Category: Articles

A Conversation with A Messianic Jew One Spring Morning in Richardson

Posted on by Mukul Saran
Cottonwood Park, Richardson

I met Nadine in a Richardson Park on a nice spring morning in late March as she was walking her little dog and she wondered what 911 Day of Service meant on the banner hung on the outdoor park pavilion iron bars. This lady with years of life on her face, was curious and ventured up to the registration desk we had set up in that pavilion. She had seen many folks wearing the bright yellow-orange T-shirts doing the dirty work of picking up the litter around the park.

A Cardinal in the tree

She was genuinely interested, and genuinely thankful that we paid attention to the litter that had accumulated in this otherwise lovely park with a creek and a bountiful of while swans & ducks adorning the rock barrier meant to contain the debris floating down from upstream.

She noted that many people do not care about simply taking care of their surroundings. That upset her. She wondered if we were a religious group. I explained ‘we are a Hindu faith-based group, but not focused on religion. We use our unique religious inspiration that guides us – all living and non-living beings are part of the one same whole. Taking care of ourselves necessarily requires us taking care of them all at the same time. She was happy to hear that.

She introduced herself as a Messianic Jew.  As a child she had understood Jesus Christ to be a messenger but not the Son of God, who sacrificed for the sinning humans. Now she had found a savior in her Lord, Christ.

She was a little unsure about how to ask the question, but she wanted to know who our ‘Lord’ was in Hinduism. My answer was simple: we do not have one ‘Lord’, but we believe, and know, that we all have One Source. We give that source a variety of names – Shiva, Krishna, The Energy, or God etc. Beyond that Truth we differ; we hold different beliefs about how this ‘Lord’ operates his /her universe. To us Hindus that difference is not highly consequential, if these beliefs lead their followers to find positivity, direction, and strength in their own lives, and help develop a loving society.

This conversation jogged her memory. She told me about a beautiful interview she had watched some time ago between two men – a Christian leader and….. a Hindu leader (she thought). She couldn’t remember the details. Search as she tried to do, she did not find the name of that Hindu leader.  She noted how the two men, coming from very different backgrounds, were able to find love in their hearts for each other.

I could relateLove knows no religion to that idea, I explained. If the two men related with each other on a spiritual level where they knew they had the same source and did not focus much on the differences in their beliefs (which, by defintion, cannot be known since they are not knowledge) then such love was possible. I ruminated that in the world today, the focus was on arguing who was right about their beliefs, and that causes strife.  She seemed to agree.

She grew curious. She wanted to know more about Hindu beliefs on Heaven and Hell. Did we believe in such a thing? This has been a topic of another blog I wrote previously – Can Hindus Ever RIP.  Heaven and Hell are merely an accounting system for our Karma. What we do right, according to our considered obligation as humans, opens the doors to heaven where we could enjoy the fruits of our Karma. What we do wrong – unethical, inhuman or such – gives us an entry pass to Hell. We must bear the consequences of all our actions.

But Hindus also believe in something else – reincarnation. This is akin to the idea that our universe is cyclic. It arises out of ‘nothing’, sustains for a while (a long while, which feels like an eternity compared to a mere 100 yrs of our lifespan), and then dissolves back into The Source. Look around…. every natural phenomenon is cyclic; most obviously we know how spring brings nature back to life year after year. We know that the earth goes around the sun in cycles, and results in a repeating cycle of seasons. We have learned about the rain cycle, the carbon cycle, and many others. Is it hard to imagine that our birth and death are cyclic in a similar sense?Karma & Reincarnation Cycle

Hindus believe our soul cycles through a variety of forms before it exits the cycle. Our bodies are just temporary housing for it (I did not use the word ‘Atma’ with her, since I would still need to resort to the word ‘soul’ to explain the ‘atma’ concept, for which there is no parallel in the western culture). She immediately could relate to the idea of permanence and repeated something similar from her religious beliefs.

Then, my explanation continued, our souls simply go from one body to the next, taking several births over many lifetimes. Hindus’ ultimate goal is to liberate from this cycle of birth and death of the bodies we are trapped in. When that is attained, we return to eternal peace, to The Source we all came from. This explanation fascinated her.

