Dear Neha
That was very sweet of you to not only greet your sir for deepavali but send in a presentationi of sorts from the net suited to the occasion. Just couple of thoughts on this in case you have yourself read the link you sent carefully. What it does is to ostensibly build a case for the existence of God. My feeling is it is a bad case and poorly reasoned one at that! I am sorry!
Godhead is not a quid pro quo as has been made out for time immemorial by a section of society which has done so to keep a bulk of the people ignorant. There is no such thing that you come to God so that She will do you good. He or She or any other form God is represented is not the issue here but it is about the concept of God the Supreme.
Dogmas and beliefs are built around an aura which has been provided to God by the ageless stories such as this which only help to distort facts. At one level God is a supreme denial of our own self and ability to perform beyond a point. Once that saturation scale in our ability is reached we need to look at an esoteric being beyond our capability to complete our task. We need someone beyond the human circle to comfort us when we are lost, we prefer to report to someone who is far beyond all the human beings we know who are full of faults and whose egos may match ours. An unnamed supreme being in guise of God is no challenge to anyone and to one whom everyone can easily relate without being challenged or made accountable. It is a brilliant concept that has been perfected over the centuries after it was first thought of by civilisations which wanted to make a sense or find an excuse for their actions. Kings or leaders could derive unequestionable strength from such a concept and even an ordinary mendicant can manage to live out of others piety by calling out the name of God.
The bottomline, being poor, rich, successful, bad, tyrannic or simply a fool has nothing to do with your God but entirely yourself, which is why there is this most popular concept emerged out of Hinduism which believes that everyone has God in them, you simply have to realise it through making others happy.
"Aham Brahmasmi! Sarve Jano Sugino Bavanthu!' That everyone should be comfortable in the world and each of us an embodiment of Brahma. This is the height to which we took the Godhead in India and now we are searching for God in myriad forms and trying to propitiate Him through mundane rituals and dogmas which are suited to an unreformed mind. It is a pity.
Neha's original file contained some pix and the following story!
A customer went to a barber and heard the later say that he does not believe God existed as there was so much of sufferring in the world.
The customer walked out and saw a man with an unkempt beard and rushed back to the barber said "sir I dont think barbers exist" The perplexed barber asked why "there is a man out there who has not shaved his beard as he couldnt find his barber". Well... each has to find his maker and only then he would be served! God will not help those who do not pray to him.....etc.,
here is another
A close friend whom I am very fond of sent me a mail about how MPs are such a waste of money when compared with the CEOs and the later's salaries should not be a concern of the government. Her note is appended to this blog at the end!
My reply to her!
Dear Bhanu
your note about the salary of MPs is fascinating but you should compare with the work and responsibilities they carry vis a vis a corporate executive whose only reason for existence is not to provide quality product but to maximise profits at all costs. The salary of a corporate executive is directly proportional to the profits he or she generates and the higher salary he or she seeks to earn the greater would be the burden on the consumer as this cost would be passed on to the ultimate consumer. Also the perspective you should have is that for a one crore plus population we have just around 600 representatives and even assuming that each of us put in Rs 1 per day for upkeep and maintenance of our representative we would have covered their costs but we must remember that we may be investing not less than rs 5000 to rs 10,000 in extra costs that we have to spend for our products because the companies have to earn profit.
Just one example, take the toothpaste. an average toothpaste tube of 50 gm would cost u Rs 40 and the cost of manufacturing of this tube would be hardly 30 per cent of the price and the rest would go for advertising and profit margin.
check this news headline "Colgate Reports Strong 1st Quarter EPS up 14% to $ .56 on 6% Unit Volume Growth Highest Dollar Sales Growth in Seven Years" This amounts to 54 per cent profit margin! Why are we made to pay so much because the average earning of a CEO as a percentage of total revenue of any industry is more than 12 per cent "In 2004, the average CEO of a major company received $9.84 million in total compensation , according to a study by compensation consultant Pearl Meyer & Partners for The New York Times. This represents a 12 percent increase in CEO pay over 2003. In contrast, the average nonsupervisory worker?s pay increased just 2.2 percent to $27,485 in 2004.
" What we should be looking at should be how to engage these "illiterate" representatives of people to do some good work for us as after all an illiterate Kamaraj was one of the kingmakers who made a lot of difference for us as Indians and one "illiterate" MGR and Karunanidhi have been successful chief ministers of Tamil Nadu ditto for AP (NTR).
Bhanu's forwarded note!
Have a look at this !
Salary & Govt. Concessions for a Member of Parliament (MP) Monthly Salary : 12,000 Expense for Constitution per month : 10,000 Office expenditure per month : 14,000 Traveling concession (Rs. 8 per km) : 48,000 ( eg.For a visit from kerala to Delhi & return: 6000 km) Daily DA TA during parliament meets : 500/day Charge for 1 class (A/C) in train: Free (For any number of times) (All over India ) Charge for Business Class in flights : Free for 40 trips / year (With wife or P.A.) Rent for MP hostel at Delhi : Free Electricity costs at home : Free up to 50,000 units Local phone call charge : Free up to 1 ,70,000 calls. TOTAL expense for a MP [having no qualification] per year : 32,00,000 [i.e. 2.66 lakh/month] TOTAL expense for 5 years : 1,60,00,000 For 534 MPs, the expense for 5 years : 8,54,40,00,000 (nearly 855 crores) AND THE PRIME MINISTER IS ASKING THE HIGHLY QUALIFIED, OUT PERFORMING CEOs TO CUT DOWN THEIR SALARIES….. This is how all our tax money is been swallowed and price hike on our regular commodities.......
on terrorism
Dearest
The recent days must have been taumatic for you. Hope none of your known people were part of the tragedy that befell Hyderabad. Such wanton act of killing innocent people can be only demonic and those who perpetrate such crime may have no heart or family ties worth any. When a man ceases to have any moorings and ceases to have any feeling for life or fellow human being he can be turned into a heartless machine who can be made to do anything at the bidding of the master. This is what happens to terrorists.
To some extent even the defence training which even you received attempts to do the same thing. It makes you to forget your heart and reason and obey the order. The order in this case is give by sane people for a just cause, namely defending the nation. But the tools that they use are almost similar, namely brainwashing the normal human being into a ruthless killer and at the crucial moment of strike or shooting, the training should take over and make him almost demonic without which the task cannot be accomlished.
My feeling is that the solution lies somewhere here. The psychological methods which are being followed by the defence seems to have been followed in the training of such terrorists and unfortunately the effect of this training is more dangerous as the targetted population are not educated nor have they got any feeling towards fellow human being or pride of belonging to a nation like the ordinary soldier. The Jehadi is more willing to cause harm and destruction to the "enemy" than the soldier who is trained to "defend the nation from the enemy" as he cannot differentiate good from evil.
My feeling is that the informal education being given by Madrasas and the RSS on religious dogmas, the cults of various demigods including saibaba, the church run conversion operations, should be disbanded immediately as all these organisations or outfits target the weak minded people who can easily be manipulated and made to act at their will by a more ruthless outfit to spread terrorism.
