Life and Spirituality

A TV Dinner I t is a mind free of the stress of greed, fear, anger and other such encumbrances that is the first step to good health and happiness. Next are sunshine, pure air to breathe and natural healthy food followed by a life style that includes physical exercise that is built in to the life style and not contrived. Most Ikarians work on their farms, gardens, orchards etc. and live in a hilly terrain that incorporates walking up and down hills just to get on with their daily routine and abundant socializing. Just like the residents of Neeltal in my novel – Nude besides the lake (the title has ‘besides’ not ‘beside’ in case you search for it online) – the Ikarians have an afternoon nap and drop into visit each other for the late afternoon or early evening tea followed by a glass of wine over greetings and laughter. As regards food, the Ikarian food includes the healthiest of ingredients and natural health supplements. The diet is usually vegetarian and includes hone...

Balck eyed peas - Lobia beans A vegetarian diet, especially one that includes eggs, milk/ milk products has been described as a healthy diet in many articles of this blog. It was given the name lovegan food as different from a vegan one that does not include eggs and milk. While leafy green vegetables such as spinach are great for providing many of the nutrients a human needs for good health, when meat is completely or largely eliminated from one’s diet, it is necessary to replace it with other food items that will provide protein in order for the diet to be a balanced and healthy. Milk products and eggs are some of the sources from which this protein can come. However it becomes necessary to include other sources of protein too. One problem with eggs is that although one or two a day is great, a larger consumption per day appears to be bad for health. Milk products such as cheese and yoghurt or just plain milk can provide the rest of the protein active healthy humans need...

A country that has a HISA center beside every town, village and city has neither homelessness nor hunger Note: It must be noted that HISA centers are visualized as completely voluntary facilities. They are neither prison camps nor concentration camps. People choose to live in one of their own free will and need and leave whenever they like. While at the center, they have freedom of movement from the center to nearby cities or any city for brief or long periods with the only condition that if they are absent for more than a certain number of days, say six, without permission, their allotment may be cancelled and they would have to seek fresh accommodation along with any other new applicants.   Any restriction or compulsion on movement of an inhabitant except children is a violation of fundamental human rights to life and liberty. Homeless in this note does not imply those living in rented homes (unless high rents have pushed them to the street) but those t...

E very now and then, I go into blogger and check the statistics of page views of the various posts of this blog. It gives me an idea of what people are interested in. A few days ago, it was a surprise to learn that visitors were reading an older post called ‘Heaven Scientifically Speaking’. The attempt in that post was to reconcile the ancient religious concept of heaven and hell with modern scientific understanding. According to ancient religious concepts, a human is rewarded by a life in heaven as a result of his or her good deeds while Hell is the punishment for bad behavior. Many modern humans put it all down as an attempt by some ruling powers to keep human behavior in check and essentially crap. Certainly the modern view is a convenient one especially if one has a pile of bad behavior in one’s past and is determined to continue with some more :) In reality we do not have to go very far to other places and planets or future lives to have a glimpse of heaven and hell...

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...