Life and Spirituality

Me on the way to Nainital during a dry summer month While nearly all scientists and experts agree that global warming is probably due to human activity, not many agree on the precise cause and which of the various human activities is to blame. The following two are the most suspected: Increased carbon emissions in the atmosphere Increased deforestation My own leaning is towards cause number two. The reasons for that have been discussed in my steam center blog and I shall not go into that again. Here is just a suggestion that could take care of the problem in a jiffy whatever be the cause. The population of grown up humans on our planet is currently around five billion. If each of these humans planted two trees each, the additional ten billion trees would take care of the entire carbon emission (through carbon capture) or deforestation problem for a year. The trees can be planted anywhere in town or country side. However, if humans continue to generate ca...

Photo shows roof of Naini Mata Temple in Nainital with text overlay by Ashok Malhotra My cousin Pradeep and a face book friend posted something this morning about a Mantra on his wall: Mantra Dhaarnaa Yon Kar, Vidhi Se Le Kar Naam Japiye Nishchaya Achal Se, Shakti-Dhaam Sri Ram These verses in Hindi may be translated as: From right Teacher learn right technique of repetition of right name Then mediate with greatest faith, Upon the Lord’s most vital name I fully agree with my dear cousin that the chanting of Mantras done correctly is a powerful technique, even magical. That is the reason one has magicians chanting spells in fairy tales to perform magic. Recently a college classmate and dear friend got into serious legal difficulties. His name is Rajat Gupta. Until recently he was one of the most senior corporate executives on our planet well known to Prime Ministers and Presidents including Obama and Clinton. He can be found in Wikipedia. However, amongst so...

T he wonderful thing about planting a tree is that in doing so we not only help ourselves but also perform a service to the world. If we were to go into all the benefits that trees provide there will be little space left for the topic at hand. Just briefly, one may reiterate that trees absorb carbon during their growth and that helps stabilize climate. Trees produce life-giving oxygen. Planted at home they enhance aesthetics and value of the property. Depending on the variety they may also produce fruits and other food besides. Planted in places of work, they improve work environment; planted on a street or park trees improve human habitations and planted in the countryside they adorn and enrich mother earth; all this while they work steadily to improve climate, soil and provide food plus shelter to numerous birds and animals. One may have noted that most plants and animals serve nature and earn good karma just through the process of living, for example birds help spread se...

Many of my recent posts have focused on economic, political and social issues. The hope was of making a contribution, howsoever small to alleviating human distress and increasing human happiness. However, the fact is that focusing on such issues does not purify the soul as easily as communing with nature does, and it is the purest of souls, the yogis whose consciousness is united with the universal consciousness who are able to make significant and dramatic contributions towards improving the human situation. It is because of the contribution of innumerable such yogis that human civilization has been advancing slowly but surely over time. Although many complain about the present day one per cent economy, an economy in which one per cent of the population controls 99 per cent of the resources, not very long ago in human society it was a one person economy, where one person controlled and owned 99 per cent of the resources of a nation. Indeed in a few countries of the world it is st...

Eugène Delacroix, The Prisoner of Chillon    I n the past prisoner’s were kept in very poor conditions such as castle dungeons and fed on leftovers. With time humanity has advanced so that conditions of prisons have vastly improved. With that has increased the expense of maintaining these prisons. Criminal are put in prisons for many reasons, the primary one being that society should be protected from criminals and that imprisonment is a deterrent for crime. There is also the hope that the criminal would reform. However, let us see if these aims are being met. First of all the expense is something that the public bears and because of it public debt rises. The living condition of prisons has improved to the extent that in most countries of the world prisoners get better food for free than a large segment of the population at large. There have been cases of persons who commit petty crimes just so that they can get free lodgings in prison. Recently there was the cas...

Rule of Ten for greater Equality Do you know? Th at Chief Executives of many corporations make in a month what the lowest paid worker of the same organization would make in a life time (Thirty to forty years of work life) With the legally binding rule of ten in place, it becomes in the interest of company bosses to increase minimum wages within their organizations to the extent possible, or their own wages cannot be increased, while making it impossible for them to collect huge and obscene compensations. All that is required is a simple law that prescribes the maximum permissible ratio between the highest and lowest compensation that any organization or corporation may have. R ecently there has been a hue and cry about the high salary and bonuses that some corporate executives, especially bankers are drawing. The occupy movement that has erupted in many countries around the world represents this anguish of people. New sources of communication make expressing t...

O ften at around five 5 p.m., I go out for an evening walk around my neighborhood or to a shopping area nearby. Yesterday as I was out on a walk, I spotted a group of around ten rural laborers returning from work at some construction site in the area. They were indeed a bubbly and cheerful lot, laughing and joking with each other as they walked briskly towards their temporary urban shelter. The exuberance was certainly far greater than other rich or middle class neighbors that I encounter on these evening walks. It is a common sight most evenings. These simple rustic labor folk that drop into the city from time to time from nearby rural areas do so to make some extra money. In recent years there has been much economic progress in India, but such progress is in the main confined to urban areas. In the villages, life has not yet changed substantially. Most villagers are farmers but their farm holding are small and they do not have money to invest in intensive modern farming. As a...