Can Meditation Be Passionate ??

This is from an email I received.. loved it so much.. couldn't help sharing it..


CAN MEDITATION BE PASSIONATE?


Yes, that is the only way for meditation to exist. Passion is energy, passion is fire, passion is life. If you are doing meditation just so-so, without any passion, without intensity, without fire, nothing will happen. If you are praying just as a formality and it is not love that has arisen in your heart, it is meaningless, it is absurd. If you are praying to God without passion there will be no connection between you and God. Only passion can become the bridge, the thirst, the hunger. The more thirsty you are, the more is the possibility. If you are utterly thirsty, if you have become just a thirst, your whole being is consumed by your passion, then only something happens -- in that intensity, in that moment of hundred-degree passion.


Don't be lukewarm. People live a lukewarm life. They are neither this nor that, hence they remain mediocre. If you want to get beyond mediocrity, create a life of great passion. Whatsoever you do, do it passionately. If you sing, then sing passionately. If you love, then love passionately. If you paint, then paint passionately. If you talk, then talk passionately. If you listen, then listen passionately. If you meditate, then meditate passionately.


And from everywhere you will start having contact with God -- wherever passion is. If you are painting with utter passion, your painting is meditation. There is no need for any other meditation. If you are dancing with absolute passion so that the dancer disappears and only the dance remains, it is meditation, no other need, nowhere to go, no yoga postures. This is the yoga postures: the dancer has disappeared and the dance is there. It is pure energy -- energy vibrating. In that state you contact. Why in that state do you contact? -- because when the passion is great, the ego dies. The ego can exist only in mediocre minds; only mediocre people are egoistic. The really great are not egoistic, they cannot be. But their life has a totally different direction, a different dimension -- the dimension of passion.


Have you observed these two words -- passion and compassion?
Passion becomes transformed into compassion. There is a quantum leap from passion into compassion --
but the quantum leap happens only when you are boiling at one hundred degrees. Then the water becomes vapor. It is the same energy that exists as passion and one day becomes compassion.


Compassion is not antagonistic to passion; it is passion come of age, it is passion bloomed. It is the spring season for passion.


I am all for passion. Do whatsoever you do but be lost into it, abandon yourself into it, dissolve yourself into it. And dissolution becomes salvation.


From The Diamond Sutra - OSHO

Vikram Buddhi -- Anti-Bush Blogger -- Wrongfully Jailed, says Family

The article below is from the Indian Express. Its is about Vikram Buddhi, an IIT alum and a student who till 2006 was pursuing his PhD at Purdue.. that is till the time he was imprisoned in the US on allegations of having written against ex-President Bush on his blog. I remember at my Univ at Ashland, and even other places, people so openly spoke against Bush; then why this disparity??

I am surprised that Vikram Buddhi's case has been highlighted in Indian newspapers alone. When I googled his name, there was not a single US newspaper that mentioned his plight.

From the Indian Express
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/seeking-sons-release-from-us-jail-father-says-ministers-help-assured/536339/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Three years after Vikram Buddhi was arrested in the US for allegedly posting an online hate message against then President George Bush, his father will finally hear from the Indian government on what progress it has made in its efforts to secure his release.

On Wednesday, Dr Buddhi Kota Subbarao is set to be given a government update on the action taken. Subbarao has been fighting a lone legal battle for the release of his son, lodged in a prison in Chicago. US authorities had even deported Subbarao to India; illegally, he says, to block legal help to his son.

After several requests to the Ministry of External Affairs, ministers and senators, the Indian Consulate in US, and several officials, Subbarao was finally called on October 29 for a meeting with External Affairs Minister S M Krishna, to explain his son’s case. This was after several letters to the minister and other departments seeking government intervention.

“I explained to the Minister the gross irregularities in Vikram’s case carried out by Judge James T. Moody. The minister agreed there was no valid indictment charge mentioned in the case and Vikram apparently looked to have been framed,” Subbarao said.

Subbarao, a former Indian Navy Captain, urged the Minister for government intervention and a dialogue with the US authorities and Department of Justice for a review of his son’s case.

“The Minister noticed irregularities committed by Judge Moody and referred the case to the law department for possible options before the government in securing justice for Vikram. The minister assured me that by Wednesday, I will be receiving correspondence from the Ministry on the action taken.”

Vikram, who was studying applied mathematics at Purdue University, was arrested in April 2006 and charged on 11 counts. He was found guilty but his sentencing has been getting postponed since 2007. The next date for pronouncement of sentence is November 19.

“Whatever action is taken has to be before the sentence and the government has to act fast. I said as much to Mr Krishna who agreed with me in principle and directed his officials to act swiftly,” said Subbarao.

Violinist in the Metro !!

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats averaged $100.

Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The detailed article on this Washington Post experiment carried out at L' Enfant Plaza on January 12, 2007 can be found at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

Two quotes from the long article--

"For many of us, the explosion in technology has perversely limited, not expanded, our exposure to new experiences. Increasingly, we get our news from sources that think as we already do. And with iPods, we hear what we already know; we program our own playlists."

