Vedanta Getting On In Years

CHANDER GUPTA





A middle-aged professional, when asked about the achievements he had to his credit in his career spanning 20 years, wryly replied that he had added 20 kg to his body weight.The gentleman had a bulging paunch and receding hairline -signs of ageing.The moot point is whether we are growing old or simply fulfilling the general expectation, with advancing years, to grow old in the way we are expected to grow old with all its outward signs confirming the same. Despite increase in the human lifespan, is it true that we are ageing faster than ever before? Ironically , even an infant born one month back is called a one-month-old baby .
If you ask your colleagues and other pro fessionals about their health, parti cularly those who are near abouts 50, it will be reveal ed that most of them would be found afflicted with one chronic ailment or the other. Blood pressure and diabetes, which are dubbed lifestyle diseases, are the most prevalent afflictions.
The dual responsibility of family and job keeps taking its toll, but sadly , we are not aware of it till the proverbial last straw breaks camel's back.The root of the malaise lies in our abandoning creative and spiritual pursuits while laboriously trying to climb the social and economic ladders.
Obviously , the solution lies not only in being health and fitness conscious from the very start of one's career, but also in devoting adequate time for recreation and in cultivating a positive attitude towards life. Take a cue from the 55year-old who liked to say that he was only 25 years old with 30 years of experience.

Write prescriptions in CAPS: Health Ministry to doctors

Fear of misinterpretation due to doctor’s illegible handwriting may soon be a thing of the past as government is set to make it a norm for physicians to prescribe medicines “preferably” in capital letters.

The Union Health Ministry will come out with a gazette notification under the Indian MCI Regulations which will mandate doctors to prescribe medicines in capital letters in a “legible” manner and also mention the generic names of the drugs.

“The Health Ministry will come out with gazette notification under the MCI regulations. Under this, the prescription should be legible and preferably written in capital letters along with the names of the generic drug prescribed,” a senior Union Health Ministry official told PTI.

Sources said that the notification is likely to be issued by the Ministry within a week’s time.

However, the senior health ministry official said that there would no penalties or punishment for the doctor as such for not writing in capital letters.

“Like all other MCI regulations, this too will govern the doctors,” the official said.

Health Minister J.P. Nadda last year in Parliament had agreed with concerns of some MPs that illegible prescription by doctors may lead to serious implications and even death in certain cases.

“The central government has approved to amend Indian Medical Council Regulations, 2002, providing therein that every physician should prescribe drugs with generic names in legible and capital latter and he/she shall ensure that there is a rational prescription and use of drugs,” Mr. Nadda said.

K.K. Aggarwal of Indian Medical Association (IMA) said this will help decrease prescription errors and it is a cheaper alternative to electronic health records.

“Prescription errors will decrease. It will become uniform. One drug has 10 odd brands. The patients will be now able to know whether the drug is generic or not,” Dr. Aggarwal told PTI.

“In US alone, 100,000 prescription errors occur every year. India does not have any data on this. This is a cheaper alternative to electronic health records. It will take some time for doctors to get used to it,” he said.

