Guru Nanak's birth anniversary

    Guru Nanak, was a great social reformer and religious teacher of the 15th Century. He preached Purity, Justice, Goodness and Love of God. He tried to put an end to religious strife, teaching that "GOD IS ONE, WHETHER HE BE ALLAH OR RAMA OR CHRIST". His followers are 'SIKHS' and the religion he founded is known as 'SIKHISM'.

            
          "Even kings and emperors
           with heaps of wealth
           and vast dominion cannot
           compare with an ant filled
           with the love of God"

 

The truth is out, Meditation changes brain structure.

    A new study by researchers from Yale, Harvard and Massachusattes Institute of Technology shows that meditation is associated with increased cortical thickness.
    The structural changes were found in areas of the brain that are important for sensory, cognitive and emotional processing and iternal perception such as heart rate and breathing.
    The researchers said that most of the regions identified in the study were found in the right hemisphere. The right hemisphere is associated with sustaining attention, which is a central practice of Insight Meditation. The study involved 20 participants, all with extensive training in Budhist Insight meditation.
    The study participants were people with Jobs and families. They just meditated in average 40 minutes a day. "You don't have to be a monk", said Jeremy Gray , assistant proffesor of Pshychology at Yale, and co-author of the study led by Sara Lazar assistant in pshychology at Massachussets General Hospital.
 

All work and no play, today is Children's Day in India

    Today India is celebrating the children's day. With 40% of India being under 18, India has the world's largest child population (400 m).
    Of every 1,000 children born in India, 95 don't see their 5th birthday. One out of four children work... at the cost of a childhood. There are seventy million child labourers in India.
    Nearly half of the world's 2.2 billion children under the age of 15 years live in poverty, Every day 29,000 children under the age of five die largely from preventable diseases, resulting in 10.6m deaths each year.
    The situation is so hopeless and frustating that one even looses the urge to do something to fight the problem.
    I beleive the "global war against terrorism" should actually be the fight against poverty. Prosperous people cannot become terrorists.

 

WikiBooks Book of the Month

    Consciousness Studies has been selected as the Wikibook of the month for November. It is a rich-illustrated textbook on the neuroscience and philosophy of consciousness. I just can't wait to read it .

 

I am a .gif !

I never thought it this way, but apparently there is some truth in it !

Which File Extension are You?

A record of sorts!

Yesterday I posted my experience with an aeroplane. Well, today I saw the maximum number of aircrafts in a single day of my life. I could see all of them through the window sitting on my chair on which I'm typing right now. There was one almost each minute coming on a procession, it's just crazy. It's a wonder how the airport handels so much traffic. I pity the air traffic controllers. Really a mind blowing experience. Maybe they all wanted to feature in my blog! There goes another one...

The Mystique Northern Wind

        The trademark wind of the winter that blows from the northern direction is now blowing with vigour.
        Actually the wind started in a low key mode about a couple of weeks ago. Now the winter is almost here, at the door step, literally. The front door of my house is North facing, and if I open it now I will be greeted with a chilly breeze gently sweeping me all over.
        I absolutely love this wind. There would be no winter without it. It particularly spices up the afternoons when the fortunate enjoy the sun outdoors after launch and indulges in some chatterbits.The wind keeps on reminding everyone that the warmth and light are temporary guests, cool dark long nights are the persisting reality in this season. One can feel that the night is present as an undercurrent in the daytime, as if the night and day coexists together!
        Above everything, this wind has an unique element of mysticism associated with it. It blows from the north, the direction where the himalayan ranges stand like a wall. The Himalaya mountains are so much associated with mysticism that the word 'himalaya' is kind of synonymous with the word mysticism. The Himalayan peaks symbolise the mystique peaks within.
         When I think about the 'lands' from the direction of which the wind is coming, I get an indescribable "out of the world" feeling, a vision of a "mystique fairy-tale" land. It is as if this wind carries with it the essence of some mystique flowers, that cannot be detected by the ordinary nose but by some secret inner organs.

It's an aeroplane today !

        Yesterday I had talked about falling leafs. Every sensitive human being is moved by the beautiful phenomenon of falling leaves at some point in his/her life.
        This is incredible, I am getting into similar spaces seeing a particular aeroplane cruising along in the sky!
        My house is located not far from the airport and the the aircrafts move straight over our heads before landing or after taking off from the airport. Literally I see or hear hundreds of aircrafts moving overhead everyday.
        The aeroplane I am talking about has some remarkable attributes. First of all, it's huge and it's wings are even larger, that means it has some kind of grandeur.
        Secondly, and this is the thing that fascinates me most, is how it cruises along very very slowly and gently along the sky.It's amazing that it won't just stall and fall down abruptly! There is no sense of urgency or hurry, and absolutely no tension in the way it moves! It has a majesty of it's own.
        Then it has it's signature sound - a loud thunderous roar, but it has a kind of sweetness or a melodious quality to it. It is not just noise, it has a positive vibe or energy in it. It is just awe-inspiring!
        This is the season when we start to enjoy the sun, the sunshine becomes golden and is soft and bearable unlike other times of the air. There is joy, celebration and festivity all around in the outdoor atmosphere. Picnic season starts from now. To sum up, life begins to taste like honey around this part of the year.
        I was already in a relaxed, joyful holiday-mood in the morning when I looked up and noticed this aeroplane cruising along gently in the sky, The situation was just right and all the factors i discussed above added-up to give a wonderful experience, an ecstatic 'high', just like something people get sometimes looking at a falling leaf!

A beautiful haiku

I'm on a 'high' right now, after a long long time, because just now I've read this haiku:

     A leaf falls
     Lo, another leaf falls
     With the wind

     (Hito ha chiru/Totsu hito ha chiru/Kaze no ue)

It's not just another haiku to me, it's rediscovering myself after about 15 years. The state of mind that this haiku depicts or provokes, used to be my natural state of mind at around this time of the year. The experiences were poetic, the feelings would linger on and there was simply ecstasy in the air. This was until I started suffering from depression, acute hypertension and later, schizophrenia.

My First Post

Testing (the waters :-P)..