"Couple of years ago, a homeless guy died right there. He just lay down there and died. The police came, an ambulance came, and no one even stopped to see or slowed down to look."People walk up the escalator, they look straight ahead. Mind your own business, eyes forward. Everyone is stressed. Do you know what I mean?"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

-- from Leisure, by W.H. Davies

How Poor Are We ??

(from an email I received)

One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people live.


They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.

On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, 'How was the trip?'

'It was great, Dad.'

'Did you see how poor people live?' the father asked.

'Oh yeah,' said the son. 'So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?' asked the father

The son answered:
'I saw that we have one dog and they had four.

We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end.

We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night.

Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.

We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight.

We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.

We buy our food, but they grow theirs.

We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them.'


The boy's father was speechless.

Then his son added, 'Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are.'


Isn't perspective a wonderful thing?

Makes you wonder what would happen if we all gave thanks for everything we have, instead of worrying about what we don't have.

Appreciate every single thing you have.

SEZ who? Not the farmers..

An article from "Down To Earth" magazine (CSE - India) by Nidhi Jamwal

First public audit of special economic zones in Maharashtra kickstarts a nation-wide effort

“Zameen aamcha hakkachi,
naahi konachya baapa chi ”
(This land is ours, not somebody else’s)

On September 15, this slogan rent the air of Div village, 100 km from Mumbai. Over 300 farmers from eight districts of Maharashtra met at Div in Raigad district to participate in the first-ever public audit of special economic zones (sezs). A group of non-profits initiated the public audit.

The message was: farmers would not give away their land to industry or government for sezs. “The government can take my life, but not my land,” said Dhakibai Thakur, 60-year-old farmer from Raigad’s Vadhav village. She made this clear to a panel—comprising former bureaucrats, academics, journalists, industrialists—conducting the audit.

“The idea behind the audit is to take people’s voice to the government and question the validity of the sez Act,” said Aruna Roy, founder of the non-profit Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan. “Maharashtra’s audit is a beginning. Similar audits will be carried out in other states,” she warned.


Brains behind the initiative

In July this year, the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (tiss) in Mumbai, National Centre for Advocacy Studies in Pune and others initiated plans. The organizations identified and gave affected villagers questionnaires seeking their opinion on the sez in their area and how it affected their lives.

“The questionnaire was in Marathi. If a farmer was illiterate, volunteers assisted. Discussions were held and reports compiled. Villagers presented the reports to the panel at Div,” said Surekha Dalvi, advocate and land rights activist involved in planning the public audit.

Maharashtra has the largest number of sezs approved in the country—202—and was the groups’ obvious choice for the first audit. The decision to meet in Raigad was symbolic. “Farmers here have put up a bold front in the past and are opposing Reliance Group’s Mumbai sez Ltd,” said Roy. “It was because of their stiff resistance the state held a referendum on sez. Though 96 per cent villagers voted against the sez, the government has not made the results public,” she added. (See ‘Our voice’, Down To Earth, October 15, 2008).

At the audit, farmers called sezs a suicide pact. A group from Nagpur presented their case against mihan ( Multi-modal International Hub Airport at Nagpur) sez. “The project will consume 14 villages’ land—4,025 hectare. Half the land is acquired and lying vacant,” said Babaji Dawre of Shivagaon village. “The land acquired was fertile. Since 2000, over a million orange trees have been cut down,” said Dawre whose village would be used for the airstrip. “The government can build the airstrip over our dead bodies,” he added. The airstrip would also mean the end of a robust milk economy of Shivagaon, which earns Rs 25-29 crore annually.

Farmer groups from Nashik and Pune narrated similar stories of losses, meagre compensations and cheating. A farmer from Amravati district alleged the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation had acquired land from farmers on the pretext of ‘public good’ and given it to private companies for sezs.

“The situation is grim. The government must pause and ponder,” said Swapna Banerjee-Guha, professor at tiss, after hearing out farmers at the day-long audit. “We will compile our report and release it soon,” he said.

Audits will next be organized in Goa, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Orissa and West Bengal. Activists and farmers will then go to Delhi and demand dismissal of sezs. “We do not want sezs pushed from one district to the other. People’s concerns are the same across the country,” said Ulka Mahajan of sez -Virodhi Sangharsh Samiti, Raigad.

Why the Fear in Love ??

Love is natural; it is already there in your heart, ready to burst. The only thing that has to be done is to allow it. You are creating all sorts of hindrances and obstacles. You are not allowing it. It is already there -- you simply relax a little and it will come, it will burst, it will bloom. And when it blooms for an ordinary person, immediately the ordinary has become the extraordinary.

Love makes everybody extraordinary; it is such an alchemy. An ordinary woman suddenly is transfigured when you love her. She is no more ordinary; she is the most extraordinary woman that ever existed. It is not that you are blind, as others will say. In fact, you have seen the extraordinary which is always hidden in every ordinariness. Love is the only eye, the only vision, the only clarity. You have seen in the ordinary woman the whole womanhood -- past, present, future -- all women combined together. When you love a woman, you have realized the very feminine soul in her. Suddenly she becomes extraordinary. Love makes everybody extraordinary.

