Arguments of a confused Man : Part I

Sometimes me and my roommates discuss about how we are getting used to the American food slowly. D always says that when we make spicey hot indian food all we taste is the chiili and masala and not the vegetable itself. A and me wont agree with D even though he is right about it. ever ... ha ha

Then i was wondering WHAT IS INDIAN FOOD ?

I realized many subtle things about heritage, culture and the perception of it. Most of us say we have to preserve our culture and teach it to the future generation. But thinking about it !! What is Indian culture ?

Is it in the 300 - 400 AD when we were ruled by sooooooo many kings ? or when we were ruled by moguls or magadha or maurya or gupta or cholas .... the list goes on and on ......Is it the culture we had during our struggle for independence ?

The question is how can i preserve and pass on something which is ever changing.

Child marriage and Sati which were considered the norms of the society seems so stupid now. So what do we mean by our culture and our heritage ?. Which should i count and, which i shouldn't ?.

Whatever culture one belongs to i think Buddha's Kalama sutta puts things in perspective. (http://www.buddhadasa.com/naturaltruth/kalamasutta1.html)

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

Growing up

I was watching this episode of Scrubs and i liked one sentence from it.

"I thought growing up is a thing that happened automatically as you become older but then i realized that's something you have to choose ! "

well said i guess.

Fear and Fearlessness

One of the sentences that was very interesting in the last post, was about fear being the biggest impediment of peace. It makes a lot of sense !!!

I still remember my surprise when i came to know that actually snake's hissing and attack on humans is because of fear and not an act of aggression. There a lot of things like that USA/USSR going through the whole cold war period fearing who will start the nuclear war first. Everything they have done was motivated by the fear of each other than aggression.

From what i have come to understand about fear and fearlessness, fearlessness is not the reduction in fear but the capacity to think beyond the sense of fear. It is not the ability to learn not to fall down at all, but to get up every time u fall.

I have read somewhere that the very essence of the cowardice is not acknowledging the reality of fear. When someone doesn't acknowledge fear, it's due to ego or plain stupidity. Or may be a delusion that the most inspiring people has never shown fear. I think they have always acknowledged the reality of the fear. The difference in them was the ability to go beyond the fear. The ability to think beyond the moment of fear. The ability to be the same person even in the state of fear. Everybody is a good person until u put them in a spot give them a option to choose a wrong&easy way out or a right&difficult way out. That is when u really know a person.

Many would know the famous quotes from FDR "The only thing to fear is fear itself", but its incomplete FDR actually said....... "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance".

a lot of things in a 5 minutes talk

I found this video online and the girl has got guts .....





New School student, Jean Sara Rohe speaking at the university graduation ceremony.

Welcome, everyone, on this beautiful afternoon. I only have five minutes, so I'd appreciate it if you'd -- thanks. Welcome everyone, on this beautiful afternoon to the commencement ceremony for the New School class of 2006. That was an excerpt of the song I learned as a child called "Living Planet," by Jay Manquita. I chose to begin my address this way because, as always, but especially now, we are living in a time of violence, of war, of injustice. I am thinking of our brothers and sisters in Iraq, in Darfur, in Sri Lanka, in Mogadishu, in Israel, Palestine, right here in the United States, and many, many other places around the world. And my deepest wish on this day, on all days, is for peace, justice, and true freedom for all people.

The song says, "We can change the universe by being who we are," and I believe that it really is just that simple. Right now, I'm going to be who I am and digress from my previously prepared remarks that I had been working on for the past several weeks. I am disappointed that I have to abandon the things I had wanted to speak about, but I feel that it is absolutely necessary to acknowledge the fact that this ceremony has become something other than the celebratory gathering that it was intended to be due to all the media attention surrounding John McCain's presence here today and the student and faculty outrage generated by his invitation to speak.

The senator does not reflect the ideals upon which this university was founded. Not only this -- please, not only this, but his invitation was a top-down decision that did not take into account the desires and interests of the student body on an occasion that is supposed to honor us above all and to commemorate our achievements. What is interesting and bizarre about this whole situation is that Senator McCain has stated that he will be giving the same speech at all three universities where he has been invited to speak recently, of which ours is the last, those being Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, Columbia University, and finally, here at the New School. For this reason, I have unusual foresight concerning the themes of his address today. Based on the speech he gave at the other institutions, Senator McCain will tell us today that dissent and disagreement are our civic and moral obligation in times of crisis, and I agree. I consider this a time of crisis, and I feel obligated to speak. Senator McCain will also tell us about his strong-headed self-assuredness in his youth which prevented him from hearing the ideas of others, and in so doing, he will imply that those of us who are young are too naive to have valid opinions and open ears. I am young, and although I don't profess to possess the wisdom that time affords us, I do know that preemptive war is dangerous and wrong, that George Bush's agenda in Iraq is not worth the many lives lost. And I know that despite all the havoc that my country has wrought overseas in my name, Osama bin Laden still has not been found, nor have those weapons of mass destruction.

Finally, Senator McCain will tell us that we, those of us who are Americans, have nothing to fear from each other. I agree strongly with this, but I take it one step further. We have nothing to fear from anyone on this living planet. Fear is the greatest impediment to the achievement of peace. We have nothing to fear from people who are different from us, from people who live in other countries, even from the people who run our government, and this we should have learned from our educations here. We can speak truth to power. We can allow our humanity always to come before our nationality. We can refuse to let fear invade our lives and to goad us on to destroy the lives of others.

These words I speak do not reflect the arrogance of a young, strong-headed woman, but belong to a line of great progressive thought, a history in which the founders of this institution play an important part. I speak today, even through my nervousness, out of a need to honor those voices that came before me, and I hope that we graduates can all strive to do the same. Thank you very much.

Defenitions

sometimes i think about the distorted definitions around us and think that is the source of all problems in this world. and when i say defenitions i dont mean the oxford dictionary but about how things are percieved.

For starters

Success. the notion of sucess is i guess so distorted that its not in anyway related to how you look in your own eyes. Ironically it has to do more with how others percieve you. So to earn other people's attention people begin to cross a line in the sand between the right and wrong and finally the line is no more there even if they want to find it, after a while.

I can blog about a lot of other words........ beauty , rich , poor , friends ......... the list goes on...... may be the most distorted one would be .......The right and the wrong..... the thing that benefits one is right and the wrong is the thing which will not benifit one.........ha ha .... as simple as that ...... defenitions !!!!