Nirvana is not possible

Many religious epics say do this and that to get moksha or nirvana. Moksha or nirvana is their final goal. They believe that once they crossover the "other" side, they will not have to go through the birth and death cycle  and suffer anymore. In their mind nirvana is an idyllic place where there is no suffering.


But such place can't coexist when you believe the god/goddess created this world. If god/goddess created this world, he/she would want someone to take care of it. Nobody would design a thing so fondly and watch it destroyed!

If you're nonegodbeliever (atheist) still fact wouldn't change. For example, if the world is evolving all the time as the physicists argue, then all living being would be evolving also. Nothing would stay in the same physical form--water evaporates and forms cloud, cloud melts and comes down as rain, rain freezes and becomes ice.... Similarly, rock turns to sand and sand collects more sand and turns to rock.

Human being may look a bit different physically or mentally because of our experiences and changing environment, but we don't become extinct!

Remembering the cousin I lost

Today is the brother "worshipping" day in Nepal. Formally this day is called the "Bhai Tika" day. Since the Nepalese are spread out all over the world in this very globalised world, the tradition of celebrating Bhai Tika has come in Canada, too.

But my family doesn't follow the tradition. We left Nepal a long time ago and lived in the societies where there were no other Nepalese until fairly recently. Besides, we didn't follow many of the traditions even in Nepal.  So, not worshiping doesn't make me sad, but I do make a point of remembering all the brothers I did worshipped when I was in Nepal on this very auspicious day.

As usual, I called my brother--the one I was paired with by my parents--last night. I call this brother "Mailodai". While talking with Mailodai and wishing him longevity and wellbeing, a cousin's name came out of my mouth, suddenly. Since this cousin didn't have his own sister, I used to take him as my own brother and bless him on this day, also.

Unfortunately, this cousin died of cancer about 5 years ago.  I had not talked about him with other brothers  on this day. Why did his name came to me yesterday? I felt a bit uneasy after we ended out conversation with Mailodai last night!

Then, this morning I send my blessing to another brother of mine who lives in California. This brother I adopted when I was in my teen age. By this time my cousin brother had adopted another sister. So, we both had new brother and new sister for Bhai Tika.

I've a few other cousin brothers also, but I wasn't as close with them as I was with this one. This cousin was only 6 hours younger to me and we did so many things together. Later when we grew up, he took me around the town in his motorcycle and made other ladies of my age very jealous!

So, what made my cousin take another sister? And, why did my "new" brother asked me to adopt him? These questions came to my mind for the first time this morning after all these years.

The truth was, my cousin was forced to adopt the other sister by his father, my uncle. My uncle thought my cousin would benefit from the new sister because her social status was much higher than mine.

But as the saying goes: God works mysteriously, my cousin came to England in his early 20s, and his adopted sister stayed in Nepal. On the other hand, I came to Canada and my adopted brother moved to the US. This brother of mine was also my husband 's classmate in college.

So, we're in contact with this brother and his wonderful wife. We're making two week's cruse in Europe together. His wife and my husband are as excited as my adopted brother and I are!  All of us are really looking forward to this trip together.

AD, CE, BCE, BC and the "c" Explained

For the longest time I kept myself from remembering what all these abbreviations stand for. BC was the easiest to remember since it was directly connoted with Jesus Christ, but my brain couldn't clearly file the meaning of all others even after reading numerous times!


Yesterday I decided I'm going to end the confusions, and now  here is the way I understand them:


AD literally means "Anno Domini" in Latin language. Anno Domini translated to The Year of the Lord or In the Year of Jesus Christ. So, if the Christ lived for 33 years, the AD means during the 33 years when Christ lived, rest of the abbreviations stand for either before the Christ time or after.


But what is confusing to me is the use of the CE and AD interchangeably. They're two very different abbreviations, why are they treated as the same?


Because, we've gotten so conscious of other religions around the world and want to avoid using a particular religious reference. So, we write CE or BCE to indicate the year something had happened.

Then, there is the "c" written in small letter. Sometime that c becomes "ca". These are also the Latin words. These words come handy when we don't know the exact date of something happened in the past.


So, the CE means "common era" in English. BCE stands for "before the common era". And,  the "c" represents approximate era to indicate we don't know the exact date!


Unlike the other abbreviations (BC, BCE, AD, and CE), c is written before the year. For example, c.400 BCE means 400 years before the common era--copied from the source below.


Now the fun part:


Do you know there are more than a few different calendars that started in different times, in different parts of the world, and written in different languages? Here are a few of them:

Julian Calendar...
Hebrew Calendar. ...
Hijri Calendar. ...
Iranian Muslim Calendar. ...
Buddhist Calendar. ...
Nepal Sambat, Vikram Samvat, Shaka Samvat ...
Japanese Calendar. ...
Chinese Calendars,
and many others...


While the Gregorian Calendar is the most widely used in the Western World today, many other traditional calendars continue to be important in other regions. Some of these calendars are based the Sun (solar), some on the Moon (lunar), and some are based on both (lunisolar).  

Sources: Worldatlas, Wikipedia common, and the Khan Academy (Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker.

You can't change others

For years I kept trying to change some of the people in my circle only to get frustrated at the end. I thought they could use some of my wisdom that was derived from my years of experiences--being with the people of various races and backgrounds. My experiences have helped me change my views of the world drastically. I thought those people who I think are lacking integrity and empathy could learn some of the "mannerism" for their own wellbeing, I thought.


