition and take a Springtime walk. On the way, he got a chance to
meet with all sorts of folks, who weren't expecting to meet the
President of the United States of America.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Monday, March 24, 2014
9 Ways the Internet Will Change Your Life in 2025, for Better and Worse!
In honor of the 25th birthday of the World Wide Web, the Pew Research
Center recruits more than 2,000 experts try to predict what the
Web--and life--will look like some 10 years out.
Happy Birthday, World Wide Web.
Twenty-five years ago today, Tim Berners-Lee (now Sir Berners-Lee) wrote a paper describing an information-management system that we would later know as the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee released the code to make his system real on Christmas Day, 1990.
The rest, as they say, is history. To mark the Web’s 25th birthday, the Pew Research Center has been conducting a series of research projects to better understand impact of the Web and to try to predict and prepare for its future. In collaboration with Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Project, Pew asked 2,558 handpicked experts--folks such as Hal Varian, danah boyd, Vint Cerf, and Marc Rotenberg--to describe what the Web will look like, and how we’ll be interacting with it, in 2025. Pew then grouped those answers into "theses," some more positive than others.
Here are nine of the report's predictions for 2025:
The report closes on a positive note, sharing a reminder voiced by many of the experts who were consulted: The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Robert Cannon, an Internet law and policy expert, writes: "The good news is that the technology that promises to turn our world on its head is also the technology with which we can build our new world. If offers an unbridled ability to collaborate, share, and interact.... It is a very good time to start inventing the future."
Twenty-five years ago today, Tim Berners-Lee (now Sir Berners-Lee) wrote a paper describing an information-management system that we would later know as the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee released the code to make his system real on Christmas Day, 1990.
The rest, as they say, is history. To mark the Web’s 25th birthday, the Pew Research Center has been conducting a series of research projects to better understand impact of the Web and to try to predict and prepare for its future. In collaboration with Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Project, Pew asked 2,558 handpicked experts--folks such as Hal Varian, danah boyd, Vint Cerf, and Marc Rotenberg--to describe what the Web will look like, and how we’ll be interacting with it, in 2025. Pew then grouped those answers into "theses," some more positive than others.
Here are nine of the report's predictions for 2025:
1. There will be added awareness of our world and our own behavior.
For this, we’ll have the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and big data to thank. This awareness won’t be limited to ourselves, though. We’ll have similar insights into other people as well. As Judith Donath, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, writes: "We’ll have a picture of how someone has spent their time, the depth of their commitment to their hobbies, causes, friends, and family. This will change how we think about people, how we establish trust, how we negotiate change, failure, and success."2. Information sharing will be so enmeshed in our daily lives that we mostly won’t even notice it.
By 2025, the Internet will become akin to electrical service or another utility. Says Joe Touch, director at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute: "We won’t think about 'going online' or 'looking on the Internet' for something--we'll just be online, and just look."3. Wearable devices will transform health care delivery.
Wearable devices will give us not just early detection of disease but early detection of the very risk for disease. That will help us make lifestyle changes not only day-to-day but hour-by-hour, "magnifying the effectiveness of an ever more understaffed medical delivery system," says Aron Roberts, a software developer at the University of California-Berkeley.4. Governments may lose control.
The Internet enables more people in the developing world to become more aware of disparities in access to health care, education, water, and human rights, and for everyone to become more aware of the cost of manipulative governments. The result will be more peaceful changes but also more public uprisings such as the Arab Spring. "Nations" of those with shared interests will become increasingly difficult for formal governments to control--but we can expect them to try mightily, with new regulations and increased monitoring.5. The Internet will become (more) fragmented.
In a line that sounds right out of a 1980s science-fiction novel, David Brin, an author and futurist, predicts: "There will be many Internets. Mesh networks will self-form and we’ll deputize sub-selves to dwell in many places." If you have a "work persona" on LinkedIn and use Facebook mostly to communicate with your relatives, you already know what Brin is talking about.6. Education will be available to all.
A singularly sunny prediction about the effects of universal access to education is represented in the report by a quote from Hal Varian, now Google’s chief economist. "The smartest person in the world currently could well be stuck behind a plow in India or China. Enabling that person--and the millions like him or her--will have a profound impact on the development of the human race."7. Gaps between the haves and the have-nots may expand, leading to violence.
Oscar Gandy, an emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School, predicts "growing inequality enabled and amplified by means of networked transactions that benefit smaller and smaller segments of the global population." Social media makes it easier for people to share their frustrations; it also makes it easier for people to challenge the status quo--not necessarily peaceably.8. The bad guys will have new tools to make life miserable for everyone else.
Privacy and confidentiality will become things of the past (see below). As the world becomes less safe, terrorism and cyber-terrorism may become daily occurrences. Dirty tricks over social media may become more influential in political campaigns. As one antispam expert commented: "Abusers evolve and scale far more than regular Internet users."9. Say good-bye to privacy.
