Life and Spirituality

Sometimes one builds a large home when not so old to meet various possible needs of a family.   As one ages, parents depart and children grow up to pursue their own lives visiting only in holidays. One is then left with a large home with a lot of vacant space, most of the time, in old age. Some old persons lock away parts of their homes most of the year to reduce cleaning and maintenance chores. I too have been doing that for the past several years. However, others have found an innovative use for their homes. They let out a room or two to visitors, students or tourists. It creates a homely facility for a tourist who might wish to skip the hustle and bustle of a city hotel and save money; for a student from a foreign land it is a great facility. I lived in one such all through my student years at UBC in Canada at highly affordable rates. It was the home of a dear old lady by the name of Mrs. Cuthbert. She not only gave me a furnished place to live in but also provide...

T ime and Space are fundamental to creation. The created universe exists because of it. Of this time is even more fundamental than space because it existed even before space was created at the beginning of creation. In this glorious creation exist both animate and inanimate matter. Both are affected by time. The timing of movements of the stars and planets is determined by universal laws, such as the law of gravity that creates and holds the universe together. These laws prescribe timing of movements of planets and they also determine when stars and planets deviate significantly from orderly movements, a time when they are destroyed. Animate matter or life is distinguished from inanimate matter in the universe by the fact that it has the capacity to perceive and feel and a degree of freedom of choice that it may exercise for its activities in time and space. The kind of choices humans make decides the quality of their experience in the universe and their progress as a...

Recently a dispute arose between an Indian woman diplomat in USA and her Indian domestic Maid. The dispute grew into a legal battle between the two parties first and it has now has grown into a full fledged diplomatic battle between India and USA and the previous good relations between the two countries have been soured. Could the inside story behind this incident be a story of a Christmas Party that went wrong? With prosperity in the developed part of the world, minimum wages of the poorest in such societies have gone up over the past several decades to a level that hiring of full time domestic staff has become unaffordable for most in such countries. However in the underdeveloped and developing world, poverty is still widespread and therefore servants and domestic staff are still affordable by many. Although its prevalence is coming down fast in India due to recent economic growth, the practice continues widely in many Indian homes. When a servant is employed in a home someti...

According to a decision of the Supreme Court of India yesterday, millions of Indians, perhaps the majority of them who have engaged in sexual activity are serious criminals deserving sentences of around ten years in Jail. This criminality arises from the way sexual intercourse of certain types is regarded in Indian law due to a section called section 377 This criminality would continue unless the following amendment is made to section 377. Indian law makers have not bothered to make the amendment for 150 years or so, ever since it was introduced. A High court judge who ruled against it was overruled by the Supreme court of India yesterday, restoring the criminality. Needed Amendment of section 377: An act of carnal intercourse between two consenting adults, even if it is not penile vaginal intercourse, shall not be regarded as against the order of nature but merely as recognition of the diversity of nature. In either case it shall not be deemed to be criminal conduct punis...