"I do not believe in a God or religion which cannot wipe tears of a widow or bring bread to the mouth of an orphan"
-Swami Vivekananda


Talk by Dr Mahesh Mehta on Dharma in our life -

Religion is not important, what is more important is Dharma. It encompasses religion. We often talk about dharma in our daily life, but where are our rights?! Ancient Indian literature doesn't quite account for rights and the reason is very simple. Dharma of each individual gurantees rights of others. Thus, when I follow my Dharma as a son, my father's rights are established. My dharma as a husband ensures rights of my wife, and vice-versa. One may lead to a conclusion that neglecting dharma amounts to taking away someone else's rights. So, dharmic principles may never be allowed to flounder.

Succinctly, one may outline 5 major principles of dharma, and they are given below:
a) Everything is God - tree, snake, you, I. There is Unity in all. That's why various objects and creatures are worshipped by Indians. This philosophy is taken from the Isopanishad - Isa vaad avisaM sharnam.

b) We are divine. We do not worship many gods. Nor is there ONE God. There is only THE God. The distinction is important. In quatifying God as one, two, or 330 million, you are setting an artificial limit. THE God just is. And that divinity is within us. Someday, when the veil of ignorance that shapes the body, mind, and intellect, is lifted, we will be able to see the supreme Reality.

c) Truth is One - Ekam Sat. We accept a multiplicity of faiths. When we worhip Hanuman, we are not worhipping the idol itself. There is "PratisthapanA" in that idol. When we write a small infinity on a piece of paper, is that Infinity? What if we write a huge circle? Is that nothingness, a void, a zero? Ofcourse not. These are representations of the infinity and zero.

d) Awareness of cosmic consciousness. Vasudeva Kutumbukum. Independence should not be worshipped, rather, society should be cherished. This is ONE family, where we are all connected. The current scenario of a Global Village is not one of Unity. It is where the entire world is a market place and the humans are nothing but consumers. Vyasti, sRusti, Parameshwara --> there is a connection between these and our relationship with each other is similarly connected.

e) Relative truth changes. If I ask you the time, you may say that it is 4:10pm. Five minutes later if you're asked the time, you will say that it is 4:15pm. Were you lying earlier or are you lying now? Ofcourse not. The reality as changed and this kind of statement is called relative truth because it changes. The Vedic seers were on an eternal quest of Truth -- and that should be the goal of our Dharma. Goal of life is gathering knowledge. Modern science believes in objective truth. Spiritual science believes in subjective truth. This knowledge was gathered over time. The vedic seers said 1000s of years ago that everything in this universe is vibrations. String theory essentially propounds the same thing that the essential component of every elementary particle is waves, or vibrations.

To do:
solicit position papers on dharma; new economic world order - currently it is money-centric. we need it more dharma centric -- dharma pradhaan artha vyavastha. For eg. friendly behavior towards the environment and how to monitor it. We can also have a position paper that expresses the deep-rooted cultural aspect of India.

Sampras and Agassi met, probably for the last time in a grand-slam final, at the US Open final yesterday. Watched the show 2nd set onwards and I'm glad I started late - my man Agassi was being brutally killed the first two sets. However, Andre brought the level of the game up a notch in the third set to send Sampras on a ball-hunt. For the entire match Sampras scored 33 aces while Agassi had ~6, which alone demonstrates where the match was really lost. Set 3 was taken by Agassi when he eventually broke Sampras' serve in his game 6. It was a remarkable event and even the crowd seems very partial in egging Agassi to work harder at it.

I was quite disappointed to see Agassi not take the fourth set and hence lose the match. Yet, what hurt most was Sampras' acceptance speech where he seemed to lose all modesty and simply said that he knew he was in a 'zone and once I realized that I was playing well, it was obvious that I would win' -- I wanted to go right thru' the 50 inch TV screen and smack him on the face. Self control - sometimes it's wise to practice it.