By 2025, only the relatively well-educated and affluent will have the ability to maintain their privacy. Whether they will choose to do so remains to be seen.The report closes on a positive note, sharing a reminder voiced by many of the experts who were consulted: The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Robert Cannon, an Internet law and policy expert, writes: "The good news is that the technology that promises to turn our world on its head is also the technology with which we can build our new world. If offers an unbridled ability to collaborate, share, and interact.... It is a very good time to start inventing the future."
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Stunning Time-Lapse Video Shows Rare Views of Yosemite! National Geographic!!
Explore the night sky in Yosemite National Park from the top of Echo Ridge—all in the first eight seconds of the video.
California-based photographers Colin Delehanty and Sheldon Neill
spent more than ten months backpacking across Yosemite National Park to
create this stunning five-minute time-lapse video of the park in all
four seasons.
Yosemite HD II is their second time-lapse video of the national park. The first, Yosemite HD, was published in 2012 after three months of shooting. But they knew they could do better.
After 200 miles (320 kilometers) and a total of 45 days in
the park, they finally captured what Yosemite means to them. In order to
do this, they had to get off the beaten path.
National Geographic asked them to guide viewers through the video and point out the difficult-to-reach places of Yosemite National Park.
1. Echo Ridge in Cathedral Range (0:00 in the video)
The photographers walked for a total of five hours round
trip to capture the introductory shot of Yosemite, near one of the
highest points in the Cathedral Range, known as Echo Peaks.
Echo Peaks and Echo Ridge are about 3.5 miles (5.6
kilometers) from the closest road and reach an elevation of 11,062 feet
(3,372 meters) from the base. Echo Ridge connects Echo Peaks with nearby
Unicorn Peak. (Learn about 3-D mapping of Yosemite's iconic mountain ranges.)
"It was freezing cold, and there wasn't much of a surface
area," said Neill. "It was one of our more memorable trips because it
was windy and the sunset was amazing. We were also fortunate to capture
the Sierra Wave, which you don't see often."
In the first shot of the video, light pollution can be seen
in the distance behind the Cathedral Range. Other shots of the
Cathedral Range appear at 2:20, 2:52, and 2:48.
2. Clouds Rest (1:12 in the video)
Clouds Rest is the highest feature overlooking Yosemite
Valley. It has an elevation of more than 9,921 feet (3,024 meters) and
is a 14-mile (22-kilometer) journey from the valley below.
"I was hiking through deep snow without waterproof boots or
snowshoes," said Delehanty, laughing.
"The area that I used to approach
Clouds Rest didn't get a lot of sun in the daytime."
Clouds Rest has an extensive view of most of the Yosemite landmarks, due to its elevation.
"From up there I developed a better understanding of how
big the park is. I tried finding locations off in the distance that
could be found on the map. I stayed up for 24 hours capturing footage,"
Delehanty added. "Since I hadn't planned on staying up there an
additional day, I melted some snow for water and got comfortable while I
waited for sunset the following day."
There are many different shots from Clouds Rest in the video. You can find Clouds Rest at 1:36, 3:00, 3:08, and 4:56.
3. Diving Board (4:00 in the video)
The Diving Board is a rock that juts out in front of the iconic Half Dome in Yosemite. It's where famed photographer Ansel Adams took the photo "The Monolith" in April 1927.
Delehanty and Neill traversed the back side of Half Dome in February 2013 to reach the Diving Board.
"We were pooped when we got to the top. The fog had rolled
in, and behind it you couldn't see anything," said Neill. "The Diving
Board was the only area where there was visibility. My back was
completely frozen by the time we finished shooting."
Other shots from the Diving Board can be found at 0:24 and 3:52.
The photographers visited more than 24 different locations, some of them multiple times, in order to get the right shots of the park.
Yosemite National Park is 150 miles (240 kilometers) east
of San Francisco and encompasses 761,266 acres of wilderness reserve,
including waterfalls, forests, canyons, and the Sierra Nevada range. It
has 150 miles of land without any roads, one of the largest roadless
areas in the continental U.S.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140309-yosemite-national-park-time-lapse-video/?rptregcta=reg_free_np&rptregcampaign=20131016_rw_membership_n1p_intl_dr_c1#close-modal
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
25 years of the World Wide Web: Top 9 interesting WWW facts
Today, you are able to access numerous webpages through a Web browser
over the Internet. You use Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Google and
many other websites often to get information, stay in touch with people
and remain updated.
Most of us heavily rely on the Internet, and the power of Internet is not hidden from anyone. But do you know the source of this power? Do you know when did you get this power to freely view any webpage? 25 years ago, on March 12, 1989 the seed of the idea that would go on to become the World Wide Web was sown.
On the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web - a true milestone in the Internet history - here we bring you certain interesting facts about the Web:
1. British engineer and computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, now Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), wrote a proposal in March 1989 for what would finally become the World Wide Web.
2. On August 6, 1991, the first website http://info.cern.ch went online.
3. A NeXT Computer was used by Sir Tim Berners-Lee as the world's first web server and also to write the first web browser - WorldWideWeb - in 1990.
4. Berners-Lee uploaded the first photo on the Web in 1992. That was an image of the CERN house band Les Horribles Cernettes.
