Arun's Corner

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...

Imagine running a search and getting a full document from BARD or Chat GPT that may or may not be accurate or complete. People will still gobble up the info. It would be worse than social media because the output could be biased in favour of or against something. Most of these MNC companies are controlled by left leaning people who'd change history just because it satisfies their whims. I cannot see any bright side to chat GPT or BARD. Not at the moment. I mean people can be poisoned just by tweaking the algorithm. posted from Bloggeroid