Theonefun

To say that individuals do not exist, is a startling statement. Am i not an individual, with my own independent thoughts, feelings, opinions, habits, aspirations and prejudices, making me what i am, an individual? It’s really not that simple. The interconnectedness concept that spiritual masters and philosophers talk of and the Buddhist Pratityasamutpada, Law of Dependent Origination, all point to the belief that nothing in the universe is a stand-alone entity. What is revelatory is that it’s not just belief; it is turning out to be fact. Although Pratityasamutpada refers more to the metaphysics of existence and the causality factor, it could add up in the physical sphere as well. Let’s take marine biology. According to a Nature magazine brief, “Scientists exploring the deep sea off the coast of Australia have discovered up to 30 new underwater species — including this string-like creature known as a siphonophore, which might be the longest animal ever discovered. Measuring 46 metres… ...

Creativity is inherent in nature itself. There is a universal law. The creator of that law is prakriti, nature. Creation is a beginningless continuity, so you cannot say that a particular day is the first day of creation. There are millions of stars, suns and planets. They are all subject to a constant process of creation and destruction. According to the law, disintegration and reintegration are always taking place. Sages have been answering questions such as, what is the cause of creation? Where did we come from? How do we exist? Where shall we go to? Vedanta says, ‘You are Atman. You have come from pure Self and therefore you are pure.’ As a human being, your first duty is to live in spiritual consciousness. Some believe that man made amistake and so he remains in ignorance. Others believe that ahuman being is privileged because he is aware of God and can attain illumination in this life itself. Animals and other beings may be intelligent, but they are still in the tamasic state. Aw...

The lockdown, enforced to prevent spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, has brought to the fore a range of physical and mental challenges, despite the fact that many are fortunate to be confined in their own homes, with all basic facilities and access to essential items. It is migrant labour, the homeless and the impoverished who are facing real world problems that require great fortitude and social and institutional intervention for any respite to happen. When we fervently wish for something — for example, for more than 24 hours in a day — and blame all setbacks and unfilled tasks to the lack of it, one would assume that when it is made available in abundance, all troubles would evaporate. Wrong. In an Aesop’s Fable, a character says, ‘Be careful what you wish for; it may come true!’ It is hard to think of anyone who might not have wished for more time. And now that the lockdown has saved many of us from the daily commute, from socialising, from frequenting entertainment venues, eating out...

Not many people can tell the difference, and while many act on impulse, very few know when to trust their intuition. It is intuition that generally poses a mystery. When is it different from a premonition, for example? By comparison, impulses are very familiar. The impulse to have another piece of dessert when you know you shouldn’t offers a perfect example. Impulses are sudden urges of desire or emotion. Someone who is hot-tempered finds it hard to resist the impulse to get angry. Intuition isn’t about desire, urges, or impulses. It is a quiet knowing from the silent mind. There is no urgency about it, and if the intuition is genuine, it feels certain. Here is where the ego leads us astray. Hunches are just another version of the ego’s desire to be right and to have things go its own way. The result is that we all listen to our ego’s fears, wishes, dreams, hunches, and premonitions far more than we should. They have no basis in deeper awareness. Intuition isn’t personal. It comes from...

Financial worries and job loss are making many people lose their balance and emotional well-being. That is only one half of the picture — the other half is this: many of the world’s richest people have all the money they want, but their material prosperity has not assured them of peace and contentment. It is time, then, that we realise that happiness is in the mind, not in the objects we possess, not in our bank accounts. Money can definitely give us lots of comforts; some people actually say money can buy anything — but money cannot buy us happiness. Money cannot buy us peace of mind. Money cannot assure us of our emotional well-being. I know many of us would love to have a million dollars. But let me ask you, if someone were to offer you a million dollars, would you give away both your eyes? When you become aware of the ‘abundance’ in your own life, your attitude will change; your emotions will regain their lost balance and you will be prepared to face ‘lean’ and ‘dark’ days with a m...