Feeling that my explanation may have been somewhat tedious, I inquired about her work – she had mentioned earlier in passing that she still worked – I found out she was associated with a Jewish service organization. More conversations revealed that we shared an interest in mental health of the community and were working in our own ways to address this. She invited me to her next monthly meeting on the topic. We exchanged contacts and are now looking forward to the next steps. Hopefully, we can follow in the example of the two people who she had earlier cited.

She left as her little doggie got up on her hind legs and, with a bark, informed her that she’s had enough of being a bystander in this long conversation. She wanted to move on.

Just a few minutes later I saw her back in the pavilion. She had returned to share the picture of the Hindu man she spoke of earlier. It was the current Dalai Lama’s photograph. I did clarify that he was a revered Buddhist leader but felt glad to think that we are all Hindus if we simply live spiritually, looking at what is the essence of our existence rather than dwelling on the differences in our own mental creations.

Diwali Sunshine – Greetings!

Posted on by Mukul Saran
                  Rangoli-A tradition of devotion

Diwali always comes with a new message of hope and gaiety.

It also brings with it an opportunity to introspect on what it means to lead a life of Dharma. This word is often found incorrectly translated as religion. It has many other meanings with subtle differences, but ‘religion’ is not one of them.

Dharma refers to our human duty or discerned responsibility, inspired by and dedicated to the Universal Consciousness that unifies us all. That consciousness is our source and our destination. It is one where all our differences arise and dissolve. It is the One that powers the Sun, as also our mind-body-intellect.

From this Divine consciousness which transcends all fractured identities, arises our dharma, our human duty to help create joy and happiness for every one. We celebrate the victory of good over evil, of light over darkness, of knowledge over ignorance, but this battle is truly a perpetual one, within ourselves, that we must win each year, each day, each moment of our lives.

Wish everyone a joyous victory! Shubh Deepawali.

Hindu Marriage Ceremonies – The Hidden Paradigm

Posted on by Mukul Saran

There’s more to Hindu marriage ceremonies than meets the eye. Symbolism abounds. Each ceremony is rooted in a deep philosophical paradigm. Awareness of it lends richness to the rituals and eliminates misinterpretations. To understand, one must begin with the Vedic view of creation and human life.

Paradigm Informing Hindu Marriages:

The entire physical universe has a single source – One God if you like! We all are born of, live in, and ultimately dissolve back into that source., similar to waves on an ocean. The vast ocean is their source, they exist on that substratum, and dissolve back some finite time later, becoming one with it. It’s as if that single source acquires a universe of wave-like forms which are only distinct from each other in their shape, their trajectories but not in essence.  They all exist only in reference to an ocean. In that sense we all are also various incarnate forms of One source, One energy, One Conscious Reality that we call God.

If this is new to you, don’t expect to be convinced of this paradigm. That is not the goal of this piece. It is merely to inform that such a perspective exists and it informs the traditional Hindu wedding rituals.

 

Another paradigm that matters is the Hindu view of God as a Divine Couple – a part of one inseparable whole, two aspects of one Divinity, e.g. Radhe-Krishna, Sita-Ram, Shiv-Parvati, or Vishnu-Mahalaxmi . Vishnu ji & Mahalaxmi ji  are the preserver of the universal order while it lives. To a faithful Hindu devotee their divinity is also reflected in human marriage relationships.

 

 

So how does this affect how two people are married? This view of human relationships being mere reflections of divinity is reflected in Bride and Groom being considered as God-incarnates. The bride represents Devi MahaLaxmi in all Her splendor and beauty.  The groom represents Bhagwan Vishnu in all His glory. That conception, which sees God’s presence in a multitude of forms, readily enables such a view. A Hindu wedding is then merely a re-enactment, here on earth, of the eternal union of the two Divine beloveds.