5. It is believed that a turning point in the history of the the World Wide Web began with the launch of the Mosaic web browser in 1993. It was a graphical browser developed by a team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularising the World Wide Web.
6. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organisation for the World Wide Web, was founded by Tim Berners-Lee after he left CERN in October 1994.
7. Archie is considered to be the first Internet search engine. It was the first tool for indexing FTP archives, allowing people to find specific files.
8. If you dislike Internet users being addressed to as 'surfers', blame Jean Armour Polly. It was she who coined the term "Surfing the Internet".
9. Most people tend to treat the Internet and the Web as synonymous. They, in fact while being related, are not. Internet refers to the vast networking infrastructure that connects millions of computers across the world and the World Wide Web is the worldwide collection of text pages, digital photographs, music files, videos, and animations, which users can access over the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol to transmit data and is only a part of the Internet. The Internet includes a lot that is not necessarily the Web.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/25-years-of-the-world-wide-web-top-10-interesting-www-facts/457238-11.html
Most of us heavily rely on the Internet, and the power of Internet is not hidden from anyone. But do you know the source of this power? Do you know when did you get this power to freely view any webpage? 25 years ago, on March 12, 1989 the seed of the idea that would go on to become the World Wide Web was sown.
On the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web - a true milestone in the Internet history - here we bring you certain interesting facts about the Web:
On March 12, 1989 the seed of the idea that would go on to become the World Wide Web was sown.
2. On August 6, 1991, the first website http://info.cern.ch went online.
3. A NeXT Computer was used by Sir Tim Berners-Lee as the world's first web server and also to write the first web browser - WorldWideWeb - in 1990.
4. Berners-Lee uploaded the first photo on the Web in 1992. That was an image of the CERN house band Les Horribles Cernettes.
5. It is believed that a turning point in the history of the the World Wide Web began with the launch of the Mosaic web browser in 1993. It was a graphical browser developed by a team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularising the World Wide Web.
6. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organisation for the World Wide Web, was founded by Tim Berners-Lee after he left CERN in October 1994.
7. Archie is considered to be the first Internet search engine. It was the first tool for indexing FTP archives, allowing people to find specific files.
8. If you dislike Internet users being addressed to as 'surfers', blame Jean Armour Polly. It was she who coined the term "Surfing the Internet".
9. Most people tend to treat the Internet and the Web as synonymous. They, in fact while being related, are not. Internet refers to the vast networking infrastructure that connects millions of computers across the world and the World Wide Web is the worldwide collection of text pages, digital photographs, music files, videos, and animations, which users can access over the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol to transmit data and is only a part of the Internet. The Internet includes a lot that is not necessarily the Web.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/25-years-of-the-world-wide-web-top-10-interesting-www-facts/457238-11.html
Monday, March 10, 2014
8 Things Kids Should Not Hear from Their Parents!
Every child matures with her own unique experiences. Observing your little baby grow up to be a smart teen is a learning process in itself. But, sometimes parents tend to forget their role and blurt out things that can play havoc to the little one’s self esteem. Parents seldom realize what their careless comments have done to their child’s emotions. So, to help you never make such harmful comments we bring you a list of things that you should avoid saying to your child.
1. I was way more responsible than you at that age…
This comment breaks into your little one’s confidence. You have to remember that you are a different person growing up in different times. Rather than this discouraging statement an encouraging advice would be so much more helpful. Also, remember to never compare yourself with your child and try to have no expectations towards them.
2. You always manage to do the wrong things and take the worst decisions ever.
Your kid is growing up and there is no learning without a few mistakes. So don’t criticise the mistakes instead encourage her to learn from them and guide her to follow the right path.
3. Do not disturb me.We all need space but sometimes your responsibility towards your child is more important. This harmless plea may be comprehended as neglect and a feeling of being unwanted can creep in making your child feel alone. Kids can even go into depression due to a comment like that. So next time be a little more careful.
4. You need to be more careful with your friends; they are not good people to hang out with.Children don’t make friends for their benefits. Their friendships are as innocent and their companionship means a lot. You must learn to respect your child’s choice in friends. If you feel like they are in bad company, try to reason things out for them and guide them towards better people.
5. Learn from your friends / siblings.Comparing one child with another is the most unreasonable thing parents can do. Parents tend to generate a negative feeling for that particular friend / sibling with comments like these which can be harmful for their relationship. Remember that every child is different and it is your duty to respect and appreciate your child’s qualities.
6. I’d rather not have children than have a child like you.It can’t get worst than this. As a parent you should never ever, for whatever reason make a comment like that to your kid. It could result in emotionally destroying your child.
7. You always succeed in hurting my emotions.
Children can’t always fulfill their parent’s wishes which result in unintended emotional pain. But rather than making the child feel guilty, reason things out and teach her how to be more careful the next time around.
8. Stop crying...
Tears are a way of expressing what words cannot. When your kid cries it means something she is trying to tell you but cannot. Do not scold the kid rather, empathise and try to understand her feelings.
Inputs from TNN | By Team iDiva | posted Mar 6th 2014 at 3:12PM
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Thursday, January 9, 2014
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