For some, immediate survival is the only agenda at the moment. For others, it is a challenge to face the uncertainty and figure out new ways of dealing with the new normal, once the lockdown enforced on account of the Covid-19 coronavirus is eased. The pandemic has most unexpectedly thrown a collective challenge and shaken up all of us, globally. It is a poignant reminder that human life is very fragile. Also, that our circumstances do not define our lives so much as what we make of those circumstances. So this adversity could also be seen as a learning opportunity. When physical access to wise teachers is not possible, one can turn to the following three teachers for their unique lessons: Nature: We stand humbled by a microorganism that is invisible. In our arrogance of taking control over the whole planet, we have forgotten that we are also part of the natural habitat and planetary ecosystem. From ants to anacondas and from bats to bears, all play a key role in maintaining the ecosys...

You would perceive, through observation, that nature does not hurry. It is never in haste, everything happens in due course. Look at the sun, it religiously rises in the morning and sets in the evening. This has gone on for centuries, and it will continue to do so for centuries to come. The sun keeps shining, giving its light to earth and sustaining life on it. Likewise, the trees stand firm;  they do not complain, they bless us by providing us with shade, fuel, wood and fruit. A tree is invaluable to man. And yet we pay no attention to its presence or indeed acknowledge the many benefits we receive from it. There was a nurse in a hospital who looked after her patients very sincerely and devotedly. In her ward was a seriously ill patient. His condition was critical and the doctors had ordered that he should be kept off all food and water, and put on drips. The nurse would attend to him everyday, and serve him dutifully. With her tender care and loving concern, the patient improved ...

India is in a unique position to resist disease and educate the rest of the world, because she is home to the world’s supreme natural health care systems. Ayurveda, Yoga and Yajna offer remedies for every stress-related disease. Here are a few simple, powerful, time-tested techniques, in addition to washing hands and social distancing. Ayurveda recommends respecting your food and eating moderately. Do not overeat. Avoid processed, packaged foods, bleached white sugar and bleached white flour. Reduce fried food, dairy, cold foods and cold drinks. Improve your diet. Favour organic food. Reduce toxic food grown with chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, which poison the earth. Grow fresh, organic veggies in a backyard garden (if you have one). Compost and recycle. Eliminate red meat from your diet. Reduce consumption of fish and fowl in order to aid your digestion and to reduce the confinement and torture of helpless animals. Industrial meat production is a crime against natur...

In India river buffaloes are enjoying their bath, donkeys are drinking, people are  taking a bath, clothes are being washed – and the same water is perhaps being  drunk by some. But the Westerner going to India cannot drink any available water  because all water is polluted, has amoebas, and is not right for drinking. His  immunity has been destroyed by too much protection. Real medicine should give you immunity rather than take it away. It should make  you stronger, able to fight any infection rather than make you weak so that you are vulnerable to all kinds of infections. It has been observed that rich people fall sick more often than poor people. Poor people cannot afford it; rich people can. If the poor can manage one meal a day, that is very fortunate – but they are not sick. Rich people, even in the East, are more sick. In Ayurveda, a few diseases are defined as royal diseases. First you have to be able to afford them. A famous psychologist, Delgado, had b...

When you go where your body and soul want to go, all the forces come together to help you. If you have lived all your life never doing what you wanted to do, what kind of a life is that, asked Joseph Campbell, who said, “Follow your bliss. If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be…. that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.” According to Campbell, bliss is what is called ananda in Sanskrit, as in sat-chit-ananda, where once you get clued into ananda, which he calls rapture, then the other two, sat, your being and chit, full consciousness, will also happen. Once you realize where you get your rapture from, sat and chi...

We must make an attempt to radiate thoughts of love, to live a life of service, says DADA J P VASWANI Why do the vast majority of us live perpetually in fear of something? Perhaps, one reason is that we are lonely. Despite an ever-increasing number of clubs and cinemas, museums and parks, hotels and restaurants, at heart, we feel so lonely. Not A Burden Why do we feel lonely? We lack the security of protection. We are like the child who, taken to a fair, has lost its mother in the crowd. His cries for his mother, “Ma! Ma!” rent the air, but we have forgotten to even cry for our Divine Mother. It is this sense of being alone that leads to a feeling of frustration, and there are those who do not find it worthwhile to live in the world. Many people see life as a burden. Some take the extreme step of committing suicide. The rest die what are regarded as natural deaths but which are, in many cases, premature. Loneliness sits as a heavy burden on the heart, sapping its strength, eating into ...

