Chicago Address 3: Swami Vivekananda

Chicago Addresses -3


PAPER ON HINDUISM

Read at the Parliament on 19th September 1893



Three religions now stand in the world which has come down to us from time prehistoric - Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism.

They have all received tremendous shocks, and all of them prove by their survival their internal strength. But while Judaism failed to absorb Christianity and was driven out of its place of birth by its all-conquering daughter, and a handful of Parsees is all that remains to tell the tale of their grand religion, sect after sect arose in India and seemed to shake the religion of the Vedas to its very foundations, but like the waters of the sea-shore in a tremendous earthquake it receded only for a while, only to return in an all-absorbing Hood, a thousand times more vigorous, and when the tumult of the rush was over, these sects were all sucked in, absorbed and assimilated into the immense body of the mother faith.

From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hindu's religion.

Where then, the question arises, where is the common centre to which all these widely diverging radii converge? Where is the common basis upon which all these seemingly hopeless contradictions rest? And this is the question I shall attempt to answer.

The Hindus have received their religion through revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end. It may sound ludicrous to this audience, how a book can be without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant.

They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons in different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits were there before their discovery, and would remain even if we forgot them.

The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis, and we honour them as perfected beings. I am glad to tell this audience that some of the very greatest of them were women.

Here it may be said that these laws as laws may be without end, but they must have had a beginning. The Vedas teach us that creation is without beginning or end. Science is said to have proved that the sum total of cosmic energy is always the same. Then, if there was a time when nothing existed, where was all this manifested energy?

Some say it was in a potential form in God. In that case God is sometimes potential and sometimes kinetic, which would make Him mutable. Everything mutable is a compound and everything compound must undergo that change which is called destruction. So God would die, which is absurd-Therefore, there never was a time when there was no creation.

If I may be allowed to use a simile, creation and creator are two lines, without beginning and without end, zoning parallel to each other. God is the ever-active providence, by whose power systems after systems are being evolved out of chaos, made to run for a time, and again destroyed. This is what the Brahmin boy repeats every day:

'The sun and the moon, the Lord created like the suns and the moons of previous cycles.'

And this agrees with modern science. Here I Stand and if I shut my eyes, and try to conceive my existence, 'I,' 'I,' 'I', what is the idea before me? The idea of a body. Am I, then, nothing but a combination of material substances? The Vedas declare, 'No' I am a spirit living in a body: I am not the body. The body will die, but I shall not die. Here I am in this body; it will fall, soul shall go on living. I had also a past. The soul was not created, for creation means a combination, which means a certain future dissolution. If then the soul was created, it must die. Some are born happy, enjoy perfect health with beautiful body, mental vigour, and all wants supplied. Others are born miserable; some are without hands or feet; others again are idiots, and only drag on a wretched existence. Why, if they are all created, why does a just and merciful God create one happy and another unhappy, why is He so partial? Nor would it mend matters in the least to hold that those who are miserable in this life will be happy in an other one. Why should a man be miserable even here in the reign of a just and merciful God?

In the second place, the idea of a creator God does not explain the anomaly, but simply expresses the cruel Rat of an all-powerful being. There must have been causes, then, before his birth, to make a man miserable or happy and those were his past actions.

Are not all the tendencies of the mind and the body accounted for by inherited aptitude? Here are two parallel lines of existence -

One of the mind, the other of matter. If matter and its transformations answer for all that we have, there is no necessity for supposing the existence of a soul. But it cannot be proved that thought has been evolved out of matter; and if a philosophical monism is inevitable, spiritual monism is certainly logical and no less desirable than a materialistic monism; but neither of these is necessary here.

We cannot deny that bodies acquire certain tendencies from heredity, but those tendencies only mean the physical configuration through which a peculiar mind alone can act in a peculiar way.

There are other tendencies peculiar to a soul caused by his past actions. And a soul with a certain tendency would, by the laws of affinity, take birth in a body which is the fittest instrument for the display of that tendency. This is in accord with science, for science wants to explain everything by habit, and habit is got through repetitions. So repetitions are necessary to explain the natural habits of a new born soul. And since they were not obtained in this present life, they must have come down from past lives.

There is another suggestion. Taking all these for granted, how is it that I do not remember anything of my past life? This can be easily explained. I am now speaking English. It is not my mother tongue; in fact, no words of my mother tongue are now present in my consciousness; but let me try to bring them up, and they rush in.

That shows that consciousness is only the surface of mental ocean, and within its depths are stored up all our experiences. Try and struggle, they would come up. And you would be conscious even of your past life.

This is direct and demonstrative evidence. Verification is the perfect proof of a theory, and here is the challenge thrown to the world by the Rishis. We have discovered the secret by which the very depths of the ocean of memory can be stirred up - try it and you would get a complete reminiscence of your past life.

So then the Hindu believes that he is a spirit. Him the sword cannot pierce - him the fire cannot burn - him the water cannot melt - him the air cannot dry. The Hindu believes that every soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere but whose centre is located in the body, and that death means the change of the centre from holy to body. Nor is the soul bound by the conditions of matter.

In its very essence, it is flee, unbounded, holy, pure, and perfect. But somehow or other it finds itself tied down to matter and thinks of itself as matter. Why should the free, perfect, and pure be thus under the thraldom of matter, is the next question.

How can the perfect soul be deluded into the belief that it is imperfect? We have been told that the Hindus shirk the question and say that no such question can be there- Some thinkers want to answer it by positing one or more quasi-perfect beings, and use big scientific names to fill up the gap. But naming is not explaining.

The question remains the same. How can the perfect become the quasi-perfect; how can the pure, the absolute change even a microscopic particle of its nature? But the Hindu is sincere. He does not want to take shelter under sophistry. He is brave enough to face the question in a manly fashion; and his answer is: 'I do not know.' I do not know how the perfect being, the soul, came to think of itself as imperfect, as Joined to and conditioned by matter.' But the fact is a fact for all that. It is a fact in everybody's consciousness that one thinks of oneself as the body.

The Hindu does not attempt to explain why one thinks one is the body. The answer that it is the will of God is no explanation. This is nothing more than what the Hindu says, 'I do not know.'

Well, then, the human soul is eternal and immortal, perfect and infinite, and death means only a change of centre from one body to another. The present is determined by our past actions, and the future by the present. The soul will go on evolving up or reverting back from birth to birth and death to death. But here is another question: Is man a tiny boat in a tempest, raised one moment on the foamy crest of a billow and dashed down into a yawning chasm the next, rolling to and from at the mercy of good and bad actions - a powerless, helpless wreck in an ever-raging, ever-rushing, uncompromising current of cause and effect - a little moth placed under the wheel of causation, which rolls on crushing everything in its way and waits not for the widow's tears or the orphan's cry?

The heart sinks at the idea, yet this is the law of nature. Is there no hope? Is there no escape? That was the cry that went up from the bottom of the heart of despair. It reached the throne of mercy, and words of hope and consolation came down and inspired a Vedic sage, and he stood up before the world and in trumpet voice proclaimed the glad tidings: 'Hear, ye children of immortal bliss!

Even ye that reside in higher spheres! I have found the Ancient One who is beyond all darkness, all delusion: knowing Him alone you shall be saved from death over again. 'Children of immortal bliss'

-what a sweet, what a hopeful name! Allow me to call you, brethren, by that sweet name -heirs of immortal bliss - yea, the Hindu refuses to call you sinners. We are the Children of God, the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings. E divinities on earth - sinners! It is a sin to call a ma. So; it is standing libel on human nature. Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal; ye are not matter, ye are not bodies; matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter.

Thus it is that the Vedas proclaim not a dreadful combination of unforgiving laws, not an endless prison of cause and effect, but that at the head of all these laws, in and through every particle of matter and force, stands One, 'by whose command the wind blows, the fire burns, the clouds rain and death stalks upon the earth.'

And what is His nature?

He is everywhere, the pure and formless One, the Almighty and the All-merciful. 'Thou art our father, Thou art our mother, Thou art our beloved friend, Thou art the source of all strength; give us strength. Thou art He that beareth the burdens of the universe; help me bear the little burden of this life.'

Thus sang the Rishis of the Veda. And how to worship Him? Through love. 'He is to be worshiped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and the next life.'

This is the doctrine of love declared in the Vedas, and let us see how it is fully developed and taught by Krishna whom the Hindus believe to have been God incarnate on earth.

He taught that a man ought to live in this world like a lotus leaf, which grows in water but is never moistened by water; so a man ought to live in the world - his heart to God and his hands to work.

It is good to love God for hope of reward in this or the next world, but it is better to love God for love's sake; and the prayer goes: 'Lord, I do not want wealth nor children nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth; but grant me this, that I may love Thee without the hope of reward - love unselfishly for love's sake.'

