பணமும் வாழ்க்கையும்

பணம் சம்பாதிக்க வாழ்க்கை வாழ்வதோ
வாழ்க்கை வாழவல்லவா பணம் சம்பாதிக்க வேண்டும்??

Orange man

A nice outcome of my 6 week long vacation in India. As a friend commented, this is what I did with lot of time and a creative mind(actually I copied this idea from a email forward) .

Food for the future world

I visited my Aunty who recently constructed a home in Erode. The vegetables in her garden were very good and that's when I was told that the house is on a 'nel vilaiyum boomi'. Recently my cousin brother divided his agriculture land into many plots and sold them away. Even in the current world situation, we know very well that we do not have enough fertile land to produce food for the growing population. What with all these lands turning to residential areas!

I cannot blame my aunty or my cousin for doing this. My cousin said that he cannot profit from agriculture, since there is no support from government. Also, he mentioned how the yield has come down drastically in the last 2 decades, due to the use of fertilizers. Even though they have enough water to cultivate the land, they are unable to see any money, so he was left with no option but to sell it.

If this continues, where will the whole world go for food? Will we have enough land to feed the future?

Also check this...
http://deepakktsnapshot.blogspot.com/2008/04/global-famine-warning.html

Value of 'One' life

Last week I was reading a news article on riots in a Asian country. It was about how local people claim that more than 100 people were killed by the riot police but the government claims that 'ONLY' 18 people died. I have been reading such statements since the day I started reading newspapers. However, what stuck me this time is that people are so bent upon statistics even when it comes to lives. Someone claims 100 people have died, but the government comes back to say that lesser people died - how does that matter? Even if one life is lost, it is very bad. What is the point in playing with numbers!!

Project Green Hands - Gift of trees

Gift of trees - this is a great idea proposed and implemented by Isha volunteers. It takes US$1 to nurture a sapling and plant a tree in India(PGH is now spread across Southern India). US volunteers who wanted to participate in this effort to bring 33% green cover to Tamilnadu, decided to spread awareness and do some fundraising. Gift of Trees is one wonderful idea. We can buy a Gift of Trees certificate for different denominations($10, $20, $50, $100, etc) and send it as a gift to a loved one. Christmas, Pongal, Birthdays, Anniversaries, Valentine's day - there are many occasions when we would want to buy gifts/cards/bouquets. Instead, if we can buy this certificate, Isha's 'Project Green Hands' will plant 1 tree for every dollar in honor of the person who receives the certificate.

You can contact me if you are interested in getting these certificates for your loved ones.

http://www.ishafoundation.org/ProjectGreenHands

Stress and me

I had resisted for a long time to write my experiences with Yoga. The last 1.5 years has transformed me to such an extent in every possible way that sometimes I don't recognize myself. My resistance to write was due to two factors - first, I could hardly get these experiences in words, in any language; second, it will be easy for anyone to judge me as one other crazy being. Anyway, whatever happened to me in the last one week is magical and marvelous(though not the first time).

Since I started practicing yoga and kriyas(www.ishafoundation.org), I have been very calm, composed, joyful and free of many physical ailments (especially back pain - my 24/7 partner for 6 years). Life was going in a very positive way. I got busy with volunteering at Isha yoga, Center for Visually Impaired(CVI, Atlanta, GA) and few other organizations. I had 2 amazing opportunities to give a car ride to Sadhguru. Got wonderful friends and social life in Atlanta improved. The list goes on and on.....

However, 3 months back, I started suffering from severe back pain and slowly I started feeling that I was going back to how I was 2 years earlier. I would get upset or emotionally disturbed without any reason. However, I was still not losing control and I was able to handle everything in a peaceful, calm way. But back pain was something that I could not tolerate and I tried changing my chair in the office, sitting posture, sleeping posture and also stopped doing Hata yoga. Nothing helped me. I realized that there was some problem with my mind or body that was impacting the other, but I couldn't figure out the problem.

Suddenly, last week(1 day after volunteering at the Isha Yoga Inner Engineering class), out of nowhere I felt like talking to my husband for a long time. I didn't know what I was going to talk. I just called him from work and luckily he was also free. As I started talking, I realized that there was one issue that came up 3 months ago and one part of my mind knew that it's not a big deal. Meanwhile, another part of my mind kept thinking about that issue and slowly a poison tree had been developing in me, without my knowledge. My good sane mind had been suppressing this. This suppression had developed so much stress in me without my awareness. Last week I got sick, rather felt so sick for no good reason. After I realized the problem and became aware that this is the root cause, life is back on track. Right after I was done talking to my husband, my body felt like water flowing in a river that we call 'Existence'. I felt like there were knots in every cell of my body that untangled themselves.

