Reading 297, from “Be Good” / “Acche Bano” in Hindi by Swami Ramsukhdasji.

 

All that we need is within us already.

There is one very great point. Have mercy on me and please pay
attention. Whatever circumstances you have been placed in, consider
those circumstances and situations as best of all and utilize it well,
then salvation will take place. Whatever things you have received, you
don’t need any more things than that. However much knowledge you have,
you don’t need to know any more than that. The amount of strength that
you have, you don’t need any more than that. Paramatma (God) can be
realized simply by putting to proper use the strength, the intellect,
the abilities, the circumstances etc. that you have. This is the
absolute Truth and is the principle.

 

Your knowledge is not less, however, what you know, you are not
utilizing it well, you do not give it importance – this is your
limitation. The circumstances that have been presented in front of you,
it will not remain like this forever – this knowledge is not something
that you know only slightly, you know this completely and entirely. If
you utilize this knowledge properly, then this knowledge is adequate for
your benefit. It is not the least bit of lesser amount. The proper
utilization of this knowledge is that, do not get trapped in the
circumstances that have presented themselves to you. Neither become
elated, nor be dejected by them…

Swami Ramsukhdasji

Reading 296, from Felix Wilfred ( quoted from Vidyajyoti, Oct. ‘09)

Whose Story?

To what extent can history be written from the perspective of the religion of a people or a group?…Does not writing of an “Indian History of Christianity”, “Indian History of Islam” or “History of Hinduism” create division among a people? Moreover, if we take religion as the point of reference and make a history out of it, does not this enterprise isolate people from the complex texture of life made up of social, political, economic, cultural and regional realities? There is, then, a lot of truth in the apprehension about the history of any group written from the viewpoint of their religious affiliation…

Felix Wilfred.

My Comments:

Felix Wilfred’s tremendously erudite and yet practically relevant article on the engagement of Christianity with Colonised India has appeared in this month’s Vidyajyoti. Ultimately he argues for a subaltern approach if contemporary Indian Christians are to rid themselves of the specter of  colonialism which still haunts Christianity in India today.

While I do not agree with everything this article talks about, yet it should be compulsory reading for any politically conscious reader. In fact, after reading him, I feel equipped to tackle the thorny issue of Mr. Jinnah so plaguing BJP office holders.

Reading 295, from Franco Moretti

Capitalism sucking the Proletariat

The money that had been buried comes back to life, becomes capital and embarks on the conquest of the world: this and    none other is the story of Dracula the vampire.

“Capital is dead labour which vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks”(Marx). Marx’s analogy unravels the vampire metaphor…The stronger the vampire becomes, the weaker the living become: “the capitalist gets rich, not, like the miser, in proportion to his personal labour and restricted consumption, but at the same rate as he squeezes out labour-power from others, and compels the worker to renounce all the anjoyments of life.” Like capital, Dracula, is impelled towards a continuous growth, an unlimited expansion of his domain…

Dialectic of Fear

Franco Moretti

My comments:

After reading Moretti,  I am convinced of the power of money to suck out all our living forces. In fact, I had happened in the last few days to meet some very rich folks who had made and continue to make their fortunes from business. Unfortunately all they could talk of was the price of real estate, the price of shares and how much needs to be saved down the line…that’s about it. The amazing thing is that in no time I started to desire wealth like they did. How much should I save? Where to put the money in? This till God put it in me not to worry about dough. Seek ye first the things above, and all other stuff will be added unto you.

& don’t be seduced by the following statement:

Only the poor detest money, Mr. Dracula is appalled by the inertia of others; like the corporates he is ever busy improving his top and bottom lines. LOL.

Reading 294, from Jospeh Campbell

Artists are magical helpers. Evoking symbols and motifs that connect us to our deeper selves, they can help us along the heroic journey of our own lives. [...] The artist is meant to put the objects of this world together in such a way that through them you will experience that light, that radiance which is the light of our consciousness and which all things both hide and, when properly looked upon, reveal. The hero journey is one of the universal patterns through which that radiance shows brightly. What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There’s always the possibility of a fiasco. But there’s also the possibility of bliss.

Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

Joseph Campbell

My notes:

Campbell is one of the best twentieth century mythologists. His The Hero with a Thousand Faces is both an intellectual tour de force as well as a self-help classic. I am in fact reading it now.