An electric plug can be made use of to hear a song over the radio, to cool ourselves with the breeze of a fan, to boil water, to cook or to warm the room with the heater. It all depends upon what we plug into it. It is never possible that electricity flowing through the fan, of its own accord, can start emitting fire or light. Similarly, the unmanifest eternal force of life can be invoked, and It shall fulfil all desires through us according to the type of our invocations. The fuel strength in petrol can be converted into horsepower through the mechanism under the bonnet. We can invoke the horsepower to reach our destination, or we can easily dump ourselves into a mass of twisted wreckage on the wayside and become a bundle of broken bones. With neither attachment nor hatred, petrol gives its power when invoked through the mechanism of the engine, and how to make use of the power depends on us and our wisdom in employing it. Similarly, the Supreme power, a mass of dynamism, is the sourc...

Don’t fear death, for there is more to life than death, writes V S KRISHNAN Sri Narayana Guru, the Kerala-born saint-reformer, was walking through the streets, when he heard a wailing sound from a house nearby. Apparently, a death had occurred there and relatives were crying bitterly over the demise of their dear one. He moved on, feeling sympathy for them. After some days, when he happened to pass through the same street, he remembered the house where he had heard sobbing sounds earlier. But now no perceptible change was visible there after the death that seemed to have brought profound sorrow. The initial shock of death seemed to have subsided and all normal activities went on as usual. ‘How soon and how smoothly we come to terms with death,’ wondered Sri Narayana Guru. What is death all about? Does knowledge of death help us lead a better life? There were many studies on the subject of death. It was young Nachiketa, son of Saint Vajasravas, who went right into the abode of Dharmaraj...

Spiritual fire refers to the flame of knowledge in the heart, the Jnanamaya Pradeep says the Bhagwad Gita’s Dhyana verse. This is your essential and innermost Self, that is of the nature of peace and bliss. The phrase spiritual fire is also common in Christianity and is deemed to cleanse, illumine and uplift one’s being. While evolved souls keep this fire burning, in ignorant persons, this divine flame fades under the influence of maya/avidya and gets extinguished. Just as physical fire requires certain ingredients to keep the flame going, spiritual fire requires three ingredients to initiate and sustain it. Noble thoughts crossing the mind, latent spiritual impressions embedded deep in chitta, subconscious, and wisdom in buddhi, the intellect-- due to discretion and dispassion --serve as flammable materials. Satasang and svadhyaya serve as oxygen. They keep the mind in elevated subtle state and keep the spiritual fire burning. If satsang is not continuously kept up, the fire of spirit...

Eating is what we do when we’re hungry or when it is the designated mealtime of the day. But, for many, eating is much more than activity that satiates hunger; it is a sensuous, blissful experience, a boredom reliever, a stress buster. The most vocal, contemporary votary of mindful eating is Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn, for whom mindful eating is the entire process of buying, preparing, eating and relishing your food. And what you shop for should reflect the wise choices you make. Never sit down to a meal when you are ravenously hungry, he advises, as you might wolf down whatever is available. Opt for small portions and bites and chew slowly so you taste and enjoy what you are eating. Feeling grateful helps you appreciate your food, and you will not stuff your tummy mindlessly. While cooking, be of cheerful disposition and serve food aesthetically, so the entire meal becomes a work of art, a pleasant and memorable experience. Take short pauses between mouthfuls, as tha...

If your work and leisure both involve looking at electronic screens, it may be a good idea to give your eyes a break Nothing has worked as hard over the lockdown period as your computer, be it for work, to catch up with your friends and family over video conferences, or to just sit back and let entertainment programming do its thing. And since multiple studies have linked excessive screen time with an increase in anxiety and stress, here are a few tips on how to switch off: Turn off notifications This would help you get back in touch with the real world and ensure distractions don’t impact your mental health. Keep some of the important notifications on, like those pertaining to work, but social media and news alerts can be done away with. Set time slots If you cannot swear off social media altogether, give yourself 30-minute windows where you can look at your accounts, but ensure you don’t cheat on this. For best results, you can partner with a family member, and you both keep each oth...