The next day I did surya namaskar and realized how flexible I was. In the last 3 months, I had trouble bending forward. It's so surprising how stress killed my body's functions. Inspite of reading about it and hearing it in the yoga class, it's great to learn this experientially.

Coffee stirrer

My first encounter with this 'Coffee Stirrer' was during my college days. Hot chocolate was getting popular in Chennai and small stalls were sprouting up in all local train stations. One day, I decided to try it, finally succumbing to my tongue. I got a small cup of hot chocolate and he game me a straw(or that's what I thought). The straw looked different - tiny and cute. I used the straw to drink the hot(very hot) chocolate and the moment it reached my tongue, hmmm....you know what would have happened. Assuming that my taste buds have been destroyed permanently, I rejoiced when I started feeling my tongue again.

Anyway, even then I didn't realize that it's a stirrer and not a straw. But that story was long forgotten until last week. I happened to use a stirrer and suddenly remembered this incident and wondered why stirrers are hollow. I goodSearch-ed(www.goodsearch.com) 'coffee stirrers' and found this interesting article.
http://www.benratesitall.com/index.php?id=1128577696.Coffee%20Stirrers.msc

However, I couldn't find an answer to my question...
Why are coffee stirrers designed as mini straws, rather why are they hollow?

As Ben mentions in his article, is it just to save manufacturing costs. With everyone going "GREEN", maybe it's high time we start thinking about non-plastic stirrers.
Also, why do we have disposable stirrers - how much plastic is being wasted damaging the environment! Anyway, that's a topic for another whole article.

Arindhum Ariyaamalum in Ananda Vikatan

For more than a year, I have been reading Vikatan every week. I would wait for Sadhguru's article. One day, I happened to read Prakash Raj's article and I was amazed at how daringly he wrote about his life. I don't know if he wrote that to get more popular. It might have been a conscious effort to share his life's journey with the world. For many people who think that the world is a perfect place and any small misdoing is punishable, Prakash Raj's article should have been an eye opener. It is not something that just happened to him, there are more people who would have experienced such a life. Anyway, I really admired Prakash for the way he was able to look back at his life. I am not saying that his life is correct or not - I am no one to judge another person's life. I am mentioning this because I want to appreciate Vikatan for publishing such articles. And this came to my mind, when I read 'Arindhum Ariyaamalum' by Gnani. This thodar has been going on for long, but I've just read the last two articles.

10 years back, I knew about transsexuals only because I was involved with CHES(Community Health Education Society). During that period they officially changed their name to 'Aravaani' - after their God. Gnani mentions that Aravaani is a Hinduiism based name and this name should not be imposed on Christians and Muslims. I liked Gnani for creating an awareness about homosexuals and transexuals. However, I did not like it when he came up with this religion based argument. People need to be a little more sensitive when they write in the media. Why would someone want to do this, I don't understand. There were some comments for the article saying that 'Aravaan' is not religion based, but it is our culture, history. Even the Supreme Court of India seems to have heard similar cases and ruled that there is a difference between 'Hinduism/Hindutva' as a religion and culture. I have not yet researched on these cases yet.
One argument is that Mahabharat and Ramayan could have a lot of mythological stuff. But they could be a part of the Indian history. So anyone who is born in India should consider this as our history and not associate it to a religion. I wonder why people are giving so much importance to names.

The Igloo

"The people who make their homes near the top of the world have learned to survive in the harsh climate of the Arctic - a cold so intense it can crack anything it touches, with wild freezing winds and endless fields of snow. For part of the year the sun never rises, and for another part the midnight sun endlessly circles the sky. Hunger is a constant threat, and there are no trees and few animals. Everything the Eskimos need - their food, their clothing, their tools - must be devisedwith great ingenuity from the meager materials at hand. No creation of the Eskimos is more ingenious than the house they live in for much of the year - the igloo, which uses snow itself as a protection from bitter cold and wind."
- From the book "The Igloo" by Charlotte and David Yue

This is a children's book, I wonder why - is it because adults should have known all about the igloos? Well, I have found that children's books are very educative unlike the fiction novels. Anyway, when I saw this book in the library, I knew I had to read it. The only time I had read about an igloo is at school - some book where different types of housing was mentioned. The book explains the lifestyle of Eskimos and how they construct an igloo(illustrations available - I felt more like visiting a museum).

More to come........

Project Green Hands

http://www.flickr.com/photos/18655811@N00/sets/72157600801107222

For more details on this project http://www.ishafoundation.org/ProjectGreenHands