Keywords: medical prescription, MCI, Health Ministry, JP Nadda

the speaking tree - Quantum Of Contentment, Happiness & Bliss

Deepak M Ranade





Satisfaction and contentment are the cornerstones of happiness. Modern day lifestyles have assigned to consumption and indulgence, cult status.Hedonism seems to be the order of the day with abject materialism now the yardstick to measure success and achievement. The need for more is relentless and unending. It has almost become the pivot around which life revolves. It brings along its siblings of thirst for power and fame. Are we on a wrong trajectory? Is ambition the nemesis of contentment? The greed for more does propel one to work harder, better and stimulates innovation and creativity but do we know where and when to say, `That's enough'?
Renunciation is an aspect of the path to spirituality. But if renunciation is misinterpreted, it could lead to depravity that would only bury the seeds of desire deep into the soil of the subconscious. These could germinate over time to burst forth as unbridled lust and insatiable hunger. Is contentment merely a virtue? Is it a neuro-hormonal complex that is part of one's personality? Why are some individuals more ambitious, or have greater appetites or for that matter, a higher libido? There is a neurological basis, a centre that had been identified to regulate these primal desires. It is located in groups of neurons located in the ventral portion of the hypothalamus, a small area in the vicinity of the pituitary gland. These neurons set the programme that determines the quantum for gratification. Are we merely victims of these set l points? Can we break the shack les of this grey matter that makes us lust for material things?
Whether renunciation is the path we should embark upon, is a moot point. The human brain t has an inbuilt programme or software that can reformat the operating system. The operating system is a programme with inputs from the database of all memories, maybe of past births as well, that determines the set point of each individual in accordance to his unfulfilled desires.The human brain is equipped with a frontal lobe that sits above the hypothalamus. Our free will is the ability to transcend this inbuilt programme and function autonomously . This free will or the programme to rewrite the operating system is called vivekabuddhi or the power of discrimina tion. The power of discretion is the wisdom that can make oneself unravel the operating programme. It gives one insight and awareness of one's own predispositions, tenden cies and weaknesses, the highest form of intelligence that can reprogramme. It is intelligence that not only reprogrammes but also has the ability to real ise its true nature as being the witness of the programme that is unfolding.
The perceiver is also the perceived.The subject and object are mere projec tions of the Self on itself. The sublimation of intellect lies in its ability to efface itself and analyse itself, analogous to the eye turning on itself to be able to see itself. The human brain is equipped with the capability of realising that it is part of the whole and also the whole, simultaneously .
A shloka from the Upanishads says: `Aum poornamadah poornamidam poornaat poornamudachyate' ­ `Aum, That is complete, This is complete, From completeness comes completeness.' And, `Poornasya poornamaadaaya poornamevaavashishyate' ­ `If completeness is taken away from completeness, Only completeness remains'.
Happiness or contentment is the interaction between subject and object.Bliss is realisation of the underlying unity of subject and object. At the moment of this exultation, there remains no object that can ever satiate the subject. All that remains is a state of unified bliss that transcends any dichotomy.

Delhi most uncaring of elderly: Study





Delhi has emerged as most uncaring of the elderly with a multi-city survey , finding that 92% of young Delhiites were not willing to act to prevent the abuse of senior citizens, reports Durgesh Nandan Jha.Across cities, the study found that 73% of working adults accepted the problem of elderly abuse but few were willing to take steps to stop it. These included 62% of those surveyed in Chennai, followed by Hyderabad (45%), Ahmedabad (41%), Bengaluru (37%) and Mumbai (35%).

Vedanta

ULLHAS PAGEY





Our Daily Conflicts
The Mahabharata war at Kurukshetra, as the story goes, was fought only once between the Pandavas and Kauravas.But there is another, or several, Mahabharatas, so to speak, the wars we wage every day `within ourselves' and these seem to go on forever. Why?
Let's take a closer look at this phenomenon. The Pandavas symbolise noble qualities like compassion, truthfulness, kindness and fairness, whereas the Kauravas signify deceit, untruth and evil designs.
So, when we talk of the war going on within us, we're talking of the ongoing tussle between the positive and negative forces. If positive forces win the war, it will result in dharma, righteousness; if negative for ces win the war, it would lead to dys functional be haviour. So, what decides `who' wins the war within?
For that, we need to understand the behavioural dynamics of our body , mind and intellect from the stand point of the Kathopanishad that says that our body is like a chariot, with the soul being its sole owner, with intellect in the driver's seat, controlling horses (sense organs) with the mind as the reins.
Materialistic objects constantly pull these sense organs towards them, resulting in the horses going haywire; but the winner is one who uses his intellect to control the horses by holding a tight leash over the reins (the mind). Anyone putting his intellect to intelligent use will always generate positive forces in the cosmos and would attain the strength to transcend all states, to achieve the Supreme Reality .

