the speaking tree - The Way We Are

SADHGURU JAGGI VASUDEV





Whichever way you have `become', you have only created and cultivated a small part of it consciously . A large part of you is unconscious because most of what you perceive is not in your awareness. Sense perception is like that -everything that goes in through your sense organs gets established in your system to be remembered forever. This is karma.Every impression that the five sense organs take in is stored. This is not against you; this information is useful. If you clean up all this information, you will not know how to handle even the simplest aspects of life. It is only because the information is coming in such torrents, it is so complex, and most of it goes into you without your consciousness, so it has become a problem.
How you became the way you are is just a tendency that you are is just a tendency that you developed because of the information you gathered. This tendency is traditionally called vasana. It is like a smell.Whatever is there in maximum quantity is the kind of smell you experience. Because you produce this kind of smell, a certain type of life moves towards you, and you also tend to move in that direction.
Now, you use perfume to cover the smell. In the first meeting, people may get deceived.The moment they notice the stink, they are going to run away . So, it doesn't matter what impressions you have gathered, what you make of it is in your hands. If unpleasant things have happened to you, it is all the more important that you turn wiser and more beautiful as quickly as possible.

the speaking tree - Disasters: Making Sense Of Human Suffering

Rajiv Vij





Over two million children were impacted by the recent Nepal earthquake; over half a million people rendered homeless; and thousands dead. More recently, floods in eastern India have caused suffering to many . The impact of natural disasters on human life is staggering. These events shake up our faith. We wonder about the existence of God or another higher force and its justice ­ why would it want millions of innocent people to suffer this way? Here's an attempt to make sense of such suffering.Firstly, natural disasters are not disasters in themselves. They are events that emanate from the natural working of the universe and follow its laws. The sun rises and sets as it needs to, the clouds turn into rain as they need to, and the plants are born ­ some to become trees and some to die early ­ as they need to. However, we are conditioned by our judgmental evaluation of every situation as good or bad based on how it affects us. We clearly take the havoc caused by such disasters personally and experience them as evil.
Having said that, these events are sometimes an expression of the growing ecological imbalance with which humans are collectively living with mother earth. They are an alarming reminder that the excessive focus on mate rial progress at the cost of negative environmental impact could eventually kill the whole.
Collectively aligning our ac tions with the rhythm of nature and its laws will eliminate the excessive reactions of the earth.s Secondly , when impacted by these events, we tend to wonder if it's our personal fault or bad karma. Questions like, why is this happening to me, what have i done to deserve this, is this God or Universe's way of punishing me, flood our mind. The reality is these events are agnostic to the goodness, integrity , faith, race or colour of their victims. They are in no way a form of punishment directed at the affected individuals.
As per the law of karma, what we experience at the level of our psyche and inner state is a direct reflection of our cumulative thoughts, intentions and actions. However, what manifests in our lives at the physical level is influenced by another dimension as well ­ that of the superseding laws of nature. That's why a corrupt businessman can be wealthy and a saint could meet with an accident. Thus, it's futile to blame our individual selves for being a victim of any of nature's tragic events.
Further, it's important to recognise that it's not what happens to us at the physical and material level, but how we respond to it, that has a deep impact on our inner state ­ and on the ongoing cycle of karma. Starting with learning to not blame or pity ourselves, we can practice meditation or other reflective techniques to reframe our outlook, connect with our inner source of strength and wisdom, and make peace with our reality.
Lastly , witnessing tragic death of loved ones, particularly of young children, creates insufferable pain for the survivors. Living through it plainly seems pointless. However unbearable and despairing our lives may appear in such circumstances, there's potential for a meaningful purpose to every human life. Every personal crisis can be a powerful teacher towards fulfilling our deeper purpose. Experiencing irreparable loss could become a pathway to deepening our sense of detachment, softening our ego, acquiring resilience, and learning to be compassionate towards ourselves and others. (The author is a life coach.)

12 million people have no cooking arrangements in India, says study

Around 12 million people in India have no proper cooking arrangements. The situation is worse in urban India where around seven per cent of households lack cooking arrangements while in rural India over one per cent of households is deprived of the facility.

The facts were revealed by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) report based on the 68th round of survey. Maharashtra (3.8 per cent) and Andhra Pradesh (2.7 per cent) are the top two states which reported “no cooking arrangement”, the survey says.

According to the report, the situation has worsened over the years. It says that 0.7 per cent of rural households lacked any cooking facility in 1993-94 which touched 1.3 per cent in 2012.

Similar is the situation in urban India where 6.3 per cent households did not have cooking arrangements around 20 years ago, but now the figure has reached 6.9 per cent.

The report says, “The proportion of rural households having no cooking arrangement shows a steady increase from 0.7 per cent in 1993-94 to 1.6 percent in 2009-10, but it marginally decreased after that. In this respect, there is no clear trend in urban areas, but the phenomenon of no cooking arrangement is seen to be considerably high.”

In urban areas, the highest proportion of households lacking cooking facility were seen in Karnataka (13.9 per cent), Tamil Nadu (9.2 per cent) and Andhra Pradesh (9.1 per cent), according to the report.

Urban-rural divide

The report highlights that the most common cooking fuel used in urban areas is liquified petroleum gas (68 per cent) while in rural India most households are dependent on firewood.

Chhattisgarh tops the list with 93.2 per cent of households using firewood for cooking. It is followed by Rajasthan (89.3 per cent) and Odisha (87.0 per cent).

