Small mind and Bigger mind

 

People’s needs seem to move up when they expand their mind because as they start thinking about others around them, their needs move up to the higher level (charity, spirituality), and they start thinking about others (people/environment). When people care for others passionately, two things happen: Their mind’s horizon expands, and they forget to be selfish!

 

This is why Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs make sense. We always find the needs of the selfish self-centred people in the bottom of Maslow ’s hierarchy. They need to be praised, and they’re always looking for love and affection. They are emotionally insecured and they’re often running after money. 

Who were Gandhi and Mother Teresa?

Gandhi and Mother Teresa were the two revered public figures. Gandhi is known as the “Father of the nation” for India and Mother Teresa was admired as the most charitable ‘saintly’ figure of the 20^th century. But were they really so? Here are a few truths most people rather not know because these truths contradict with their own belief criteria that they’re so comfortable with.
 
People’s belief system works so naturally that they’re not even aware of it (their habitual acts). If someone ask why they’re doing so, they’ve no answer. Self-examination is rare thing among the people who are compliance with their traditions/religion.
 
Now, who was Gandhi? Gandhi was a male chauvinist, raciest, an astute politician and a manipulator. He forced many innocent fellow citizen to be faced the brutal beating or even killing spree at the hands of the British ruler, while he was securely snugged inside of the prison. Gandhi was also class-promoter who wrote white people are "the predominating race” and the black people "are troublesome, very dirty and live like animals”. (South Africa, 1903). He slept in between teenage girls to test his “will-power.” This is the man who developed the theory of Satyagraha! 
 
Similarly, Mother Teresa said: "There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ's Passion. The world gains much from their suffering."  (Christopher Hitchens on Mother Teresa). There are also many evidences of her taking bribes and money laundering—involving large sum of money!

Think big; think change

 

Some people are born to hurt others—by their words or deeds. Others are born to serve others and take very little for themselves. Some others are not capable of knowing what is right and what is wrong, and there are yet another type of people who may know what is right and /or what is wrong, but they don’t have courage to express their feelings. They don't realise:

The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.—Steve jobs

Who is the God and why there are so many?

           Based on what we know, it seems, God is who we consider is worthy of holding such title! Choosing or naming a God acceptable to everyone prove not only difficult but impossible for numerous reasons. This explains why there are so many gods and goddesses, and why the few saints/gurus/monks/rabbis/priests or whoever devoted their life on finding the truth about God left us with their vague messages. They want us to figure it out ourselves who the God was/is. Since the concepts of god and religion are tightly entwined, explaining those ideas were not easy for them, and they did not want to misguide us or take this matter so lightly.

                The problems associated with answering ‘who is the god’ are personal—they did not have to be, but they are for now. For instance, many individuals are emotionally attached with their God that they take a great offence even when someone talks objectively about their Figurehead. These people do not understand other people outside of their faith who do not share the same experience (or the feelings) as they do with their deity. For example, millions of Hindus worship the ‘elephant-head’ deity, Ganesha, with a hope that Ganesha would make them rich and prosperous—as they grew up hearing this deity’s reputation of granting those wishes. It’s natural for these people to worship Ganesha and transfer such belief to their next generation as a family tradition.  This tradition is difficult for people outside of this culture to understand. This is why when a few of my non-Hindu friends made fun of some of the Hindu gods and goddesses, I understood perfectly.

Can a prison be a home for someone?

Something we read/hear/experience sticks in our mind forever. The "Shawshank Redemption" movie is one of these memory that I can't forget even after so many years.  

The plots in this movie are great and I like most everyone playing major role in it. Beside the two main characters (Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins), there is a third character--a long-term prisoner--who returns to prison with his own will even after completing his sentence and was free to go wherever he wished. 

I had almost forgotten his reasons to return to prison until three days ago. My experience of what happened three days ago helped me understand the reason. I had never thought this way before, but now that I've read a quite a bit and thought about it a bit,  it is true that  a prison can be a safer home for someone who has spent most of his/her life inside of it.

Shankara's explanation of the Brahman.

 

Who is the Brahman?

The fool thinks, "I am the body"; the intelligent man thinks, "I am an individual soul united with the body." But the wise man, in the greatness of his knowledge and spiritual discrimination, sees the Self as the only reality and thinks, "I am Brahman." 

Source:

https://www.onelittleangel.com/wisdom/quotes/saint.asp?mc=60

 

If god exists, evil is not comprehensible

I just finished reading Simone de Beauvoir's short novel Inseparable. Knowing Simone, I expected the major characters in this novel (the inseparable girls) would be rebellious in nature and utterly courageous. However, I hadn’t imagined them to be frighteningly bold and naively dutiful -daughters (one of them) struggling to break free from the conventional Catholic traditions of their time.  One of them more dutiful than the other, obviously, tragically sacrifices her life after tormenting herself between her love and her duty to her family. Living a life of a woman was, and still is, not easy in many developing countries, but I didn’t think having ‘temptation’ even after being engaged with your partner was considered as sin in the 1950s in Europe.

The book mirrors religious hypocrisy in France during Beauvoir’s formative years. Her expression of “If god exists, evil is not comprehensible,” is totally opposite of the wildly held belief that “We’re only the instruments of God” and “Its’ prideful to want to understand everything”.