Jun 15 2015 : The Times of India (Delhi) Train To 21st Century   Government must use Debroy report to bite the bullet and reform Indian Railways Ever since the first passenger train left Bori Bunder for Thane on 16 April 1853, Indian Railways has been the underlying glue that literally held the nation together.The problem is that this glue has worn away and is no longer relevant to a new century. That first train journey in 1853, with steam locomotives, took an hour and 15 minutes. Bori Bunder station is not used today but a non-stop train journey from Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus to Thane still takes 57 minutes. Indian rail needs urgent reform to make it much faster, more efficient, better managed and significantly leaner. The recently submitted Bibek Debroy committee report suggests precisely this. It lays down a five-year roadmap to evolve a statutory rail regulator, scrap the rail budget as a separate entity and make room for more players in an “open access“ regime which would turn the Railways into just another train service provider. Its major suggestions of creating an independent, quasi-judicial Railway Regulatory Authority of India, of freeing the train network from political interference, of unbundling railway services and restructuring the jumbo-sized railways into more manageable smaller units must be pushed through forthwith. In indicating how railways can actually do this, the eight-member committee has toned down its earlier aggressive approach outlined in its March 2015 interim report by calling for gradual changes. This is pragmatic given that there have been nearly a dozen committee reports since 2000 alone that have recommended similar measures. At one level, the plethora of committees shows the urgency of the railway problem. Yet, hardly any reform measures have ever been implemented, demonstrating how reluctant all governments have been in taking on the biggest of public sector behemoths. Yet reform we must ­ as the rail network affects every Indian and the growth of the economy directly. Consider this: Independent India inherited 53,596 km of train routes. This has grown by just over 22% to 65,806 km in 2013-14. In contrast, originating passenger traffic grew almost eight times from 1.28 million in 1950-51 to 8.3 million in 2013-14.We have constantly increased the number of daily trains but not capacity and management. Railways must open up to competition, reform and professional management. Given that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to emulate the Chinese miracle and in Suresh Prabhu we have a dynamic railway minister as well, this is India's chance.

the speaking tree - Eternal Entity Versus Biological Mortality

B V Vaman Maharaj





Human beings are considered mortal. If so, then how is it that they desire eternal existence, knowledge and bliss? Human beings devoid of the attributes of eternal existence, knowledge and bliss, logically cannot express the desire to live in this world eternally, to attain complete knowledge and complete bliss.Human beings are special
Although human birth is considered the best of all other life forms due to endowment of the special quality of power of discrimination, the perceived physical bodies of human beings are all non-eternal; they have an expiry date. Physical bodies are in the grip of numerous births and deaths, and are subject to many other drawbacks.
Further, beyond the existence of the physical body , a human being can directly feel the existence of mind, intellect and perverted ego. As the human is of a finite nature, it follows that his mental and intellectual capacities will also be finite.
The existence of a perverted ego can be perceived by the presence of specific thoughts such as thinking that one belongs to this or that country; this or that religion; that one speaks this or that language or belongs to this or that group ­ whatever it may be.
It may then be questioned whether after death of the physical body there is the existence of any such nationalist, religious or language groups ­ in fact, it may be pertinent to ask whether everything is destroyed or if there is the existence of a subtle body consisting of mind, intelligence and perverted ego or even beyond that, the existence of an eternal entity.The great potency of the Absolute As per the Bhagwad Gita, living beings ­ individual conscious units ­ are the outcome of the marginal potency of the Supreme. The definition of a jiva or individual living being in the Naradiya Purana says, “The spiritual entities which have emanated from the potency of the Absolute Spiritual Substance and have their existence in the marginal potency ­ when tinged with the three qualities of maya the external deluding potency , sattva, rajas and tamahs ­ are designated as jivas.“
Now living beings or souls in one sense are identical with the Supreme as potency cannot be separated from the Substance. That is, potency cannot be conceived of without the Substance. In another sense the jiva or individual soul is distinct from the Supreme as it is an atomic part of the potency of the Lord and not the Substance itself. Even the summation of all the potencies of the Substance cannot become the Substance.
The source and its parts
Sri Krishna is the Infinite Absolute Entity while jivas are the absolute infinitesimals or spiritual atomic parts of the marginal potency of the Absolute as the particle of the ray of the Sun is distinct from the Sun itself.So jivas are simultaneously distinct and non-distinct from the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna. This is inconceivable. As the real Self of the jiva is nirguna and transcendental ­ beyond the range of mundane mind and intellect ­ and as Paramatman is also Transcendental (Nirguna), the relation between the two is Nirguna or transcendental, that is, inconceivable.
The soul is eternal. Therefore, due to the Self being eternal, all living beings tend to desire eternal existence, knowledge and bliss. (The writer heads the Sree Chaitanya Gaudiya Math in Chandigarh.) Post your comments on speakingtree.in