This considered divinity of the bride & groom, and their consequential Oneness is the backdrop of the wedding. None can be second to the other; they are the two sides of a single coin. In practice the wedding serves as a reminder to the couple of their eternal bond, their complimentary nature and their essential unity despite manifest differences. This paradigm has been coded into practice by ancestors, but the Hindu society has lost awareness of its existence.

 

 

 

 

The Wedding Story Board:

(a) Dwarachar: The groom arrives at his fiancé’s door to marry her. The bride’s family and friends welcome him with Aarti. This ceremony is based on another element of Indian cultural ethos – atithi satkar, offering a guest to the same soulful welcome that one would offer should God ever show up at the door. This ceremony affords the groom a red-carpet welcome as Vishnu ji visiting Mahalaxmi  ji’s home.

(b) Jaimaal: An exchange of garlands when the bride and groom come face to face for the first time prior to the wedding ceremony, reaffirms mutual acceptance of each other by bride and groom.

 

(c) Pad Poojan: As part of the wedding rituals you might find bride’s father – the host – washing the groom’s feet. Some people disavow this tradition as disrespectful to the bride’s family. Yet, when one views it in the light of  atithi satkar, when the atithi is Bhagwan Vishnu Himself, this objection seems irrelevant. The son-in-law does not gain any leverage over the father-in-law just because of this ceremony. The father-in-law remains a father figure who is worthy of due regard as an elder and as a parent.   

(d) Kanyadaan: a ceremonial transfer of bride’s hand to the groom’s, has been labeled as regressive by some. For the current discussion, suffice it to say that this ceremony is a symbolic reunification of the two beloveds by the bride’s family, not a donation or gift. A more detailed treatment of this custom is available here. Lazy, uninformed perspectives lead to erroneous interpretations. The paradigm matters.

Unfortunately, this ceremony is sometimes conflated with various other negative socio-cultural aspects of many Hindu marriages. In particular, it stands as a symbol of a power imbalance between bride’s and groom’s families that has become embedded in other associated customs. Some, like demanding dowry, have been legally addressed but may still be found in practice. It is important to recognize that this imbalance has no sanction in Hindu philosophical paradigm. These need to be, and should be, excised while preserving the reverence for our benevolent traditions. Fortunately, it is also not difficult to find marriages today that exemplify the practice of customary rituals sans the baggage of corrupt social practices.

Conclusion:

It is not a goal of this piece to explain all the marriage rituals in light of the mentioned Hindu philosophical paradigm. It is to illustrate that a Hindu marriage invokes divinity in human beings to bind two people in a union that is fundamentally equal and complimentary. It is a beautiful way to lend strength to human relationships. It is empowering for women and men alike. Some key rituals are designed to put into practice the best of Hindu dharma. That’s how it must remain.

 

What’s Wrong With Kanyadaan – Patriarchy?

Posted on by Mukul Saran

The Hindu marriage ritual of Kanyadaan was portrayed in a recent garment ad as regressive and rooted in patriarchy. In a previous article we addressed the root of this debate – mis-translation of word meaning and misinterpretation of its symbolism. Next we look closer at what bothers some women. What is wrong with Kanyadaan? What does need change?

Without being facetious, being born is patriarchy. A little biology only to clarify the point. The father’s chromosome determines the sex of the child. A Y-chromosome from the father conceives a male child. On the other hand, an X-chromosome from the father gives birth to a female child. The mother can only contribute an X-chromosome, one of two needed for conception.

Do we resent this inequality? No. We celebrate the differences. We recognize how essential and complimentary this difference, this patriarchy, is to creation & sustenance of life itself.

Patriarchy, by itself, cannot be the issue with Kanyadaan.

Clearly, it is just a label! But the label betrays a sense of resentment, misplaced as it is, at the unfortunate reality of an imbalance in male-female power-structures within the society. This imbalance continues to find patronage in a variety of ways: distinct rules of behavior, social limits to engagement in society, (e.g. education, economic pursuits etc), ineligibility for certain roles and functions, society’s attitudes towards sexual violence. These are matters of daily import for us all, especially for those who bear the brunt. These need correction and urgently.