If you go deeper into your love... because there are difficulties to go deeper in love, because the more you go deeper, the more you lose yourself, a fear arises, a trembling grips you. You start avoiding the depth of love because the depth of love is just like death. You create barriers between you and your beloved, because the woman seems like an abyss -- and can be absorbed into it -- and she is. You come out of a woman; she can absorb you: that is the fear. She is the womb, the abyss, and when she can give birth to you, why not death? In fact, only that which gives you birth can give you death, so the fear is there. A woman is dangerous, very mysterious. You cannot live without her and you cannot live with her. You cannot go very far away from her because suddenly, the further you go the more ordinary you become. And you cannot come very close, because the closer you come... You disappear.

This is the conflict in every love. So one has to make a compromise; you don't go very far away, you don't come very close. You stand just in the middle somewhere, balancing yourself. But then love cannot go deep. Depth is attained only when you drop all fears and you jump headlong. The danger is there, and the danger is true: that love will kill your ego. Love is poison to the ego -- life to you, but death to the ego. One has to take the jump. If you allow intimacy to grow, if you come closer and closer and closer and dissolve into the being of a woman, now she will not only be extraordinary, she will become divine because she will become a door to eternity. The closer you come to a woman, the more you feel she is a door of something beyond.

And the same happens to the woman with the man. She has her own problems. The problem is that if she comes closer to the man, the closer she comes, the man starts escaping. Because the closer the woman comes, the man becomes more and more afraid. The closer a woman comes, the man starts escaping her, finding a thousand and one excuses to be away. So a woman has to wait; and if she waits then again there is a problem: if she takes no initiative it looks like indifference, and indifference can kill love.

Nothing is more dangerous to love than indifference. Even hatred is good, because at least you have certain type of relationship with the person you hate. Love can survive hate, but love cannot survive indifference. And the woman always in a difficulty... if she takes the initiative the man simply escapes. No man can tolerate a woman who takes initiative. That means that the abyss is coming on her own near you! -- before it is too late, you escape.

That's how Don Juans are created. Then from one woman to another they go on. They live in a hit-and-run affair, because if you are too much there, then the abyss will absorb you. Don Juans are not lovers, not at all. They look like lovers because continuously they are on move -- every day a new woman. But they are people deep in fear, because if they remain with one woman for long, then intimacy will grow, and they will come closer, and who knows what will happen? So they just live for a certain amount of time; before it is too late, they escape.

Byron loved almost hundreds of women in his small span of life. He is the archetype, the Don Juan. He never knew love. How can you know love when you move from one to another, and another, and another? Love needs seasoning; it needs time to settle; it needs intimacy; it needs deep trust; it needs faith. The woman is always in trouble -- "What to do?" If she takes initiative, the man escapes. If she remains as if not interested, then too the man escapes because the woman is not interested. So she has to choose a mid-ground: a little initiative and a little indifference together, a mixture. And both are in a bad shape, because these compromises will not allow you to grow.

Compromise never allows anybody to grow. Compromise is a calculating, cunning thing; it is businesslike, not love-like. When lovers are really unafraid of each other and the dropping of the ego, they jump into each other headlong. They jump so deeply that they become each other. They become in fact one, and when this oneness happens then love transforms into prayer. When this oneness happens, then suddenly a religious quality comes to love.

First love has the quality of sex. If it is shallow, it will be reduced to sex; in fact it will not be love. If love becomes deeper, then it will have the quality of spirituality, the quality of divineness. So love is just a bridge between this world and that, sex and samadhi. That's why I go on calling the journey, from sex to superconsciousness. Love is just a bridge. If you don't move on the bridge, sex will be your life, your whole life, very ordinary, very ugly. Sex can be beautiful, but only with love and as part of love. Alone in itself it is ugly. It is just like this: your eyes are beautiful, but if the eyes are taken out of your sockets they will become ugly. The most beautiful eyes will become ugly if they are cut from the body.

-- Osho

The Good Old Days !! (score 6)

Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?'
'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him.
'All the food was slow.'

'C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?'
'It was a place called 'at home,'' I explained!
'Mum cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.'

By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.
But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it :

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore Levis , set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card.

My parents never drove me to school. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow).
We didn't have a television in our house until I was 19.
It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; it came back on the air at about 6 a.m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people...

I never had a telephone in my room.The only phone was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home... But milk was.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers --my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. He had to get up at 6AM every morning.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies.. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren. Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing.

Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?

MEMORIES from a friend :

My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it.. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons.. Man, I am old.

How many do you remember?

Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.

Ignition switches on the dashboard.

Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.

Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.

Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.

Older Than Dirt Quiz :
Count all the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about.
Ratings at the bottom.

