SHANTI MANTRA - MEANING

Hello Every, Comment on this please

COW SLAUGHTER

It is told that Rishis and Munis of ancient times used to eat non vegetarian food. Gradually they learnt something which made them move away from eating flesh and eat only Green leaves and vegetables. The answer hinges on the fact that Lot of energy is required for human digestive system for the process of digestion. If you have keenly observed, people feel drowsy after having lunch or dinner. The very reason for this is, digestive system uses most of energy available depriving brain form the part it need to keep itself active, forcing it to go to hibernation.

A non-vegetarian food takes more then 8 hours to complete its digestion, hence, for 8+ hours activities of brain will be less as compared to its normal activities making the person more lethargic. Might be this was the reason rishis and munis went away from non-vegetarian food.

So, now the debatable topic is "should we eat nonveg?". If yes, "Should we also kill COW for its flesh?" Now the cow is making news for a different reason in India. Recently the BJP government in Karnataka had proposed a anti-cattle slaughter bill. Should it be passed? Should it not be passed?

Vote your opinion with justification

Un-answered GOD ... Continued .......

We discussed many things in the previous blog post. Interesting conclusions opened up. At the same time interesting questions came out. Many people have already summarized in a nicer way in the comments itself, and I need not put more effort. I shall do a copy past of couple of summary done.

Summary by Arya:
1) GOD is ever existing
2) GOD manifests himself in all the creations
3) GOD is omnipresent
4) An apparent/non-apparent form of GOD takes birth/grows/sustains/dies and it is formed by the combination of pancha-mahabhutas(5 elements)
5) Any form that encapsulates GOD is temporal
6) GOD is an entity which is the witness to all the above mentioned forms
7) In fact GOD is inexplicable because in explaining him(which i am doing now) I am applying my thoughts which itself is part of one of the above forms which is always prone to errors/bias/ignorance

Summary by GodCon:
GOD is :
1) ever existing (eternal), unborn, infinite, immutable aspect(sathyam, nityam, ajam, anantam, achyutam)
2) source of all energies, including life (kaaraNa sharira) (sarva kaaraNa kaaraNam)
3) source of everything that we see and know (similar to above but more at the object level; chara-achara prabhu)
3) the source, sustainer, and the final destination of everything (bhutakrit, bhutabrit, paramagatih); controller of everything (mayadhyaksehna prakritih suyate sacharacharam)
4) an infinitely intelligent being (discussed in the previous thread of discussion; Pious and GodCon)
5) the core / center of everything (sarvasya hridi sannivishTah)
6) controller / knower of past, present and future of beings (bhuta-bhavya-bhavat prabhuh)
7) He is beyond sensory perceptions, so can be understood (partially) through inference
8) all knowing (Omniscient; sarvagjna)
9) his energies are everywhere, inside and outside (sa-bhaaya-abhyantarah), and all energies comes from Him.

Defination of God In one line by Arlagada:
"Sarve jana sukhino bhavantu" –

I agree with Arlagada on this aspect.

We all do things to keep ourselves happy at the end of the day. We love our mothers because we are happy by doing so, we participate in blog because we are happy by doing so. In this way, every work we do in this karma bhoomi is for happiness (sukha). A sanyasi also is happy by being a sanyasi. So, Happiness itself is “GOD” and veda’s and all scriptures say one thing that is “Sarve jana sukhino bhavantu” meaning “let everyone be happy” OR let every one be one in GOD.

There is now a anomaly again between dvaita and advaita. You are invited to participate under this article

Un-Answered GOD!

A wonderful discussion about What/Who is God? went on in a more mature and more orderly manner than previous. I personally learnt a lot out of this discussion. I would like to summarize about what we have deduced till today about GOD.

Every thing that is born has death; Earth, Sun, other planets, Humans, Animals, Dream and many other such things are the examples. Extrapolating this to the universe, we see that, there must be one such thing that has no birth, from which everything originated. Many people gave an example of Singularity supporting this concept. We also went till Big Bang and came back. We all accepted that, this entity will be called as GOD. Once we deduced the existence of God, we moved on for the next question, i.e. What/Who is God?

Deducing the existence of God we knew that we had actually already deduced one of the main properties of God, i.e. “ever existing” nature of God. Further we also had proved the omnipresent of God. We defined him as Creator, Sustainer and destructor. Later on, something very interesting happened in the discussion. The discussion introduced two terms called "Atma" and "Paramaatma". Various people participating in this blog post had various stances to take about the relationship between these two. This lead the discussion to boil down to two great philosophies that has existed from ages, Dvaita and Advaita. I shall try to do some justice to this summary by writing down the list of difference and arguments made by participants about these two philosophies.

