Digital expressions by Priya Shilpa

There is a lot of natural beauty in this world. So are exceptional sahityam(literature), music, poems and art. For one who has a keen eye in these respects even a 1000 yrs would not be enough to understand the depths of any of these subjects. But according to Swamiji what he appreciates most in this world is "Clarity". We saw last time that everything in the world exists. What we use are our skills to use what already exists. Not everybody has the same skills. It is God, the Omnipotent and Omnicient who is Omnipresent who has created this order. If somebody has done something or created something, he should have the knowlege to do so. This world was created. What is created is well created (meaning well planned). We came into a creation that has order and that is what we study under different subjects. So, one can understand how much knowledge must be present in the creator and that creator is God. This is something all religions believe in, in some form or the other, but ca...

In this lecture, the lesson was that nothing in this world really belongs to us. Neither this body, nor any of the things we accumulate. That doesn't mean we should refrain from taking care of the things or the people around us. For example, this body was given to us, it is upto us to make the best use of it and maintain it. But remember that it was given to us by God and that it would perish some day. Everything in today's world has already been given to us. We are only finding or creating things from that which already exists. More about Karma Yoga will be dealt later said Swamiji.

From the previous lectures, the question that kept arising in my mind was, how is it possible to live in this world without all these relationships. In fact that is how Swamiji starts his next lecture. He says, that it is impossible to live in this world without relationships with the people around you. These relationships are not necessary to sustain life. For example animals and plants have life, they do not have a mind which associates or relates them with fellow animals. In deep sleep there is still life, but at that moment no relationship is existant. But once awake we need these relationships to live. These relationships are formed by our likes and dislikes. A child that is born does not know any relationships, as he grows he is introduced to his family. These relationships whether we like or dislike happen without our choice at birth. We vary in our identity/roles based on our relationship with other people surrounding us. We can think of what Shakespeare said "All the wor...

Nothing is eternal. There is nothing that we can hold onto eternally. We all come empty handed and we leave empty handed. We cannot even take a blade of grass with us and we have no idea when that end will come. When a person is thirsty, you can only satisfy that thirst with water and not by any other objects of possessions. In the previous talk, we learned that true satisfaction does not come from the world around us. When this world cannot give us nityanandam, it cannot give us any disappointment either except when we give it that opportunity. If you do not really understand yourself, you are your own problem, but you are the solution if you truly find yourself. When you are given a mirror, it is given to look at yourself, similarly you are given the rationalilty not to understand the world but yourself. What we need is Atma gyanam. We keep within ourselves bad emotions from the past or our childhood that has accumulated as hard as a rock, but it is only us who can melt this rock. Th...

I was looking on You Tube to find any videos or documentaries about the Upanishads or even discourses by scholars explaining the Upanishads for the common man. I came upon this video playlist (in Telugu) on You Tube that consisted of a discourse by Swami Sundara Chaitnayananda titled "Sadhana Sadhyam". I thought I will share with you some of the points from this video. The essence of this discourse was our constant search for "Trupti". He explained how we look for satisfaction and happiness in people around us, be it our parents, siblings, friends or spouses, in possessions or even our own careers. Just as the self which is perishable one day so are all the above categories. When people we like are with us we are happy and content, when the same people leave us or when we leave them it makes us sad. When possessions we like are in our hands we rejoice and when they are spent or don't come our way we look for other objects to fill their place. We are constantly e...

May 14th, 2010 was another big moment in my life... I graduated with a Ph.D in Math. I have learned so much in these last few years apart from just Math. Have grown so much as a person, which, I must attribute to all the people with whom I have been associated with along the way. The road was bumpy at times, there were moments when I cried but there were many more when I laughed and have been very happy. Like Miley says, "It's all about the climb" and I have enjoyed every minute of it. If you haven't heard this song, you should. It is very motivational and I'll always remember listening to it every morning on my walk to school. I have been very lucky along the way in meeting some wonderful people, from whom I have learned a lot and I am sure they never realized that their actions good or bad were actually teaching me something. Tulane's unified commencement ceremony was as usual superb! Anderson Cooper delivered such a wonderful speech. You ca...

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A few weeks ago, when in Atlanta, Arun and I watched this Hindi movie "Rann" which is all about the role of the media in today's world and how it has evolved... Some of the points elucidated in the movie are so obvious for us to see in our everyday lives. One of the things being, how we fabricate the most common insignificant occurrences into either a debacle or wonder. We create all the hype so it has a large audience and of course the inflow from advertising... An example would be, a major news channel who was airing the Nobel peace prize ceremony of President Obama and in the middle of it suddenly turned their attention to the balloon flying in the Colorado sky. Even without proper evidence that there could be somebody in it, they had a bunch of people weighing in on what would happen if it were true. In the end it turned out to be a hoax and I would have missed the award ceremony if not for another channel. Recently in the news has been Tiger Woods. At his cost every ...

I haven't written a post in such a long while as work has been keeping me on my toes...but I definitely need to record this moment on my blog... The Saints won the 44th Super Bowl on February 7th,2010 and what a game ! I didn't get any work done this evening but I do not regret it one bit, it was all worth it ! I have to confess, I have never watched a Super Bowl game ever before, but this time I watched every second of it, and to top it all off I actually said a small prayer that the Saints win.... Arun (in Atlanta) and I watched this game together and were on the phone till the end and boy did we scream over our phones :) This means so much for the city of New Orleans, and I am so happy the team was able to deliver. When Porter made that intercept and touch down that's when I knew we won, but didn't want to celebrate early and just waited for that clock to tick to ZERO... What a great way to begin the new year ! WHO DAT !!!! New Orleans is back in the game !