One of the disciples of Krishna, the then Emperor of India, was driven from his kingdom by his enemies and had to take shelter with his queen, in a forest in the Himalayas and there one day the queen asked how it was that he, the most virtuous of men, should suffer so much misery. Udhishthira answered, 'Be hold, my queen, the Himalayas, how grand and beautiful they are; I love them. They do not give me any- thing but my nature is to love the grand, the beautiful, therefore I love them. Similarly, I love the Lord. He is the source of all beauty, of all sublimity. He is the only object to beloved; my nature is to love Him, and therefore I love.

I do not pray for anything; I do not ask for anything. Let Him place me wherever He likes. I must love Him for love's sake. I cannot trade in love.'

The Vedas teach that the soul is divine, only held in the bondage of matter; perfection will be reached when this bond will burst, and the word they use for it is, therefore, Mukti - freedom, freedom from the bonds of imperfection, freedom from death and misery- And this bondage can only fall off through the mercy of God, and this mercy comes on the pure. So purity is the condition of His mercy. How does that mercy act? He reveals Himself to the pure heart; the pure and the stainless see God, yea, even in this life; then and then only all the crookedness of the heart is made straight. Then all doubt ceases. He is no more the freak of a terrible law of causation. This is the very centre, the very vital conception of Hinduism. The Hindu does not want to live upon words and theories, if there are existences beyond the ordinary sensuous existence, he wants to come face to face with them. If there is a soul in him which is not matter, if there is an all-merciful universal Soul, he will Rota Him direct. He must see Him, and that alone can destroy all doubts. So the best proof a Hindu sage gives about the soul, about God, is: 'I have seen the soul; I have seen God.' And that is the only condition of perfection. The Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realizing - not in believing, but in being and becoming.

Thus the whole object of their system is by constant struggle to become perfect, to become divine, to reach God, and see God; and this reaching God, seeing God, becoming perfect even as the Father in Heaven is perfect, constitutes the religion of the Hindus.

And what becomes of a man when he attains perfection? He lives a life of bliss infinite. He enjoys infinite and perfect bliss, having obtained the only thing in which man ought to have pleasure, namely God, and enjoys the bliss with God.

So far all the Hindus are agreed. This is the common religion of all the sects of India; but then perfection is absolute, and the absolute cannot be two or three. It cannot have any qualities. It cannot be an individual. And so when a soul becomes perfect and absolute, it must become one with Brahman, and it would only realize the Lord as the perfection, the reality, of its own nature and existence, the existence absolute, knowledge absolute, an bliss absolute. We have often and often read this called the losing of individuality and becoming a stock or a stone.

'He jests at scars that never felt a wound.'

I tell you it is nothing of the kind. If it is happiness to enjoy the consciousness of this small body, it must be greater happiness to enjoy the consciousness of two bodies, the measure of happiness increasing with the consciousness of an increasing number of bodies, the Rim, the ultimate of happiness, being reached when it would become a universal consciousness.

Therefore, to gain this infinite universal individuality, this miserable little prison - individuality must go. Then alone can death cease when I am one with life, then alone can misery cease when I am one with happiness itself, then alone can all errors cease when I am one with knowledge itself; and this is the necessary scientific conclusion- Science has proved to me that physical individuality is a delusion, that really my body is one little continuously changing body in an unbroken ocean of matter, and Advaita (unity) is the necessary conclusion with my other counterpart, Soul.

Science is nothing but the finding of unity. As soon as science would reach perfect unity, it would stop from further progress, because it would reach the goal. Thus chemistry could not progress farther when it would discover one element out of which all others could be made. Physics would stop when it would be able to fulfil its services in discovering one energy of which all the others are hut manifestations, and the science of religion become perfect when it would discover Him who is the one life in a universe of death, Him who is the constant basis of an ever-changing world, One who is the only Soul of which all souls are but delusive manifestations.

Thus is it, through multiplicity and duality, that the ultimate unity is reached. Religion can go no farther. This is the goal of all science.

All science is bound to come to this conclusion in the long run.

Manifestation, and not creation, is the word of science today; and the Hindu is only glad that what he has been cherishing in his bosom for ages is going to be taught in more forcible language and with further light from the latest conclusions of science.

Descend we now from the aspirations of philosophy to the religion of the ignorant. At the very outset, I may tell you that there is no polytheism in India. In every temple, if one stands by and listens, one will find the worshipers applying all the attributes of God, including omnipresence. To the images. It is not polytheism, nor would the name henotheism explain the situation.

'The rose, called by any other name, would smell as sweet.' Names are not explanations.

I remember, as a boy, hearing a Christian missionary preach to crowd in India. Among other sweet things he was telling them was, that if he gave a blow to their idol with his stick. What could it do? One of his hearers sharply answered, 'If I abuse your God, what can He do?' ' you would be punished,' said the preacher, 'when you die.' 'So my idol will punish you when you die,' retorted the Hindu.

The tree is known by its fruits. When I have seen amongst them that are called idolaters, men, the like of whom, in morality and spirituality and love, I have never seen anywhere, I stop and ask myself, 'Can sin beget holiness?'

Superstition is a great enemy of man, but bigotry is worse. Why does a Christian go to church? Why is the cross holy? Why is the face turned toward the sky in prayer? Why are there so many images in the Catholic Church? Why are there so many images in the minds of Protestants when they pray? My brethren, we can Do more think about anything without a mental image than we can live without breathing- By the law of association the material image calls up the mental idea and vice versa. This is why the Hindu uses an external symbol when he worships. He will tell you. It helps to keep his mind fixed on the Being to whom he prays. He knows as well as you do that the image is not God, is not omnipresent. finer all, how much does omnipresence mean to almost the whole world? It stands merely as a word, a symbol. Has God superficial area? If not, when we repeat that word 'omnipresent', we think of the extended sky or of space - that is all.

As we find that somehow or other, by the laws of our mental constitution, we have to associate our ideas of infinity with the image of the blue sky, or of the sea, so we naturally connect our idea of holiness with the image of a church, a mosque, or a cross.

The Hindus have associated the ideas of holiness, purity, truth, omnipresence, and such other ideas with different images and forms.

But with this difference that while some people devote their whole lives to their idol of a church and never rise higher, because with them religion means an intellectual assent to certain doctrines and doing good to their fellows, the whole religion of the Hindu is centered in realization. Man is to become divine by realizing the divine. Idols or temples or churches or books are only the supports, the helps, of his spiritual childhood; but on and on he must progress.

He must not stop anywhere. 'External worship, material worship' ?,' say the scriptures, 'is the lowest stage,' struggling to rise high, mental prayer is the next stage, but the highest stage is when the Lord has been realized., Mark, the same earnest man who is kneeling before the idol tells you, 'Him the sun cannot express, nor the moon, nor the stars, the lightning cannot express Him, nor what we speak of as fire; through Him they shine.' But he does not abuse anyone's idol or call its worship sin. He recognizes in it a necessary stage of life. 'The child is father of the man.' Would it be right for an old man to say that childhood is a sin or youth a sin?

If a man can realize his divine nature with the help of an image, would it be right to call that a sin? Nor, even when he has passed that stage, should he call it an error. To the Hindu, man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth. To him all the religions from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realize the Infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and association, and each of these marks a stage of progress; and every soul is a young eagle soaring higher and higher, gathering more and more strength till it reaches the Glorious Sun.

Unity in variety is the plan of nature, and the Hindu has recognized it. Every other religion lays down certain fixed dogmas and tries to force society to adopt them. It places before society only one coat which must fit Jack and John and Henry, all alike. If it does not fit John or Henry he must go without a coat to cover his body. The Hindus have discovered that the absolute can only be realized, or thought of, or stated through the relative, and the images, crosses, and crescents are simply so many symbols - so many pegs to hang spiritual ideas on. It is not that this help is necessary for everyone, but those that do not need it have no right to say that it is wrong. Nor is it compulsory in Hinduism.

One thing I must tell you. Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible. It is not the mother of harlots. On the other hand, it is the attempt of undeveloped minds to grasp high spiritual truths.

The Hindus have their faults, they sometimes have their exceptions; but mark this, they are always for punishing their own bodies, an do never for cutting the throats of their neighbors. If the Hindu fanatic burns himself on the pyre, he never lights the fire of Inquisition. And even this cannot be laid at the door of his religion any more than the burning of witches can be laid at the door of Christianity.