Sadly, these develop in all societies, and India is no exception. However, the realities of female experience today must be seen as a social distortion, not a product of the Universalist worldview of Hindu thought, to help us reach meaningful solutions.

Ardh-Nareeshwar: Equal & Complimentary Embodiment of Male & Female Energies

Hindu philosophical paradigm considers female energy as an equal and complimentary part of the male energy in one whole – a la Ardh-Nareeshwar. It dares to imagine God in male-female pairs – Radha Krishna, Sita Ram, Uma-Mahesh etc. It is the only religion that recognizes a female aspect of God – Shakti. Can such a philosophy really be the source of any demeaning tradition that treats women as inferior or subservient? Hardly so!

Ritual helps encapsulate such enlightened philosophy into practice, and helps pass it down the generations. It is imperative to decode it accurately so we do not loose the wisdom they contain. We must look for causes of power imbalance between sexes outside of Kanyadaan, if we are to find meaningful solutions.

Kanyadaan is based on love… dismissing it as Hindu ‘patriarchy’ is inappropriate. But it is also true that many girls feel hurt; it’s a reality to be acknowledged with empathy. While respecting our rituals for their real meaning and message, the sense of hurt that many women feel deserve our consideration.

Today, hearing loosely-worded statements like “she’s not your daughter anymore” or “you’re giving her away to the groom” can be hurtful. In the old days when transport from one village to another was difficult or non-existent, it


may have been the reality of marriage for the woman and her family. In that circumstance these words may have even helped the girl’s parents to let her go, and for the girl to accept the finality of the change.

Any premise that the girl, while joining another family, must cut all connection with parents or family is not supported by tradition. Shortly after marriage traditionally the girl would return to her parental home for a visit with her family. So statements made in this vein are distortions of the original.

There is room for improvement on what is said, how it is said and, most importantly, in educating ourselves about the source, symbolism and purpose of Kanyadaan. For that, read ‘Kanyadaan is Kanyamaan‘

The Morning After – 1981 Winnipeg

Posted on by Mukul Saran

The day had come… more accurately, the night – around 1:30AM in Winnipeg, Canada in late August of 1981. The mind, the body, the universe was confused. Time-zones do that to you. My would-be Ph.D. supervisor was not there this late at night.  The university’s India students association had no welcoming service. Google was born only in 1998, a full 17 yrs after the fact. Cellphones were in a pre-natal stage (the first commercial ones came out in 1983). No family or friends, an unfamiliar country! It felt foreign – the airport, the people, the phone-system, the transportation system – everything! At 22yrs old, I found myself struggling as a freshly-landed, lonely foreign student in Canada.

 

The night marked the end of a maiden flight that had taken me straight out of my native India.  My previous international travel was as a 16yr old accompanying my parents on a bus to Nepal.

Clueless about my whereabouts, it only made sense to stay put at the desolate airport for the night. As the sun came through, the pocket phone diary my parents had handed me yielded a contact. This gentleman had been a professional contact of an uncle of mine, many years prior. How I made the call on that coin-operated rotary phone in Canada dodges the memory, but it turned out to be a lifesaver. He and his wife very kindly picked this stranger up from the airport, fed good hot breakfast, and then dropped me outside Tache Hall.  Exhausted, I did not notice the beautiful colonial design of the dorm building.

That breakfast surely helped me break an unintended, prolonged 18+hrs fast. I had given up eating food a few hours after taking off from Delhi on Air India flight to NY. Whenever the air-hostess brought the meals my confused body rejected them; the body clock had lost its rhythm. Emotions had consumed me; this separation from my family and my land was going to be a long and uncertain one. My parents have had to borrow money just to put me on that flight. The finality of the moment dawned on me as the excitement of travel in previous days yielded to home-sickness.

Travel from NY, onward to Toronto, allowed no breaks to eat.  The US immigration officer looked perplexed as  he examined my papers. I had no US transit visa to enable ground transport  to LaGuardia, a connecting airport several miles away.  My travel agent had not advised of this detail. The officer drew me aside and went to get his associate.  He came back with an African-American lady officer to escort me out of the airport. She walked with me to the bus station, sat on the bus through to LaGuardia, navigated to the check-in counter for NY-Toronto flight, and accompanied me through security until I had securely boarded the flight. Had it not been so, I’d likely be stuck in NY that night! Thank the travel agent!