The High-Strung Life

It is said that the most blessed evangelist John, when he
was gently stroking a partridge with his hands, suddenly saw one in the habit
of a hunter coming to him.  He wondered that a man of such repute and fame should demean himself to such small and humble amusements, and said, “Are you that John whose eminent and widespread fame enticed me also with great desire to know you?  Why then are you taken up with such mean
amusements?” The blessed John said to him, “What is that which you carry in your hands?” “A bow,” says he.  “And why,”said John, “do you not bear it about always stretched?” The hunter answered him, “I must not, lest by constant bending the strength of its vigor be wrung and grow soft and perish, and when there is need that the arrows be shot with much strength at some beast, the strength being lost by excess of continual tension, a forcible blow cannot be dealt.” “Just so,” said the blessed John, “let not this little and brief relaxation of my mind offend you, young man, for unless it sometimes ease and relax by some remission the force of its tension, it will grow slack through unbroken rigor and will not be able to obey the power of the
Spirit.”

John Cassian (c. 360-c. 435)

Lady Luck and Christianity

The Renaissance believed in Fortuna, or what we today call Lady Luck. & the said Lady has never been favorable to me as far as lotteries go. But this post caught my eye and I am pitching for it here! In fact in light of this post by me some days ago, I am praying against despair that I win the prize!

My dear constant reader, pray that God wills that Lady Luck smiles upon me this time. Amen. (Frivolity intended, for the Kingdom is certainly joyful!)

PS. As a matter of fact I do have this erudite blog in my Google Reader. That’s where I got to know of this giveaway.
Cheers to winning for once.

From Kala Chakra, Foreign Scholarships & Racism

Our students mostly don’t want to be scholars. That’s too nerdy, they feel. And studying core subjects don’t pay much in India. And even if you study say Literature, Culture Studies or Pure Mathematics here and top your university at the Masters Level, then too a bilayat-returned B-grade student gets the plum academic job here. The proverbial colonial hangover prevents us from respecting homegrown scholars. So our moneyed class and generally discontented intellectuals seek out doles ( called scholarships) from various foreign universities and rush there to cram what they easily could have done here only if their greed were checked. The result: Australian racists bashing our poor exiled students.

I am not much surprised at these attacks. Even a cursory glance at colonial studies will show how people of colour have been regularly brutalized by the Whites. They are deplorable but nonetheless a fact of history. It’s bound to occur like the bull-bear cycles of the equity markets, somewhat like Eliade’s myth of eternal return, like Nietzsche’s transvaluation of values. I am sure you have got the hang of it…

Amitava Ghosh says somewhere in The Shadow Lines how we have no right to eat off the fat of developed nations when we never made their houses and streets. Rather we should make our own country developed. That ain’t gonna happen if we have cowards running away from our troubled nation.

Kala Chakra

On Wisdom (Reading 292, from the Book of Job), some of the most haunting lines ever written in English

But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?

Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living.

The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me.

It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.

It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire.

The gold and the crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold.

No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies.

The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure gold.

Whence then cometh wisdom? and where is the place of understanding?

Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air.

Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears.

God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof.

For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven…

The Book of Job

Reading 291, on Adultery & the Nazis

Once a man asked a woman , ” Will you sleep with me for$10 million?” The woman readily agreed. Now the man said, ” Since we agree in principle now let’s settle the proper price”…

The Nazis: A Warning From History (Not an exact quote)

My notes:

That’s about how Hitler and his cronies seduced a nation. Of course, the nation wanted to be seduced first.

Reading 290, from The Hidden Lives of Nuns

I have taken this pic from Mrs. Reed's web-site, hope she does not mind!

“It used to be walls were the most important. You were cloistered, and you mustn’t go beyond a certain point…Our cloister is the cloister of the heart. It’s not necessarily walls. I think it is a freer way of looking at life: allowing people to be themselves and allowing them to express themselves…”

Mother Gemma Angelo in Cheryl R. Reed’s  Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns

My notes:

Religion is all about being free. Don’t get me wrong; religion should not be an escape from the world and its pains. The truly religious are deeply affected by the world’s joys and sorrows. They are NEVER indifferent to life. Their love for people continuously incarnate God’s Kingdom even today.

There are a few things which I believe Evil  adores:

a) Too much discipline.

b) Perfection

c) Judging others.

d) Rituals and constants shows of holiness.

e) Respecting the letter of the Law