The Old Fight

Now days I am doing a lot of self-talk i.e. talking to me. When I talk to myself either loudly or in the inner thoughts, most of the time I have been accepting that my outside can never be perfect. Too often we are hard on ourselves because we are trying to live up to some idea of "perfection" we have about ourselves. Often we are trying to live up to a standard that society projects on us, or to a standard that we’ve put on ourselves because we feel we have a deficiency in some area.

Learning how to manage a job and a family when there doesn't seem to be time for both is a constant struggle with in these you have to find time for your hobbies. But the question is all the same Can a healthy balance can be achieved with the proper effort? I hope you must have said this to yourself many times "I’m going to get organized this time and stick to it". Staying organized is like trying to keep weight off; we do it for a while and then fall back into old habits. Most of us have learned many organization techniques over the years: get a day planner, make to-do lists, develop an organizing system so we can find and store things easily, touch paper only one time. However, we end up still getting slacken down, and the planners and the to-do lists fall by the wayside. We end up right where we were before, maybe a little improved but still struggling with overload, over commitment, and overly tired. Because the gateway we are left with is of the four Ds [Do, Delegate, Delay or Dump].

I have personally identified following points to make my inside perfect:

1. Identify people who steal your time (online/offline); don’t succumb to their schedules or tactics.
2. Control interruptions: the more you allow them, the more they will happen.
3. Limit the amount of stress you are exposed to by getting proactive.
4. Maintain some physical activity and keep on changing your environment.

Happy Navratras

Today there is a lot of mess in my room as it is getting white washed but due to my earlier commitments with myself. I am some how managing to write down the BYBS. Despite of the routine cleanings the whole house is being white washed or thoroughly cleaned once in a year in the festive season of Navratras.

This festival of Navratras has great importance here in India. Usually it falls from 30 September to 08 October in a year. The festival of Navratri (nav stands for nine and ratr means nights) lasts for 9 days with three days each devoted to worship of Goddess Durga (the Goddess of Valor which is taken as a symbol of end of evil), Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth and Saraswati (Minerva), the Goddess of Knowledge. During the nine days of, feasting and fasting take precedence over all normal daily activities amongst the Hindus. Evenings give rise to the religious dances in order to worship Goddess Durga.The 7th - 8th days belong to Saraswati Maa who is worshipped to acquire the spiritual knowledge. This in turn will bless us with wisdom . But on the 8th day of this colourful festival, yagna (holy fire) is performed. On the last day, the festival of Navratri culminates in Mahanavami. On this day Kanya Puja (Nine young girls representing the nine forms of Goddess Durga are worshiped.) is performed. The following image is of the card we received from the ancient heritage temple of Simla Kali Bari. Happy Navratras.

Life after Death

There is no reason for a sound faith to be irrational. A useful faith should not be blind, but should be well aware of its grounds. A sound faith should be able to use scientific investigation to strengthen itself. If, due to an inevitable destiny of soul, an Omnipotent Being will save us no matter what we do, we will not regret having spent a bit of time preparing unnecessarily to save ourselves. But if there is no such Being, or if there are divine Beings more powerful than us who can help us if we are prepared to accept their help, then we will deeply regret for a very long time our failure to prepare ourselves.It should be open enough to the spirit not to lock itself up in the letter. A nourishing, useful, healthful faith should be no obstacle to developing a science of death. In developing such a science, it is necessary for the investigator to consider all previous attempts to do so, especially those traditions with a long development and a copious literature. Of all these, the science of death preserved in the Indo-Tibetan tradition is perhaps the most copious of all.

Given the boundless interconnectedness of living forms, beginning-less and end-less, and spread throughout an infinity of space, the materialist picture of evolution as natural selection operating purpose­lessly, yet efficiently developing life forms through random mutation from a definite beginning point within a finite theater of planetary environment, needs some revision. First of all, postulated definite beginnings and finite settings are always suspected. The materialist account describes reasonably the material, causal development process, but why should not mind as well as body develop and mutate?

The Buddhist view of all this, the psychobiological evolutionary account known as the "Theory of karma," is very like the Darwinian idea of evolution. The karma theory describes a great chain being, postulating a relationship between all observed species of beings and a pattern of development of one life form into another humans have been monkeys in the past, and all animals have been single celled animals. The difference in the karma theory is that individuals mutate through different life forms from life to life. A subtle, mental level of life carries patterns developed in one life into the succeeding ones.

Species develop and mutate in relation to their environments, and individuals also develop and mutate from species to species. This karmic evolution can be random, and beings can evolve into lower forms as well as higher ones. Once beings become conscious of the process, however, they can purposely effect their evolution through choices of actions and thoughts. Although their are undeniable differences, the karma theory gives an evolutionary explanation of how beings are the way they are. So we can comfortably translate Karma throughout as "Evolutionary Action".

Karma means action that causes development and change and so is close to what we mean by evolution. There is no need to retain to retain the Indian word karma. Some translators do so because of the factor of mystification; they feel that nothing in the target language can reproduce the unique meaning of the original term. Some westerns who delve into Eastern thought also keep the term because they are thinking of karma mystically, as a kind of fate. But in Buddhist science, it has nothing to do with fate-it is an impersonal, natural process of cause and effect. Our karma at a given moment of life or death or the between is the overall pattern of causal impulses resulting from former actions connected with our life continuum.

These form a complex that impresses its effects on our bodies action and thoughts. In turn our ongoing actions of body. Speech and mind form new causal impulses, which determine the nature and quality of our lives in the future. This complex can be called our evolutionary momentum. There is an old Tibetan saying Don’t wonder about your former lives; just look carefully at your present body. Don't wonder about your future lives; just look at your mind at present!" This expresses the sense that our present body has evolved from a long evolution driven by former actions and our future embodiments will be shaped by how we think and what we decide to do in our present actions.

The time of the between, the transition from a death to a new rebirth, is the best time to attempt consciously to effect the causal process of evolution for the better. Our evolutionary momentum is temporarily fluid during the between, so we can gain or loose a lot of possibilities during its crisis.

Post theme taken from Tibetan Book of Natural Liberation