Argument 1:
Dvaita - Atma and Paramaatma are two separate entities yet the same.
1. Example: Fire and spark are different yet the same
2. Example: Atma (Jivaatma) maintains its individuality and yet is moving towards attaining Paramaatma. Paramaatma is independent

Argument 2:
Advaita - Atma and Paramaatma are never different, but look different because of "Maya".
1. Example: Just like one feels his existence in a dream is true while seeing the dream, we are all feeling this existence itself as true. But, is a illusion caused by Maya whose scope is between birth and death
2. Example: Just like you see a rope as a snake in darkness, you see Souls as infinite because of Maya.

"Maya" - we also saw people defined Maya in two ways

1. MAYA (illusion) - This is because of the five characters of a Purusha(Material body of a living creature). The five characters are 1. Desire, 2. Anger, 3. Selfish, 4. Pride, 5. Jealousy. However, the 1st one is the core reason for the rest and for more emotions if any.

2. MAYA - this is not because of Five Characters but five characters are because of Maya (illusion). Maya can also be ignorance.

Some Common consensus:
1. We also saw that people came to one consensus about the relation between Atma and Paramaatma. Just like house cannot be called as brick, even though it’s made of bricks. A forest cannot be called as tree even though it’s made of trees. The only thing that differs is the scope. A tree can give shelter to few birds; a forest can give shelter to many living creatures. A brick can give shelter to few ants; a house can give shelter to many humans. Similarly, a soul is just differing from super soul with the scope alone.
2. Atma and Pramaatma have same nature. i.e Soul has three basic aspects as part of its nature - Sat (eternity; truth), Cit (knowledge potency), and Ananda (blissfulness).

Other Discussion:
1. Eternal truth and truth.
2. Knowledge and Ignorance.
3. The ari-shad-vargas (kama, krodha, moha, lobha, madha, maatsarya).

Later, we saw that none of these arguments were leading to question asked, i.e Where/Who is God? We were discussing here on this blog assuming that Atma and Paraamtma exist, but we have never deduced these or defined these.

Few Un-Answered questions that came out of this discussion:
1. If god has created everything, and if Paramaatam is God, what is paramaatma and how does it explain the creation?
2. Is God Energy?
3. Is God Matter?
4. Can Atma be defined? If yes, how?
5. What is that which thinks?
6. Who am I?

The last post says answering “Who am I”
"a person says "I am blind", "I am happy", "I am fat" etc. The common and constant factor, which permeates all these statements is the "I" which is but the Immutable Atman.
That "I" itself is all "Atman, Jivatman, Brahman, Paramatman, GOD"

Lastly, I invite you people to continue discussion under this blog post. Let us all try to put some light on these above stated aspects. Many of my friends and subordinates read this discussion and were impressed by the way the discussion is proceeding, probably this one among very vey few blogs were valuable discussion has happened. All the participants of the blog have put there views and applied there minds with an un-emotional and un-attached way. A healthy discussion is possible only when the participants are OPEN MINDS and EGOLESS with there ideas. I can also say, this discussion is not affected by ari-shad-vargas (kama, krodha, moha, lobha, madha, maatsarya).

LET THERE BE LIGHT

What/Who is GOD?...... Second question to answer......

We have had a beautiful, yet high temperature discussion in our previous post DOES GOD REALLY EXIST?. Here is my summary of the discussion.

1. GOD EXISTS: If some one sees / knows God and is convinced, for that person there may not have any NEED to participate in this discussion. For those who have not seen God, theist or an atheist, the first means of acquiring knowledge - direct perception - has not worked. So, as next best option, he/she has to attempt to use the second means of acquiring knowledge (infer) about existence/non existence of God based on the observation. A theist infers positively about God observing the manifestation.

Any rational person who observes this creation (existence of the universe) - its complexity, its structure, coordination and beauty - makes an attempt to identify its cause (the sustaining principle behind it). As there is a potter behind the creation of a visible pot, A "theist", says "there could be a God behind the creation (or sustenance) of this universe.

2. GOD is the creator & GOD is an ever existing aspect, we can logically deduce that, there should have existed an infinite aspect that should have existed for ever, if not then, that again will have an origin. So the source of all infinites should be an aspect that has ever existed, which was never created but is the source of all creation (anadih adih). That which is the source of everything, that from which everything must have come.