1.Candy cigarettes
2..Coffee shops with tableside juke boxes
3.Home milk delivery in glass bottles
4. Party lines on the telephone
5.Newsreels before the movie
6..TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning. (there were only 3 channels [if you were fortunate])
7.Peashooters
8. Howdy Doody
9. 45 RPM records
10.Hi-fi's
11 Metal ice trays with lever
12 Blue flashbulb
13.Cork popguns
14. Studebakers
15. Wash tub wringers

If you remembered 0-3 = You're still young
If you remembered 3-6 = You are getting older
If you remembered 7-10 = Don't tell your age,
If you remembered 11-15 =You're older than dirt!

I might be older than dirt but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.

Don't forget to pass this along!!
Especially to all your really OLD friends....

Peace of Mind

Once Buddha was walking from one town to another town with a few of his followers. This was in the initial days. While they were travelling, they happened to pass a lake. They stopped there and Buddha told one of his disciples, “I am thirsty. Do get me some water from that lake there.”

The disciple walked up to the lake. When he reached it, he noticed that some people were washing clothes in the water, and right at that moment, a bullock cart started crossing through the lake. As a result, the water became very muddy, very turbid. The disciple thought, “How can I give this muddy water to Buddha to drink!” So he came back and told Buddha, “The water iin there is very muddy. I don’t think it is fit to drink.”

After about half an hour, again Buddha asked the same disciple to go back to the lake and get him some water to drink.

The disciple obediently went back to the lake. This time he found that the lake had absolutely clear water in it. The mud had settled down and the water above it looked fit to be had. So he collected some water in a pot and brought it to Buddha. Buddha looked at the water, and then he looked up at the disciple and said, “See what you did to make the water clean. You let it be…. and the mud settled down on its own – and you got clear water. Your mind is also like that! When it is disturbed, just let it be. Give it a little time. It will settle down on its own. You don’t have to put in any effort to calm it down. It will happen. It is effortless.”

What did Buddha emphasize here?
He said, “It is effortless.” Having ‘Peace of Mind’ is not a strenuous job; it is an effortless process! When there is peace inside you, that peace permeates to the outside. It spreads around you and in the environment, such that people around start feeling that peace and grace.

What is the STORY OF STUFF ??

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.


http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Love is the Law of God

-- from the "Book of Mirdad" by Mikhail Naimy (Lebanese writer)

Love is the Law of God

You live that you may learn to love. You love that you may learn to live. No other lesson is required.

And what is it to love but for the lover to absorb forever the beloved so that the twain be one?

And whom, or what, is one to love? Is one to choose a certain leaf upon the Tree of Life and pour upon it all one's heart? What of the branch that bears the leaf? What of the stem that holds the branch? What of the bark that shields the stem? What of the roots that feed the bark, the stem, the branches and the leaves? What of the soil embosoming the roots? What of the sun, and sea, and air that fertilize the soil?

If one small leaf upon a tree be worthy of your love how much more so the tree in its entirety? The love that singles out a fraction of the whole foredooms itself to grief.

You say, 'But there be leaves and leaves upon a single tree. Some are healthy, some are sick; some are beautiful, some, ugly; some are giants, some are dwarfs. How can we help but pick and choose?'
I say to you, Out of the paleness of the sick proceeds the freshness of the healthy. I further say to you that ugliness is Beauty's palette, paint and brush; and that the dwarf would not have been a dwarf had he not given of his stature to the giant.

You are the Tree of Life. Beware of fractioning yourselves. Set not a fruit against a fruit, a leaf against a leaf, a bough against a bough; nor set the stem against the roots; nor set the tree against the mother-soil. That is precisely what you do when you live one part more than the rest, or to the exclusion of the rest.

You are the Tree of Life. Your roots are everywhere. Your boughs and leaves are everywhere. Your fruits are in every mouth. Whatever be the fruits upon that tree; whatever be its boughs and leaves; whatever be its roots, they are your fruits; they are your leaves and boughs; they are your roots. If you would have the tree bear sweet and fragrant fruit, if you would have it ever strong and green, see to the sap wherewith you feed the roots.

Love is the sap of Life. While Hatred is the pus of Death. But Love, like blood, must circulate unhindered in the veins. Repress the blood, and it becomes a menace and a plague. And what is Hate but Love repressed, or Love withheld, therefore becoming such a deadly poison both to the feeder and the fed; both to the hater and the hated?

A yellow leaf upon your tree of life is but a Love-weaned leaf. Blame not the yellow leaf.

A withered bough is but a Love-starved bough. Blame not the withered bough.

A putrid fruit is but a Hatred-suckled fruit. Blame not the putrid fruit. But rather blame your blind and stingy heart that would dole out the sap of life to few and would deny it to many, thereby denying it to itself.

No love is possible except the love of self. No self is real save the All-embracing Self. Therefore is God all Love.

So long as you are pained by Love, you have not found your real self, nor have you found the golden key of Love. Because you love an ephemeral self, your love is ephemeral.

You have no friends so long as you can count a single man as foe.

The heart that harbours enmity how can it be a safe abode for friendship?