To the Hindu, then, the whole world of religions is only a travelling, a coming up, of different men and women, through various conditions and circumstances, to the same goal. Every religion is only evolving a God out of the material man, and the same God is the inspirer of all of them. Why, then, are there so many contradictions? They are only apparent, says the Hindu. The contradictions come from the same truth adapting itself to the varying circumstances of different natures.

It is the same light coming through glasses of different colors-

And these little variations are necessary for purposes of adaptation. But in the heart of everything the same truth reigns.

The Lord has declared to the Hindu in His incarnation as Krishna:

'I am in every religion as the thread through a string of pearls.

Wherever thou seest extraordinary holiness and extraordinary power raising and purifying humanity, know thou that I am there. ' And what has been the result? I challenge the world to find, throughout the whole system of Sanskrit philosophy, any such expression as that the Hindu alone will be saved and not others. Says Vyasa, 'we find perfect men even beyond the pale of our caste and creed.' One thing more. How, then, can the Hindu, whose whole fabric of thought centers in God, believe in Buddhism which is agnostic, or in Jainism which is atheistic?

The Buddhists or the Jains do not depend upon God; but the whole force of their religion is directed to the great central truth in every religion, to evolve a God out of man. They have not seen the Father, but they have seen the Son. And he that hath seen the Son bath seen the Father also.

This, brethren, is a short sketch of the religious ideas of the Hindus. The Hindu may have failed to carry out all his plans, but if there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one which will have no location in place or time; which will be infinite like the God it will preach, and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and of Christ, on saints and sinners alike; which will not be Brahminic or Buddhistic, Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these. And still have infinite space for development; which in its catholicity will embrace in infinite arms, and find a place for, every human being from the lowest grovelling savage, not far removed from the brute, to the highest man towering by the virtues of his head and heart almost above humanity, making society stand in awe of him and doubt his human nature. It will be a religion which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will recognize divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be centered in aiding humanity to realize its own true, divine nature. Offer such a religion and all the nations will follow you. Asoka's council was a council of the Buddhist faith. Akbar's, though more to the purpose, was only a parlor meeting. It was reserved for America to proclaim to all quarters of the globe that the Lord is in every religion.



May He who is the Brahman of the Hindus, the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Buddha of the Buddhists, the Jehovah of the Jews, the Father in Heaven of the Christians, give strength to you to carry out your noble idea! The star arose in the East; it travelled steadily towards the West, sometimes dimmed and sometimes effulgent, till it made a circuit of the world, and now it is again rising on the very horizon of the East, the borders of the

Sanpo(1), a thousand fold more effulgent than it ever was before.

Hail Columbia, motherland of liberty! It has been given to thee, who never dipped her hand in her neighbor's blood, who never found out that the shortest way of becoming rich was by robbing one's neighbors, it has been given to thee to march at the vanguard of civilization with the flag of harmony.

(1) A Tibetan name for the Bramaputra River

Chicago Address-1: Swami Vivekanand

Today, as I was surfing the net, I got some marvellous words from the great sage, Swami Vivekananda’s speeches delivered at World's Parliament of Religions, Chicago.


I wondered, why not to share it with all other like-minded persons!

I am presenting the first episode in this edition. Here it goes:

Chicago Address - 1



Response to Welcome at the World's Parliament of Religions,

Chicago, 11th September 1893



Sisters and Brothers of America, It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us. Thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions; and I thank you in the name of the millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects. My thanks, also, to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from the Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honour of bearing to different lands the idea of toleration. I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance.

We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to the southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings:

"As the different streams having there sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee."

The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world, of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita:

"Whosoever comes to me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me."

Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization, and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death-kneell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.



Chicago Addresses -2

Why We Disagree

15th September 1893



I will tell you a little story. You have heard the eloquent speaker who has just finished say, "Let us cease from abusing each other," and he was very sorry that there should be always so much variance.

But I think I should tell you a story which would illustrate the cause of this variance.

A frog lived in a well. It had lived therefore a long time. It was born there and brought up there, and yet was a little, small frog. Of course, the evolutionists were not there then to tell us whether the frog lost its eyes or not, but, for our story's sake, we must take it for granted that it had its eyes, and that it every day cleansed the water of all the worms and bacilli that lived in it with an energy that would do credit to our modern bacteriologists. In this way it went on and became a little sleek and fat.

Well, one day another flog that lived in the sea came and fell into the well.

'Where are you from?'

'I am from the sea.'

'The sea! How big is that?

Is it as big as my well?' and he took a leap to one side of the well to the other.

'My friend,' said the frog of the sea, 'how do you compare the sea with your little well?'

Then the frog took another leap and asked, 'Is your sea so big?'

'What nonsense you speak, to compare the sea with your well!'

'Well, then,' said the frog of the well, 'nothing can be bigger than my well; there can be nothing bigger than this; this fellow is a liar, so turn him out.'

That has been the difficulty all the while.

I am a Hindu. I am sitting in my own little well and thinking that the whole world is my little well. The Christian sits in his little well and thinks the whole world is his well. The Mohammedan sits in his little well and thinks that is the whole world. I have to thank you of America for the great attempt you are making to break down the barriers of this little world of ours, and hope that, in the future, the Lord will help you to accomplish your purpose.

Emotional Intelligence

1                     Introduction:

The emotions make human beings different from other animals; it is this trait of man which makes him a ‘social animal’. Machines can work faster and with much more accuracy than the humans, but humans are emotional and machines are not. A man without emotions is heartless. Without emotions there’d be neither joys nor sorrows and life would be boring and without any motivations. Many HR analysts have looked into the emotional aspects of human beings and found that our mind all the times behaves in two distinct manners: A. logically, and B. emotionally.

Many analysts propose that IQ contributes only 20% to life success – the rest of your achievements come from “emotional intelligence” (Emotional Intelligence Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, Daniel Goleman).

 That is the reason that even the strongest chess software could not defeat the great Grand Masters of chess till date. Emotional intelligence plays a great role in our career development. Ideas without emotions are nothing. Emotions make them functional and through the intelligence we use them to our benefit. It is on this pretext that the modern human resource development managers are looking into emotional intelligence with a view to utilizing HR more skillfully and productively.

Emotional Intelligence and CA Technologies:

Broadly, there are five basic extents whereby we can classify the scope of emotional intelligence. They are:

A.      self-awareness,

B.      Managing emotions,

C.      Self-motivation,

D.      Empathy

E.       Handling relationships.

Self-awareness is very important for all of us. One should be aware of his/her strengths as well as weaknesses. This is a trait of one’s personality. When one is aware of one’s limitations, he/she can manage assignments/tasks more efficiently allotted to him/her. Secondly, managing emotional stresses is vital to our responsibilities. For instance, we cannot cope with tensions and obstacles unless we have control over our emotions. Emotions like sadness, stressfulness, etc., may lead to depression. Thus, the person shall not be able to perform up to the level. Thirdly, Self-motivation plays a great role in one’s success. When we face failure and are not able to accept it, we invite stress. Success as well as the failure is the parts of our lives. At times, we have to encounter failures and fatigue. There are some of us who are not able to cope with failures and hence create problems for themselves. These problems dampen their potentials and they do not perform well. Fourthly, we should be able to spread happiness around us. Keep smiling. Encourage others when they are down, help your colleagues when in need; take every comment thrown at you, positively. These traits of your personality evolve empathy towards others. It is the human tendency that you shall get whatever you give to others; hence, the saying, “As you sow, so shall you reap.” Therefore, let your emotions not hurt others. Lastly, as we are social animals, we have created a web of relations called society. We are individual units of this society. Individuals form family, families form communities and finally the society comes into being. In this society, we have many roles to play. At home, in the office, on Public places etc., everywhere we have a specified role to play. Perhaps, that is why, Shakespeare said, “The whole world is the theatre, and we all are actors.”

Relations influence our behavior very promptly and swiftly. Therefore, we should handle our relations very artfully. We should respect other’s feelings if we wish others to respect ours. If the relations are not very well-managed, the problems may arise that would hamper your responsibilities towards your Company. That is why, management of personal relations is very important.

3                     Emotional intelligence and performance:

Through the appropriate management of our emotions, we can achieve growth in our performance. Firstly, enjoy whatever you are assigned to do. When we are engaged in the tasks that we like, we are never mentally tired. Mental freshness makes us more efficient. Therefore, enjoy your assignments and you’d never feel fatigue. Secondly, concentrate upon what you are doing. While at work, do it like a painter works skillfully to decorate his piece of art, or a musician performs with a charming expression. Forget everything else. Feel the pleasure of creating something which you are assigned to and which shall make the life of many, more comfortable. Computer applications are like literary works. Literary works give us pleasure through the beauty of words; whereas, computer applications give us pleasure by making our tasks more automotive and efficient. Everything that is done with a sense of beauty is art. When you write a program, you create a kind of new innovation which in itself is a piece of art.

