Saturday, September 27, 2008

Prelogue- the foggy reflection

• I am starting my reflections journey with this blog.
• These are reflections of science, spiritualism in my mind.
• I am intending to write 108 such blogs (from reflections001 to reflections108).
• My first reflection is of my beloved GOD, Guru Dattatreya.
• As Hindu proceeding, I start the blog remembering Hindu Gods, but in a lighter way.

Friday, September 26, 2008

GOD's call center- lighter side

With infinite requests, routing them to each Lord-in-charge (330 million, as per hindu mythology) was getting tedious. GOD got inspiration from Indian- IT industry, and started a call center...

A person prays and gets a recorded voice response in Apsara’s voice...

"Hi, thank you for calling heaven....
For start-up & mouse related problems, pray Ganesha,
For system Installation issues, pray Bramha,
For system Operation issues, pray Vishnu,
For system Un-installation & patch-up (ref. Bal Ganesh) issues, pray Shankar,

For Multi threading, pray Krishna (The number is busy as HE is busy with Gopis),
For Best practices query, contact Yudhishtir,
For Visual C++, contact Sanjay,
For Motivation & team building, contact Draupadi,
For Laptop related query, contact Dushasan,
For Cloning, contact Gandhari,
For E-learning, contact Eklavya,
For Tele-learning, contact Abhimanyu,
For extended warranty, contact Bhishma

For Single thread execution, pray Sita,
For Data recovery related issues, pray Ram,
For Backup issues, contact Lakshman,
For Boot installation, contact Bharat,
For Messenger issues, pray Hanuman,
For Contract issues, contact Sugriva,
For Firewall service, contact Jatayu,
For Hacking, contact Ravana,

For Knowledge management, pray Saraswati,
For Data transfer issues, pray Narada,
For Reorganisation issues, pray Shani,
For Past accounts & hard-disk format, pray Dattatreya,
For Appraisal, contact Yama,
For Account audit, contact Chitragupta.

Science X Spirituality

We see science and spirituality as two different and contradictory things.
* Science, we feel as something which can be proven.
* Spirituality, something to be believed.
* Science flows in
observe-> repeat -> conclude -> abstract it to basic principle.
for example: Newton observed falling of apple. Measured the acceleration. Repeated it for different environment and concluded to the law of gravitation.
* Spirituality flows opposite, in
believe one abstract principle -> conclude -> repeat -> observe.
for example: We have to believe in GOD/ spirit, conclude his behavior/ power, and observe his presence in repeated experiences.
* They look contradictory, but are like blind men touching elephant and making their contradictory perceptions.
* Imagine a pyramid with ground base on physical world and it's top as truth.
* Science is starting with base and move up to the top of pyramid.
* Spirituality is starting at tip of pyramid and follow to it ground base.
* Religion is the ready-path taken in the spiritualism journey.
* We have not covered both ends of the pyramid at same time, leading to contradiction.
* But with advance in science (like quantum theory), unification of both is possible. This will lead to one truth, which will answer all our questions.

Datt Atreya - The name

* Datta in Sanskrit means "given", something given which is permanence in nature, not be taken back. 
* GOD has unconditionaly given himself to the mankind as Datta.
* Atreya associated with the word Datta, in one meaning is his father's name.
* Other meaning of Datt-A-Treya is giving up (datt) to achieve absense (A) of three Gunas (treya).
* Three gunas are Satwik, Rajas, Tamas, which describes physical world.

Lord Dattatreya- Introduction

* ‘Guru Dattatreya’ word brings us a picture of three headed God in mind. These three heads are of supreme God's, Brahma (who generates), Vishnu (who operates) and Shiva (who destroys). The word GOD is supposed to be short form of these three roles.
* There are various interesting stories related to his birth. He was purest Atma, who excelled so much, that he became most superior. He was human being having complete control over his mind, body and destiny. He invented Yoga, which later on Patanjali arranged in eight steps, now known as Ashtanga yoga. He learned his wisdom through 24 Gurus from nature, like bee, butterfly etc. This teaches us to be observer while being detached.

Reflection: Datta's teaching I understand,
:= All religion lead to One GOD.
:= Any human being can reach excellence with continuous efforts.
:= Be kind, detached and observer.
* A thought about Dattatreya in devotee's mind, gives a calm, serene feeling. The feeling is like sitting on banks of a calm river and have a tranquil smell of sandal and flower. Lord's presence and his miracles are everyday experienced by his true devotee and people in need.

Dattatreya in modern time

* Dattatreya is immortal.
* He manifested in modern time (Last 700 years), as Sripad Sree Vallabha, Nrusimha Saraswati, Shah Datta, Akkalkot Swami Samartha and Shirdi Sai Baba.
* Shirdi Sai baba is the most recent is time, less than a century before.

HIS Kindness

Dattatreya teaches us to be kind.
Here a heart-touching story. Datt was returning from tapasya on girnar. He saw a wolf dying because of starvation. Lord dattatreya cut his hand to feed the wolf.
Now, it is seen that wolves in the area eat sweet Prasad of the temple. On call, wolves will gather from nearby forests and eat the prasad....amazing!!!

Reflection: Though, such miracles are common day experience. The story is not to highlight the miracle, but the kindness of the almighty Lord.

Guru Dattatreya- Hindu GOD in Muslim manifest

Interesting thing, observed is Dattatreya's affection towards muslim religion. Being hindu, ancient deity and mostly praised by Brahmins, it is very surprising for modern communalist.
* Dattatreya as Nrusimha saraswati, (shankarachrya) cured a Muslim king, when it was strictly against the hindu tradition. He worshipped a poor man to become Sultan in his next life. His famous temple in Nrusimha wadi is built by Muslim king.
* Dattatreya later took form of a muslim fakir, known as Malanga fakeer or Shah Datta. He appeared for Sant Eknath as the muslim fakeer.
* Swami Samartha and Sai baba had their stay in masjid. It is difficult to tell whether Sai baba, by birth was Hindu or Muslim.
* Famous Muslim Saints who recognized Dattatreya as the Supreme lord, are Noori Maharaj (Thane), Tajuddin Baba (Nagpur) and woman fakir Hazrat Baba Jan (Pune).
* He treated all religions, castes, gender equally. HE is also known to bless Harijans & women in the manifest of Nrusimha saraswati, Swami samartha and Sai baba.

Reflection: All these incidences are of last 6 centuries and an eye- opener for destroyer mentality. Today’s world is divided in communal groups, who can’t digest anything that does not confirm to their views, even if this is taught by their supreme Lord. Extremist people representing their religion or political groups regularly visit and pay their respect to Shirdi Sai baba. Do they remember HIS basic teaching, ‘Sab ka malik ek’?
Lord Dattatreya is true example of socio-religious harmony between the religions.

Origin of sorrows

Dattatreya told a simple story about origin of sorrows to his disciple, Parashuram.
We are pilgrim making journey for finding truth. The pilgrim while walking, sees an attractive red fruit on the sideway. He gets desire to eat it. He like the taste and can not stop eating more from the tree. Soon he gets stomach ache and he forgets his destination. He starts finding way out of it. He finds another yellow fruit tree, and in desperation, he eats them too. He finds himself in never ending sorrows and forgets his final destination.

Reflection: Human being are born to find the ultimate truth, but in greed they lose their way, get caught in sorrows and forget the destination.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

1st interval

• Hope you enjoyed reading the blog, as much I enjoyed writing.
• In next reflection, we will discuss another personality who gave us great truth by observation.
Read my next blog
http://reflections002.blogspot.com