3. Everything originates from GOD
"God: Is the source of everything we have and know; from whom EVERYTHING comes."

4. Everything ends/annihilates into GOD
since creator manifests in all the creation, sustainer and annihilator must be manifestation of creator.

5. How do we infer manifestation of GOD/Omnipresence of GOD?
God has no raw material to create the world. So he has two options
1. Create from nothing
2. Create from him

ruling out option 1; we know that world is created by God using himself.

6. Consciousness cannot be god for following reasons
1. The action performed in the aware state of mind is present
2. Present is the only state where there is no thought.
3. Past and future are just thoughts and nothing else.
4. Your present action is dependent always on your past thought to gain some future result. By this we know that consciousness is dependent on Sub-Consciousness, hence the later is supreme to the former. Thus, that kicks consciousness out of the game.

7. Is Sub-consciousness GOD?
Arguments thats says NO:
1) SC is subjective, confined to individuals. If it is accepted as God then we will have more than a billion Gods.
2) SC cannot explain creation; how does cosmos exist? How life exists? How things are in place? Etc
3) SC pertains to mind and I have shown that there are aspects that are higher than mind (which I have shown, unless someone has other theory to explain).
4) I have also shown that if SC is accepted as God then creation can be argued to be a mere imagination of the mind.
5) If Sub-Consciousness is GOD, the entire universe is just imagination, because SC is just a thought, knowledge.

Arguments that says YES:
1. SC (Knowledge from experience) is something which exists in all the creatures.
2. Pragnanaam Brahma (Knowledge is GOD), and knowledge is only by your past action, and past action is experience. Hence, going back knowledge gained by past (Sub-Consciousness) is GOD.
3. SC is not Subjective, It overlaps with the sub-consciousness of other creatures and hence universal.
4. SC can explain creation. If GOD is the creator, he should have knowledge about the creation, knowledge is SC, and hence GOD has SC, which is manifested in various forms in various creatures. All this individual SC’s merge to form a Universal SC which is GOD Consciousness OR Pure Consciousness OR just GOD.
5. If people say, just because, SC is Knowledge and hence the world is imagination, so be it. existence, It’s been called as “Maya” since Vedic times.

These are some of the major arguments which I have observed in the previous blog post. However, we have also seen people who are bringing science and supporting the philosophical argument. Ultimately, What I see is, everyone are in consensus with the the “Existence of GOD”. The next question that arises is “Who/What is GOD?”

I was discussing with some of my friends, as to, how the discussion should proceed now on about, “What/Who is GOD?”. This is what we thought, and I would like to share my view about the way the discussion should continue.

First of all, we should Identify and come to one consensus about the list of Characteristics thats an entity called GOD possesses, Just like Omnipresent, Infinite, Every existing and so on… After come to consensus, we will take up individual concepts like Sub-Consciousness, Consciousness, Matter and Energy, Black hole, Big bang and stuff like that, and try to see if the concepts satisfy all the listed characters, something like a check list. The one that satisfies all those will be called GOD.

I invite you discuss under this Article.

DOES GOD REALLY EXIST?

IDOL WORSHIP: Different minds have different thoughts, but every thought that’s in the minds of mass will ultimately boil down to two fundamental questions

• Is Idol worship right?
• Is idol worship wrong?

Once up a time a king who did not believe in idol worship asked his intelligent minister to explain him “What makes idol worship important?” one of king’s Intelligent minister called one of king’s guards and ordered him to bring the painting of king to king’s court. After the painting was brought in front of the court, minister asked the guard to spit on the painting of king. Struck between what is right and what is wrong, the guard responded immediately “How can I spit on my master, my king”. IDOL-YES are those who think on these lines and substitute GOD in the place of King. “We have faith in GOD and his idol both” is one of the many arguments by IDOL-YES.

“GOD is everywhere; he is formless, tasteless, and omnipotent. In such a case there is no reason for a idol, we just need to have faith and honest in our approach, we need not go to temples and go around a stone of a human or some other form to prove that we are having faith in GOD”. This one of many counter argument made by second set of people whom I have called as IDOL-NO

What we observe here is, IDOL-YES define GOD as a form, while IDOL-NO define GOD as formless. As a disinterested observer the question that comes in my mind is

DOES GOD REALLY EXIST?