You do not know the joy of Love so long as there is hatred in your hearts. Were you to feed all things the sap of Life except a certain tiny worm, that certain tiny worm alone would embitter your life. For in loving anything, or anyone, you love in truth but yourselves. Likewise in hating anything, or anyone, you hate in truth but yourselves. For that which you hate is bound up inseparably with that which you love, like the face and the reverse of the same coin. If you would be honest with yourselves, then must you love what you hate and what hates you before you love what you love and what loves you.
Love is not a virtue. Love is a necessity; more so than bread and water; more so than light and air.
Let no one pride himself on loving. But rather breathe in Love and breathe it out just as unconsciously and freely as you breathe in the air and breathe it out.

For Love needs no one to exalt it. Love will exalt the heart that it finds worthy of itself.
Seek no rewards for Love. Love is reward sufficient unto Love, as Hate is punishment sufficient unto Hate.

Nor keep any accounts with Love. For Love accounts to no one but itself.

Love neither lends nor borrows; Love neither buys nor sells; but when it gives, it gives its all; and when it takes, it takes its all. Its very taking is a giving. Its very giving is a taking. Therefore is it the same to-day, to-morrow and forevermore.

Just as a mighty river emptying itself in the sea is e'er replenished by the sea, so must you empty yourselves in Love that you may be ever filled with Love. The pool that would withhold the sea-gift from the sea becomes a stagnant pool.

There is nor 'more' not 'less' in Love. The moment you attempt to grade and measure Love it slips away leaving behind it bitter memories.

Nor is there 'now' and 'then', nor 'here' and 'there' in Love. All seasons are Love seasons. All spots are fit abodes for Love.

Love knows no boundaries or bars. A love whose course is checked by any obstacle whatever is not yet worthy of the name of Love.

I often hear you say that Love is blind, meaning that it can see no fault in the beloved. That kind of blindness is the height of seeing.

Would you were always so blind as to behold no fault in anything.

Nay, clear and penetrating is the eye of Love. Therefore it sees no fault. When Love has purged your sight, then would you see nothing at all unworthy of your love. Only a love-shorn, faulty eye is ever busy finding faults. Whatever faults it finds are only its own faults.

Love integrates. Hatred disintegrates. This huge and ponderous mass of earth and rock which you call Altar Peak would quickly fly asunder were it not held together by the hand of Love. Even your bodies, perishable as they seem, could certainly resist disintegration did you but live each cell of them with equal zeal.

Love is peace athrob with melodies of Life. Hatred is war agog with fiendish blasts of Death. Which would you: Love and be at everlasting peace? Or hate and be at everlasting war?

The whole earth is alive in you. The heavens and their hosts are alive in you. So love the Earth and all her sucklings if you would love yourselves. And love the Heavens and all their tenants if you would love yourselves.

---The Book Of Mirdad---

The Man Behind The "Hole In The Wall"

The Man Behind The "Hole In The Wall"
-- by Peter Robinson (from the Association of Learning Technology -- Online Newsletter)

The Wikipedia entry for Sugata Mitra said, on 11 May 2009, that

"Since the 1970s, Professor Mitra’s publications and work have resulted in training and development of perhaps a million young Indians, amongst them some of the poorest children in the world. The resultant changes in the lives of people and the economy of the country can only be guessed at".

He is best known for the ‘hole in the wall’ experiments. Although the research has been mainly done with schoolchildren it raises important questions about learning and ICT in general. Recently Peter Robinson had the pleasure of hearing Sugata Mitra talk and interviewed him about the 'hole in the wall' experiments.


The first hole in the wall
"In 1999 we started the hole in the wall experiments. I had an office in those days in Kalkaji, a suburb of New Delhi, India which bordered an urban slum. On our side of the boundary wall there were all these rich, high-powered software professionals and on the other there was a large sprawling slum. We cut a hole in the wall and installed a PC connected to broadband and the internet, and there was a touchpad. We covered it with a glass sheet, so the monitor glowed out on the other side. What we did then was pretty simple. We watched. As you can imagine children looked at the glass with something glowing inside it, instead of a dirty wall. This is what happened after about 8 hours: an 8 year old boy, who happened to be the son of the tobacco seller in the road outside our office, was browsing the internet and then was able to teach his student, a little 6 year old girl, to browse. We found that most of the slum children were able to use the computer to browse, play games, create documents and paint pictures within a few days. What we saw provoked many questions: Is it real? Does the language matter? Would the computer last, or would they break it or steal it? Did anyone teach them? People said, chances are that friends on the other side of the wall must have popped their heads over and showed them how to navigate and that is how they knew about it."


Did anyone teach them?
"So we visited a small town in central India in a backward area where there were no computers and no one was going to teach computing. I buried another computer in the wall and we recorded the results. A 15 year old drop out began fiddling about with the touchpad. He quickly noticed that his finger points moved things around on the screen. When he tapped the touchpad, the Internet Explorer changed page. He had done his first click. This was after 6 minutes; 8 minutes later he was going from website to website and coming back. He was browsing. When that happened he started to call other children. By the end of the evening 70 children were browsing the internet. This showed me that children, in groups, can teach themselves to use a computer and the internet."