4                     My own experiences:

I can say it with my own experiences that emotional intelligence is a tool that can enhance our capabilities and performance. That is why, these days, people are joining more and more laughing clubs. Through my own experiences, I can state that in our mind, there are numerous emotions – good as well as bad ones. We should try to suppress bad ones and inculcate the good ones. But sometimes, suppression may lead to depression. Therefore it is a tactful exercise. To control your anger, you may attract your attention to something else or leave the work for a while and relax. If you hear some harsh words from some of your colleagues or Managers, you can express your anger by writing your feelings on a paper and tear the same afterwards. There are many things in the world that we may not like. But we have to encounter them. Be sure that you cannot change the world; you can change yourself. Those who adapt themselves survive and all others are flown away in the strong storm of circumstances. Therefore, adapt yourself to the circumstances and you’d survive. Do not worry if the targets are not achieved; think of the reasons and remove them. Do not get disturbed if someone in the team is not performing up to the mark. Divide his incomplete work in other members. Do not get frustrated if the project is not complete and the date is fast approaching. Increase working hours, enhance performance and share the burden jointly. Smile whenever you see a sad face. Smile whenever someone behaves improperly, smile as this would motivate others in your team, smile because it costs nothing and gives enough support to your team. Finally, remember these strong words of Swami Vivekananda:

If you say, “I am, I am,” so shall you be. And if you say, I am not, think that you are not and day and night meditate upon the fact that you are nothing, miserable and low, nothing shall you be.

Losing faith in oneself is losing faith in God. Always remember. We are everything, ready to do everything, we can do everything and man must do everything.

Ustad Sarvar Sabri: Extending the Boundaries of Fixity

Ustad Sarvar Sabri:
Extending the Boundaries of Fixity
Shezad Khalil

It is good to swim in the
waters of tradition, but to sink in them is suicide.
—Mahatma Gandhi (p. 308)

In an era in which postmodernist and postcolonial thought and its relationship with the arts, and in particular in music, is defined in accordance with the construction of the ‘new’, the names of prominent musicians as Talvin Singh and Nitin Sawhney appear to be constantly experiencing and experimenting with transforming the musical traditions of the past. This is to say that that which was acceptable and practiced throughout the narratives of antiquity has now evolved into novel and innovative procedures of the present, that is, change has occurred and continues to transpire.
Alongside the compositions of the twenty-first century South Asian and British South Asian musician sits the theoretical underpinnings of cultural thinkers as Homi Bhabha and Paul Gilroy. It is the speculations of these postmodernist and postcolonial theorists that provide the analytical framework and foray of contemporary artists as Singh and Sawhney illustrating as Bhabha observes that ‘newness’ occurs within the space of the British metropolis. This is then the
domain in which numerous South Asian and British South Asian artists take the ‘roots’ of their homelands and their classical training into the depths of the ‘unknown’. And, this is also the vicinity in which many South Asian migrants leave behind the artistic conventions of the ‘past’ to journey forward into the realm of the ‘new’. The intention of this is to redefine and reconstruct those identity politics that identify who they are as twenty-first century artists and how their artistic modes sit within the space of contemporary Britain. In turn, the result often leads to the formation of compositions that are hybrid in nature, but through the fusion of varying styles of artistic expression.
Stemming from a rich South Asian historical tradition of music that dates back to the court of the Mughul Emperor Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad Akbar, also known as Akbar the Great, (1542-1605), he contemporary composer and musician Ustad Sarvar Sabri welcomes and embraces the roots of
classical training with the intention of extending and experimenting with the conventions of adition. This is an argument that will be explored shortly, but first the contextual scaffold of Sabri’s history must be examined in brief.
It was during the era of Mughal rule that Akbar the Great, even though illiterate, displayed a great admiration for the performing and fine arts of the Indian subcontinent. As an aficionado of the ich diversity of the arts, Akbar attracted the greatest thinkers and artists in his court. These were known as the navaratna; the Sanskrit word for the nine jewels. One of these gems was Mian Tansen (1520-1590) who was a classical vocalist in the court of Akbar and also trained people in the art of South Asian classical music. And so, Sarvar Sabri’s lineage of musical learning belongs to and can be dated back to Akbar’s chief musician.
Sabri’s early teaching that he received from his gurus was not only affiliated with the past, but was also associated with some degree of fixity. Hall’s theorisations would describe this instance of Sabri’s musical training as situated in and influenced by ‘the idea of a pure, original people’ and culture [italics in the original] (p. 275). Further, the choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh would observe this type of ‘traditional’ guidance as an example of keeping alive the ‘acknowledgment of a common consensus’ of those ‘groups of people [that have and continue to] agree on certain things’, that is in connection with those systems of the past (p. 6). And therefore, for Sabri, his early training in the tabla would also be viewed as an instance of transmitting a consensus of the past into the domain of the present. But on close inspection, is this really so?
In fact, even though Sabri’s learning of the tabla was situated in the customs of history and stemmed back to the influence of Tansen and his musical systems, his work imitates Hall’s conception of ‘translation’. According to this cultural theorist then, some postmodern subjects, including Sabri and his musical manifestations, undergo a form of renovation; an excursion of progress and alteration. Although the artist’s training may have been positioned within the classical vocabularies of the past, it is as a result of these systems that direct several people to make changes to that which already exists. Hall observes that such people [as musicians and their
art] retain strong links with their places of origin and their traditions, but they are without the illusion of a return to the past. They are obliged to come to terms with the new [artistic] cultures they inhabit, without simply assimilating to them….They bear upon them the traces of particular cultures, traditions, languages [, artistic systems] and histories by which they were shaped. The difference is that they are not and will never be unified in the old sense, because they are irrevocably the product of several interlocking histories and cultures’ [italics in the original] (p. 310).
For Sabri then, his contemporary arrangements and art form are created from a combination of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’. What this means is that the ‘past’ (‘sameness’) is positioned within the ‘present’ (‘difference’), but the ‘present’ (‘difference’) is dissimilar to and/or an extension of the ‘past’ (‘sameness’). For example, in creations as Master Drummer of India, 2002, a CD album influenced by three of Sabri’s gurus:
Ustad Bundu Khan (1880-1955), Ustad Latif Ahmed Khan (1942-89) and Karaat Ullah Khan (1918-80), the listener witnesses how this musical genius in tracks as ‘Taal Bundu Khan’ not only executes his classical training but also presents a modern twist to the composition by playing it in
an unusual eight and a half beat cycle.
In this brief example of this tabla master’s work, we observe how Sabri unfolds the ethics of his musical philosophy. This is positioned within the realms of hybridity that is as inspired by the notion and elements of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’. In discussion with Sabri, 2012, he justifies his thinking: ‘I never lose track of or contact with my roots … It is the concept of a musical idea and process that is more exciting as well as the ability to find different ways’ of communicating thoughts. For Sabri then, the notion of broadening boundaries is situated within the belief that one can create ‘newness’ without having to challenge tradition and/or the past. ‘History’ in itself can then open doors for the construction of something quite novel and unique, and yet similar and distinct from the past. It is this philosophy that sets Sabri apart from many twenty-first century composers and musicians as many of these artists appear to break away from the musical systems of the past and infuse their contemporary work with minute elements of their classical training.
Sabri’s constructions then take the notion of ‘sameness’ on a different voyage of discovery. Even though he begins each musical journey from the starting-point of the past that is as positioned
within his classical training, from here his roots develop into something both ‘fresh’ and ‘new’. ‘Sameness’ then expands itself and travels along a route that is concerned in conveying difference’. It is this conception of disparity, diversity and variation that distinguishes the work of this master from other South Asian and British South Asian musicians of the contemporary domain.
Sabri’s musical compositions also imitate Jeyasingh’s thoughts, especially in relation to tradition. If, as Jeyasingh asserts that convention is something that has been ‘tried and tested’, suggesting that the practices of the past do not remain stationary, then for Sabri the same thought and philosophy are applicable to his own creations. This is because as Jeyasingh states, the terms ‘tried and tested’ propose the importance of alteration. This is not to say that one’s musical
roots have to remain static. Not at all! In fact, for Sabri, Jeyasingh’s vocalisations advocate that his own work celebrates the musical systems of convention and yet at the same time he enhances
these by employing his own ideas in order to experiment with and deliver the past into the present. Further, Sabri’s postmodern arrangements continue to convey signs of particular musical traditions so that the listener understands that the systems of the past are still appropriate and relevant for the contemporary world that we live in. Further, even though his work bears a strong influence of the past, it is through Sabri’s aptitude as a maestro of the tabla that he is able to modernise these constructions through his own musical and hybrid vocabulary.
The route(s) and destination are one, that is, the past can be represented in the present.