The final flight from Toronto to Winnipeg was uneventful, but it was too late for any food service. That breakfast in Winnipeg had ended the forced, prolonged fast.

It was Friday morning that I flung my bags on the bed in the dorm, and went into a deep slumber almost immediately.  The morning after, on a beautiful Saturday, I woke up again. I had literally slept for nearly 24hrs since the last breakfast.  Hungry and weak in search of food, ventured out of my room on the University of Manitoba campus. Not a soul was in sight. Coming from a hugely more populous place buzzing with a constant din 24/7, I had never seen a place so desolate.  A single car parked outside another colonial structure on campus – later learned it was called the Admin Bldg –  gave me some hope. 

The owner emerged nearly 30mins later.  In my unpracticed Indian English, I mustered enough courage to ask for help. “Nothing on campus would be open for the next 3 days” I was told. It was the Labor-day long weekend. It was also my first encounter with this vocabulary. He was a kind man. He dropped me off at a McDonald’s a few short kilometers from Campus.

I had never heard that name before. For almost all of us Indians, Canada was a far away fantasy land where Eskimos lived in Igloos. No internet or Google existed to help us know any better. That McDonald’s went into the history book (my personal one!) when it fed a hungry, vegetarian Indian kid his first meal in Canada. Of course in 1981, neither McDonald’s, nor Tache Hall, or for that matter even the city of Winnipeg or the province of Manitoba, would know what ‘vegetarian’ means. Nevertheless, found enough to fill me up – some French Fries and Vanilla milk-shake! I was happy that the meal only cost a couple of dollars; my total cash assets of a few hundred dollars was all I had. That’s ALL the foreign currency that India could afford to let international students take out of the country, including their fees.

As a side note, years later McDonald’s declared that their fries were not vegetarian; they used ‘formula 47’ which included beef tallow. I felt corrupted. Unwittingly, a lifelong vegetarian Hindu boy had enjoyed the fries at the cost of the cows slaughtered for his eating pleasure.

How the next few days passed on campus remains a complete blur. I only recall not having enough mental resources to seek out the Physics department or my PhD supervisor for another three days. When I did finally reach him his relief was palpable; he had finally found his lost student. It became clear that he did visit the airport to receive me but returned baffled that I was not on that flight from Toronto. He had misread my telegram “arriving at 00:00hr”. He went to the airport a full 24hrs later!

My parents in India had no inkling of these 36+ hrs, or even whether their son had reached the destination, until over a month later when my first hand-written letter reached them in Bhopal. It leaves me bewildered as I think about how they might have felt not knowing for all those weeks. I will never truly know.

The ability of humans to survive through much worse situations is incredible. Thankful I am well equipped to write about it today!

Kanyadaan – Donating Your Daughter?

Posted on by Mukul Saran

Outfits like Maanyavar do not care about our traditions. They know their customers well. Their recent ad, featuring Ms Alia Bhatt, which interprets Kanyadaan as a regressive custom treating women as objects of donation, is not a mere aberration.  At an earlier wedding, a pundit ji derided the custom with impunity and called for its elimination. A few hands applauded while others listened in silence. I sat flabbergasted!

The ad deserves credit for an emotionally seductive message, delivered with finesse, that Kanyadaan is regressive. Millions of unsuspecting Hindus with a deeper & very different understanding of the tradition are turned into villains and victims at once! They are labeled and ridiculed as patriarchic and regressive.

How could those protesting the ad justify the ‘patriarchy & insult’ this ritual promotes for females? Is Kanyadaan a regressive custom?

Ill-considered modern interpretations, devoid of any cultural/religious context, feelings or meaning, underlie the misplaced feeling. Hindu view that postulates both male & female energies as equal halves and complimentary parts of the whole is ignored, just as the symbolism and purpose of the ritual are.

