Victimization of Self

"I could have done better in the exams, if the neighbor had kept the music on a lower volume"

"These stupid people don't know when to stop partying. Can't they see I'm focusing for my interview?"

"I find happiness in other's happiness. I have given away myself for the others."

I am sure, we all come across such statements every day. We often know and revere the originators of such statements.

May I please have the liberty to hurt your feelings and call these revered people as cowards?

Yes these people are cowards who shy away from taking the responsibilities on their head and solving it. It is the easiest path for anyone to walk away from our responsibilities. After all, the world was created by the God for all of us to live happily or live with the consequences of our choices. God made all of us equal – giving the choice and the ability to think through. Then why do we blame someone else for our happiness? It is because we do not want to take up the responsibility on our shoulders and work towards it! Why do you think most of us complain about our boss or the workplace? Because, if you do not complain of them, the responsibility of your growth falls on you!

May a times we also find some people who not only complain of everything, make you the reason for their suffering too!. Be careful. Life is what we choose it to be. Never a bed of roses – we all know for sure. Every action or inaction in life has its consequence. I learnt somewhere that leaders are not who always take the right decisions, but those who make their decisions and live by the same.

Vacancies – Positions open – Deva or Asura?

We have all heard innumerable stories about the Devas or Suras and their arch-rivals Asuras. The story of their enmity has often taken heights and has been showcased by multiple high grossing Hollywood as well as Bollywood movies. Do you know that there are positions available amongst the Suras and Asuras equally if you are interested?

Many of us might recall the Sura and Asura are both brothers from the same father – Maharishi Kashyap but different mothers – Diti and Aditi. Due to their constant strife for power they are both assigned different homes – the sky (Heaven or Swarga) and underground (Patala), We have always visualized the Suras as the nice looking heroes who are always struggling to keep ugly looking, wrong doing Asuras at bay from capturing their abode.

Let's take a slightly distorted view and consider them equal and then understand them both!

• Both Devatas and Asuras are the offspring of the same maharishi.
  
• They are both the creatures of the same God – Lord Brahma
  
• They both fight for the same Lakshmi
  

However, there are a few differences as well –

• The Devatas strive to maintain their abode in Swarga, they never venture out of their territory. The Asuras on the other hand, do not consider the territory to be the binding factor. They are always looking to increase their territory.
  
• The Devatas always strive to keep the Lakshmi, while the Asuras always strive to get Lakshmi.
  
• The Devatas represent stagnation while the Asuras represent growth. 
  
• It is almost always seen that the killing of Asuras liberates or makes Lakshmi, while a downfall of Devata brings sadness
  
• Thefight amongst them is vertical – Up vs Down
  

So are the Asuras evil? Remember, "Evil" means absence of God. But we know, that the God is omnipresent and omniscient and nothing exists if God I not present!

So are Asuras evil? Nope. They are what the Devas are not. They represent the industriousness, relentlessness, hard work, ambition and growth. The only thing they lack is adherence to Dharma. For them the growth is their dharma. Throughout their quest for Lakshmi, they do not care for Saraswati – the goddess of knowledge. In little times, when they do care for Saraswati, it is to get Lakshmi and forget Saraswati later. Hence this phenomenon is referred to as VidyaLakshmi.

Remember the good Asuras who created legend for all of us – Prahalad (son of Hiranyakashyap) and his descendents – Virochan, Bali. Virochana – Prahlada's son followed the path of dharma and believed that his salvation would come if he helped others in their desires. Vishnu desires his neck and Virochana gives it away by beheading himself. Bali, his son, is no different! Bali gave away his entire empire to "Vaman Deva" – an incarnation of Vishnu only to live in Patala (Underground). What we do not realize is that the growing size of the Vamana avatara of Vishnu represents the growing form of the human desires.

Like it or not, the story says that there were good Asuras and there were bad Suras too. Being industrious and hardworking, the Asuras kept creating Lakshmi. Lakshmi on the other hand, came to being when the underground was mined or worked upon or killing of Asuras – choose what you like.

Probably, this is the reason why God likes them too. But the God creates a delicate balance for the nature to survive!

None of them bad! They both have good qualities. Choose what you are and when!

Kauravas in heaven

A few weeks ago, in my blog on "Did Yudhishthira went to heaven?" I mentioned that he saw Kaurava brothers in the heaven. And he was enraged. But do we know why?

Kuru – the great ancestor of the Pandavas and Kauravas once tilled a land close to Hastinapuri – his capital. He tilled the earth with such determination that he used his flesh as the seeds and his blood as the water for the seeds to germinate. Upon seeing this, Indra descended from his throne and asked Kuru for his wish. Kuru requested nothing for himself, but for others. He asked ascension to heaven for anyone who dies on the land he tilled. Though Indra could not refuse Kuru's request, he added a condition that the person must die as a warrior.