For further information on Sarvar Sabri, see his website: http://www.sarvarsabri.com/
and his company Sabri Ensemble: http://www.sabri.org.uk/
Please visit Sarvar Sabri and the Sabri Ensemble on Facebook. For further reading of Sarvar
Sabri, see Arc Music, ‘News’: http://www.arcmusic.co.uk/index.php?page=news
Selected Bibliography
Homi Bhabha. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
Mahatma Gandhi. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. May-July 1925. Vol. 27. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust, 1968.
Paul Gilroy. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double
Consciousness, 1993. Reprint, London:
Verso, 2002.
Stuart Hall. “The Question of
Cultural Identity”. In Modernity and its
Futures, edited by Stuart
Hall, David Held and Tony McGrew, 273-325. Oxford: Open University Press, 1992.
Shobana Jeyasingh. Appendix i – Transcripts
of Presentations: Shobana Jeyasingh”. Compiled
and produced by Tina Cockett. In Traditions on the Move, Open Forum Report, edited by Academy of Indian Dance,
6-9. London: Academy of Indian Dance, June
9, 1993.
Shezad Khalil is studying for a PhD at the University of Loughborough

Sexy vs Beautiful

The word ‘Sexy’ has been in the public discourse recently as
a Chair Person of some women’s Organization used it to express beauty/preventability
of the women. In her views, addressing a woman as ‘sexy’ is a compliment and
not an offense as it shows a basic trait of the womanhood. Being ‘sexy’ in a manner
is a quality and not a disqualification for the women.
But what about the men. Should not it be a quality for them
either? If sexier young ladies are better than those who are not, the same
logic should apply to their male counterparts too. To extend the logic, if ‘sexy’
is a compliment for the women, the same applies for the men. Therefore, the
word should not and would not be referred especially to the womanhood.
Now, the question arises as to how the word should be used
and in what circumstances it may or may not violate the basic norms of civility.
It is the usage of the word and not the word itself that counts. If a friend
uses the word and addresses the woman as ‘sexy’, there is no harm. On the other
hand, if some unknown youngster uses the same to tease her and to provoke her,
it is an infringement upon the behavior of the user of the term.
There are specific topics which look good on the specified
lines drawn by the social customs and traditions. Those who give the society
more importance than individuality would agree that we should follow the social
practices and should not discuss matters like ‘sex’ openly. Only the authorized
persons should participate in such discourse. Suppose, a five-year-old praises
his/her mom by saying, “Mom, how sexy have you been these days!”
Or the granny in her eighty’s looks at her grandson of
around 14 and comments, “Hi handsome, what a sexy physique you have!”
In the both cases, the persons who are being complimented
would feel themselves in awkward situation and it would be difficult for them
to react. Therefore, my supposition is that the usage of the word and not the
word itself should be considered when one decides upon the correctness of the
word. In the present context, the word ‘sexy’ is harmless. It is just a word
like other countless words. It has been created to be used. Therefore, neither
its meaning nor its usage is at fault. The word becomes objectionable only when
it is used for the wrong reasons. Many of our friends use abusive language; it
is in their habit; they cannot help it. Therefore, we have become used to their
slangs and do not mind the same. On the contrary, if some unknown person uses
the same language against us, we get highly charged and more often than not
begin to respond in the same abusive tongue which we think highly uncivilized.
The word ‘sexy’, therefore, should not be used during a
formal session. Neither can it be accepted as a compliment to a woman if
someone wishes to take liberty with her basic dignity. In the friendly environment
the word may be used. Nobody is going to object to it. In their heart, the women
would love to listen to the word if the speaker is the person whom they like to
the least possible quantity.

Music and stress-management

Introduction:

In this era of rapid growth and nail-biting competition, life is getting full of tension. This tension leads to different diseases like the hypertension, heart problems, and insomnia and so on. In psychological terms this tension is called ‘stress’. Many ailments occur due to the lack of physical exercises. Our life-styles have become so comfortable and relaxing, thanks to the science and technology, that most of our day-to-day activities are performed automatically by different machines. For example, we have remote control devices for TV, air conditioners, fans etc and therefore need not trouble our legs in order to use them. Outdoor games have been replaced by very meticulously designed video games. Hence, most of us need not go out and play. Mobile phones have made it possible to sit at home and replace important meetings with the video conferencing. There is just no scope for physical activities. This physical inaction leads to hypertention, and other psychological disorders which generate stress. In this article, we’d see as to how we can manage stress through the use of music.

What is stress?

There are many definitions given to the mental stress. Some are as under:
1 Stress is the body's reaction to a change that requires a physical, mental or emotional adjustment or response. It can come from any situation or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, nervous, or anxious.
2 Stress is caused by an existing stress-causing factor or "stressor."
3 Stress is a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.
Considering these definitions, we can conclude that the stress is the result of our mental fatigue which may occur due to a variety of reasons. Your co-workers do not behave your way and you get tensed; you are waiting for someone but he/she gets late and you get frustrated; you do not succeed in the mission undertaken by you and your blood pressure shoots. There are numerous excuses for stress but in fact it is in your mind. In the same unfavourable situation, some get stress and some other do not. This shows that stress is not something that comes from outside; it is within our own mind.
The stress begins with frustration. We do not like someone’s actions or something and we get frustrated. This frustration, if suppressed, generates anxiety which, in turn, gets transformed in anger. We try to suppress this anger as most of the time we cannot express it. That leads to more mental imbalances and finally we fall prey to the stress. If the situation prevails for a long time, this state of mind can lead to mental depression which can cause more psychological problems.

The solution:

There are many simple actions which can curtail our stress and we can get rid of it. Psychologists have devised means and methods whereby one can cope up with these kinds of situations. However, fine arts in general and music specifically can be of great help in controlling the mental stress.

Stress-management through music:

The basic cause of the mental stress is that our mind sometimes does not accept, or does not wish to accept the reality of circumstances. For example, you are watching your favourite show on TV and suddenly the the electric supply is off. If you accept the situation and keep cool, it is well. However, many of us take it very sentimentally and think that the power fails only when they are watching TV and they are not very lucky and so on. These types of feelings generate stress. If our attitude towards life is negative, we are stressed. If the attitude is positive, the situation changes rapidly to our favour.
Music makes positive. We feel relaxed and comfortable. As we listen soothing and sweet music, all our frustrations, tentions and other mental imbalances keep on evaporating and we feel very light and free of all stress. If one happens to be a musician, he/she can cure the ailment of mental stress very easily. The Swara Sadhana, which is essential to Indian music, is very helpful in controlling the stress. As we listen to the rich drone sound of Tanpura, we feel a kind of peace in our mind. When we mingle our voice in tune with Tanpura, our mind gets concentrated on Shadja, the key note of Indian music. As we tune the instrument, we need too much of concentration of mind towards the basic note. All these activities lead us to the state of meditation. In terms of Yoga, this meditation is the basic prerequisite for attaining the state of Samadhi. But the musicians have the privilege to get this state of mind without Yogic practices. Music in itself is a kind of Yoga. It can cure many mental illnesses including the mental stress.
In the fourth Chapter of Sangeet Ratnakar, the author has elaborated upon the characteristics of a good Vaggeyakara, i.e. the good musical composer. One of the characteristics mentioned herein is ‘Avadhana’ which means the concentration of mind. Thus, we see that the composers of Indian music need the concentration of mind in order to create music. It applies to any kind of music. If we can practice to concentration of mind, we can strengthen our will power. If our will power is strong, we can easily can overpower the mental stress.
Not only musicians, but the listeners of music can also benefit from the positive qualities of Indian music. Here, let us make a distinction between the quality music and the popular music. It is not that the popular or the mainstream music cannot fall in the category of the quality music. But more often than not, the popular music is different from the quality music. Music which is meant for generating excitement and action, fails to give relaxation. Those who wish to use music to suppress the original mental feelings, have to face the consequences. This is the reason, that disco jockeys are able to make us dance but their kind of music is far from the peace of mind. It can generate excitement but cannot create pleasing effects. Therefore, one should choose soothing and relaxing music if he/she wants to get rid of the mental stress.
Indian classical music has the capacity to shun the negative feelings and create the positive attitude. Therefore, it is recommended that one should develop the habit of listening to the Indian classical music if the mental stress is to be curtailed.

Conclusion:

There is a very famous saying: “caution is always better than cure.” Therefore, it is advisable that before it is too late, before we fall prey to the mental stress, let us develop the liking towards the Indian classical music. All of us try to learn a bit of Indian music. If it is not possible, at least we can listen to the good music. We should try to keep away from the loud amplified kind of music which is amply available on the electronic media. We should rather be inclined to the real classical music. This will surely make our lives more fruitful and productive in all respects.