For perspective, Bollywood can claim credit for turning women into objects of pleasure. The star icons peddling these messages of ‘respect for women’ are the foremost in disrobing women of their respect. And the uninformed activists, with misplaced pride, will accept all of that as ‘modern’.

Now back to the point….

 

What is a Daan?

Examine ‘bali-daan – a soldier giving up his most precious ‘property’ – his life. Does he merely ‘donate’ a ‘possession’?  Any such degeneration of meaning is an outcome of irreverence. Further, would you view this act as something he must do in exchange for what he’s paid – a transaction? No, the word carries sanctity – it’s an act of sacrifice, dedication, samarpan, not just a materialistic exchange of goods.  ‘Daan’ can be used in multiple ways; the context and the emotion impart it meaning and dignity.  

 

What is KanyaDaan?

Kanyadaan is a ritual performed by parents, and sometimes by the father, during a Hindu wedding. It entails placing their daughter’s hand in the groom’s for marriage. The ritual resembles ‘giving away’ of the bride by her father in a Christian marriage.  Some interpret this act of love as insulting and patriarchic because it is perceived as a  giving away of  ‘property’; parents are seen to ‘own’ their daughter. This is merely a matter of perspective.

 

Message & Symbolism

To begin to understand, ask the parent’s perspective as they place their daughter’s hand in groom’s. Think of the emotion they endure as they entrust the safety, honor and happiness of their daughter to another man and family. Imagine the tears of joy and pain in their eyes. It is this emotion that defines it – an act of offering, gifting away a piece of their heart, not a possession. This ritual prepares a father and the mother, to accept the eventual separation of their daughter from them.

Simultaneously, it carries a message to the groom: ‘her parents, while offering their daughter’s hand in marriage, do so with the desire and hope that you will offer her the same love and care that they have invested in her upbringing.’

Change your perspective and you see the poignancy of that moment – a moment of letting go.

 

Spiritual Underpinning:

This tradition, and the entire Hindu marriage, rests on a deeper spiritual meaning and purpose.

Hinduism considers marriage as an earthly re-enactment of the eternal Divine relationship between Bhagwan Vishnu and Mata Lakshmi. The groom is welcomed as such. The bride’s parents entrust and reunite Her beloved with Her through Kanyadaan.

The ritual is a reminder to treat this spiritual union with respect in which none is lesser than the other, and the two are equal parts of a Divine whole. Respect for women is an intrinsic outcome of the Hindu worldview.

This religious imagery is not arbitrary… it ties into the larger Hindu vision of creation, and specifically humans, as inherently divine. Importantly, there’s a sense of reverence in this act. See it in that light, and all negativity disappears.

What one does not possess or own, one cannot donate. This is true of both children and wealth in a Hindu view. Parents are but guardians on earth. These lines from Khalil Jibran express this beautifully

“They come through you but not from you
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you”

This paradigm does not support ‘ownership’, nor a materialistic ‘donation’ or ‘gifting’ of a bride. Kanyadaan is a respectful ceremony intended to lovingly give up ‘guardianship’.  Modern templates and vocabulary are woefully inadequate to comprehend this worldview and must be discarded.

 

In the End

Kanyadaan does not belong on the totem-pole of social evils.  Hindus are good about recognizing what truly matters, e.g. sati-pratha, child-marriage, animal sacrifices etc and removing them from our midst.

Tens of millions of women who have gone through kanyadaan feel no ignominy. A particularly poignant testimony came from a friend in a social media conversation:

“it is a very emotional post to me and writing with tears…true reflection of a father…Can’t forget that drop of tear that fell from my father’s eyes on the day of my departure (विदाई) from their house, my departure from country and then his departure…I grabbed all those tears and they come out when I remember him that’s the best gift I have as a daughter!”

What needs change is not the ritual but the willingness to seek a deeper understanding & expression of its true significance and symbolism.

Do not demean yourselves with ill considered modern reinventions. Learn your religion. You will discover a very different and uplifting worldview than you might imagine.

Yes it is the 21st century, and these ideas are even more relevant today than ever before. They are perennially progressive.