Heard Bhupati and Mirnyl got the men's doubles crown. Good for them. Would like Bhupati and Paes to get the gold in the Asian games at Busan now.

Star gazing on Berkeley hills

Sat night was fun. After several unsuccessful attempts (either it was the wrong saturday or the weather was too bad), I got to do some star gazing at the Lawrence Hall of Science. I went up there with several friends and I think all of us enjoyed the night tremendously! (After that it was movie time w/ 'Tao of Steve' -- a commentary on merging the powerful insights of the Buddha with low end materialistic matters such as getting 'laid'...plenty of aphorisms were strewn throughout the movie and one could watch it again just for the knowledge, however, I would not be that 'one')

LHS has several volunteers who set up 10 and 12 inch telescopes for sky gazing. It is hard-work, getting these old beasts to point at just the right steradian. But then, the most patient among us mortals dare to become astronomers. Most of my ilk find it easy to look at beautiful (even artificially colored) images of new discoveries. Seriously, finding a new comet or meteor is highly over-rated, methinks.

* Ring nebula: Unlike what the name suggests, this is not really a nebula. In fact, it is the remnant of a once glorious star that decided to explode into a supernova. This one was approx. 4100 light years away. Though I could not make out (resolution was too poor), there was supposed to be a white dwarf at the centre of this gaseous ring. Yet, just looking at the ring was awesome.

(Aside: In the early part of the 20th century, an Indian astronomer working in the US discovered something called the 'Chandrashekhar limit' which says that if the mass of a star is less than 3 times the current mass of our sun, it will explode into a supernova once most of its Hydrogen has been fusioned into a higher element, such as deuterium or tritium or even Helium. Otherwise, it will colapse under the force of its own gravity and turn into a blackhole.)

* Andromeda galaxy: Closest galaxy to the milky way. If you look at the 'W' of Casseopia, and go down about 4x the width of the 'v' portion, you will be looking at the approximate direction of the andromeda galaxy. As a kid, I used to fantasize about star-ships crossing the 200,000 light years separating Andromeda and us. Escapist mind. Anyways, with a 12 ince tele., it was not possible to see anything other than an elliptical cloud. Andromeda, in fact, is a spiral galaxy, quite like our own. Recently Hubble has discovered another type of galaxy - a ring galaxy. Sounds fascinating.

(Aside: Looking thru' a telescope - try to see from the corner of your eye; this is where the cones are most sensitive to light. Also, if carrying a flashlight, have a red filter light because that will cause minimum distraction to the eyes getting used to the low intensity view of a telescope.)

* Binary star system: There's one at the handle of the big dipper but I saw a different one. Two stars, one lot more bright than the other, revolving around each other. Period approx. 40 days. There was a tremendous amount of drift in the eyepiece, largely due to atmospheric disturbances -- the image kept on floating from right side to left side while looking out west.

(Aside: The keck telescope (on Mt. Polomar, I believe) is the most powerful ground based 'scope with a 210inch diameter mirror. Hubble looks millions of light years deep in the sky. When it finds something interesting, it sends the position to Keck folks. Keck 'scope has several mirrors that are changed to reflect variations in the atmosphere. The wobble of a laser beam sent up enables these mirrors to correct for the atm. changes).

This being my first weblog, I should start off by promising (myself and the odd reader) nothing. This disclaimer is necessary particularly because I tend to slack off once my initial enthusiasm wears off. While I do have high hopes for this e-diary, my only qualm is its inability to allow expression of thoughts or ideas in a language other than English.

Sometimes, during intense conversations with friends, I've realized that I tend to forget sources for little facts known only to myself. Now, in polite company people may simply attribute to this forgetful nature to work, stress, what not, however, others may tend to eventually view everything I say with suspicion. Hence, this area will also be a place where I can write down things I have heard on the radio, read in books, surfed on on-line newspapers, and ofcourse, add my own comments for completion. Tall order, but like I said earlier, I promise nothing.