The land was later known as Kurukshtera and all who died (mainly Kauravas) ascended to heaven for just having died on the land.

Sometimes, we may have done our best and have been the most righteous of all, yet we may not be the one to achieve success. Never loose the hope. There are bigger things in play than you think. Remember, the scale on which the success or failure is determined is created by man. And hence the scale changes with time. What you can do is to set the scale in relative terms for yourself. Since you remain the subject all the time and you remain the measured quantity the scale works better when you measure how much good you did for yourself and others. Never try to judge yourself from other's perspectives.

If there is someone who can remember you, you have conquered the world.

Long ago, there was a king Indradyumna. He went to Swarga of his great deeds. However, after a few years he was sent back to the earth since his account of good deeds was drained. He was told if he could find anyone who could remember him, he can come back to swarga. Indradyumna went to the oldest man on earth who couldn't recognize the old king. However, the old man pointed the king to an old owl. The owl pointed the king to a swan who directed him to a turtle. The old turtle remembered the king and thanked him for the lake he built. The king couldn't recollect anything about the lake. The king had once donated so many of his cows that the earth moved by the moving of the cows from the shelter. This trough formed in the shelter area later became a pond and then the lake where the turtle lived. The king then got his right to get back to the swarga. Hence, knowingly or unknowingly, if you help others, you are sure to succeed.

Deepawali or Diwali – Why do we celebrate the same?

In my own quest, I missed my daughter's questions – Wh do we celebrate Diwali or Deepawali? What is this festival? And why is there so much hype about it?

Let's see!

Deepawali or the festival of lights has always been called Diwali in the easy linguistic terms. It is a festival to mark the return of Sri Rama in Ayodhya after completing his 14 years of exile. However, Deepawali in today's terms is a 5 day festival and each day has its own story. I will try my best to explain for each one of these.

Day 1 – Dhanteras

Dhanteras is the combination of two words – "Dhan" and "Teras". Dhan means money or wealth while Teras means thirteenth. Thus Dhanteras falls on the thirteenths day of the month of Kartik. It happens to be two days prior to Diwali and thus marks the start of the celebration. As evident from its name, the festival of Dhanteras is celebrated in the honor of Kubera – the yaksha and the symbol of wealth accumulation.

Per the legends, there are two prominent stories for this day –

Story 1 – At the end of the ocean churning or Samudramanthan, Dhanvantri appeared with a pot of Amrit or the elixir. This is what all the gods and demons came together for. It is said Dhanvantari appeared on the day which we call as Dhanteras.

Story 2 – It is said that there once was a young prince Hima who was said to die in 4 days of snake bite. His wife, upon hearing this, spread out all the gold and jewels all over the room and started to tell stories. She did not let the prince sleep and kept him engaged through the story telling and songs. At the destined time, when Yamraaj ented their chamber in form of a snake, he too got mesmerized by the princess' stories. At the same time, all the glittering gold blinded him and he couldn't see clearly. Blinded and lost Yamraaj couldn't keep track of the time and returned back silently in the morning. The princess saved the prince this way. Dhanteras, is celebrated to have the glittering gold all over to divert Yamraaj or any bad feeling coming near us.

Day 2 – NarakChaturdasi

Quite a controversial day! The northerners in India celebrate this day as Chotti Diwali. While the southerners celebrate this as the main Diwali. The stories for both the factions are similar with minor differences.

NarakChaturdasi story – Call me prejudiced, but I shall start with the Northerners story. Sri Krishna once fought with a demon named Narkasur. Narkasur was the son of famous Hiranyksha and had kidnapped 1600 women. At the end of a gruelsome fight, Sri Krishna finally beheaded Narkasur and freed all the captives. When the women pleaded as to where to go and about societal denial for their acceptance, Sri Krishna accepted them as his wives. Probably the reason for many widow ashrams in Vrindavan.

NarakChaturdasi story with the not-northern twist – It is said that Narkasur had the boon that he could only be killed by his mother. During the fight, Narkasur injured Sri Krishna. When Sri Krishna was hurt, Satyabhama – Sri Krishna's wife who accompanied him in this war, got enraged and fought Narkasur. By virtue of being the mother of the universe, Satyabhama killed Narkasur. Similar is the tory in the eastern part of India where they know this festival as Kali Chaudas or Kali Chaturdashi. The southerners celebrate this to be the main Diwali day.

While the means have been different, the end was the same – Victory of good over evil.

Day 3 – Deepawali

This is the day when Sri Rama came back to Ayodhya. In honor of his return the entire city was decorated with lights and the residents burnt crackers. This is the day very well known to all of us as well.

Some stories also tell that this is the day when the Pandavas lost their kingdom, brothers and wife in the game of dice. I am not sure, why people still consider this day auspicious for playing poker?

