உரனென்னும் தோட்டியான் ஓரைந்தும் காப்பான்
வரனென்னும் வைப்பிற்கோர் வித்தது.
aramna ennanga? aram na anbu.
arivu vechu indha 5 pulan kaliyum therinju irrukaravan deivam maathiri.
sense organs la naakku maatuk rendu velai pannum, apart from identifying suvai it also talks. pesi thaanga kedukaradhu….
The import of all the scriptural texts is elucidation of the nature of the Supreme Being. It is not possible for human beings to know Him as He is beyond the ken of the human senses and the mind. The texts vary from the revealed primary authority, the Vedas, to outpourings of mystics from their spiritual experiences and terse philosophical texts expounding the concepts systematically. The Saiva canon, known as the Tirumurai, comprises 12 works of which the 10th is the Tirumandiram of Tirumular.
In his discourse, Sri Mathivannan said two works like the Tirumandiram and the Bhagavad Gita could be compared to show that their objective was the same — enable man to realise his spiritual nature. Tirumular was a great mystic who, according to tradition, composed the 3,000 verses of the Tirumandiram at the rate of one verse every year.
While this raises the doubt of his extraordinary lifespan, this is explained to be due to his being a mystic (Siddha). But the real significance of his composition must be seen in the rich analysis each verse lends itself to, as the verses are pregnant with meaning. So it can be interpreted that each verse has enough substance to meditate upon for a year. Tirumular attests that he composed these verses by divine grace. The reason why the works of mystics stand the test of time is because their articulations are not mere words but are Mantras with immense spiritual potency.
The Bhagavad Gita, on the other hand, is the teaching of the Lord during His incarnation meant for application in day-to-day life. The thrust of Krishna’s sermon is the primacy of discharging one’s duty in life. Arjuna was confused just when the war was about to commence and tried to get out of the situation by pursuing Self-knowledge.
In His teaching the Lord pointed out that man can progress spiritually only step by step and as a warrior it was incumbent upon Arjuna to do his duty first: fight for the sake of Dharma. Both the Gita and the Tirumandiram highlight the rarity of human birth and the need to utilise this opportunity to realise the goal of liberation for which it is intended.
Source: The Hindu dated Wednesday, Nov 29, 2006
saradhambal koyila munnadi ennaga ezhudheerikkum?
Sarada Aalayam. Aalayam na ennanga? layam na onnagaradhu. manam kadavuloda onnaagardhu thaan aalayam.
udambai mattum thaan unnakku, ulla irrukaradhu avar thaan.
aazhwar kooda, alai kadalla irundhu uruvaagi, marupadiyum kadalla pora maari, ellmae avanla irundhu uruvagi, thirumbavum avanukku ulla thaan onraagum
basics purinjukonga…
LORD Krishna says in the Gita that whenever there is trouble in the world, he will return. Similarly, leaders seem to emerge when needed. While many may wait for God or a leader to emerge when there is trouble, some cannot be passive. They will not leave it to God or others to improve the world: they will take steps themselves. Such people are leaders. What makes a leader and how leaders can be developed, are questions that have intrigued people for centuries.
A recent article in BusinessWeek says the Bhagvad Gita is supplanting Sun Tzu’s The Art of War in the US as the favoured Eastern text for ideas about leadership. Concerned that the models they have followed so far may no longer be appropriate, American executives are looking for new role models. This article reminded me of the dilemma of an engineering college in Pune in the 1970s. It did not have an IC engine and continued to offer its students a steam engine for their laboratory work.
Though the essence of the process of combustion can be studied within a steam engine as well as an IC engine, the systems of combustion management , which students also want to learn, are very different in the two machines . Similarly, though at heart the essence of leadership is eternal, the skills that leaders need vary with the circumstances in which they must lead.