Robots in a Theme Park – On Consciousness

Posted on by Mukul Saran

The 1973 movie, Westworld features a theme park with simulated people (humanoid robots). Ordinary folks like us could let themselves go, and safely engage in otherwise undesirable or unsafe fantasies with these ‘people’ – such as fighting, shooting and more.  When technical malfunctions begin affecting them, the amusement park transforms into a world of robots acting on their own whims. Futuristic?              

Not really. Our human world is another theme park. Aren’t we just robotic beings acting on our own whims, our desires, our egos?

I hear your protests – this analogy is far-fetched! These robots are not the thinking, feeling machines that we humans are. I concede, at least not yet. Nevertheless don’t we share some fundamental similarities?  

To your point, this robot in the picture can hardly be compared to a human skeleton!  The robots’ shape follows their function – shuffle loads, sort mail, vacuum floors, walk our dogs, offer companionship, or be the ‘people’ of theme parks. They are not always similar to humans, even superficially!

However, the more complex the function they serve the closer they must be to us –  ‘arms’ to manipulate objects,  ‘legs’ to move around, ‘eyes’ to ‘see’ around obstacles, ‘ears’  for our voice commands and even touch-sensitivity for touch commands.  They must all have a ‘brain’ (hardware and software) to control these senses and their actions. Even so, these brains can’t learn & perform functions they have not been programmed for. Most certainly they don’t understand feelings.

But as artificial intelligence opens up these possibilities, such machines could conceivably grow into ‘humanoid robots’ – robots with human-like abilities to sense, act, learn, and yes, even ‘feel’ like those of Westworld.

So what is the point? Humans are not unlike robots, even if different in lots of ways. There is one deeper similarity that generally escapes our attention, and is worth dwelling on.

Without electricity, the robots are just powerless machines. Their internal systems need it to perform the intended functions. Which electricity do we speak of here – that which permeates the air around us as electrons, protons, ions? No that does not drive robots; it must be ‘harnessed’. This ‘organized’ energy is the ‘life-blood’ for working robots. It simply flows through the components. In the process it enables them to perform their function. That energy just flows, but it does not perform any actions itself. It is there; it just is. Fundamentally, the robots owe their living, active existence and capabilities to this energy.

Of course, today’s robots do not understand this! But will they never? They might very well do. 

Pause to wonder the capabilities the cognitive robots of the future.  A recent article published by ScienceNews.org conjectures this possibility: “A robot with a sense of touch may one day “feel” pain, both its own physical pain and empathy for the pain of its human companions. Such touchy-feely robots are still far off, but advances in robotic touch-sensing are bringing that possibility closer to reality.“  A projection further into the future allows us to imagine a day when robots could have a mind of their own, an ego of sorts –  not dissimilar to humans!  And this brings us full circle to the question – how, then, would these ‘humanoid robots’ be different from ‘robotic humans’?  

Humans are a fully functional, complex machine. Our body is equipped with organs to navigate & manipulate, with five senses to interact with the outside world, and with a brain for intelligence. But, to parallel a robot, what ‘electricity’ activates our hardware and firmware and bring it alive as a thinking, feeling being? What ‘organized’ electricity powers the human machine and gives it life, it’s powers of thought and action?

Our living bodies are powered by a ‘harnessed’ conscious energy that otherwise pervades the universe, the fundamental entity on which existence rests!  Without it, the body is simply an assembly of organs – lifeless and useless – quite similar to the assembly of components that a robot is without electricity. That ‘organized’ conscious energy is what enables the ‘robotic’ humans to feel, think and act as it ‘flows’ through them. That is what gives life to the purely biological, chemical and physical processes of the robotic human machine.  Life is not born out of these processes; the processes are born out of life. While our bodies are the robotic vehicles that feel, think and act, we owe our thoughts and actions to that consciousness in which they are inspired, and which enables the body and mind to act.

We are robots in the theme park of this world. We are unaware of our life-blood, our ‘electric’ conscious energy being the inspirer of all our thoughts, deeds, and in turn, the results.  Our ego – that association of self with the body-mind-intellect – acts to blind us to the real us – the conscious energy, the soul, that powers our machines.

