It was an amazing experience! Before this course, I had just heard of Art of Living courses, their Sudarshan Kriya and of course about sri sri….

On the first day, we started with little bit of yoga which were light exercises… a sort of warm up. After that, 12 to 18 suryanamaskaras. The female named Anjana was very nice at keeping our enthusiasm on and making the whole activity interesting.

Then we got introduced to two amazing personalities, Bawa and Dinesh. They both took over the stage completely. Bawa is superb at talking. Both of them are graduates from IIT, Mumbai. Both are extremely knowledgeable, helping, down to earth and completely dedicated. As I said earlier, Bawa is superb in talking. He is quick witted. He is having superb convincing power. Of course, whatever he was telling was having strong base of sri sri’s teachings and his own understanding. So whatever he was saying, in form of speech or as answers, he was convincing. But he used to demonstrate it very nicely. for e.g. one boy said.. “I will try to do sudarshan kriya everyday“. Bawa asked him to come to stage and asked him to “try to pick up the apple kept there on stage“. Poor fellow picked it up. Bawa said.. “Don’t pick up.. TRY TO PICK UP“.. Everybody started laughing. Then he said “You never try to do anything.. You DO IT or DON’T DO IT! Simple“.

Sudarshan Kriya is a superb practice. I feel that everyone should experience it by joining the course. It shows many physical effects on people doing it. Some people start crying, some laughing, some has finger cramps and what not. Basically its because strong emotional blast. Bawa jokingly calls it as “special effects”. I had cramps in my fingers. I had extreme nerve tension in head also. When Bawa asked us to lie down for sometime, to our surprise, we took rest for 45 minutes!!

We did sudarshan kriya for first 3 days out of four. “Special Effects” went on minimizing day by day!

There was a nice group of musicians including two fantastic singers. We heard very nice bhajans from them which are still playing in my ears.

Overall it was a very nice and refreshing experience. I have decided to do Sudarshan Kriya everyday. Lets see if I can maintain this. Bawa says “Don’t do kriya everyday.. do it only today!”

Related online wayouts from here :

Bawa and Dinesh’s blog : http://bawandinesh.blogspot.com

Art of Living : http://www.artofliving.org

Yes!+ Website : http://www.yesplus.org

His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar : http://www.srisri.org

I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earths sweet flowing breast
A tree looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray
Poems are made by fools like me
But only God can make a tree
– Joyce Kilmer

Recently I visited Dajipur Wild Life Century near Kolhapur, Maharashtra, India! I am a member of WWF India and it was a nature awareness camp arranged by them. Though the facilities provided by Government of Maharashtra were not up to the mark , it was a great experience.

I realized that jungle is just not about animals. Birds sighting, animal sighting is just a small part of jungle trail which might happen or not. But there are many other reasons to visit jungle. The cool breeze in the morning, sounds of different birds, insects, droppings of animals (Yes!), pug marks showing animal existence…. All these things make jungle trails a cool experience.

I realized how nature works in cooperation. How everything is dependent on everything else. We have been told not to displace even a stick. A small stick lying on the ground is also contributing to life at that place. So many ants, decomposing agents are dependent on that stick. The stick might be part of food to the nearby tree…. Its all so amazing! I am not getting enough words to express it.

We usually walked about 10-15 kilometers everyday, but we hardly got tired. I think it generally happens in pollution free environment like this. But for people like me, staying in cities, it was one of the rare experiences.

There were 2-3 professors of Zoology, Botany in the group. So the trails used to be technical (rather biological). The use of jargons and Latin names for plants, leaves, birds, animals was a normal thing in trails. These guys don’t say “Leopard”, they say “Panthera Pardus“. It gets boring sometimes for a person like me who can hardly identify 5-6 birds and 5-6 trees by name.

I like to feel jungle. To be with nature, being natural, away from cell phones and computers and Internet. I don’t know if I liked this trip because it was small and a sort of refreshment. I don’t know what will happen if I need to stay at such a place for a long time. But one thing is sure that it was boring returning to city, back to work. Its so Unnatural!

(Photo Courtesy :My friend Aditya Bapat)

I use Ubuntu Linux Distribution at my home. I am GNU/Linux operating system user for last 4 years. When I first time heard about Richard Stallman and Open Source movement, I got very much impressed. I immediatly installed Red Hat 7 at my Home Machine and since then I have tried many distros.I have been thru all typical linux problem those days like ‘Linux not recognising my modem’,'Linux can’t play MP3′,’Linux has not detected sound card of my machine’ etc.. But, there was not a single day when there was not any Linux on my machine. I have always had duel boot with Windows XP and some GNU/Linux distro.

For last 4 months I m using Ubuntu. I got the CDs couriered from Netherlands after I put up the request in ‘ShipIt’ section of the Ubuntu website. It’s a great operating system. It recognised all of my computer hardware. I can play any video or audio format with it. It’s very much user friendly. My younger college going brother finds it very easy to operate. Whenever he is on computer.. he is on Ubuntu.

I am not against Microsoft. They have developed something which has taken them to the top in computer software market and kept them there for such a long time. It is defently a great thing. Here in India, there is just too much software piracy. Home PC users don’t have even an idea that there’s cost for operating systems, application softwares, games etc.. Most of the users use pirated softwares with cloned CDs which is unethical. I am against this.

GNU/Linux plays a very important role here. It’s free to use. There are so many open source alternatives to popular commercial softwares in open source area. e.g. Open Office is alternative for Microsoft Office. GImp is alternative for Photoshop, Blender is alternative for 3DsMax, Mozilla Firefox is alternate for Internet Explorer etc..