This is how you can make your adolescent process emotions positively during a difficult phase Social distancing can be hard, especially for teenagers used to spending most of their waking hours with friends. Now, during this lockdown, several teenagers are struggling with being confined to the home. “Most teenagers are experiencing insomnia or sleep pattern disruptions. They’re sleeping at 5 or 6 am and getting up in the afternoon. There is a lack of concentration and focus, low motivational drive, and irritability. They’re getting into scraps with their parents over home chores. Their use of social media and gaming have gone up. And unfortunately, even pornography,” says Dr Zirak Marker, senior psychiatrist and advisor at Mpower - The Centre. Experts share how to help young adults deal with the situation: Find the trigger “First, figure out why the lockdown is difficult for them,” says clinical psychologist Priyanka Kartari. “Is it because they don’t have access to their friends? Is i...

Swami MUKTIDANANDA writes of the urgent need  to decongest cities and clean up our relationship with our environment Wisdom lies in seeing the Covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity to learn from nature. Despite being blessed with a wonderful habitat such as Planet Earth, human beings have exploited nature and, according to a World Wildlife Fund report, have decimated 60% of all other species in the period 1970-2014. We need to shift from our humancentric approach to a nature-centric one that will take into account the well-being of all species, and also stop polluting air, water and land recklessly. To ensure genuine human welfare, there is an urgent need to respect nature and reorient civilisation in the direction of compassion, sensitivity and respect for all beings. Modern lifestyles that produce enormous amounts of non-biodegradable waste, have seriously compromised nature’s bio-geo cycles like the carbon cycle and hydrological cycle. The result of all these is degradation of the...

For the majority, life means simply drifting through it, struggling with mundane duties and livelihood and culminating in the final exit. However, the opportunity of human life is too precious to be mere survival. According to Aristotle, "The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival." This dictum holds the key to a fulfilling and meaningful life. In Buddhism, 'awareness' has been equated to 'mindfulness'. In essence, awareness means living life with alertness and understanding. It is attentiveness from moment-to-moment about ourselves and our surroundings. Awareness has to be cultivated with effort and then practised till it becomes a habit. First, we develop awareness about our own self -- our body, mind and intellect -- which in due course expands to our surroundings and different facets of lives. Consciousness about our body results in good health with timely prevention and containment of di...

Is there no way out of the suffering that this life sometimes seems to be? Suffering is not what is happening to us, but how we see what is happening to us, writes Om Swami Swamiji,” my father said to me the other day, “life has taught me that one must go through one’s journey alone.” He was a bit unsettled, even distraught, as he had recently fallen prey to a fraudulent phone call telling him that his bank card had been blocked. (Mis) leading him through a series of steps, the caller managed to extract his bank details and in just under two minutes, spent my parents’ entire one month’s pension on various websites. The bank concluded that it was my father’s negligence that was behind this disaster, for he’d shared the transaction password with the caller. Understandably, the police couldn’t do much because the call was traced to another state in India. In the larger scheme of things, it’s nothing: to lose one month’s worth of pension when you’ve been earning for more than four decades....

Today, loneliness is a familiar occurrence. Being alone is not synonymous with being lonely. Loneliness does not arise from being ‘alone’ with ourselves; it emerges when we crave recognition and acceptance and feel isolated. Careful analysis reveals that we bring loneliness on ourselves because we do not wish others to curtail our desires or prevent us from doing what we want. The first people we create a distance from is our own family as we don’t want elders, teachers, parents, or in-laws to admonish or correct us. Gradually, we shrink into a smaller unit and separate ourselves from others, even though at a deeper, subconscious level, we long for a sense of community and togetherness. That is why we love celebrations and parties. Yet, under the misguided dread of rejection, of being disregarded or because of ego tussles, we tend to isolate ourselves. Thus, loneliness slowly and surely creeps into our lives. The recent, popular term ‘social distancing’ is somewhat incorrect. When we c...

