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Saturday, July 24, 2004 ( 2:15 AM ) sankar You cannot make a flower bloom For an Express Computer story on the connection between "stress-free enviornment and bug-free software", I obtained some very valuable inputs from Shri Jaggi Vasudev, founder Isha Foundation, Coimbatore. He was in the US and this is a mail interview (my sincere thanks to Bhuvana, who helped me to get this done). Spirituality is considered to be a "subject" that cannot be taught or learnt. Your comments? To be spiritual is an inner experience. To be spiritual means to transcend the limitations of the physical. Transcendence cannot be taught but the methods that lead to the transcendence have to be taught. It is like: you cannot make a flower bloom but can cultivate the necessary atmosphere for it to bloom. Some say that meditation is our own nature and it is possible for someone to be in the meditative mode while carrying out his/her routine activities. Do you agree? Meditation is not something that you do, but something that you become. It is a quality, not an act. If one becomes meditative it will naturally permeate into everything that he does. It is like a fragrance it spreads into everything. How does an executive, who has to necessarily set goals, deadlines, etc can probably be unperturbed about the future results and the past experiences as advocated by spiritual scriptures? It is simple common sense for one to understand that our external situations will never happen 100 percent the way we want them to happen as it involves various ingredients and forces. Especially if a person has taken up a role of much activity and much scope as you say a corporate person does, and if he is going to be perturbed whenever things don't happen the way he wants them, he is bound to become a wreck. One needs to understand the larger the area and scope of our work becomes you have less and less control over it. Outside situations are always going to be like this, never totally in our control, but our inner situations where we are the only ingredient can be taken in total control. If this is brought forth, our ability to manage the external can be greatly enhanced. If performance is the priority, equipping oneself to maintain an inner balance is of utmost importance. The ideal way of getting initiated into spirituality? In the presence of a Living Master. How to reconcile the "sole reality" ("'Atman' is the only reality") of spirituality with the other reality of the material world? You won't have to reconcile with anything that is not yet a living experience for you. If you assume [something]that which is not in your experience as yet it will only lead to hallucinatory states which are of no spiritual consequence. If you are serious about making a journey, you need to understand that you can only start the journey from the place you are right now, not from an imaginary point. # Friday, July 23, 2004 ( 1:50 AM ) sankar The Green Power I wrote a story on CII - Godrej Green Business Centre (CII Godrej GBC), Hyderabad. This is a kind of resource centre for environment products and services, know-hows, etc. The US Green Building Council has ranked the CII Godrej GBC the "world's greenest building" as it demonstrates leadership in environment management. A CNN story that I read in this regard says that the new adage that caught the imagination of corporate America is "the greenest industry". Great development! Hope being green will catch up fast in India as well. We all can contribute to this cause in so many small ways: saving petrol, switching off that light which is on unnecessarily, buying high-quality water taps, etc. Check this site if you want to know your ecological footprint. An ecological footprint is "An ecological footprint measures the evidence of our energy use. The evidence is also called an "impact". Every time we use energy there is an impact. We use energy to get food, to keep our homes warm and bright, and to move our cars and stuff around. When measuring our ecological footprint then, we measure not the size of our feet, but the size all of the land we use to get our energy from food, fossil fuels and renewable resources. I have already started becoming obssessed with the ecological footprint. # |
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