GNU/Linux was difficult to use once but its history now. Right from installation process, it has become very very user friendly. We just need to give it a try. We can download ISO images of any one of the popular GNU/Linux distributions from their respective websites…. Or we can buy those CDs for less than Rs.300/- from http://buylinuxdvd.com or such websites.

Five-six months back, there was an artcile in businessweek.com which said that the biggest girls school in Kerala has changed the policy and they use GNU/Linux for teaching. Those small girls learning computer, learn GNU/Linux only and they find it very easy. As they have never used MS Windows, they are unbiased.

As GNU/Linux is open source, its source code can be altered to meet own requirments and even can be distributed to help neighbour. Its concepts are inherited from the great, eternal concept for humans which is FREEDOM. So there’s no death to GNU/Linux.. there’s only growth….

आपल्यासाठी नाही..

त्या भौतिक शास्त्राला किंवा पावसाच्या देवाला या ‘अखिल मानवजात’ वगैरेशी काही घेणंदेणं नाही.. तसं असतं तर मागच्या २६ जुलै सारखा कोसळला नसता आणि आपले सौंदर्य वगैरे दाखवायचे असते तर रात्री बेरात्री कोसळला नसता.. छानपैकी दिवसा छायाचित्रकार, कवी जागे असताना पडला असता..

या सृष्टींचे प्रयोजन काही वेगळेच आहे. मला नाही वाटत की संपूर्ण मानवजातीच्या इतिहासात ते अजून कुणाला ‘दुसऱ्यांनाही ते सांगता येईल’ इतपत कळले आहे! न्यूटन काय किंवा आईन्स्टाईन काय.. मार्क्स, सावरकर.. काही विशिष्ट विषयांत ते इतरांच्या पुढे होते अगदी काही शे वर्षे पुढे होते.. पण या संपूर्ण सृष्टींचे प्रयोजन काय, कोहम?.. ची कायमस्वरूपी अशी उत्तरे कुणी दिली?. . . . कदाचित त्यांना स्वतःला कळले असेल.. सांगता नाही आले! सांगताना ‘नेति नेति’ असेच झाले!

….तर मग का पडतो पाऊस? तो काय देवाचा प्रसाद आहे का? देवस्वरूप आहे का? का एक भौतिक शास्त्राचा नियम? का कविता? सही! रोमँटिक वगैरे.. का यमस्वरूप..? माहीत नाही हो. . मग काय “मेघांच्या धारांतून प्रेमरूप भासतोस..” ला काही अर्थ नाही? नसेल कदाचित!

सगळी प्रासंगिक नावे, विशेषणे आहेत ही! आपल्यानुसार वेळेवर(?) आला तर वेळेवर शेती होऊन आपल्याला जे अन्न लागते जगायला(?) ते जास्तीत जास्त प्रमाणात मिळते म्हणून देव म्हणायचे.. हिल स्टेशनला किंवा घाटात गेलो तर डोळ्यांना सुंदर(?), छान(?) दिसते(?) म्हणायचे.. वाट लावली तर यम म्हणायचे. . पण या प्रत्येक नावाच्या, भावनेच्या, विशेषणाच्या पाठी. . “साला काय चालू आहे हे?” हा प्रश्न असतोच. मी तर फार त्रासलो आहे हो.. कुणाला कधीतरी मिळेल का हे उत्तर. . का या प्रश्नावर काट मारावी मी आणि फोटो काढावा पावसाचा खिडकीतून? छान(?) दिसतंय(?) हो बाहेर….

Thanks to and Picture posted by Skyburst.

A superb thought about flowering

ENERGY

When the tree is overflowing with vitality it blooms and flowers. Flowers are a luxury. Only when you have too much and you cannot contain it, do they burst forth. Spirituality it is a flowering – it is the ultimate luxury. If you are overflowing with vitality, only then does something like a golden flower bloom in you. William Blake is right when he says 'Energy is delight.' The more energy you have, the more delight you will have. Despair comes because energy goes on leaking; and people have forgotten how to contain it. In a thousand and one thoughts, worries, desires, imagination, dreams, memories, energy is leaking. And energy is leaking in unnecessary things which can be easily avoided. When there is no need to talk people go on talking. When there is no need to do anything they cannot sit silently: they have to do. People are obsessed with doing… as if doing is a sort of intoxicant; it keeps them drunk. They remain occupied so they don't have time to think about the real problems of life. They keep themselves busy so that they don't bump into themselves. Otherwise they are afraid — afraid of the abyss that is yawning there within. So they keep hanging around things necessary, unnecessary; they invent problems and they remain clinging to those problems. This is how the energy goes on leaking and why you never have too much of it. One has to learn to drop the unnecessary, and ninety percent of ordinary life is unnecessary; it can be easily dropped. One has to be almost telegraphic, just the essential, and you will have so much energy left that one day suddenly you start blooming, for no other reason at all.

Let me tell now whose thought is it? It is by OSHO. I sometimes wonder why this great philosopher has not been accepted in Indian Society to the extent he deserves. There are many controversies about him, about his lifestyle.. About his RollsRoyces.. about From Sex To Enlightment.. and so on….

But he has definitely talked about many other nice things other than sex. No doubt that he was an enlightned master and he made tremendous amount of people happy in his lifetime. His thoughts are fresh and applicable to today's world also.. The above thought is just one of the numerous thoughts he put forward about little things in life..

Isn't it really true what he said above?

Lets Do It!