Theonefun

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...

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...

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...

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...

Signs of good luck in marriage With marriage, comes along numerous expectations between the two individuals set to tying the knot and their respective families. Their first and foremost expectation is to believe that this holy union would bring happiness in the lives of all. Importance of Kundli Milan In Hindu marriages, astrology plays a significant role in ensuring the same. Not all, but some families believe in Kundli Milan of the ‘couple in question’ to see if their ‘gunas’ do match or not. These astrological calculations are based on the couple’s respective horoscopes and planetary motion. Compatibility of couple The entire procedure and the expectations of family lead to one conclusion and i.e. good luck & prosperous future for the people involved and their families. For example, knowing if the couple are compatible based on their respective nature. Physical feature linked to future predictions On the other hand, several ancient scriptures give in their view that sometimes an...

Jupiter's transition into Scorpio According to astrology, regardless of the ruler of your zodiac sign, when an astrological planet makes a transition into a particular zodiac sign, it ends up impacting the rest of the zodiac signs as well. So, for example, if your Sun Sign is an Aries, and Saturn is transitioning into Sagittarius, this transition would also cause a ripple effect on your life. Astrological planet transition Likewise, the recent transition of Jupiter into Scorpio would also leave an impact on your life. But, before I write down the zodiac sign-wise impact, let us explore some crucial understanding of the both, the planet and the hosting sign. Qualities of Jupiter Jupiter represents luck, and is the biggest element of our solar system, its transition into a sun sign is meant to boost the hosting zodiac’s strongest quality. So the entire year, for the particular zodiac sign is hugely influenced by luck; which means it’s a win-win for every zodiac sign already! Jupiter ...

One sided love tale of Ganesha and Tulsi Indian mythologies are full of love sagas, from Shiva-Parvati, Vishnu-Laxmi, and Lord Ram-Sita to Krishna-Radha. Failed love saga But, there is one story that could never see its fate come to a fruitful end, i.e. of Lord Ganesha and Tulsi. Ganpati Bappa Morya Lord Ganesha, who is known as the remover of all obstacles, could not reciprocate holy Tulsi’s undying love, which left her fuming and cursing the Lord in return. Tulsi and Ganesha's hatred Seeing her vicious hatred shocked him and he too decided to teach her a lesson, which left her repenting for her life. Tulsi Not only did Ganesha curse her for life, but discarded her use in any of the auspicious ritual related to his worshipping. Wonder why it all happened? See in the following slides: Dharmaraja Daughter of Dharmaraja, Tulsi, in her youth was an ardent devotee of Lord Vishnu. She would often walk up to the banks of Ganges and worship in the nearby temple dedicated to Lord Vishnu. T...