Showing posts with label Hinduism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hinduism. Show all posts

Friday, 29 August 2014

Spiritual cities in India: Open meditation centers near the holy temples



Narendra Modi has been elected the Prime Minister of India from the most ancient and holy city of Varanasi on a new dawn of hope after a very long era of pessimism, neglect and stagnation. While Varanasi has been one of the center points  points of Indian spiritualism, in its present condition, it is disorganized and dirty. After taking over, Modi is fast tracking the ways to take the city out of its sorry state, and to scale it to new heights. He has added Kyoto on his upcoming visit to Japan, so that Varanasi can learn something from the development of this charming city.

While there must be hundreds of proposal to transform Varanasi and other heritage cities into vibrant centers of spirituality and culture, I would like to add one more suggestion to it. This has got purely to do with the spiritual aspect, rather than the infrastructure of the city. In present Kyoto, while there are hundreds of very beautiful temples who have preserved the rituals and cultures of Japan, they have mostly become a tourist destination. On the contrast, in India, many people visit Varanasi or other holy cities primary for the spiritual purpose rather than tourism. Thus, while developing these cities,  this aspect has to be kept in mind.

Indian spirituality definitely emphasizes rituals as a way to take the mind deeper into itself, but it prescribes self-introspection, primarily via meditation as the most important tool of self upliftment. Meditation has recently gained traction all over the world due to its perceptible and tangible benefits. Thus, while upgrading our own holy cities to the next level, it should be important to upgrade them spiritually as well. One of the ways to achieve it is to construct meditation centers for people in the vicinity of the holy temples, so that people can not only meet their deities, but they can also meditate upon them in peace for sometime. A beautiful statue of the deity related to the holy city can be placed in the meditation center. In many cases, there is no space near the temple as it is a very crowded area. In this situation, the meditation centers can be located as close as possible to the temple area.

Having such a meditation center will help the devotees to quietly sit down and infuse himself with the spirit pervading around the holy city. Meditative postures in holy atmosphere is a breeding ground for noble and uplifting ideas. It is the way forward for self upliftment, and to understand the true meaning of spirituality.

I am sure many other additions can be made to this suggestion, though I keep myself confined to this simple idea. Any other related ideas are welcome.

Monday, 14 November 2011

The Digvijay Singh Syndrom- Effects and cures





Attempting to write something about Digvijay Singh would be discarded by most of the people as a waste of time and space for a clown without any self-respect. Mostly agreeing to these views, sometimes I fear for a worse scenario. This post is just an illustration of that. Lets analyze some issues in this regard.




The disease called Digvijay Singh broke out a few years ago. It's first victim was the ex-CM of Madhya Pradesh, Mr Digvijaty Singh. He was just another incompetent politician before that, who did nothing for the development of his home state in two terms. Subsequently, the origin of this disease was his desire to get a bigger national role. The congerssi culture of sycophancy asks you to be a boot licker of the first family to go anywhere near to the top. Numerous congress leaders have fallen to sickening depths for this, and some were rewarded by Presidency for this. But Diggy seems to be affected by  some mutant virus of this trait, and hence is getting unique acclaim. This victim shows regular irrational speech, illogical statements, total lack of self-respect and selling soul and motherland for some votes.


Hating to call him Digvijay, I would call him Diggy henceforth. Diggy on record abuses respected Hindu teachers, be it Baba Ramdev or Sri Sri, calls a terrorist as "Osamaji" along with other honorific verbs, alleges falsely about hindu organizations, and denounces our brave soldiers for "false encounters". That he tries to impose an incompetent Rahul on the country as the "best choice" is his personal choice, but other issues do concern us very much. It is those aspects that I want to touch here.

Before this disease broke out, I was really proud of our plural culture, that the President was a Muslim, PM was a Sikh, president of largest political party was a Christian and so forth. And I hated RSS as being communal and so forth. Today, I am more careful about this fact, as Diggy opened my eyes to the sad truth that instead of respecting our pluralism, all these people are just taking advantage of the liberalism of the majority. It is easy to brush aside his views as personal hallucinations, but we can't forget that he is doing so in the capacity of general secretary of AICC. Diggy's non-stop barbs make it clear that he has the permission of "High Command".  That tells us the direction which congress is taking now. Not that it was not in the past, but now it has became more brazen.

Apart from that, Diggy is the mentor of the future PM(shamefully). And why diggy is so intent on Rahul? He knows very well that Rahul is incompetent. Diggy is proving his best to qualify as sycophant in chief to be the prime among power wielder.  Due to the fractitious nature of Indian politics, this can easily happen. Then Rahul becomes PM, and diggy will be made the HM. Those people who think that Diggy can not get that post due to his ill-reputation reigning everywhere today, just look at SM Krishna as the Foreign Minister. Or look no further than the PM today. If those people can be in those post, then I surely see doggy as the HM of India. That will be disastrous for our country, Hindu leaders, and our plural heritage. Many things will be tried to sacrifice brazenly at the altar of vote-bank politics. Though I firmly believe that be it Diggy or any other Bhasmasur, our cultural heritage will come out unscathed from these setbacks as has happened in the past, yet we can at least be aware of future challenges and dangers.


What can we do in this regard? The starting step is to take pride in ourselves, our traditions and our faith. We are  proud of our pluralistic thinking. Now we have to be proud of its source as well. The primary source of it is  the liberal Hindu mindset. We have to be proud Hindus, and should start taking notice of the insults and abuses hurled at us from all around. If we do not do it, people like diggy will keep on insulting it to bank on the vote-bank politics. These moron think that even today the average educated man doesn't understand issues. We have to change this scenario.

It is a truth that we are largely unaware of our national heritage. We are getting cut from our roots. We can barely say five lines about the salient features of our faith and tradition which has enabled its flow for centuries now. In this age when our media is ruled by Saudi Arab or the baptist church, it is high-time that we be at least aware of our culture. If you don't believe it, just check the ownership of CNN-IBN, a quick google search will do. The anti-Hindu barbs it presents in too well known by now. The surprising thing is the brazenness with which they do it. The leftist ideology and the false implementation of secularism has done us great disservice.

Today it is very probable that a westerner will talk about Hinduism with more pride than can an average Indian does so. We are ashamed to say that we are a proud hindu, as it can make us branded as "communal" and fundamentalist. What can be the greater tragedy than that in our country!!


People like diggy make us aware of the importance of being in touch with out roots, else people with blind lust for power will start to take the society for granted, as has happened in the past few decades.

We have to learn more about our culture, traditions and the great philosophies in it. We have to learn yoga ourselves. Most of us do things if many other people are doing it. Particulary the educated west is doing it. Well, the west is mad to know these beautiful things which  has come out of our culture, and which people like diggy are hell-bent on insulting. The reason being they are beneficial to us as human beings.

So be aware, know, practice and preserve !