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[drlamba]

Boundlessness and infinity are key to evolve

The need to fence off one’s physical territory – whether residential or commercial private property, an apartment complex, office premises or between nations – arises from mutual mistrust and suspicion and for safety and security. But ownership and possession, demarcation and divisions are so antithetical to the spiritual domain that promotes boundlessness; and these barriers are incongruous on…

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Are coincidences real?

There is a part of me that, despite myself, wants to entertain the possibility that the world really does have supernatural dimensions. It’s the same part of me that gets spooked by ghost stories, and that would feel uneasy about spending a night alone in a morgue. I don’t believe the Universe contains supernatural forces, but I feel it might. This is because the human mind has fundamentally…

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In Defence of Unschooling

It takes nerve to go against the grain and take your child out of school. But, for some, that’s when learning really starts. I know of a boy, let me call him Peter. Peter was seven when his mother decided that enough was enough. Reshma had spent years trying to support him to attend school. He’d started early on refusing to go, and she’d taken the school’s advice, which was to make him go. She…

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Rahul, disqualification and defamation law

The law took its course. Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi stands disqualified following conviction in a defamation case where a Gujarat court gave him two years jail – the conviction and sentence together disqualify him from Parliament. Gandhi can contest in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections only if his conviction is suspended/ overturned, or if appellate courts reduce the jail term. A magistrate’s court in…

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Soul is superior to mind

Why do we seek happiness in a finite world of ‘mine’ and ‘yours’? How does the ego come to identify with what is only maya, keeping us bound? The Vishnu Purana in part seven, chapter six, explains the problem in clear words: “The intellect takes what is not the Atman to be the Atman. Therefore, the mind takes what is not one’s own to be ‘mine’.” In other words, from our false identifications with…

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UK Suffering from Drawbridge Mentality

The popular acronym NIMBY (‘not in my backyard’) is the deliberate opposition by residents to revised land use in their ostensible ‘backyard’, much like a ‘drawbridge mentality’ that implies a conveniently selfish campaign to oppose inward migration, ironically by those who partook an exactly similar migration earlier. The redneck sentiment in the land of immigrants i.e., the United States of…

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Political Education

 In his autobiographical Seventh Letter, Greek philosopher Plato famously remarked, “The human race will have no respite from evils until those who are really philosophers acquire political power or until, through some divine dispensation, those who rule and have political authority in the cities become real philosophers”. Plato’s retreat to his ‘Academy’ for implementing his political ideals in…

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Geo-Political Water Get Further Muddied by Algerian-Iranian-Russian Moves in Africa

The war in Ukraine is poised to enter a decisive phase as both Kyiv and Moscow prepare for a spring onslaught. The Ukrainian forces have already started receiving German-made Leopard 2 tanks and now Poland and Slovakia have decided to send its Soviet-designed MiG-29s to Ukraine. Add to this the recent collision – intentional or otherwise – of a Russian Su-27 fighter with a US MQ-9 Reaper over the…

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Staying Alive

Survival is the ability to swim in strange water. Approximately 65 million years ago, a meteor crashing down to Earth resulted in 80% of all animal species going extinct—a loss so cosmic it’s hard to even fathom. The Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event is most widely known for wiping out the dinosaurs, but not all ancient reptiles were annihilated. One order in particular has proven especially…

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Artificial Intelligence or Idiocy Incarnate

The problem with the new chatbots is not just that they are often stupid and naive; it is that they are not “stupid” or “naive” enough to pick up on the nuances, ironies, and revealing contradictions that constitute human culture and communication. Worse, by relying on them, we risk succumbing to the same obtuseness. There is nothing new about “chatbots” that are capable of maintaining a…

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India played diplomatic hardball & British response was that it still gives ‘aid’ to an India whose economy has overtaken its own

In a hardball diplomatic move, India removed extra barricades outside the British high commission and the residence of the high commissioner in New Delhi on Wednesday. And, presto, security outside the Indian high commission in London that again saw pro-Khalistani protests was noticeably better than earlier. That it came to this is entirely the fault of Britain, which seems to have confused…

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Your arth (money) grows when it finds arth (meaning)

The word arth‘’ in Hindi has a dual meaning. It means ‘money’ and it also denotes ‘meaning’. Yet, all arth– money or wealth – doesn’t necessarily have arth – meaning or value. We earn money to sustain ourselves and to lead a comfortable life. This money is essentially in the form of currency, which plays out in various transactions, or prices in our daily lives. But to grow, money needs to have…

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Tirthankar who can be Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh

As per Jain cosmology, universe is Anadi-nidhan, eternal. The two time-cycles, Utsarpini, in which all good things – knowledge, happiness, life span, stature – are in ascending order, and Avsarpini, during which all these are in descending order, when joined together, make one rotation of the time wheel called Kalpa. At the end of Avsarpini, all living beings, except a few, are destroyed.…

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Tagore and Swami Vivekananda

“So far as I can make out, Vivekananda’s idea was that we must accept the facts of life. We must rise higher in our spiritual experience in the domain where neither good nor evil exists. It was because Vivekananda tried to go beyond good and evil that he could tolerate many religious habits and customs which have nothing spiritual about them. My attitude towards truth is different. Truth cannot…

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Ways to be calm – and why it matters

Is being calm about passivity and numbness, or is it a superpower that makes us strong? Is calmness a passive state of being, involving numbing oneself to what’s really going on? Is it in some cases unnatural – sociopathic even? Or is a sense of tranquillity one of our greatest qualities? Here are five ideas about calmness, from the philosophy of serenity to the music, art and poetry that can…

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Is a martyr’s death truly an act of freedom and resistance in everyday life marked by oppression and violence

The ninth Guru of Sikhs, Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded for not converting to Islam and his companions were hacked to death. He was unwavering in his faith and became a martyr. Similarly, an octogenarian Christian bishop is condemned to death for his beliefs. Even while bound to a wooden stake, as Roman authorities order his immolation, the monk still refuses to blaspheme against his god. A crowd…

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A Fast Furious America Confronts China’s Gradualism

While China builds up its diplomatic presence in the Middle East and is perhaps looking forward to brokering a ceasefire deal between Ukraine and Russia, in the South China Sea it has been gradually building strategic advantages that threaten the vital interests of the United States and its allies. This has been happening over the years when the United States was engaged in Afghanistan, Iraq, and…