Life and Spirituality

A Spiral Galaxy We are all familiar with the annual cycle of our planet around the sun in around the 365 days. We can derive a value for the Mayan estimate of the year by dividing 1,101,600 by 365, subtracting 2, and taking that number and dividing 1,101,600 again by the result. This gives us an answer of 365.2420 days. It is more accurate than the 365.2425 days of the Gregorian calendar. Besides the annual cycle there are other cycles that concern the movement of our planet in the galaxy, the longest of which on a galaxy wide horizon is around 226 million years. Our sun travels through the spiral arms of the galaxy as it revolves slowly around the galactic center in an orbit that takes about 226 million years. Shorter cycles mark other movements of our planet. There is a dark patch called the dark rift in the Milky Way close to the galactic center. This is caused by an interstellar dust cloud obscuring the light coming from the stars at the core of the galaxy. It is from th...

M y mind was drawn to the present topic when the news came over the media that the visit of the music god Ravi Shankar to our planet has come to an end at the age of 92. Ravi Shankar was lucky that he found an intensely gentle and loving companion even in his late years.  He faced some of the social problems of our planet while he lived amongst us but loneliness was at least one impediment that he did not suffer from. It is something that at least half the humans on the planet will face sometime or the other during their lifetimes. The Plains in Nainital District The normal course of life for a human on our planet is that he spends his or her childhood with parents. This is followed by a transition period when the human becomes an adult.  This transition period is rarely a lonely one because the human is quite busy with friends and setting up a life and career. Soon enough, after that, most humans get married and have the company of their spouses and children. When...

Economic Wisdom from the Himalayas In recent years there has been much discussion about the one- per- cent i.e. the small percentage of the world’s population that possesses and controls most of the wealth of the world. However, there is one- per- cents in numerous other arenas of human life and perhaps if one examined carefully enough each one of us probably falls in the one-per-cent in some category or the other. One of my neighbors would probably meet the criterion when it comes to ugliness and a friend in the size of his ---    :)   nose. Each one of us is unique and special in some way or the other for sure. If I turn my gaze towards myself, I find that I fall in that category as regards education is concerned. One consequence of this privilege is that one often develops a view point that is different from what ever is being upheld by the ninety nine percent from time to time on all sorts of issues. I have continued to persist with the habit because ov...