At the all-India level, firewood is followed by LPG which is used by 15.0 per cent of households. Around 9.6 per cent and 1.1 per cent of rural households use dung cake and coke and coal respectively as primary sources of cooking. Around 4.9 per cent of households use other sources such as gobar gas, charcoal and electricity for cooking.

Major points in study

Use of coke and coal as the primary source of energy for cooking has been markedly reported in Jharkhand (31.1 per cent), West Bengal (13.5 per cent) and Chhattisgarh (11.3 per cent)

Nearly 40 per cent of urban households use LPG as the principal fuel for cooking in all major states. It is the highest in Haryana (86.5 per cent households), followed by Andhra Pradesh (77.3 per cent) and Punjab (75.4 per cent). It is the lowest in Chhattisgarh (39.8 per cent).

Compared to rural areas, use of kerosene as the primary source of energy for cooking is more prevalent in urban areas, especially in Gujarat (10.5 per cent), Maharashtra (10.1 per cent) and Punjab (10.0 per cent).

Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents

The Car Credo

Vol - L No. 31, August 01, 2015 

• Editorials

A car-friendly city is a danger to democracy.

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Parliament Deadlocked

Vol - L No. 31, August 01, 2015 

• Editorials

Obstructionist tactics are becoming tiresome and the Opposition may be tiring too.

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Commentary Circumstances of the Iran Nuclear Deal Imran Barlas Iran's pursuit of independent policies brought it into a long-standing conflict with the US. The present nuclear deal is a vindication of Iran's independent stand. Read more	Commentary Israel as a Historic Mistake For the US, a Burden Too Heavy to Bear Sukumar Muralidharan The original sin of Israel's birth has scarred it for life and it remains incapable of finding an identity that would meet basic democratic norms. Its neighbourhood in West Asia has had no option but to accept its truculent presence.All... Read more
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Brainier than Einstein? 12-yr-old gets highest IQ score of 162

A 12-year-old girl in the UK has achieved the highest possible score of 162 on a Mensa IQ test, which could make her brainier than Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

Nicole Barr, of Harlow, Essex, got a perfect 162 on the Mensa test. The score puts the tween in the top 1% of brightest people in the world and means she is more intelligent than physicist Hawking, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Einstein, who are all thought to have an IQ of 160.

“She’s a hard working child. She stays after school for homework club and never misses a day,” said her mother Dolly Buckland, 34.

“From a young age she’s been picking out mistakes in books and magazines. She’s a happy, fun-loving girl who is always asking for extra homework,” she was quoted as saying by ‘mirror.co.uk’.

“When I found out I got such a high score, it was so  unexpected. I was shocked,” said Nicole who received her IQ test results last week. “Nicole’s IQ puts her comfortably within the top 1% of the population,” said Mensa spokesman Ann Clarkson.

The girl, who is a Year 7 student in Burnt Mill Academy, enjoys reading, singing and drama. At primary school, Nicole was several years ahead of her peers and could tackle complex algebra before the age of 10.

the speaking tree - When The Mind Is In The Present Moment

Swami Chinmayananda





When the mind drops its perceptions of sense objects and stops identification with its thought dances, at that stage in meditation, the mind is no-mind. When thoughts rush out in their mad fury to hug objects of pleasure, they are called extrovert thoughts, and to quiet these is the sacred function of the path of meditation. When these outgoing thoughts are eliminated, the resulting condition of the mind is known as the no-thought state of highest mediation.Thoughts gush in to flood the mind with angry bursts of self-riotous compulsions mainly from two sources: the past and the future. Some thoughts stem from the past, dragging along with them memories of the good and bad done in the days gone by . These confuse the individual with regrets and sorrows, joys and pleasures raised by his memory from the stinking tombs of the past, forcing him to relive the dead past in the fragrant moments of the present.
The future is the other source of our thoughts. We are often flown upon the wings of our mind's fancy and imagination to a world of dreams ­ where we are made to shudder at the future possibilities of failure, tremble in hopes of successes, and swoon in the expectation of total losses or large profits.
The past is made up of dead moments and to unearth the buried moments is to live with the dead. We do so when we waste our energies in unproductive and wasteful regrets over things we have already committed. The more we remember them those very vasanas are getting more deeply fixed into our personality structure. When we are not engaging ourselves with the negative preoccupation of entertaining the regrets of the past, we are wandering in the fairy castles of our fancied future, peopled with ugly fears, horrid dreams, unnerving hopes, and perhaps a thousand impossible expectations.
In short, when our minds are not rattled by the perception of objects, let us not thereby conclude that we have quieted our thoughts. Often, it is not so. The mind, when it is not engaged in the worldly objects that are right in front of it, can choose its own private fields of agitation by dragging up the buried corpses of a diseased past or by bringing up vivid pictures of a tragic hopelessness as the sure possibility of the immediate future! In either case the mind of the individual at meditation can get sadly disturbed.
Therefore, the rishis advise us: “Moment to moment engage the outgoing mind to live in the present. Completely reject the past. Renounce the future totally . Then, in such a bosom, the agitated mind shall reach the state of mindlessness.“ This state of mind is called no-mind.
The content of the present moment, divorced from all relationships with the past and future, is the absolute fullness of the Infinite. Eternity is experienced at the sacred depth of the present moment. To live in the present, independent of the past and the future, is to experience samadhi, the revealing culmination of meditation. Seek it yourself. Nobody can give it to anyone else. Each will have to reach there all by himself, in himself, with no other vehicle than himself. (August 3 is Sadhana Day . Swami Chinmayananda, founder of Chinmaya Mission, took mahasamadhi on this day in 1993.)