Past meets the Present Leading to a Better Future

Taken from Newsbharati.com
Ancient Indian Mythological Scripts are Actual History Scripts : APJ 09 Aug 2011

(This inaugural speech by our former President, Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, though concentrates upon discovering Indian mythologies in the light of science and technology, yet it conveys a message to all of us; Ancient Indian Civilization has not migrated from somewhere else, it has indigenously evolved.)
Past meets the Present Leading to a Better Future
"The DNA of a human being is his history book ever written"
I am indeed delighted to participate in the inauguration of Seminar on Scientific Dating of Ancient Events Before 2000 BC at New Delhi. My greetings to all of you.
Friends, I am happy that all of you are engaged in the mission of establishing synergy between the scientific wisdom of ancient India and modern scientific inventions in various areas such as agriculture, energy, medicine, weapon systems and metallurgy. I am sure this type of study will enable us to utilize the scientific techniques used by our ancestors and lead towards an eco-friendly planet earth for the present and future. When I am here with all of you I would like to share my thoughts on the topic "Past meets the Present leading to a Better Future".Friends, when you are all working on scientific dating of epics particularly Ramayana I would like to share with you my personal experience. I was born in British India in Rameshwaram grown there for 16 years when India's India emerged. My life is completely inter connected in lovely way because during various phases my life sea waves were giving me beautiful songs, songs of freedom and songs of development. The entire Rameshwaram Island is known to me with great detail every part of it, because as a young boy I used to travel all parts of the Island to deliver the news paper daily to various houses. In my eyes Gandhamanaparvatham appears from where Rama is supposed to have seen Srilanka. In front of me appears the famous Kothanda Ramar Temple of Rameshwaram. Also I see the Ramatheertham, Lakshmanatheertham and Jatayutheertham and Agnitheertham in different areas of Rameshwaram. The central point is the Ramanathaswamy Temple where we find the Siva linga which Lord Rama had worshiped. Today being the new moon day of Adi month, minimum 3 Lakh pilgrims from different parts of the country will be converging at Rameshwaram for sea bath. This the day Lord Rama is supposed to have taken the bath in the Rameshwaram Sea after returning from the war to remove the Doshas of killing Ravanan. Thousands of pilgrims visit the Island every day and enjoy its beauty and spirituality.
I will be the happiest fellow, if through scientific dimensions establish the places from where there Lord Ram, Lashmana, Hanuman, Sugreeva and the Vanara sena created a base before launching the war on Srilanka. Really I have a profound interest in scientific dating of Ramayana. Dating of events leads to transforming mythology into historyVedic and post-Vedic literature has a tremendous amount of scientific knowledge which will be extremely beneficial to humanity. For creating a faith in these documents, there is a need to establish the date of occurrence of Vedas and Upanishads which are contained in our mythology, so that they are transformed into historical events and not imaginary mythological events. I am happy that this is what the researchers in astronomy, ecology, theology, archeology, anthropology and space science assembled here have carried out and are in the process of demonstrating it to the modern scientific world.If we look at the study on Scientific dating of Ramayana, the important aspect about the Ramayana is that when Valmiki wrote the epic, he made it with many proofs. He packed so much information about the various planetary positions of those days, the geography of the areas mentioned in the epic, the seasonal events, and about the genealogy of various kings that it is virtually a no-brainer to establish the dates on which those events occurred. Genealogical links and archaeological findings provide clues to the dating of the Ramayana era. According to writer B.R. Haran, In no other nation and no other religion in the world, true history is so meticulously documented, supported by many evidences. Any ancient history is supported with evidences of architecture and literature. The Sangam literature is the documented evidence for the existence and ruling of Tamil kings, and similarly, Ramayana and Mahabharata are the documented evidence for Rama and Krishna.Archaeological and literary methods can only provide approximate datelines. For determining the precise time of the Ramayana events, scientists use astronomical calculations. Several of India's leading astronomers and nuclear scientists have come together to establish the dates of India's ancient history.So how is astronomical dating done? Says eminent historian Dr P.V. Vartak: "Sage Valmiki has recorded the dates of events in detail, albeit by describing the positions of stars and planets. To decipher the astronomical encodings has not been a trivial task, and not many have attempted to do so. It should be noted that the ancient Indians had a perfect method of time measurement. They recorded the 'tithis', days according to the nakshatra on which the moon prevailed, the months, the seasons and even the different solstices. By noting a particular arrangement of the astronomical bodies, which occurs once in many thousand years, the dates of the events can be calculated."Dr Vartak has taken hundreds of illustrated passages from the epic to establish dates. Valmiki records the birth of Rama as Chaitra Shuddha Navami (9th), on Punarvasu Nakshatra and five planets were exalted then; Sun in Mesha up to 10 deg., Mars in Capricorn at 28 deg., Jupiter in Cancer at 5 deg., Venus in Pisces at 27 deg. and Saturn in Libra at 20 deg. (Bala Kanda.18/Shloka 8,9). December 4, 7323 B.C. therefore is the date of birth of Rama, when the four planets exalted. Ramayana occurred over 9300 years ago.For example, Rigveda talks about an advanced civilized predominantly urban and maritime society which has used variety of ships, boats and 75 different types of houses which includes hutments and palaces. Vedic literature reveals that Indians are very advanced knowledge of mathematics and were possessing extraordinary knowledge of astronomy. Takshila University was established in 700 BC where more than 10,000 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. Similarly, Nalanda university was in existence in 3rd century BC which had housed more than 90 lakhs books. Maharishi Atreya was the first Guru of internal medicine, Shri Dhanvantri of Surgery and Kashyapa was the first Guru of Gynecology and pediatrics. Shushruta Samhita describes more than 40 types of surgical instruments and Ayurveda talks about holistic treatments. Astronomical calculation making use of planetarium software have proved that events narrated in Balamiki Ramayana actually occurred around 7000 years back and they can be sequentially dated. Ramasetu is found submerged and the same location as is described in Balamiki Ramayana and the city of Dwarka has been explored by marine archeology wing of Govt of India. As per the estimate made by the Inter-Governmental panel on Climate Change (NASA, Global Change Master Directory) the rise in the sea level during the last 7000 years has been about 2.8 meters which roughly corresponds to 9.3 feet. The remains of Rama Sethu are found submerged nearly at a depth of 9-10 feet. Thus, obviously this bridge was capable of being used as a land route 7000 years back. This is the only existing evidence on manmade bridge few thousand years back. It is essential that our researchers launch a mission oriented programme in an integrated way by earth science, geological science, remote sensing, space scientists, oceanography, climate change teams and the people who build construction under the sea.Here I request the researchers to launch research on India's epics with atleast 100 Ph.Ds with the highly talented historical, geological, astronomical and space scientists to ascertain the veracity of history and date of events in our epics. Science always has multiple source of research information to verify the conclusion. It should be true to all our research on epics and its dating. Let me now discuss the work of Prof Tobias on human evolution.Human EvolutionI was studying the work of Prof. Tobias on Paleo-anthropology and discovery of archeological sites, I thought of recalling the advances made in the research on human evolution. Traditionally, there have been two distinct and different approaches in understanding human evolution. First is the archeological evidence. The lessons that we have learnt in India from Mohan-ja-Daro and Harappa and many similar excavations the worlds over have been seminal and many a civilizations' way of living, its culture and its origins have become evident. Prof. Tobias has made a significant impact in this area, particularly emanating from land, which is said to the cradle of human evolution. The second and more recent approach is propelled by advances in our understanding of the human genome. While the major part of the human genome sequence is common between human beings and even with mice, the small portions that differ; control and contribute to the diversity that we find in the evolution of humans. I am happy that through such genomic studies, it has been found that Harappan civilization were not a mysterious people of unknown biological origins, or migrants from Centers of high culture in western Asia, but were descendents of population identified with pre-Harappan cultures of the North Western sector of the sub continent. Gene flow between Mesopotamia and the Indus domains, perhaps along trade routes, accounts for the higher incidents of some phenotypic features along this east west axis than what is apparent across north south axis penetrating peninsular India. But, migrant theory need not be invoked to explain various patterns. This makes research in genetic engineering, using human genome sequences to understand the evolution of humans, very fascinating for scientists. The scientific dating of our epics has also to be related to Genology with human genome sequences, with the evidences that we found in the form of fossils. Prof. Tobias is one of the pioneers in the area of genetics. From his vast experience in genetics and Paleo-anthropology, Prof. Tobias has been able to present to the world in an understandable capsule form, the whole process of human evolution over 600 million years. The simplicity of the outcome of his complex research has also stimulated many scientists the world over to look at the challenges posed in our understanding of human evolution. Today, the world talks about convergence of many technologies. Prof. Tobias and others have shown us that all our origins converge to a single point both in space and time. The evolution human orgin put forth by Prof Thobias should be related to events of Indian epics. After all every Indian’s epic deals with human history, their conflicts and their civilization. Hence it has to be releated with the evolution of human origin over 600 million years ago, which is scientifically proven.
Origins of Life
Ancient human history has been revealed beautifully by Paleoanthropology. Life originated 600 million years ago and continental drift occurred 200 million years ago creating five continents. Mammals evolved 140 million years ago, Hominids that is the human type, evolved 26 million years ago but modern man only arrived on the scene some 200,000 years ago. He migrated and colonized the world only in the last 50,000 years. The spoken language is some 10,000 years old while writing evolved only a few thousand years ago. All this phenomenal progress has been achieved only within the short span of 200 to 400 generations that is in just 10,000 to 5,000 years. The spoken language period as per Prof. Thobias is around 10000 years old and the birth of Rama based on the 9th thithi of Chaitra month dates to 10th January in 5114 BC, that is 7117 years back. We need to establish the relationship between the birth of spoken language and the evolution of Valmiki Ramayana.
New DNA technologies
Newer DNA technologies have given us better insight in retracing the history of man. The DNA of a human being is his history book ever written. Nowadays intelligence, cognizance, drug response, behavioral problems everything is related to genes: disease gene mapping is progressing at a faster pace with new age DNA technology. It is probably during the 30,000-50,000 years of co-existence that societies have evolved adopting newer innovations and cultures.Thus the 'Nature - Nurture' philosophy holds good even in this Genomic Era: 'Genes' what we inherit from our parents is the basis; a beautiful 'building' is built over it, be it Einstein or certain unique creations, the environment plays a crucial role in shaping the destiny of the individual and leading to excellence. It is just the opportunity that makes Man. All children when they are born are equally poised to become a great scholar. The nervous system, and for that matter any of our systems, should cooperate with an individual in his or her progress. Origin of civilization in Indian subcontinent, I am happy that through the use of modern technology the perception of Indian Archeology has changed and has facilitated by researchers to prove an indigenous origin of civilization in the Indian Sub continent. This is an important factor which should work as an integrator of the entire nation since all of us have come into this land from the same ancestors and roots. While discussing this issue I am reminded of a conversation with one of my cardio thoracic surgeon friend. He said, "When I perform an open heart surgery, on different patients; after opening I find the blood of the patient is same in color, hence I cannot discriminate any patient and provide differing attention and care." This thought process has to get embedded scientifically and culturally amongst all Indians so that we can see nation is bigger than any individual and all of us have to contribute to the accelerated progress and development of the nation. Now let me talk about certain application of knowledge derived from Scientific Dating of Ancient Events.
Agriculture in Ancient India
The dating studies have found that the farmers in the vedic period used natural manures for their agriculture. They have found 12 types of soil and determined the associated organic manure compatible to the soil types. They did not make use of pesticides or any poisonous elements in the agro sector. This has resulted in reduced atmospheric pollution and also provided quality food for the humankind. We have to learn a lot from this experience. Today, we have to ensure that we should use eco friendly fertilizers, pesticides and plant systems in our overall agricultural development taking the cue from ancient civilization that will make a big contribution to green agriculture goal of 21st century. We need to integrate our past civilizational heritage in forms of agriculture or other forms of systems which provides earning capacity with reference to modern technologies. Induction of modern technology definitely add values to our ancestor database of civilizational heritage. The mission for scientific dating of our epics, I have the following suggestion:
Launching research on India's Epics with atleast 100 Ph.Ds with the highly talented historical, geological, astronomical and space scientists to ascertain the veracity of history and date of events in our epics. The scientific dating of our epics has also to be related to Genealogy with human genome sequences, with the evidences that we found in the form of fossils. The evolution human origin put forth by Prof Thobias should be related to events of Indian epics. After all every Indian's epic deals with human history, their conflicts and their civilization. Hence it has to be related with the evolution of human origin over 600 million years ago, which is scientifically proven. The spoken language period as per Prof. Thobias is around 10000 years old and the birth of Rama based on the 9th thithi of Chaitra month dates to 10th January in 5114 BC, that is 7117 years back. We need to establish the relationship between the birth of spoken language and the evolution of Valmiki Ramayana.
Conclusion
I have discussed few areas which can benefit from the dating of our ancient events. I am sure the scientists and technologists assembled here will be presenting several areas in which the dating can be beneficial. To disseminate the findings of these studies to the large population will require intensive documentation and the application potential of each one of the findings. I would suggest that the teams assembled here can work out areas which need to become the part of the learning process of our youth. This will enable the seminar to make specific recommendations on including vital areas of our ancient culture in the primary, middle and secondary school text books. In addition, the seminar should attempt networking of people and ideas belonging to different specialties like agro scientists, doctors, engineers, archeologists, geologists and environment experts so that the benefits of lesions arising from earlier civilization and their lifestyle make a change to our thinking and lead towards the development of an eco friendly human habitat. The research on scientific dating may have partners, who can provide scientific, astronomical, anthropological and geological and genetic data to ascertain the veracity of the historical events.With these words, I inaugurate the Seminar on Scientific Dating of Ancient Events before 2000 BC. My best wishes to all the participating for success in the mission of connecting the past to the present leading to a better future.