The English factor
"At this time the main question being asked of me was what about English? People said to me, 'you are being very unfair; it is amazing that they are able to do what they are doing. You are confronting them with a machine they have never seen, language that they don’t know and then expecting them to do something; it can’t work.' I decided to check the role of English and repeated the experiment on 30 June 2000 in a rural village where nobody spoke English. More girls came to this than boys, unlike in my previous experiments. I did not have a good quality connection to the internet, so I left them with a load of CDs. I came back after 3 months. A 10 year old boy and 12 year old girl were playing a Microsoft game. The moment they saw me they said they needed a faster processor and a better mouse. I asked what they had learnt and the reply was an anatomy lesson, the skeleton structure of a hand. The boy asked me in Hindi, 'Do you know how many bones there are in a human hand?' I said I didn’t know. He said there are 32 and in English with a very strong American accent he started telling me about them. We found that the children had acquired a vocabulary of about 200 words in English, words like exit, stop, file and save. When they want to learn children do not find language a barrier."


General findings
"We needed to know how far does it go? We could not understand how this happened. It took us five years of measurements across the Indian subcontinent to verify the results amongst 40,000 of the world’s poorest children. We found that children given unsupervised access to computers mainly located in a government school playground or in similar safe, public areas, would become:

1. computer literate – in their own way, with their own vocabulary, but highly effective nevertheless;
2. better at maths and English – I do not know why, maybe because they learn to analyze and solve problems in groups;
3. more social and cooperative – because they learn that knowledge, unlike material objects, grows with sharing;
4. more interested in school – if the computer is near or in the school premises;
5. less likely to drop out of school – because they want access to their computer;
6. less interested in petty crime – mostly because all their free time is spent at the computer;
7. viewed with more local goodwill – parents and others like the idea that the child is learning something and not creating trouble at home.

The measured outcomes showed:

* acquisition of functional computer literacy;
* improvement in academic performance;
* increase in confidence and self esteem;
* increased collaborative behaviour.

Apart from these measured findings, there is consistent anecdotal evidence of large-scale impacts on school enrolment, retention, concentration, attention span and problem-solving ability. Teachers have been very positive about the whole thing because of the children’s increased interest in learning, higher enrolments, and their concentration on higher level tasks like mentoring other students and leading class discussions."


What the children cannot teach themselves?
"We wanted to see what the limits were of self learning in groups. We wanted to see what children could not solve in order to test the boundaries of this form of learning. So we set up an experiment. In 2006 we went to a little village in Kalikuppam in Southern India, a place that had been hit by the tsunami and where illiterate fisherman lived. If Tamil-speaking children could teach themselves biotechnology in English, on their own, how far could we go?

I downloaded some difficult material on biotechnology, all in English, a language foreign to the children. We put this into the hole in the wall computer that NIIT had installed there. After 2½ months I went back and asked the question, have you learnt anything? As expected they said, 'Nothing, it is very hard as it is all in English and it is something we do not know anything about.' 'Did you use it?' 'Yes we used it every day.' 'What were you doing with it?' The young girl said, 'Well, it’s OK if you wanted to learn that DNA replicates and that defects in DNA cause disease, but apart from that, nothing.' I investigated a bit more and she showed me the things she knew – she showed me material on Alzheimer’s disease, and, when I asked what it was, she said, 'It’s complicated, but it’s why old people forget.' So, even when I made things as difficult as I could for these very young children, they found ways to make learning happen. The girl in this story was particularly interesting – she had started out with a couple of boys, but the boys had said to her 'We’ll do this. You’re only a girl, you won’t understand.' So she had said to them, 'I’ll come back when you’re gone then.' And she did return, determined to prove them wrong."

"Overall we found that children who had started with a score of zero had taught themselves basic biotechnology on their own to reach a test score of 30% in just two months. We did many experiments looking at what children learn by themselves. Here is another example. In Hyderabad, groups of children showed significant improvement in English pronunciation on their own with only a few hours of practice. They used a computer and a speech to text programme that had been trained in a native English accent. The published results (http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/itid/1/1) show that speech to text engines can be used for self-regulated improvements in pronunciation."


Gateshead
Professor Mitra is now at Newcastle, and has been working in the neighbourhood there. He was invited to a primary school in Gateshead. "At a primary school in Gateshead, UK – the remotest of the remote places I have been to – a class of children, aged around 10, had a laptop each, but their school performance did not seem to have changed much. I set up a challenge. I devised six GCSE level questions on science, the environment and such issues, and told the children there was only one rule – they had to work in groups of four and there was one laptop per group. All but one of the groups solved the problems, the first in 20 minutes and the rest all within an hour. The group that didn’t succeed consisted of one girl and three boys. As soon as the exercise began, the boys all went to the toilet and did not come back. The girl tried on her own but was unable to make progress. So here we saw that ten-year olds working in groups could answer in less than 20 minutes GCSE questions they would encounter six years later. I asked them if they could have done this in less time if they had not shared a computer in groups but had worked on their own laptops, alone. They said they could not have done it that way at all."


