Arun's Corner

The AI bubble may burst soon. ChatGPT is on a ventilator and its future depends on its investors.  This came after Salesforce's CEO said he had been using ChatGPT for the past 3 years but tried Gemini for 2 days and "he is not going back". OpenAI issued a code red for ChatGPT amid rumors that the company is working on another model, codenamed Garlic.  Code red means the software needs a lot of work to sustain itself among its rivals. Google, which was nowhere in the AI market when ChatGPT was launched, now rules the AI market with Gemini 3. Grok won't pick up anytime soon because people hate Elon Musk. Claude is good but serves the programmers better. Meta AI, based on Llama, won't work outside the Meta ecosystem. Most of the other AI products are just dummies working on the API of Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT.  Even Microsoft's Copilot may stop using ChatGPT if we are to believe some insiders who claimed Copilot will be moved to an in-house model. When it comes...

Someone was saying today that the Sati system is being misinterpreted. They said the funeral hymn just said that the woman should mourn the death of their husband and then go back to their life. I don't know the truth. I have yet to read those hymns. But Sati was prevalent in India as was Jauhar. The Sati system started during the Gupta era and ended in the 18th century when Raja Ram Mohan Roy went against fellow Hindus. He also fought and ended polygamy. I feel we are trying to whitewash the evils of our religion instead of accepting and improving it. Hindu religion persists because it is adaptive to current circumstances. Of course, there have been people who intentionally wrote translations of Hindu scriptures to malign Hinduism. They succeeded too. The previous governments had textbooks written with misinformation so that they could adversely affect fresh brains. Also, many quote the Manu Smriti and believe its contents are set in stone. We should instead, bring it up to the cu...

Sri Bibek Debroy said there have been 27 cycles of kaala so far (until 2024 AD). One kaala cycle contains the four yugas: 1. Sat yuga 2. Treta yuga 3. Dwapara yuga and 4. Kali yuga Kalki Avatar comes towards the end of Kaliyuga and restores dharma and then, a new cycle of yugas starts. There have been 27 Ved Vyasas so far, each time appearing in the treta yuga to clean and organize the Vedas. Ved Vyas is a title given to the person who has comprehensive knowledge of the four Vedas and he/she can rearrange the Vedas to keep them updated with time. In his address to his Western audience, Swami Vivekananda said that by Vedas, no books are meant. He said the Vedas, as such, are the experiences of and the realization of the divine by Rishis and Rishikas of yester years. The Vedas are the experiences of persons and are kept updated by Ved Vyasas. The Vedas do not have a beginning or end. The Vedas have been updated 27 times by 27 Ved Vyasas. I don't know, however, what happens after a pr...

When the World Wide Web started, we created content for people to read and consume. Not for the Search Engines. We wrote for people and peers. Search engines came up as a service because of the content we created. And then, all of a sudden, we started creating content for the search engines in the hope of reaching more people. Google. People gave so much power to Google that it became a verb: google it. Why only google it? Why not bing it or duckduckgo it? We made a giant out of Google. Google and SEO are now synonyms. The SEO people optimize sites for Google. Rarely do SEO people think beyond Google. A proper digital marketing approach incorporates all methods of gaining traffic. The list includes Organic Social Media and PPC in addition to Google. I am not trying to make any point here. I simply shared my thoughts. Share yours in the comments below.

Nobody performs sacrifices in London so how does it rain there? The guy was referring to the verse of the Bhagavad Gita that says sacrifices create clouds and rain gives food. Obviously, he didn't pause to reflect on the verse and was mocking the Gita. This is what most people do. They take deep philosophical texts at their face value and fail to grasp the real meaning. Sacrifice, in this case, doesn't mean starting a fire and pouring clarified butter into it all the while chanting some mantras. Sacrifice refers to Karma Yoga.  According to Lord Krishna, when a person performs his action with the greater good in his mind, it is a sacrifice. Non-attachment to the result is the key to such sacrifices. The person acts saying God will preside over the action and whatever God wills will happen. It is Karma Yoga. One needs to understand that the Hindu scriptures are not something you should read at their face value. They have a deeper meaning. If confused, ask instead of making fun o...

Where did we come from and where do we go? Someone posed this question. Here's my answer per my understanding: According to the Hindu philosophy, you and everything else are always there. You were never born, being energy or soul.  The Universe keeps on being created and dissolved by itself. You and everything else are vibrations of energy so you will always be here, even after you leave your body. It is said that the soul takes up another body depending upon its karma.  This continues until the universe contracts into the Hiranyagarbha (womb of Brahman). There you lie until the universe expands again. It's all just Maya, a play of Brahman. That's according to the Hindu philosophy. Tat Tvam Asi, meaning you are that. Here, "that" refers to the Supreme Soul. You are the energy of That. Always vibrating, always alive.  You may read the speeches by Alan Watts to completely understand this and other philosophies.

Someone told me he wants to serve God but doesn't know which religion to follow. The following was my answer: You don't need a religion to serve God. In his discourse on Karma Yoga, Swami Vivekananda said the best way to serve God is to serve humankind without any attachments and without expecting any returns.  You simply think you are doing God's work and the results of such work belong to God. Think not of yourself as the doer because it is God acting through you. I would suggest reading "The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda" especially the Karma Yoga part. The book is also available at ramakrishnavivekananda dot info as text. You can read it on the website. All the best.

I don't understand the hate people have for other religions. There were posts all over Facebook and Reddit, mocking Christmas yesterday. Just as you believe in your religion, other people believe in their religion.  Understand that religion is not the goal. It is just a means to attain God. Don't make fun of others' beliefs. In doing so, you are berating your own God because God is the same across all religions. Is it too hard to accept the truth? Religions and beliefs are just different roads leading to the same destination. How would you reach your destination if you don't follow your path and are instead busy making fun of others?