When two great leaders, Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and Narayana Murthy of Infosys met some months ago, Mr Lee suggested to Mr Murthy that it was time for him to enter politics and improve the quality of governance in India. Mr Murthy humbly replied that running a company was very different to running a democratic country and he did not have the skills required. Thereby he questioned the simplistic notion that successful corporate leaders could be role models for the management of a democratic state.
Jack Welch was the most successful CEO of the twentieth century according to CNN Money. During his years at GE, the firm’s revenues increased 400%, its profits 800%, and its market value 3,400%! While achieving this, CNN Money explains, Welch managed 993 acquisitions and 81,000 layoffs. It is inconceivable that the head of a democratic state, confronted with a sluggish economy, could acquire other countries and fire under-employed citizens!
The skills leaders need are inseparable from the context in which they must lead. Sun Tzu will remain a good source of wisdom to win a war. But the Gita may provide better lessons for living in harmony with the world and with one’s conscience too. Therefore, in the drive to teach leadership through books and seminars, we must offer models that fit the needs of our times.
CEOs that create great wealth for their shareholders are good models for running a company. But they may not be appropriate models for many vital issues that must be addressed in the world today. Disillusioned by a spate of corporate scandals and by the macho but mindless invasion of Iraq, Americans need new role models. In India too we need leaders who win by inclusion and who secure peace and not merely win wars. Therefore, the interest in the Gita in the US is encouraging, as well as the revival of Gandhi as a role model for Indian youth in a very enjoyable Bollywood movie, an idiom they can relate to more easily than erudite discussions of his philosophy.
MANY leadership summits that showcase powerful and wealthy leaders and popular books on leadership fail to get to the heart of leadership. Books that present lists of the common traits of leaders expect that others will become leaders by applying these lists in their lives. Such lists may describe the management systems that leaders employ to get to their goals, but not the process of combustion within: they do not explain what makes leaders emerge.
In contrast to such lists, Warren Bennis , an authority on leadership, describes the process of emergence of leaders in his book, Geeks and Geezers. He says that while leaders may come in many forms and have very different traits; all leaders are born in a ‘crucible’ within which, through an intense alchemy, they acquire their leadership mettle. The concept of the crucible and the spark that sets off the alchemy was lucidly explained by a young man who had set his heart on conquering India. Alexander the Great, when 16 years old, told his secretary, Eumenes, “The gods put dreams in the hearts of men; dreams that are often much bigger than they are. The greatness of a man lies in that painful discrepancy between the goal he sets himself and the strength that nature granted him when he came into the world.”
This simple and profound statement points to three eternal truths about the essence of leaders. A leader has a passionately desired goal in his or her mind. A leader has the honesty and courage to admit a personal incapacity to reach that goal. Nevertheless, he strives to improve himself to obtain the goal and thus emerges as the leader we recognise. Gandhi and Alexander, both great leaders , were very different persons: one a man of peace, the other a hero of war. Gandhi was a small man with a big dream. Like Alexander, he also had a goal he pursued relentlessly - though unlike Alexander’s his goal was to throw off a conqueror of India. His autobiography My Experiments with Truth recounts his lifelong efforts to find a better way to reach his goal and acquire the personal strength necessary.
We need more leaders in India in many walks of life. Our young people need appropriate role models, not all of whom may be powerful or wealthy. Moreover, any movement to develop leaders in India should hark back to some eternal truths. To become leaders, young people need opportunities to reflect deeply on the context in which they must lead and to ignite the spark within themselves. Because, to become leaders, they need much more than the style of leaders: they must care for others, have commitment to a cause, and the courage to take the first, difficult steps - the wisdom that Krishna gave to Arjun.
Source:
The Economic Times
Iyya Comments:
romba nalla irukku padinga.
In the process, if it discovers penicillin, well okay, it’s going to come in handy when setting millions of people free from infection. If it finds our Sun will become a red giant some five billion years from now and vaporise Earth and whatever sentience happens to be on it at the time, well tough, but that’s how the cookie crumbles.
There’s no good or bad involved here. Any moral dimension we impose on the universe is only the result of our brains and beliefs which actually have no ultimate evidentiary sanction.