Day 4 – Pariva or Annakuta

Annakuta is referred to as the mixing of the grains and the all vegetation together. This is the day when Sri Krishna lifted the Mount Govardhana on his little finger to save all the residents from the wrath of Indra. The legend says that all the people used to worship Indra in order for timely rains which would be helpful for their agriculture. However, this developed pride in Indra. To curb his pride, Sri Krishna devised a plan of worshipping the mount Govardhana. When Indra saw this, he unleashed rain god upon earth and caused devastation. Sri Krishna saved all the people and animals of Brij under the shelter provided by Govardhana Parvata. It is said that SriNathji is an embodiment of Govardhana Parvata and is still there in the village named Jatipura close to Mathura.

Annakuta or Dhanakuta is mixing of strength, grains and vegetables till you get something good. This is also a turning chapter in the Vedic food preparation technique where mixing of grains was prohibited.

Day 5 – Yama Dwitiya or Dooj

Day five of the festival is the day of celebration of the brother-sister love. It is a day dedicated to the love of Yama and Yamuna – the son and daughter of Surya. It is said if any brother and sister pair takes a dip in Yamuna together on this day, both will have a long happy life.

 

All said, the festival of Diwali is also mark of the new crop. Diwali is celebrated just in time when the new Kharif crop is harvested. India being an agricultural country it is hard to distinguish the festivals from the crop cycles. Similarly, holi is celebrated when the Rabi crop is harvested. Since these crops are primarily north-indian, the festivals also resonate with north Indians more. Similarly, the Pongal, Onam, Durga Puja and Ganesh Chaturthi all follow the regional agriculture cycles. Don't they?

 

Lakshmi – The goddess of wealth and the thirst for her

In continuation of the ideas from my previous post, I take the liberty of writing some more.

We worship Lakshmi in many forms and strive to get more of her. In fact our thirst for Lakshmi never ends.

The question is how do we get Lakshmi? History tells us that you need to churn the ocean to get Lakshmi. Churn resembles hard work and also collaboration of the driving forces. The collaboration is to be understood from the perspective that there are two different opposing forces which work in tandem to give some and pull some fashion. The competition between the groups, the churn of ideas, and the dilemma in mind is fruitful till the time the forces work in tandem to produce greater goods for the organization and decision making. Consider the benefits for the consumers in the market when two product companies compete to enhance their shares.

However, there is one more point to the churn. When Lakshmi came out of the Kshirasagar, she immediately went to Sri Vishnu overlooking the handsome gods or powerful demons. This tells that though hardwork is important to realize Lakshmi, an innate knowledge of the purpose is even more important to hold Lakshmi by your side. What we need to inculcate in ourselves is the knowledge of self and work towards the attainment of the wisdom to understand the purpose.

Remember – being an Indra you may be the king, but will be worried for life – you would always run after Lakshmi but she'll run from you. Being a Vishnu, Lakshmi walks towards you – you help solve issues getting involved but not being consumed by them. Being a Shiva, you renounce Lakshmi – you still solve issues but neither get involved nor take part in anything.

Lakshmi – Goddess of wealth

This weekend all of my family was busy preparing for Diwali – the festival of lights. We started with cleaning up the home, decorating it with lights and other artifacts. At the same time, we took out the Ganesh and Lakshmi idols for cleaning, so that we can perform the Diwali rituals. My daughter asked me the question – why do we worship Ganesh and Lakshmi? They aren't a couple and also didn't we perform Ganesh Chaturthi a few weeks ago? Why do we also have a third goddess – Saraswati in the images related to Diwali? Wonderful questions – I remarked, and got back to study harder. Let's see if I can do justice to her curiosity or arouse more?

Ganesh is worshipped by the virtue of the boon he received from Lord Shiva.

Lakshmi as we all know is the wife of Vishnu. She is the goddess of wealth and good fortune. We all strive to get her and probably lead our lives in quest for more of her. Remember the post where I talked of how Indra runs after Lakshmi and Lakshmi finds comfort in the feet of Vishnu. All through our lives we fight for her. Why? Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth, prosperity and money as some call it. Lakshmi is symbolically denoted by water, gold, vegetation, elephants, lotus, owl and virtues.

The puranas talk about Lakshmi to have come out of the ocean (Kshirsagar) as a result of the samudra-manthan or the churn. Hence she is known to be a daughter of the sea. It is said that Lakshmi walked out of the ocean dressed in white with pot of wealth in her hand and a divine peace in her face. She overlooked everyone, walked over to Vishnu and put a garland around his neck. A lesser known fact is about Alakshami or Jyeshtha. Alakshmi or Jyeshha is considered to be the elder sister of Lakshmi. She is said to come out of the ocean dressed in blood red. Alakshmi is said to have emerged after the poison came from the churning of the ocean. Some also say that she was the product of the sweat or saliva from the snake Vasuki who was used as the rope to churn the ocean.

