Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from May, 2017

The Banyan Tree

In the 15th Chapter of Srimad Bhagavad Gita- Lord Krishna compares the material world with a Banyan tree. Lord Krishna starts the Chapter 15 with this Verse, श्रीभगवानुवाच | ऊर्ध्वमूलमध:शाखमश्वत्थं प्राहुरव्ययम् | छन्दांसि यस्य पर्णानि यस्तं वेद स वेदवित् || “Sri-bhagavnn uvaca Urdhva-mulam adhah-sakham asvattham prahur avyayam chandāmsi yasya parnani yas tam veda sa veda-vit The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: "It is said that there is an imperishable banyan tree that has its roots upward and its branches down and whose leaves are the Vedic hymns. One who knows this tree is the knower of the Vedas.” In this section of Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna is talking about material world, how a living entity gets entangled in the material world, the spiritual world which is the actual source of the material world and the need for developing detachment.  The analogy of a Banyan tree is used to show how the material world is a perverted reflection of the spiritual

A Random Dialogue

I love interesting conversations. Given any day of college, I would gladly skip my meals, sit down with a group of intellectual individuals to have constructive discussions on meaning of life, far away galaxies, purpose of existence, love, poetry, Theory of Relativity and the Higgs-Boson particle rather than attending a bunch of somniferous lectures which add little or no value to my pursuit of true knowledge. A couple of days ago, this beautiful girl walked me through and w e shared this soul-stirring talk: Let's call her A. A : You write amazing poems. I really wonder how you manage to put so many thoughts into words! Me: Thank you very much. But very frankly I have not written any poem so far. A:(shocked) What do you mean? (pointing to the board on the side wall) You didn't write that poem displayed on the board? Me:(being modest) No. Although it has my name and copyright on the bottom right corner but to be very honest, I didn't write it. A:(perplexed

Labyrinth of reason

Some people argue, “ Everything is relative; nothing should be generalized. ” But this argument begs the question: “Nothing should be generalized" – should this statement be generalized ? If yes, then the statement is false because there is something, not nothing, that should be generalized. If no, then “nothing should be generalized” doesn’t apply to all statements, implying that some statements may be generalized. Thus, if the statement is generalized, it ends up relativized;  and if it is relativized, it ends up generalized. Either way, we end up with the opposite of the starting assertion. Such logical self-implosion underscores the self-contradictory nature of “nothing should be generalized”. While claiming to provide freedom from absolutist ideologies, it ends up imposing its own version of absolutism: the absolutism of relativism. Pertinently, the absolutism of relativism (“There is no truth”) characterizes the atheistic and that those embracing such notions des