Or do they? Marc D Hauser, a professor of psychology and biological anthropology at Harvard thinks not. In his recent book, Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense Of Right And Wrong he makes the point that human beings have ethics hardwired into their brains.
For a long time behavioural scientists used to think that things like altruism, sacrifice and responsibility as manifested in humans and some higher mammals were there because they had some survival value and not because it was inbuilt.
But Hauser argues that, just like our brains have evolved to process fundamental linguistic units to generate language, it has also developed in a way so that people have learned to recognise universal values such as fairness, gratitude and honesty.
In a manner of speaking Hauser has put the horse behind the cart. We automatically feel disgust, he says, when we smell or taste rotten food; we feel outrage when we witness cruelty or unfairness. Moral reasoning comes later, to provide arguments and justifications for the genetically programmed responses.
That the roots of morality are found in nature, not nurture, and that we are indeed born to be good is something the more evolved minds from our midst have been telling us for a long time.
Now that we have a scientist also saying the same thing — that morality is grounded in our biology — any inquiry into our moral nature should no longer be the proprietary province of the humanities, social sciences or religion, but a shared journey with the natural sciences too.
After all, as Socrates tells his protégé: “And what is good Phaedrus, and what is not good — need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
subramaniam na ennanga? idha padinga
aamaga ullam thaan. adhaan indha kuralla sollraanga
உள்ளத்தாற் பொய்யா தொழுகின் உலகத்தார்
உள்ளத்து ளெல்லாம் உளன்.
manam edhavadhu sinthanai senjuttae irrukum, ullam adhellam pannaadhu…
paarkadal ellamae namakku ulla thaan irrukku. vayiru thaan paarkadal…
adhu maari vamana avatharamum ulla thaan irrukku…
The evidence for evolution is overwhelming and comes from many branches of biology.
How can it be shown that I, we and it — three pronouns that range from me the intimate individual, to possible alien entities in other galaxies, to weird dark-matter material existing in a parallel universe of unknown dimensions — are all come of, and sprung from, one? It’s quite simple really.
The evidence for evolution is overwhelming and comes from many branches of biology. The comparative anatomy of the arm of a human, the foreleg of a horse, the wing of a bat and the flipper of a seal reveals these superficially different organs of different mammals to have a very similar internal structure which indicates a common ancestor.
The study of the embryos of mammals and birds or reptiles shows that at some stages they are virtually indistinguishable from one another — again demonstrating a shared lineage. A genetic commonality between animals in general and the plant kingdom can be traced back to a mutual point of origin some three billion years ago from where various living things differentiated.
We also have evidence that Earth and other planets of the solar system, along with its star the Sun belonging to the Milky Way, a galaxy among all the billions of other galaxies in the universe, grew out of primordial nebular stuff.
This material can be traced back in time to some 14 billion years ago when the whole lot were compressed in a superheated ball of intense energy which had exploded in what has come to be known as the Big Bang.
The result of that explosion was responsible in creating all of space, time and matter which every known thing in existence takes part in today and will share without exception in the future.
The plurality of universes has been postulated — with living things in them or not, peopled or otherwise. Some may consist of matter, antimatter or even the mysterious component called dark matter and they may exist in more or less than the four dimensions we are familiar with.
However, they too share their origins with the rest of us. The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics says the universe splits into infinite universes at every moment of time leading to a multi-branched structure where every possible element of history is realised.
This is the whole that everything is integral to. Sometimes it’s greater than the sum of its parts, sometimes less; but in the end, always equal to it. So what are we separate from except in form?
