Act One – Brahma, the Creator
While God is beyond human understanding or perception, Hindu scriptures have conceptualized the force that gave rise to our universe. When God sleeps the universe disappears and when He wakes, it appears.
Brahma is Act One of on the drama that creates the universe. Lord Brahma, the Creator, lights the spark of existence at His pleasure.
See On Hinduism by Irina Gajjar
The number of internet references to U.S. government attempts at communications with aliens is surprising. The other day, I heard a commentary on TV regarding the merits of attempting such communications. There were pros and cons, the major con being fear of invasion.
I think we can never stop hoping and trying to connect with beings who exist in other realms, wherever and whenever they exist as I am convinced they must.
Are you convinced? Just post a yes or no, if you wish to respond to this question. Or tell us more.
Bragging is human but there are rules to be followed if we wish to be elegant about it. I think the biggest rule is never brag about what you do not do. In my view, bragging about not doing things is distasteful and often hypocritical. I have zero tolerance for people who harp on what they don’t eat, drink, do or say especially if the subtext is we should follow their example.
Another bragging rule used in my family is that it is OK to brag about things we are not trained in. In other words, while it’s not OK for a mathematician to show off math skills, she can brag about how well she cooks. I personally have some doubts about that one, though I respect the need to brag about ourselves and especially about our loved ones. In that case I guess the best rule is to be quick with your brag.
How do you feel about bragging?
What do you think of this conversation?
“. . . I’m afraid our baby will grow up bereft of its historical identity if we just let the issue of Jewishness slide.”
“There is no way Jewishness can slide, Nat. Being Jewish is different from practicing Judaism. It’s not a question of following arbitrary rules. It’s a question of who we are and how we are perceived.”
“Exactly, we are the products of a long cultural and religious tradition. We are descendants of rabbis and Talmudic scholars. How can we determine that the so-called rules we have rejected are arbitrary when we don’t even know what they are let alone what they represent?
Excerpt from The Pokhraj, by Irina Gajjar.
From earliest times, Hindus have thought and written about one God called Brahman. Brahman is an all-encompassing truth who has no shape or form but as the essence of Divinity, He flows into many manifestations.
“As Creator of the world, God is called Brahma. As Preserver, God is called Vishnu. As Destroyer, He is named Shiva. These three aspects together form the Trinity, the totality of a single God. From the Trinity, originate God’s thousands and thousands of forms and names.”
from About Hinduism, by Irina Gajjar [to be published soon].
The civilization which flourished in what today is Northwest India and Pakistan is known as the Indus Valley Civilization or the Harappan Civilization. It thrived before 1,500 B.C.E. and its decline somewhat coincides with the arrival of Aryans from Northwest Asia.
The cities of the Indus Valley Civilization enjoyed trade with the coexisting elaborate cultures of the early Middle East, of Greece and of Crete. Motifs in pottery and items like tablets overlap with motifs that prevailed further north and west of India
Excavations of Harappan cities show that they were well engineered with brick houses of several stories, with good drainage systems and public baths. People played games like hopscotch and marbles and they wore draped garments.
A fair number of tablets have been excavated with a script that remains undeciphered. Even clever computers have been unable to figure them out, leaving us with an intriguing mystery.
See Irina Gajjar’s Ancient Indian Art and the West.
To ask whether God exists is to ask whether God can be distinguish from that which is not God.
It is to ask whether we can distinguish between spirit and matter, between the eternal and the temporal, between truth and falsehood, between reality and illusion or between existence and non-existence.
Do you think this is the right question? Do you think the question matters more than the answer?
See Irina Gajjar’s On Hinduism, Chapter 3, The Bhagavad Gita, p. 70.
Often I wonder about the God or gods in whom atheists disbelieve.
Do they disbelieve in truth, in nothingness, in energy or in the unknowable?
Do they disbelieve in nature?
Some of us think God has certain forms, powers or manifestations. Some of us are tentative in our belief or agnostic while others are unwilling even to consider questions associated with the notion of God. Yet others blame God for all the atrocities we humans have committed in His or Her name.
I deeply respect all belief and no belief, but I wonder what disbelievers think when they go beyond denial.
According to traditional Hindu philosophy, the mind is part of the body.
Our bodies consist of ether, air, fire, water and earth which are the five subtle elements and of the mind. The mind in turn incorporates the five senses (touching, hearing, seeing, smelling and tasting). It also embraces understanding and emotions like wanting, hating, happiness, unhappiness and courage
Thus the body and mind are allocated to the material world as distinct from the world of spirit or soul or eternity.
See Irina Gajjar’s The Gita, A New Translation of Hindu Sacred Scripture, 13: 5, 6, The Body and The Spirit
On and off buttons exemplify a generational divide. Technology has changed and seniors are stuck in an era in which one button turns something on and another one turns it off.
Young people understand that you only need one button. Push it on to start something and push it again to stop it. The button is a simple symbol. It doesn’t say on or off. It traditionally looks like a circle with a line drawn through it, but now it can be a circle, or an indentation, a gesture or even nothing.
The same “button” turns on a fan, a computer, a phone or a lock on an appliance. It also might activate some remote activity. This may trouble older people. If the button is pressed too long, it doesn’t turn things on or off or the gadget gets confused and freezes or something switches on and off, or swivels or continuously speeds up and slows down in a panic. A mere touch could set an alarm in motion and cause a swarm of police to go charging to an unknown place.
Are you scared or young?