 

Can Hindus Ever RIP?

Posted on by Mukul Saran

With each passing away of an Indian celebrity, the social media gets flooded with shorthand RIP messages. What does one make of these – just short-hand expressions of condolence or a prayer for the departed soul?  Can Hindus ever RIP? Let’s decode what a RIP prayer would mean for a dead Hindu.

RIP is a Christian term first found on tombstones in the 18th century. It reflects the belief that the soul and the body are separated at death and must ‘rest’ until resurrection when they will be reunited and be with the Lord in Heaven. Only Christian faithful will have peace. Others will be eternally damned in Hell. So, can Hindus ever RIP?

The closest Hindu conception of ‘rest’ in the afterlife is when the ‘Jeevatma’, upon leaving the dead body, may enjoy Heaven as a reward for its good karma on earth. It must resume the cycle of rebirth and suffering upon completion of its term. But heaven is not what the jeevatma needs. It’s ultimate destination is Moksha, a liberation from the cycle of reincarnations and attainment of unending bliss.

Wishing RIP to a Hindu is like wishing the Chandrayaan mission success in reaching the earth’s orbit, rather than in landing successfully on the moon!

Words are tied to ideas, values and beliefs, e.g. words like ‘Chairman’ have fallen out of favor as they tend to associate only men with positions of authority, subconsciously.  The city of Trivendrum is better referred to by its original name Tiruvananthpuram, which means the ‘town of Lord Anantha’, rather than the meaningless one coined by the British.

Foreign words, like RIP, reinforce foreign concepts. They dissociate the vocabulary from our native values, ideas and beliefs. Without continuous nourishment, these cultural traits wither and die. It is essential, therefore, that Hindus use the traditional terminology to help sustain our paradigm of life. It is at the root of our culture and traditions.

Only then will our future generations know what it means to say ‘Om Shanti’.

Om symbolizes the formless infinite from which all creation arises and dissolves into. Shanti refers not just to peace, but to Bliss that is an unchanging characteristic of the infinite soul. Om Shanti is a prayer that the jeevatma gets off the cycles of reincarnation, realizing its own True nature – an inseparable part of the infinite whole Paramatma – conscious, eternal and blissful.

The Onion Profile

Posted on by Mukul Saran

 

My friends are really confused! I mean the facebook friends.  For years they have seen my face in various shades on the facebook profile. They don’t quite know what to make of an onion that has sprouted a few strands of the green blades as my profile picture. This is also kind of unlike my personality – linear, direct and simple. If the profile picture must represent me, it should simply show my face. The expression in the picture would convey a sense of my personality and create whatever impression it does on a viewer – a serious, contemplative person in nerdy black glasses or a fun guy dressed up as a ‘mafia boss’.

 

But what on earth does an onion, nesting among oranges and bananas, perched on a

decorative fruit-plate above a counter top mean? That has been confusing my friends.

And I know.  Since my profile-name also no longer spells out my actual name, for an average user it is rather difficult to identify me. Often, I have been ignored for this reason.

The story of this profile begins with the discovery of an onion lost in a dark corner of a kitchen cabinet for an unknown number of weeks.

How could it stay alive, sprouting new life without soil, water, or sunlight after weeks of neglect?  A novelty for me for sure! The beauty of this unattended, natural growth had to be displayed! What better place than a counter-top, where this resilient creation could be seen and admired.

It soon became salad. How could one resist the urge to taste the fresh onion greens?  Where the green shoots were clipped and taken away, new ones developed and grew back rapidly as if urging us to take more!

When the darkness envelopes our lives, when the loved ones neglect us, when we face a paucity of life’s essentials we humans can still thrive, much like this onion. There is something inspirational in this growth. It is natural, it is resilient and it is beautiful. It deserves to be seen and emulated by one and all.

For the onion it comes naturally. Humans must strive to develop it – a generosity that is willing to give away all our material growth. And then be happy to give away some more.