What can we learn from the 'hole in the wall' experiments?
The materials and findings from the 'hole in the wall' experiments are fascinating and one could describe them forever. Sugata Mitra spent some time discussing with me the implications for adult learners in the UK. Here are some conclusions.


* The 'hole in the wall' experiments suggest an alternative, inexpensive and reliable method for bringing computer literacy to those areas where the ICT provision is inadequate. “Such facilities are not meant to replace schools and teachers, they are meant to supplement and complement and to be a stand-by for those areas of the earth where good schools and goodteachers are, for whatever reason, absent.”
* In the context of education in the UK, teachers in classrooms may need to be reminded that many learners, and not just children, are learning about and using ICT outside the formal learning environment.
* Working in self-organised groups and helping each other, the children typically achieve basic computer literacy within three months, and by nine months have achieved the proficiency level equivalent to the skills of most modern office workers.
* One does not have to learn just by doing. Watching and discussing is very important. A noticeable finding from the 'hole in the wall' experiments was that only a small group would be actively involved in working the machine or making suggestions from close by, but that a larger group standing by but contributing relatively little also gained knowledge and expertise.
* In effect, in the 'hole in the wall' experiments, every learner was a teacher and vice-versa. 'child teachers' emerged at each of the experimental sites – typically, talented 6–8 year old girls and boys who took on the 'teacher' role and taught 3 or 4 'generations' of children to use the computers. It may be that the phenomenon of peer learning and teaching is not just confined to children.
* The projects were not set up to look at learning by older people. As Sugata Mitra says, “I am not suggesting that older people learn in the same way as children. But I suspect that many older people will learn about things when they need to and want to. Take pornography for example. It is unlikely that the users would learn about video format and file technologies in a classroom. Adults are able to do quite complicated things when they want to.”
* Learning works well when self directed and much better when done in groups. Learners learn best in groups, because learning is a social activity. Groups function better than individuals. Of course many in adult learning as well as primary education already know this. It is why, in organisations and business, we often have so many meetings. That is why we don’t sit in rows like in classrooms. We learn from testing out ideas and discussions. Learning is fundamentally a social process.


This article originally appeared in ICT Skills Briefing

Peter Robinson
peterfrobinson@ntlworld.com

Notes

1.
Sugata Mitra is now Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK. He is a physicist by background. He has taught and researched computer applications for over 25 years. He was until recently Chief Scientist with NIIT Limited in New Delhi.
2.
This article is a compilation from different sources. See:
The hole in the wall official website
The Hole in the Wall, a documentary about the experiment
The Beginnings

Tanjew Berrymuds !!

This is an exercise in language skills. To get the full effect, this should be read aloud. You will understand what "tanjew berrymuds" means by the end of the conversation.

The following is a telephone exchange between a hotel guest and room-service, at a hotel in Asia, which was recorded and published in the Far East Economic Review:


Room Service (RS): "Morrin. Roon sirbees."


Guest (G): "Sorry, I thought I dialed room-service."


RS: "Rye..Roon sirbees..morrin! Jewish to oddor sunteen??"


G: "Uh..yes..I'd like some bacon and eggs."


RS: "Ow July den?"

G: "What??"

RS: "Ow July den?...pryed, boyud, poochd

G: "Oh, the eggs! How do I like them?
Sorry, scrambled please."

RS: Hokay. An Sahn toes

G:"What?"

RS:"An toes. July Sahn toes

G:"I don't think so

RS: "No? Judo wan sahn toes

G: "I feel really bad about this, but I don't know what 'judo wan sahn toes'means

RS: "Toes! toes!...Why jew don juan toes? Ow bow Anglish moppin we bodder?"

G: "English muffin!! I've got it! You were saying 'Toast.' Fine. Yes, an English muffin will be fine."

RS: "We bodder?"

G: "No...just put the bodder on the side-

RS: "Wad!?"

G: "I mean butter...just put it on the side."

RS: "Copy?"

G: "Excuse me?"

RS: "Copy...tea...meel?"

G: "Yes. Coffee, please, and that's all

RS: "One Minnie. Scramah egg, crease baykem, Anglish moppin we bodder on sigh and copy....rye??"

G: "Whatever you say

RS: "Tanjew berrymuds."


This is scary...I can actually read and understand this!!

Indians Have Succeeded In Countries Ruled By Whites, But Failed In Their Own

In this last Swaminomics of the millennium, I would like to sum up our performance in the 20th century in one sentence. Indians have succeeded in countries ruled by whites, but failed in their own.


This outcome would have astonished leaders of our independence movement. They declared Indians were kept down by white rule and could flourish only under self-rule. This seemed self-evident. The harsh reality today is that Indians are succeeding brilliantly in countries ruled by whites, but failing in India . They are flourishing in the USA and Britain .


But those that stay in India are pulled down by an outrageous system that fails to reward merit or talent. Fails to allow people and businesses to grow, and keeps real power with netas, babus, and assorted manipulators. Once Indians go to white-ruled countries, they soar and conquer summits once occupied only by whites.


