Why should we read "Bhagavad Gita" ?

An old farmer lived in a farm in the mountains with his young grandson. Each morning Grandpa was up early sitting at the kitchen table reading his Bhagavad Gita. His grandson wanted to be just like him and tried to imitate him in every way he could. One day the grandson asked, "Grandpa! I try to read the Bhagavad Gita just like you, but I don't understand it, and what I do understand I forget as soon as I close the book. What good does reading the Bhagavad Gita do?"

The Grandfather quietly turned from putting coal in the stove and replied, "Take this coal basket down to the river and bring me back a basket of water."

The boy did as he was told, but all the water leaked out before he got back to the house. The grandfather laughed and said, "You'll have to move a little faster next time," and sent him back to the river with the basket to try again.

This time the boy ran faster, but again the basket was empty before he returned home. Out of breath, he told his grandfather that it was impossible to carry water in a basket, and he went to get a bucket instead. The old man said, "I don't want a bucket of water; I want a basket of water. You're just not trying hard enough," and he went out the door to watch the boy try again. At this point, the boy knew it was impossible, but he wanted to show his grandfather that even if he ran as fast as he could, the water would leak out before he got back to the house.

The boy again dipped the basket into river and ran hard, but when he reached his grandfather the basket was again empty. Out of breath, he said, "See Grandpa, it's useless!" "So you think it is useless?" The old man said, "Look at the basket." The boy looked at the basket and for the first time realized that the basket was different. It had been transformed from a dirty old coal basket and was now clean, inside and out.

"Son, that's what happens when you read the Bhagavad Gita. You might not understand or remember everything, but when you read it, you will be changed, inside and out. That is the work of Krishna in our lives."

Happy Easter

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

The Right Yardstick

This past year I was diagnosed with cancer and faced the possibility that my life would end sooner than I’d planned. Thankfully, it now looks as if I’ll be spared. But the experience has given me important insight into my life.

I have a pretty clear idea of how my ideas have generated enormous revenue for companies that have used my research; I know I’ve had a substantial impact. But as I’ve confronted this disease, it’s been interesting to see how unimportant that impact is to me now. I’ve concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn’t dollars but the individual people whose lives I’ve touched.

I think that’s the way it will work for us all. Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. This is my final recommendation: Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.

- Clayton Christianson

Personal Calling ...

There are 4 obstacles. First: we are told from childhood onwards that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear and guilt. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible. But it’s still there.

If we have the courage to disinter dream, we are then faced by the second obstacle: love. We know that we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream. We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us going forward. We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey. Once we have accepted that love is a stimulus, we come up against the third obstacle: fear of the defeats we will meet on the path. We who fight out dream suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse: “Oh, well, I didn’t really want it anyway.” We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey. Then, we warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how.

Defeats happen, even if they are necessary or not. When we first begin fighting for our dream, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.

So, why is it so important to live our personal calling if we are only going to suffer more than other people?

Because, once we have overcome the defeats - and we always do – we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence. In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life. Each day, each hour, is part of the good fight. We start to live with enthusiasm and pleasure. Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our soul, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives.

Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with the scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us, perhaps the very next day. Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all our lives.

Oscar Wilde said: “Each man kills the thing he loves.” And it’s true. The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get that we want either. We forget about the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far. There are a lot of people who, when their personal calling was within their grasp, went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal – when it was only a step away.

This is the most dangerous of the obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it: renouncing joy and conquest. But if you believe in yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.

- Paulo Coelho

Happy People ...

Why walk when you can fly?

Once there was a king who received a gift of two magnificent falcons from Arabia. They were peregrine falcons, the most beautiful birds he had ever seen. He gave the precious birds to his head falconer to be trained.

Months passed and one day the head falconer informed the king that though one of the falcons was flying majestically, soaring high in the sky, the other bird had not moved from its branch since the day it had arrived.

The king summoned healers and sorcerers from all the land to tend to the falcon, but no one could make the bird fly. He presented the task to the member of his court, but the next day, the king saw through the palace window that the bird had still not moved from its perch. Having tried everything else, the king thought to himself, "May be I need someone more familiar with the countryside to understand the nature of this problem." So he cried out to his court, "Go and get a farmer."

In the morning, the king was thrilled to see the falcon soaring high above the palace gardens. He said to his court, "Bring me the doer of this miracle."

The court quickly located the farmer, who came and stood before the king. The king asked him, "How did you make the falcon fly?"

With his head bowed, the farmer said to the king, "It was very easy, your highness. I simply cut the branch where the bird was sitting."

We are all made to fly -- to realize our incredible potential as human beings. But instead of doing that, we sit on our branches, clinging to the things that are familiar to us. The possibilities are endless, but for most of us, they remain undiscovered. We conform to the familiar, the comfortable, the mundane. So for the most part, our lives are mediocre instead of exciting, thrilling and fulfilling… So let us learn to destroy the branch of fear we cling to and free ourselves to the glory of flight !!!!!!!

Confused Nation !!!

There is a lot of truth in this but there isn't enough of this being expressed to the young & impressionable... most of our young from middle class & lower middle class backgrounds aren't ever asked to think that this is wrong... so what values can they grow up with... they will emulate the corruption (in all senses of the word) that they see around them.

* Where a policeman kills a leopard that is actually attacking a villager, and instead of being felicitated he is booked for the crime of saving a human being at the insistence of some Wildlife Organizations.!

* A nation where Rice is Rs.40/- per kg and SIM Card is free.

* Where a pizza you have ordered reaches home faster than an ambulance or police, even if you were being murdered or having a heart attack!

* Where a car loan is charged at 5% but an education loan, so necessary for our youth is charged an interest of 12%!

* A nation where students with 45% get into elite institutions through the quota system and those with 90% are sent away because of merit.

* Where a millionaire buys a cricket team, spending crores instead of donating the money to any charity; where two IPL teams were auctioned at 3300 crores, yet still a poor country where people starve for two square meals per day.

* A country where footwear is sold in AC showrooms, but the vegetables we eat, are sold on the footpath and very often next to garbage dumps!

* Where everybody wants to be famous, not by doing good for others, but by looting others and finally getting their names in the newspapers through some scam or other!

* It’s a strange nation we live in, where assembly complex buildings get ready within a year while public bridges, flyovers and sea links take several years even to get off the drawing board and another decade to be completed.

* We are a nation where two brothers fight with each other for the nation’s spoils, but the nation doesn’t know that the two of them are cleverly looting the nation while we watch their mock battles. * We have malls, and sky-rises, with slums forming their boundary wall.

* A country where men and women squat on railway tracks, with nowhere else to go while watching them from windows, are couples with three bathrooms and one for the guests.

* A country where politicians who are supposed to serve the people accept money from the same people they are supposed to serve, and then take a salary from the government for their services to the people!

* We are a nation where we talk in hushed whispers about the corruption in the country and then dig into our pockets to bribe a cop when we are caught cutting a red light. Think about it; we are a confused nation, aren’t we?

WC 2011