Alakshmi is attributed to everything opposite of Lakshmi – poverty or daridrata, fights or kalaha. She is said to have been disowned by everyone. Later listening to her plight, Sri Vishnu owned her and gave her equal status like Lakshmi thereby creating two sides of the same coin! Alakshmi is often considered to be embodied as the owl – the Lakshmi carrier.

From the above story about the Lakshmi, what we realize is when Lakshmi comes, Alakshmi follows. Lakshmi and Alakshmi come always together. While Lakshmi gives us the wealth, health and prosperity, Alakshmi pollutes the mind, home and creates situations for devastation. While Lakshmi is always welcomed and worshipped, Alakshmi is neither welcomed nor worshipped. But she always accompanies Lakshmi. How do we separate the two or rather reduce the effect created by Alakshmi? The answer is provided by Saraswati – the goddess of knowledge. Remember, Sarawati rides a swan. A swan is the only creature who can differentiate and separate milk from water. When we worship the goddess of knowledge, we get the power to distinguish between Lakshmi and Aalakshm and hence find ways to reduce the impact of Alakshmi. This is the reason for worshipping Lakshmi and Saraswati together. Lakshmi is never worshipped alone for the fear of Alakshmi.

Now we ask the question, we all study hard to be engineers or doctors or whatever and yet we do not gain Laksmi? What went wrong in our worship for Saraswati? The answer is simple! You got what you asked for! One studies not for knowledge but to earn Lakshmi. And hence you are not really worshipping Saraswati but another form of Lakshmi – VidyaLakshmi. Unless you gain blessings from Saraswati, there is no savior from Alakshmi.

I wonder how many of us have figurines of elephants in our house. Do we know why?

Violence - where does it all starts?

Tune in into any channel or read any newspaper. You will be looking at innumerable news filled with violence in many forms –political, poverty, castes, racism, domestic and even sex. The first thing I would have thought was disgust and anger for the one who inflicted violence. At the same time, the feeling for sympathy comes in for the victim.

I have often asked where does the violence starts? Is it only the result of the social or poverty injustice or is it inbuilt part of the human nature? I guess both. While there has been a great deal of discussion on the former reasoning, I shall work on the later part here!

Imagine a forest with a tiger and a deer. The deer is running all over chased by the tiger. Finally when the tiger catches the deer, the tiger rips the deer with it claws and tears the flesh of the deer’s skin with its teeth. The tiger savors the deer and then moves on looking for another prey another day. A violent story, ain’t it? I say NO.  This is the story of the survival. The tiger has to kill the deer for itself to survive. The deer has to run and save itself or else it will be killed.

Now let’s talk of another story – King Shibi and the dove. This story is very famous in both the Hindu scriptures as well as the Buddhist Jataka tales.

Once upon a time, king Shibi was very famous for his generous and altruistic character. Once a dove flew into the lap of the king looking for shelter. The dove was being chased by an eagle. The king immediately granted sanctuary to the dove. The eagle then cried foul and asked the king to feed his hunger. The king offered the food for eagle weighing equal to the dove. No food in the entire kingdom could match the dove’s weight. Finally Shibi started to cut himself in order to feed the eagle.

In one version of the tales, the eagle and the dove transformed into the gods and praised Shibi. Shibi was then offered a way to heaven.

In the other version, the eagle then stopped Shibi and called him fool. Enraged, Shibi asked him the reason for such salutation? The eagle explained – “If you take the dove away from me, you may save the dove but my family would die of hunger. If you give your body to me, what happens to my hunger tomorrow? Who would save this dove from me tomorrow? Who would take care of your kingdom tomorrow? Who would take care of the subjects and ensure a better life for tomorrow? Saving the dove is great, but is also against the nature. It’s the wish of the god who made dove weak and gave an eagle the hunger for the dove.”

This similar idea is also displayed in the Vishnu Purana – “Matsya Avtar” through the “Matsyay Nyay” or the rule of the wild. The big fish easts the small fish to survive and any disruptions in this cycle would lead to devastations as experienced by Manu. The great Manu was approached by a small fish and the fish requested – save me from the bigger fishes today and someday I shall save you. Manu took the fish to his home and kept her in a small vessel. The fish outgrew the vessel and many more with time while Manu kept transferring her to the bigger one. Manu couldn’t believe that his small fish has become the big fish now and can fend for itself. Finally one day when Manu couldn’t hold her in the pond or the lake or the river, had to let go of the fish in the sea. This was the time of the great deluge or “Pralay”. The Vishnu purana says that the same fish came to save Manu and his family’s boat. This fish was the first embodiment of the Lord Vishnu. This story teaches two concepts for the early mankind – empathy and the law of the jungle.

Thus violence for me is also the need for survival. The humane in us should be able to judge when the need subsides and when the cruelty starts.