Rono Dutta has become head of United Airlines, the biggest airline in the world. Had he stayed in India , he would have no chance in Indian Airlines. Even if the top job there was given to him by some godfather, a myriad netas, babus and trade unionists would have ensured that he could never run it like United Airlines.


Rana Talwar has become head of Standard Chartered Bank Plc, one of the biggest multinational banks in Britain , while still in his 40s. Had he been in India , he would perhaps be a local manager in the State Bank, taking orders from babus to give loans to politically favoured clients.


Rajat Gupta is head of Mckinsey, the biggest management consultancy firm in the world. He now advises the biggest multinationals on how to run their business. Had he remained in India he would probably be taking orders from some sethji with no qualification save that of being born in a rich family.


Lakhsmi Mittal has become the biggest steel baron in the world, with steel plants in the US , Kazakhstan , Germany , Mexico , Trinidad and Indonesia . India 's socialist policies reserved the domestic steel industry for the public sector. So Lakhsmi Mittal went to Indonesia to run his family's first steel plant there. Once freed from the shackles of India , he conquered the world.


Subhash Chandra of Zee TV has become a global media king, one of the few to beat Rupert Murdoch. He could never have risen had he been limited to India , which decreed a TV monopoly for Doordarshan. But technology came to his aid: satellite TV made it possible for him to target India from Hong Kong . Once he escaped Indian rules and soil, he soared.


You may not have heard of 48-year old Gururaj Deshpande. His communicat ions company, Sycamore, is currently valued by the US stock market at over $ 30 billion, making him perhaps one of the richest Indians in the world. Had he remained in India , he would probably be a babu in the Department of Telecommunications.


Arun Netravali has become president of Bell Labs, one of the biggest research and development centres in the world with 30,000 inventions and several Nobel Prizes to its credit. Had he been in India , he would probably be struggling in the middle cadre of Indian Telephone Industries. Silicon Valley alone contains over one lac Indian millionaires.


Sabeer Bhatia invented Hotmail and sold it to Microsoft for $ 400 million. Victor Menezes is number two in Citibank. Shailesh Mehta is CEO of Providian, a top US financial services company. Also at or near the top are Rakesh Gangwal of US Air, Jamshd Wadia of Arthur Andersen, and Aman Mehta of Hong Kong & amp; Shanghai Banking Corp.


In Washington DC , the Indian CEO High Tech Council has no less than 200 members, all high tech-chiefs. While Indians have soared, India has stagnated. At independence India was the most advanced of all colonies, with the best prospects.


Today with a GNP per head of $370, it occupies a lowly 177th position among 209 countries of the world. But poverty is by no means the only or main problem. India ranks near the bottom in the UNDP's Human Development Index, but high up in Transparency International's Corruption Index.


The neta-babu raj brought in by socialist policies is only one reason for India 's failure. The more sordid reason is the rule-based society we inherited from the British Raj is today in tatters. Instead money, muscle and influence matter most.

At independence we were justly proud of our politicians. Today we regard them as scoundrels and criminals. They have created a jungle of laws in the holy name of socialism, and used these to line their pockets and create patronage networks. No influential crook suffers. The Mafia flourish unhindered because they have political links.


The sons of police officers believe they have a licence to rape and kill (ask the Mattoo family). Talent cannot take you far amidst such rank misgovernance. We are reverting to our ancient feudal system where no rules applied to the powerful. The British Raj brought in abstract concepts of justice for all, equality before the law. These were maintained in the early years of independence. But fifty years later, citizens wail that India is a lawless land where no rules are obeyed.


I have heard of an IAS probationer at the Mussorie training academy pointing out that in India before the British came, making money and distributing favours to relatives was not considered a perversion of power, it was the very rationale of power.


A feudal official had a duty to enrich his family and caste. Then the British came and imposed a new ethical code on officials. But, he asked, why should we continue to choose British customs over desi ones now that we were independent?


The lack of transparent rules, properly enforced, is a major reason why talented Indians cannot rise in India . A second reason is the neta-babu raj, which remains intact despite supposed liberalisation. But once talented Indians go to rule-based societies in the west, they take off. In those societies all people play by the same rules, all have freedom to innovate without being strangled by regulations.


This, then, is why Indians succeed in countries ruled by whites, and fail in their own. It is the saddest story of the century.


PS: I HONESTLY WONDER WHICH EXPAT ASIAN NATIONALITY IN CAN CLAIM THE SUCCESS INDIANS HAVE HAD WORLDWIDE.


Ravi Shankar Jayaram
Research associate
Council on Hemispheric Affairs
The Hague

The Stranger

The Stranger

A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small Texas town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on.

As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey.. But the stranger...he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies.

If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind.

Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.)

Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home... Not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our longtime visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush. My Dad didn't permit the liberal use of alcohol. But the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished.

He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing.

I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked... And NEVER asked to leave.

More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you could walk into my parents' den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

His name?.... .. .

We just call him 'TV.'

He has a wife now....We call her 'Computer.'