Har ghar tiranga failed in Karnataka. Nobody has tiranga on their homes. Karnataka believes the North is ruining their culture.  BTW, Karnataka wants to have its own flag. This is the same Karnataka that was killing Biharis some time back. Instead of calling for peace, the then government arranged for special trains to get the North Indians back to their native places. Disgusting.  Meanwhile, people in TN are saying they are Tamijh and not Indians. Someone uploaded an image to Reddit that showed the whole world map as Tamijh. Irony.  Local politicians have ruined society and diversity in India. They've poisoned the minds of people by creating a divide among us. Earlier it was only religious. Then VP Singh brought in reservations, furthering the caste divide.  Rahul Gandhi says India is not a country but a union of states. People lapped it up for their personal benefits. There are now many groups online that identify themselves as different countries in the "union of...

Basically, Karma Yoga is about action. It says you reach the same point by acting as you would reach via devotion towards God. But the acts of action should be selfless. It is difficult to act & not expect anything in return. You need not worry though. Because what goes around, comes around. Action always produces results. These results, good or bad, are sure to come back to you sooner or later. Maybe not in the same life but they sure come back. You cannot simply act and escape the results. The Gita says, "Act. Don't worry about results." But results will always be there and you'll have to experience them. Isn't it contradictory? The Hindu scriptures say you can reduce effects of bad karma by performing acts of charity. Like feeding the fish, ants, and other animals. In the villages, they still follow the rule of making the first roti for a cow. Then there are other acts where people feed other people to get better results from their acts. Then again, the abo...

The principle of Vedanta is hard to follow. Though many people preach it, I doubt they follow it. According to Vedanta philosophy, God is one. Everything is made up of God. God is everything. So far it's nice. The issue arises when you try to see God in other human beings. People are different. They treat you differently. You want to see God in them, but you fail to relate them to God because they all act differently. Let's not go to acts. Action is still a distant thing when you notice their looks. They look good, they look bad, they look angry, they look sad, and so on. How can they be God? Forget humans too. Vedanta says the phone you are holding in your hands right now, is God. Does it make any sense? That phone, the screen, the person holding it, and the person who composed the text you are reading is God. How is that possible? That chair you are sitting on is also God. God is everywhere. Makes sense? Not to me. I tried to see God in everything and everyone and faile...

According to the Srimad Bhagavat Gita, prayers are of the types: 1. Satvik 2. Rajsik, and 3. Tamasic Satvik is when you pray to God and God only, accepting Him in your actions. Rajasik is when you pray to yakshas and demi gods. Tamasik is when you pray to ancestors and ghosts. The same Bhagvad Gita says that whomsoever you pray, God is the recipient of the prayers and the Providence thereof. Some people are so bound by their desires that they go visit graves of people. For example Ajmer Sharif, Nizamuddin Dargah, etc are graves. Basically, the people going there to get their wishes fulfilled are praying to ghosts/spirits. There were people in Chunar who went to a hilltop grave of some unknown person saying he fulfills the wishes of people who go there and light diyaa at his mazaar (grave). Mom used to go there and as usual, I had to accompany her. At that time, I hadn't read the Gita so I didn't know it was wrong according to the Hindu philosophy. I later asked G...

Are desires as bad as they are made up to be in any religion? Don't you need at least one desire to keep you going? Where would you be without any desire to live? That'd lead to depression. I am not saying that you should be bound by desires, but there are good and bad desires. You should be able to discard the bad ones. Again, there is no clear distinction between good and bad. It is up to you to decide what is good and what is not. There should be a balance. Giving up all your desires will make you a piece of meat. You'd want to end life itself. Are you supposed to give up all your desires? I thought about the above again and concluded that it is wrong, though not in its entirety. There are two states of being without desires. One is existence without a purpose. It means people without any aim because they are not happy with life. Such people are of tamasic nature - dull, full of lethargy, and having no desires. They feel life is a waste of time and wait for deat...

Twitter was created in 2007 as a microblogging platform. The initial character limit on Twitter was just 140 characters. It was fun until politicians and news agencies took over the platform. Obama was the first politician to bring politics to Twitter. He used it for his presidential campaign. News agencies followed and started providing news via the social media platform. It was now called a news aggregation platform, but the other things remained unchanged. Soon the fringe elements started using Twitter to spread their agendas. It became toxic due to these fringe elements and politicians. Modi was the first Indian politician to make use of the social media platform to gain votes. Last year, Elon Musk bought the platform saying he wants the Twitter Bird free. However, he changed things to make profits. Twitter started charging 900 rs to verify accounts and to provide them the premium facilities like better engagement and increased character count. With a 10000-character limi...

You might have noticed that all mantras begin with the sound of "OM". What you might have ignored or failed to notice is that mantras in Sanskrit end with "ithi" or "Swaha". Some of you end mantras with just a "Namah". Not to scare you, but if you fail to use "ithi" at end of each mantra or at the very end of any Stotra (hymn), the mantra & related offering (sacrifice or prasadam) doesn't reach the god being prayed. The word "ithi" marks the end of the mantra and urges gods to accept whatever you are offering. The word "swaha" is used more in homams (rituals where you put offerings/prasadam directly into the fire). Since people put offerings into the fire while saying "swaha", many of us associate it with "destruction". When anyone says "sab kuch swaha ho gaya (everything became swaha)", it does and should not be concluded that they lost things. It is a wrong notion that as...