Patanjali yoga offers a path of self-cultivation; the word cultivation stands as much for spiritual care as for agriculture, writes KRISHA KOPS Swami Hariharananda Aranya lived as an ascetic in a mountain cave and possessed nothing but a thick, cotton blanket, a napkin, a dhoti, and a wooden water-pot. For the last 21 years of his life, he lived in a house cave, where he spoke to his students only through a window. But he mainly became famous for writing one of the most important comments on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. What Hariharananda attempted to achieve with his studies and asceticism was self-cultivation. This spiritual practice is as much a part of many religions as it is of numerous philosophies. It is concerned with bringing about a fundamental change in oneself through theories and practices. In his Yoga Sutras, 1:33, Patanjali writes about self-cultivation, which translators use for the Sanskrit term bhavana, deriving from the Sanskrit root bhu for ‘becoming’. More precisely, P...

It blesses and reassures, receives and gives, invites and bids goodbye, creates abhinaya and mudras, writes HARSHA V DEHEJIA of the human hand The human hand with the prehensile thumb is the most beautiful and evocative part of the human body. Not only is it of utility in carrying out the many functions of human life but even more, raises it towards the sky to reach for the heavens; it expresses feelings, holds a kalam to write a love song and a chisel to transform a stone into a celestial image, and handles a needle to create beautiful embroidery. Our gods and goddesses speak to us through their hands. The Varada Hasta of Vishnu assures us of blessings; the Abhyaya Mudra of Shiva gives us protection. The left hand of Shrinathji calls us to join him in his krida, games, and when Venugopal holds the flute with his two hands, it is a call to his madhurya, sweetness. When Durga wields the trishul, trident, with her hand, it is an assurance of the victory of good over evil; when Lakshmi ho...

I Am No Longer An Atheist   MUKUL SHARMA tells us what turned a renowned atheist into a believer   In December 2004, at the age of 81, Anthony Flew declared that he had become a believer. The announcement came as a huge shock to the whole world’s rationalists, non-believers and secularists alike.The reason was simple: Professor Anthony Flew, a very well-known British philosopher, author and lecturer at several principal universities, had been regarded till then as one of the 20th century’s leading atheists, who from the age of 15 had shunned and advocated against the idea of any divine Creator.   In a letter to The Sunday Telegraph of London, he said later:“The God in whose existence I have belatedly come to believe is most emphatically not the eternally rewarding and eternally torturing God of either Christianity or Islam but the God of Aristotle that he would have defined — had Aristotle actually produced a definition of his (and my) God — as the first initiating cause ...

Misery or happiness is your choice. Let it sink deep in you. You choose it. When you are unhappy you have chosen to be unhappy. There is no other excuse. Once you understand this, you will have the freedom to choose. Then it is up to you. I have heard about a great Sufi mystic who was always happy, always cheerful, always blissful. A disciple asked him, “Master, you always look so happy. I have been watching you for many years, in many situations. Day in, day out, for years I have observed you. All kinds of situations have passed, but you always remain happy. What is your secret?” The Master said, “There is no secret in it. Whatsoever situation confronts me, I always have the choice: to be happy or to be unhappy. And I always choose to be happy.” Try it. This is a magic formula. In each situation, look before you become unhappy or happy — look. Is there a possibility of being happy? And you will always find that the possibility is there. There is always something to be happy about. If ...

After the death of the body, either the jiva is reborn or it attains nirvana. A person is liberated when the blueprint of samskaras in his chitta, consciousness, is destroyed, for his Atman is already free. It’s the individual’s chitta that needs liberation. If the chitta retains samskaras, the jiva is reborn according to his karma, fruit of his actions. At the time of death, the jiva’s next birth, how long he is going to live, his prarabdha, previous lifetime’s karma that will come to fruition in his next birth, are all decided. The karma grid works like an automated, sophisticated and accurate machine. Once everything is settled, the jiva starts to look for a new body that has already been earmarked according to his karma. Every jiva doesn’t get a new birth instantly. Some have to go through a transit period that can extend indefinitely. The tradition of shraadh for the departed facilitates the jiva’s crossing over to the other side. Nobody actually knows what happens to the jiva aft...