MUKUL SHARMA
Source: The Economic Times dated November 3 2006
Iyya Comments:
idha mattum purinjitta podhunga,
ellamae onnula irundhu thaan vandhadhu, neengalum narayanan thaan….
idhaan thaan matrix of the universe. Saradhmbal
saradha means guru rupini.
namma edhaiyum edhuthuttu poga mudiyadhu. sooriyan kitta adithi pray panna. sorriyan gava a child. child ellam pgim bodhu edhuthutu poga mudiyuma?
paarunga ellam epdi correcta varudhunnu. epdinna namma nammakaaga paakaliyae.
namma onnum therinjuttom, adhi solli villakka mudiyadhu, so ungallukku sollradhukku idhellam vendi irrukku, adhaan correcta varudhu…..
The means to realise God have been elaborated in scriptural texts like the Bhagavad Gita: Karma yoga (action), Jnana yoga (knowledge) and Bhakti yoga (devotion). These three ways relate to the fine-tuning of the three aspects of the human personality— the body, intellect and the mind (emotion) respectively. These Yogas are the techniques to restrain these faculties from their worldly distractions so that they instead facilitate spiritual progress.
In his discourse, Sri K.B.Devarajan said the Azhwars were exceptions who envisioned God and revelled in mystical experiences by the singular grace of the Lord. Among these Srivaishnava mystic saints, the first three known as the Mudal Azhwars— Poygai, Bhutam and Pey— were contemporaries. Born on successive days in Kanchipuram, Mahabalipuram and Mylapore, it was divine grace that brought them together on a rainy night when they sought shelter in the same house in Tirukkoyilur.
Huddled together in the confined space of the foyer of the house they spent the night in discussion on spiritual matters for they had come to worship the Lord in that sacred place when they felt another presence amidst them. God had chosen to reveal Himself to them and they sang His glory in lucid verse with the spiritual knowledge He bestowed on them. Each Azhwar sang a hundred verses in Andadi style and they are known as Mudal, Irandam and Munram Tiruvandadis. Their hymns have been canonised in the Nalayira Divya Prabandham.
Pey Azhwar’s hymn describes the Lord’s beatific vision in the incandescent light of the lamp of wisdom lit by Poygai and Bhutat Azhwars, “Today I have seen the lotus-dame on the frame of my ocean-hued Lord. He wields a fiery discus and a dextral conch in His hands. He has the radiance of the golden Sun.” This is the end a devotee seeks by adopting the formal means to realise Him but the Lord graced these mystics without any pretext. Such acts of divine grace in the lives of mystics substantiate His declaration that His devotees are dear to Him. Poygai Azhwar highlights at the outset that God, who is the end to be realised, is also the means.
Source: The Hindu dated Nov 02, 2006
Iyya Comments:
idhaiyum padinga-gives a tamil article on BhoodaththAzhwAr and PEyAzhwAr as to how they lit different kinds of lamps and saw god.
One lits the lamp by making the world as vilakku, ocean as oil and sun as fire. The other says i cannot lit such type of lamp and lits the gnana vilakku. this is explained in the pasurams below:
BhoodaththAzhwAr:
anbE thagaliyA, ArvamE neyyAga/ inburugu sindhai idu thiriyA/ naNpurugi GnAna chudar viLakku EtrinEn/Gnana thamizh purindha nAn/
meaning:Here, it is the love as the lamp and involvement as the oil and azhwAr says” I dedicate myself to the service of the lord, by singing this song that blesses wisdom(GnAna), with love as the lamp, endearing involvement as the oil(Ghee), and knowledge as the wick of the torch”.
PEyAzhwAr
thirukkaNdEn, ponmEni kaNdEn- thigazhum/arukkan Ani niRamum kaNdEn-seruk kiLaRum/ ponAzhi kaNdEn puri sangham kai kaNdEn/ en Azhi vaNNan pAl inRu/ What a song! AzhwAr just says:” I found the Glorious, GOLDEN form of the Lord. I have seen the Glory of Sri and nArAyaNa and His beauty and His Sea colour, His brightness and brilliance like the Sun and His sanghu (Divine Conch) on one hand and chakrA (Discuss) on the other;”
paarunga avar epdi vilakku vekkum bodhu kadavulai paakaraar, neengalum paarunga…