*I* deas

Well it so happened that one of my close friends had changed her religion

Until that time i never really thought about my religion. It was usual stuff go to temple ! :) put your querries and help urslef calm down a little and come back.

It was only few days ago that i sat back to think about why is religion so important atleast toothers eyes ?

When they do this, somewhere they lose a sense of belongingness with the human race. For example, when people say, ‘I am a Hindu,’ or ‘I am a Buddhist,’ or ‘I am a Muslim,’ or ‘I am a Christian.’

In the process, they are also saying, ‘Those who are not Hindus/Muslims/Christians do not belong to me.’ They take a position: ‘I am somebody.’

In order to maintain this limited identity, some are ready to lose their life. The same with culture, tribe and nationality. If the emphasis was on being a human, then there would be more peace in society. We need to help people see that before being a Jew, or a Muslim, he is a human being. And as a human being, the whole of humanity is part of you and belongs to you

These lines immediately reminded me of a story that Swami Vivekananda had used during his Chicago address in 1893,

A frog lived in a well. It had lived there for a long time. It was born there and brought up there, and yet was a little, small frog. Of course, the evolutionists were not there then to tell us whether the frog lost its eyes or not, but, for our story’s sake, we must take it for granted that it had its eyes, and that it every day cleansed the water of all the worms and bacilli that lived in it with an energy that would do credit to our modern bacteriologists. In this way it went on and became a little sleek and fat. Well, one day another frog that lived in the sea came and fell into the well.
“Where are you from?”
“I am from the sea.”
“The sea! How big is that? Is it as big as my well?”
He took a leap from one side of the well to the other.
“My friend,” said the frog of the sea, “how do you compare the sea with your little well?”
Then the frog took another leap and asked, “Is your sea this big?”
“What nonsense you speak, to compare the sea with your well!”
“Well, then,” said the frog of the well, “nothing can be bigger than my well; there can be nothing bigger than this. “This fellow is a liar, so turn him out.”

An exceptional story that brings to light the real problem afflicting us human beings. More than the obsession with our religion, it is antagonism towards other religions that is the cause of all social trauma. As Rajaji had pointed out in one of his articles, religion is necessary to ensure that the moral fibre of society is kept intact. It does not matter which religion people follow, but the fact that they follow the religious governance that is imperative.

Personally, I am a strong believer in the presence of the supreme being. And I have friends from other faiths and also friends who supremely believe that there is no supreme being. And tolerance and the liberal thought process of Live and let live is what is needed in today’s world. As Mahatma Gandhiji explained, God is one and the same, only the ways we try to reach him are different. I remember reading sometime back in the wonderful book, The Monk and the Philosopher that religious wars began as soon as human beings allowed themselves to say, “There’s only one true God, and that’s mine, so I have the right to annihilate anyone who doesn’t believe in him”!

Swami Vivekananda had insisted on the need for practical vedanta. In support of this Practical Vedanta, Swami Vivekananda referred to the mahakavya, tat tvam asi meaning Thou art that from the Upanishads. He explained that, “If we are identical with the other and with Brahman, then we will want to do good to the other. This mahavakya is therefore the foundation for morality. It is not that we do good to our neighbour out of altruism, but because the neighbour is identical to our self.”. That is one pragmatic thought!

Let me finish with another great anecodote from Swami Vivekanda that provides lucid clarity on this,

Suppose you start from here and travel towards the sun in a straight line. From here the sun looks only small in size. Suppose you go forward a million miles, the sun will be much bigger. At every stage the sun will become bigger and bigger. Suppose twenty thousand photographs had been taken of the same sun, from different standpoints; these twenty thousand photographs will all certainly differ from one another. But can you deny that each is a photograph of the same sun? So all forms of religion, high or low, are just different stages toward that eternal state of Light, which is God Himself. Some embody a lower view, some a higher, and that is all the difference.

P.S. I am a big fan of stories and anecdotes. Maybe, my cognitive skills are too impaired to understand things without the aid of these allegories. But, it definitely helps understand and comprehend complexity when things are simplified to something which we can relate to. No wonder I tend to use lateral analogies and stories whenever I am trying to explain something. To state the truth, those stories are as much to ensure that I get comfortable with my thought process as it is to benefit the listener.

Article by Th elinux Guru !

It is a widely accepted notion that geeks are hopeless dates. Myself, I don’t believe this for one nano-second, so I’m writing here to de-bunk this modern myth.
I am the first one to admit that geeks are rarely examples of Olympian physical perfection. They do however possess superior intelligence, and as such, they themselves recognize that they are at a disadvantage in the physical arena. Consequently, they try harder to please, and you will be the beneficiary of all this trying :-)
But what people really want in a mate, the thing that truly makes a relationship last, is a mind-stimulating companion. It is in this category that the geek stands above all. For instance, on a romantic star-lit evening, it is the geek who can point out that the stars actually have colour, show you the Red Giants in the sky, or perhaps explain the origins of Cassiopeia, making the night sky so much more magical. While out on a picnic in the park, it is the geek that can tell you the names of every bird and their mating rituals, and the geek who will not only pick you a wildflower bouquet, but recite the names of each lovely flower.
At the risk of sounding superficial, geeks are fabulous gift-givers. They will stealthily observe what your heart’s desire is, then scrimp and save their geek-o-bucks so that you might receive that G3 laptop for Valentine’s Day! Oh yeah, Baby! And on a practical note, it is the geek that can groom your new computer to purring perfection while you’re out doing a food-run!
There is a glitch in the Geek Dating scene, one that threatens a geek’s natural and instinctive love of efficiency. Countless hours can be wasted on searching for the right geek mate, only to find out that they have a characteristic that is completely unacceptable. (They may be hostile to your preferred Operating System for instance.) This is why Geek Culture® has devised the time and relationship-saving dating assistant, the Virtual Geek-Mate-Date Card™.
You would not believe the success I’ve had meeting geeky soul mates using these humourous and brilliantly simple web-based introductions! By exchanging these cool e-Cards, you each will have, at your fingertips, all the geeky characteristics of the other, and you both can make an informed decision on whether or not to continue the dating/mating rituals.
‘Nuff said. You will never know unless you try, so you go geek