In my mission to 'change' others, I lost quite a few hours for a quite few years. I must have gotten older a few years in this mission of mine. I had frustrated me also to see someone doing the same old nuisance again and again. "


Finally, with the help of someone and the literatures I read, I think I got the answers now.

I've realised that we can't change others since everything people do come from within themselves--presumably from their mind, they themselves consciously have to seek for change. Nobody can change their mind for them!


I'm a Gemini. I love to share things--whatever I've, so I was offering my unsolicited advise to people. But I didn't know that people come to this world with their own past "sanskar" to live the life they had built in past life. They inner-ears can't hear me, or anyone else, in that matter. They will hear what they need to hear and will do exactly that!


My new found wisdom has released me from thinking about others and try changing them :-) 

The Have and have-not are not equal

My mother used to say “hune ra nhune lagdaina joda”. In English it translates to "the haves can’t compete with the have-nots".

I see that true in every field I look at. I see it in financial sector,  in knowledge, in looks, in experience, in skills, and so on.

Although these are natural phenomena and and existed always, realisation of this phenomena stunned me this afternoon after reading a few stories that were heart achingly terrible!

Dreams are explained!

I woke up from an incessant laugh in my dream this morning. I found a couple of my toes bended backward that pained me when I tried straightened up quickly. I was petrified.

It wasn’t that my toes pained me, it was the thought of me laughing in my dream that sent a cold chill in my spine!

My bended toes were not the problem, they slowly straightened up and I was fine after a few minutes. But the superstition I grew up with was my problem.

You see I grew up hearing we shouldn’t do a lot of things. I was told that our dreams are future messages, but these messages are presented backwardly to us. For example, if we see someone sad, that person’s good time is coming. If we see someone in a clean attractive outfit and looks happy, that person is going to get ill or his/her misfortune is coming.

Not showing our joy in the public was another thing we were well versed on. For instance, we were told that we shouldn’t show our emotions in the public. Being happy is sort of crime—not just in mine but many other cultures. 

Our societies expects us to keep the good news to ourselves and share our problems. Because they don’t want to jinx their good luck and attract bad one!

Despite the fact that happy people spread good vibration—happiness is contiguous—we continue preaching to hold our happiness within ourselves.

In a recent UC Davis study finds that happy adolescents commit less crime and take less drug. In another study Vivian Moussa writes for Odyssey (March 2018): 

 “People are accustomed to things not going a certain way, and quite frankly, our generation is full of complainers. We like to talk about every little thing that seems to be going wrong in our lives, and then when someone is actually happy with how their life is going, we suddenly don't know how to react.” 

In many culture we’re—especially  the girls—are taught to be modest and that may be for a good reason. But showing only the Sad faces and hiding Happy faces has created distrustful  society.

The Law of Cause and Effect

My car got hit by a taxi from the second-lane a few weeks ago. With God’s grace, nothing happen to me, but our car is totalled. Since I was making the left turn, I got the ticket of $172.50 which I paid without any.

Accidents happens. Nobody consciously wants to make an accident. It just happens, and I don’t know it has anything to do with the God/Goddess or  by the power of the Law of Attraction. Car accident happens every second of a day, if not in this town somewhere else. It’s not a big issue considering our fast-track mobile-world that we’re living today! Besides, our insurance paid us more money than our car was worth.

This accident made me ponder a few serious issues: If our car was irreparable, what or who saved my life? If I had died or seriously injured, what would have my husband do? What would have our children said to their dad? What would have others made out of the accident?

My husband was seriously thinking of retiring four years ago. With that thought, we sold our house, my husband took one year of sabbatical leave and we moved our residence to Ottawa, Ontario. But my husband decided to postpone his retirement for a few more years, and we returned to our old town after one year.

Accidents are bad. They’re risky of life, reputation and money. But this accident has taught us so many things. Our whole outlook in life has changed:

1) We walk more now and enjoy the fresh air—probably got healthier

2) We  don’t feel “pity” on those who doesn’t have a vehicle—we did before

3) We discovered the local shops and restaurant—appreciate our surrounding more

4) We now think vehicle is a luxury, not a must have thing—learned to appreciate vehicles

5) We learned that driving is a privilege, rather than a birth-right—learned to appreciate our luck

6) Learned to be less “cynical” to those who have expensive vehicle.

Our car was perfectly fine, but since we’ve to make frequent long-distance trips from home to work and vice versa, we thought of trading our car with a new more luxury one last year. Then, we noticed our colleagues were purchasing expensive cars and bragging about them. We didn’t like that, and we postponed our car purchase for two more years. 

Now, we’re forced to buy a car urgently since the winter is approaching very soon. Living in a country which gets cold half of the year, we can’t do without a car at our age. So, we looked and searched for a sturdy car that drives well and gives us a good gas millage with open-mind. The dilemma for us is that we’ve only 10 or 15 good driving years, and this is our opportunity to purchase a car we like. Financially also, we can afford an expensive car. So, what are we to do?

Purchasing an expensive car means violating our own philosophy. All these years we talked about people who paid a hefty sum for a car they couldn’t afford, just so they could “show-offs”. We gave examples of the business tycoons such as Zuckerberg and Buffet and said they drive 30 or 40 thousands car. We didn’t know that some people purchase expensive cars for “legitimate” reasons, also!

Every cause has an effect, and every effect has a cause.