Life and Spirituality

backyard trees This blog and others by this author have repeatedly stressed the importance of living in green spaces and of increasing green spaces on our planet by endeavors such as planting trees and designing cities to include designer green areas http://someitemshave.blogspot.in/2012/06/green-hybrid-city.html . Some of the advantages mentioned were felt intuitively but were not backed by scientific evidence. All this changed this month when the results of a new study due to the University of Edinburgh were published in the journal of Sports Medicine. What the researchers found was that green spaces lessen brain fatigue with all its attendant benefits. These benefits include reduced stress and improved mental and physical health. In another blog of this author (steamcenter.blogspot.com) dealing with technological matters in layman style, this blogger has stressed the contribution of increasing greenery for improving the climate on the planet and in the present blog t...

 food seasonings fresh from the tap W hen a situation becomes ridiculous, it is difficult to maintain a stiff upper lip and it is time to choose between crying and laughing. After Poo was found in cakes (read older posts in this blog for that) from Europe it seems it is  Pee now in U K. and that too in a respectable advocates' lounge at Snaresbrook Crown Court, in north-east London. If that is possible in a respectable lounge under full legal glare can you blame the stores for passing horse meat as beef and late night take-aways from UK of helping rid the kingdom of stray cats and dogs while making a quick buck on the side? It seems that the heady brew from one or more clickers set below the belt was found as the seasoning for soups, salads and sandwiches. What is the world coming too? LOL !  Read this report for example http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/20/snaresbrook-court-police-urine-food To quote from this report , The council sai...

  An old grape vine sending support to a new young one Humans are fascinated by magic tricks. I too enjoy them for fun but when a trickster puts on a holy garb and pulls out a few gold coins from thin air, a trick that most any street magician can do he is sure to create a few new religious disciples. Later after many years when they discover that they had become religious disciples of a fraudster they feel very angry. But do they have anyone but themselves to blame? They were so gullible as to be fooled by a few silly magic tricks while a great magic plays around us all the time that we fail to notice. Can there be any greater magic than the sunrise and sunset that takes place every day or the movement of the stars or the very processes that create and sustain life every moment of our lives. What greater magic could the Almighty have created? Nevertheless, failing to notice that, we are ready to be taken for a ride when a rabbit is pulled out of a hat. There is ...

  The first edition, 1992, of Mystic and the Blossoms I f one went about trying to define beauty, it would be very difficult to do so with precision. It is something like love that can be felt but not described. We know that birds and a variety of animals express tender love. It is heart breaking to see birds scream when their young ones are in danger, but it seems that they may be oblivious to beauty. Appreciation of  beauty is something that appears to need  evolution into a human or a godly being. Therefore an appreciation of beauty may be a mark of evolution. It is difficult to imagine gorillas and donkeys appreciating the beauty of a flower or a butterfly.  It is tragic to see that there are humans too on the planet that are quite oblivious of beauty. As a professor of engineering and a faculty member in three leading universities of our planet, my profession was to make scientific contributions and educate students of engineering. Some remarked th...

Simplicity  "Honesty is expensive. Do not expect cheap people to possess it" Warren Buffet I s it better to be clever or simple in life? What do sacred books have to say on the matter? In life one comes across two kinds of persons. There are some who are extremely simple, direct and straightforward in whatever it is that they have to do or say. Then there are others who are clever, who rather than going about the business of life in a straightforward manner try and discover that extra trick that might make one more successful; rather then come to the point directly they would rather beat around the bush as they weigh the consequences of various options, the various strategies as in a game of chess. When I was in school, my friends regarded me as a simple person. It was the clever street smart ones who were popular and most admired. Therefore it was natural for us simple ones to try and cultivate cleverness. However, as one matures one wonders about one’s...

A Glass of Milk for the Sweet Child While I made some critical remarks about some religious organizations in the previous post, it must also be reported that some of these organizations do a lot of good work too. BBC news showed what an excellent job of running free kitchens the Catholic Church in France is doing besides the church has also done a great job of providing excellent education through the schools it runs and I myself have studied in one for a few years as a child. On the other hands there are also sordid scandals that plague some religious organizations. As a comment to my previous post, Vincent a friend and fellow blogger pointed out that it is not always easy for people to walk out of a religion they may have been born too as it from a business organization that provides some service. Therefore a need exists for reform. Perhaps the scandals in some of these churches would reduce if priests were allowed to marry. It is fine to say that for attaining a high or...

Corporate Compensations It appears that worried heads are deliberating in the Vatican who the new Pope should be. A source of worry may be the falling membership of the church or perhaps how to deal with troubling scandals. Similar worries confront many other religious groups and organizations in the modern world. Some of the Hindu temples use a simple but apparently effective technique, they tell the innocents that they will get their heart's desire visiting and giving a gift to the deity in the temple. Apparently the deity does not collect the wealth but the priests do. Some have amassed a huge amount of wealth as result of it. Since ancient times, there have been sincere spiritualists who have tried to discover the hidden meanings of life and the universe. Large and small organizations including the great religions of the world have come up around the teachings of these seers. However, some of those who run these organizations are not all latter day saints. In fact ...

When reports came out that huge numbers of samples of beef products in Europe were found with horse meat the concern of this blogger was less with horse meat than with the fact of fraudulent labeling. If a company is willing to fool with adulteration who knows what else they may be mixing in to the meat? As a consequence, this blogger suggested in a previous post that samples must be tested not just for horse meat as was being ordered by regulators but with all kinds of other meats such as dog etc. Tests for just horse meat will not reveal rats for example.   I do not know if any one that matters read and followed up on my suggestion but it seems that the Chinese went ahead and tested for poop products. Guess what the chocolate cakes were being flavored with besides almonds? Read this post; http://grist.org/list/ikea-cake-turns-out-to-come-with-extra-feces/ To quote briefly from it, “Chinese officials  destroyed 1,800 pounds of -- almond cakes , when ...

A Red- tailed Bulbul feeding in the garden P utting out some bird food for the birds in one’s garden or terrace is a wonderful way to give something back to nature and also to fill surroundings with sweet song of birds all day. Occasionally they do make a racket but then which sweet creature including little children do not. Premixed bird seed is not available in Indian market to my knowledge but a variety of other foods that humans too use are available and one can prepare one’s own mix easily. millets are the most popular grain people use here to feed birds and there is also a special grass seed just for birds called kangani that is much tinier than millets and a favorite of bird lovers. My own practice is to prepare a five kg mix of millets, kangani, white and black sesame seeds, yellow and brown mustard, crushed peanuts, crushed wheat and some washed split lentils. I have added sun flower seeds to the mix too but usually avoid it because it is expensive here. This is ...