Shakti symbolises power — the divine power to create, sustain and evolve. Woman is a storehouse of hidden powers and talents, but she is so suppressed that these remain dormant in her, unharnessed and unutilised. Women have suffered mental and physical atrocities since ages. Sometimes she is humiliated in her home and at other times, outside the home. From childhood, she is taught to be dependent and constantly made to think that she is weak and fragile. Can a religion that has Durga, Kali and Lakshmi as its three main goddesses say that a woman is inferior to men? No way! The truth is that you are not a body; existentially, you are god as in godliness. God is not a person but is existence. In Atmashatakam, Adi Shankaracharya wrote: I am thoughtless and formless I am all pervasive and beyond senses I am eternally present Bondage and freedom is not in me I am consciousness I am Shiva I am Shiva Shankaracharya did not say these words for men alone. Nowhere does he say that man is Shiva a...

Sampranata samadhi, concrete meditation, causes the seed of omniscience to ripen. In permanent savikalpa, higher state of samadhi, that is, samprajnata samadhi, the seed assumes vast proportions. In that state, one’s object no longer remains within the limited periphery of the unit mind, but becomes as vast as the Macrocosm. One’s potentiality becomes immeasurable. By virtue of sadhana, the ungerminated seed ripens and assumes unlimited proportions. Thus elevated, sadhakas, seekers, do not need to acquire knowledge from external sources. The bliss of knowledge spontaneously manifests itself in them due to Macrocosmic grace. This expansion of chitta, feeling/emotion, is only possible in savikalpa samadhi. A restless chitta can never attain samprajnata samadhi. Jara samadhi is different -- it occurs when the mind becomes so infatuated with a crude material object of ideation, that it takes the form of that object, to the exclusion of all other objects. The goal of samprajnata samadhi may...

The world is filled with jaw-dropping sights, but rapid climate change is threatening some of the most spectacular natural wonders. Here are just a few of the world’s most majestic places that could disappear in as little as a few decades. According to a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), there are many national parks and landmarks under serious threat from climate change, so much so that they will be irreparably damaged, or worse, completely disappear. When we think of parks and monuments, we often think of grand landscapes and wilderness. But it’s not just the outdoors and the environment that is at risk here, it’s also our cultural heritage. Sometimes it’s hard to fully comprehend the devastating consequences climate change will wreak on our planet until you think about what we stand to lose if global warming is left unchecked. Read on to find out which places are on the verge of disappearing if climate change continues unabated... Seychelles We won’t be able t...

Vastu rules for Temple construction Anyone who’s ever built or constructed a home would know how important it is to have a sanctioned design for the same. People, who practice Hinduism, know the significance of Vastu Shastra and its importance during the construction of house, any commercial or religious place. Rules for temple construction by Agni Purana Unlike in present time, the construction of religious edifices and idols was considered of sacred importance and thus followed a set of sanctified set of rules and rituals. Holy Scripture, Agni Purana has several chapters that guide us through the ancient ways on how to construct holy places and idols, and how to pray. Brahma-Vishnu-Mahesh These chapters comprises of divine mantras and rituals in dedication to worshiping of Lord Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma and many other Gods and Goddesses; including ways to appease them and perform sacred penance towards them. Lord Vishwakarma In the ancient times, not anyone or everyone could construct th...

Moles on face- What do they indicate? Some ancient scriptures, like Samudrika Shastra, have explained how a person’s body hides the secret to his/her future and destiny; and how simply by analysing them one can decode certain life events like, success, marriage, spouse, children, travel, etc. Samudrika Shastra- Face moles Previously, we shared with you the knowledge and insights on one’s personality, marriage, etc., based on the moles on their bodies, shape of body parts, skin color, etc. Today, I am going to present you some details about ‘moles on face’ that are based on the information taken up from Samudrika Shastra. Success in life Earlier, we present information about one’s love life, health and financial fortune based on the moles on face, but today, I am going to tell you that how the position of the moles on face decides on one’s success in life. Take a look…. (I'll be keeping all the images same so that it becomes easy for you to look out for the exact position.) #1. This...