A Unique Experience

(Taken from a long-forgotten online source)

Many years I was a guest at a similar recital that took place in Bethesda, Maryland. The Bharata Natyam is surely one of the most difficult dances that humanity has thought up; as such it's an accurate reflection of the very ancient and complex Indian culture.

Except for a handful in attendance, including Pundita, the audience was Indian or Americans of Indian heritage. The recital was a graduation ceremony for American girls of Indian ancestry who had been studying Bharata Natyam for years -- some practicing since early childhood.

One girl among the dancers riveted the audience's attention. She was beautiful, incredibly graceful, and for one so young she demonstrated impressive dance technique.

I ask you to put yourself for a moment in the girl's place and consider that the Indian culture, even when transposed to Indians living in America, is very conservative, very restrained. Think of practicing for years to master a dance that is far more than dance -- at once living history, a statement of your heritage, and a spiritual meditation. Finally comes the time to demonstrate everything your teacher has taught you and make your parents and community proud.

Now ask yourself what might be the worst thing that could happen to you on that stage, with hundreds of eyes upon you.

Suddenly a murmur went up from the audience. The woman next to me gripped my arm and whispered, "Oh my God her pantaloons have come undone!"

Yes. The button or safety pin had given out. As the hapless child continued her dance the leggings underneath her costume slowly continued their descent. A look of horror fleeted across the girl's face. The other dancers broke their stride a bit to glance in sympathy.

The girl's teacher raced to the stage wing and gestured, calling softly for her to leave the stage for a moment so she could regain her dignity and her pantaloons. Everyone would have understood if she'd left the dance momentarily under those awful circumstances.

A look of determination came over the girl's features; within an instant the look was gone, replaced by the stylized expression of the deity her dance was meant to represent.

Without missing a beat, and as the pantaloons continued their downward journey to twist around her ankles, the girl continued with her dance.

Even before the triumphant stamping of the dancers' feet to signal the end of the dance, the audience was clapping her on.

Yet only after all the dancers made their bow to the audience was the deity replaced by a mortified child. She whisked off the pantaloons, scampered to her teacher's embrace, then disappeared backstage for pantaloon repair.

Then at the insistence of the other dancers, her teacher, her parents, the musicians and the audience, the girl shyly returned to the stage to take a bow to thunderous ovation.

As the audience dispersed I heard a man say to a companion, "It was as if Saraswati [the goddess of wisdom, music and the arts] appeared tonight to teach us a lesson."

Goddess or no goddess, the lesson was abundantly clear. To be human means you can't avoid making a damn fool out of yourself, even if you're the best-looking and most accomplished of the lot. But you show the spark of that which transcends the human condition when you hang in there and finish your dance.

Musical nostalgia

Simon & Garfunkel’s unique compositions, Bob Dylan’s profound lyrics and musical biographies of The Beatles have continued to fascinate generations. Does good music ever grow old?
Pratiksha Thanki

The evergreen ABBA and The Beatles: From LP to ipod their music never lost its charm. Wandering around the streets of a tiny German city Lübeck, the aural pull drew me to a church choir of teenage boys, singing Ralph Vaughan Williams’ ‘Turtledove’ with a heavy German accent. At their age they probably didn’t understand the British folk song about love and loss, but their voices and Vaughan Williams’ composition nearly moved two Indians in their informal audience to tears. Music does have that power over us.
Plato warned the world of this power centuries ago as he thought music could affect human psyche. He preferred music only for the purpose of education. However, music hasn’t remained within the bounds of platonic point of view for a long time now. Passing through many evolutionary stages, music is often identified by the era, genre, artists, nations and cultures; as a continuum, evolving on the inspiration of the past. The times they are a-changin'…
In his much talked about book ‘Why Classical Music Still Matters', musicologist Lawrence Kramer worries if classical music will eventually fade away or will it be confined inside the museum walls? Such worries seem needless so far, even today when a person begins to learn the piano, the first tune he/she would start with would be invariably Bach’s ‘Musette’ while the guitarists would initiate plucking the chords with Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘The Sounds of Silence'.
Musical nostalgia is not limited to the West, even in India one can witness singers earn more points with old classics across talent hunt programmes.

They say, the music you listen to in the years of growing-up stays with you forever. In later years people start complaining about how the contemporary music doesn’t make sense to them. Keeping such generalisations aside, the classics from the past few decades, especially the music of the 50s and 60s still seems very much around. Even for the new generation, The Beatles and the Doors share the same storage space on an iPod, and are merely divided by a play-list name from Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. Their relevance may be a subject of debate after 50 years, but the Beatles and the Doors have surely survived the test of time. In fact, one would easily find Jim Morrison’s face printed on t-shirts, hanging right next to Che Guevara even in some urban Indian corners.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…

The way music influences people and cultures is an interesting study for musicians themselves, to legendary pianist of the 20th century, Igor Stravinsky, "music expresses itself". This leads one to assume that interpretation of that ‘expression’ remains in the hands of the listeners. Projecting personal feelings and perceptions in Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of fire’ or The Rolling Stones’ ‘I can’t get no Satisfaction’ allows every individual to come up with their unique interpretation of the songs in different age, under different
circumstances. In dealing with the western music of the last century, one could be lost in a web of genres - ranging from rock, country, rhythm and blues to jazz, but from John Denver’s ‘Country roads take me home’ to ‘Across the Universe’ from the Beatles, the appeal of music is less based on the genre, and more on the audiences’ personal history with particular songs and bands. Some were introduced to The Beatles by their spouses, others learned about them from their parents and grandparents. Even if they simply bumped on to some of their song on a website, after listening to Lennon-McCartney combo crooning,
‘Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,' they may not need further introduction.

How exactly have these songs remained relevant at the moment? Apart from the fact that after half a century, compositions of Queen, Beatles or ABBA do not sound outdated, their words also appeal to the universal human nature. Paul McCartney had his mother in mind when he wrote the song ‘Let it be'. Co-incidentally she was named Mary, and McCartney’s words "When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be," end up with countless religious or inspirational interpretations even today. His fellow Beatle John Lennon’s lyrics in ‘Imagine’ made a political statement and also sounded like "a communist manifesto" in Lennon’s own words, today it is revered as a kind of peace anthem.

Queen, another rock band from the 70s, too has its songs rooted deep in the pop psyche. Their songs like ‘I want to break free’ still rock the college festivals alongside Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall'. Queen’s best known number ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is high on finding contemporary relevance. According to Freddie Mercury, Queen’s lead singer and lyricist of the Indian origin, that particular song was just ‘random rhyming nonsense'. Around the same time Jim Morrison from the Doors was busy singing about ‘Cancelling his subscription to resurrection'. The incoherence of life conveyed through these songs still finds a resonance in today’s climate of political and financial cacophony.

Riders on the storm…

While The Beatles, the Doors and Queen tapped into personal and cultural history and political ideas, artists like Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel were busy dealing with identity crisis. Dylan’s ‘Like a rolling stone’ strikes a chord with anyone who has dealt with feelings of disconnection with the world and loneliness. On a similar line, Paul Simon’s words ‘A rock feels no pain, and an island never cries’ have become the epitome of lonely souls across the globe. Simon simply regarded that song as an ‘adolescent’ effort but his songs speak to a whole new generation with identity crisis of their own.

These are still instances of the ‘Popular’ music, as musicologist like Theodor W. Adorno would have us mark clear distinction between serious classical music and music that is created to please the masses. However, the lines between classical and popular are definitely blurring as music of Mozart is often used as background music for advertisements while Bob Dylan keeps getting nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature for his lyrics written in the past four decades.

The popularity scale for music is changing because of the blurring of language and cultural barriers. Nena’s German protest song ‘99 Luftballoon (99 red balloons) ‘ still finds young international fans while A R Rahman and Gulzar’s ‘Jai Ho’ makes Scandinavian ladies tap to its beats in their Bollywood dance class. Fresh interest is generated in the Bollywood song-and-dance in the rest of the world, but the musical past hasn’t lost its relevance in India either.

Har fikr ko dhuen mein udata chala gaya…

There are far more interesting and complicated musical genres and traditions in India, yet, popular music is still associated with movie songs. The process and purpose of composing music for movies in India is very complicated. Majority of songs are written or selected to suit the premise of a movie script. Despite these limitations the music of the 60s and 70s contained some gems penned by Sahir Ludhianvi, Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri, Kaifi Azmi and Gulzar, that capture complicated human emotions and seem relevant even today.
On the one hand, Sahir found some outlet for personal feelings in songs like ‘chalo ek bar phir se ajnabi ban jaayein’ based on his
failed relationship with Sudha Malhotra, his communist thought process emerges in ‘Saathi haat badhana’ from the film Naya Daur. The closest he comes to the tone of Bob Dylan-esuqe thought process is in ‘Mein zindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya’ which comes from his personal experience of getting uprooted, overcoming many obstacles and moving on like a rolling stone. Shailendra, on the other hand was obsessed with the concept of death that he dealt with in the song ‘Jeena isi ka naam hai’. Apart from lyricists, music compositions of Shankar Jaikishan, S D Burman, Madan Mohan and other masters of the 60s and 70s earned the music of this era the distinction of ‘Golden Era of Music.' HMV still earns maximum revenue by selling music of this era.
The author is a free-lance writer, researcher and a blogger. She divides her time between India and Germany.
source:
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2011/20111109/edit.htm

A Tribute to Ustad Asad Ali Khan

Yesterday, on the 13th of June, 2011, as the sun set, a shining star of Hindustani classical music was lost in the unknown horizon. The sudden demise of Ustad Asad Ali Khan, the illustrious Rudra Veena maestro left all of us in shock. This is the tragedy not only for all his near and dear but it is a great loss to the Indian music. He was amongst the very few exponents of Rudra Veena, an instrument that is on the brink of collapse. Presently, when the great tradition of Rudra Veena is on the verge of extinction, I think I should attract the attention of the readers to this wondrous instrument and one of its very rare exponents, who tried his level best and in every possible manner to preserve, protect and spread the tradition.

Ustad Asad Ali Khan belonged to the 12th generation of Beenkaar Jaipur gharana (family or school) of the Indian classical music. His great grandfather Ustad Rajab Ali Khan Beenkaar, grandfather Ustad Musharraf Ali Khan Beenkaar and father -- also his tutor -- Ustad Sadiq Ali Khan Beenkaar were court musicians in the princely state of Alwar, where Ustad Asad Ali Khan was born. His father later moved to the princely court of Rampur where his father undertook to teach him music and for the next 15 years he learnt to play the Rudra Veena, practicing 14 hours a day.



For continuation of gharana, he successfully guided and trained his son and successor Ali Zaki Haider, who is going to carry Guru-Shishya Parampara further.

Although he is physically no more with us, his diligence and devotion have now placed him among tile top galaxy of Indian classical musicians. In India Ustad Asad Ali Khan was venerated for his superb musical skill and knowledge and received recognition and awards galore:

• Indian Civilian honor, Padma Bhushan in 2008 from President of India.

• Senior fellowship from ministry of cultural affairs, India in 2007-08.

• ITC Award from Sangeet Research Academy, Calcutta in 2007.

• Tansen Award from Madhya Pradesh Government in 1994

• Award of the Sangeet Natak Academy, Lucknow(U.P.) in 1985

• Award of the Sangeet Natak Academy, Delhi in 1977

• Veena Visharad, the highest music degree, from the Banaras Hindu University.

He is a top-grade artiste of the All India Radio and participates in Radio sangeet sammelans (i.e. music conferences), national programs and musical performances all over India. He has also been a professor of music in Delhi University.

He has given concerts in Afghanistan, Australia, Holland, Italy, New Zealand the United Kingdom, the United States of America and other countries.

May his soul rest in peace and may God give his family the power to bear with the tragedy.