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| Srimad Bhagavatam |
To be honest I cannot recite even the basic chants from memory. As a kid I felt uncomfortable with the caste marks my grandmother would paint on my forehead on some chosen days. I would rub it off as I ran to play to avoid friends making fun of me. Not because they were anti- anything. It was because they sported horizontal lines or stamps as against my vertical lines and were bigger than me. But we were open minded and after playing went to drink water from a tap at a nearby Hanuman temple . All of us accepted Hanuman without reservations and also the water there was the coolest.
As we grew up, we lived in a fairly cosmopolitan middle class surroundings, these differences took a back seat, except when one of us went deep into his religion or caste and started to preach. But we learnt to cope depending how close we were as friends. My Religious practice, mostly token, was to please my parents and specially my grandmother. It was something I grew up with and knew how to balance it with other demands of life on us. Obviously the ugly aspects of human nature were always there and surfaced often but we were lucky not to face its brutalities directly. I vaguely remember ARP's shouting warnings to keep lights off during second world war and my total confusion when I heard of Mahatma's assassination! I was nine years old.
I shall fast forward to my post retirement days when I chose to read Mahabharata and having nothing better to do, blogged about it sporadically. I was surprised when I was told that Mahabharata was not read as a sacred text not withstanding that Bhagvad Gita was in it. There was a belief that it would create discord in our homes if the epic was even kept at home! With a bit of internet research, I discovered that Mahabharata was a story which was recited for may years before it was written down by Veda Vyasa. The epic grew with time and many more couplets were added later on.
There are also so many versions and interpretations that it is almost an industry. Getting to know this epic was a fascinating journey and was surely thought provoking. The stories of mythical gods interacting with humans, living with them like mother Ganga did or bestowing Kunti with children or Draupadi coming out of the fire as fully grown woman are all fantasies that we lap up without batting an eyelid.It was also about human nature with all its frailties and ugliness. The story is heroic as it is tragic and complex. It is also a story of the victory of the good over the evil.To top it all it is a story full of violence.
For instance it was a shock to learn that in the eighteen days of the great war of Mahabharata, more died per day than in the second world war. It is difficult to comprehend that people killed per day in the 18 days of Mahabharata war was almost three times that of second world war and the proportion would be higher if civilian deaths are not considered! Civilians did not die in the Mahabharata war. Of course the second world war was on from 1939 to 1945 and 40-50 million deaths occured.
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| Courtsey Wikipedia |
Clearly Vyasa narrated this story as a cautionary tale. We also learn that Krishna an avatar of Vishnu master minded the whole war to ensure the destruction of Kshatriya clan, the warriors. in spite of such eforts we seem to be perpetually on the brink of all kinds of disasters notwithstanding the appearances of more and more saviors on earth since the advent of Mahabharata war. Even second world war was declared to be a war which would end all wars.
I am told that Vyasa was so distraught after reciting this violent story that he chose to narrate the Srimad Bhagavatam to give humanity some hope. I promise I will plunge into it with a open mind and react as a typical rambler. But if you are looking for a worshipful narration of the stories that Vyasa chose to tell us, you will be disappointed.
Recently I also heard a series lectures on coursera by Some excerpts:
About the Course
About 2 million years ago our human ancestors were insignificant animals living in a corner of Africa. Their impact on the world was no greater than that of gorillas, zebras, or chickens. Today humans are spread all over the world, and they are the most important animal around. The very future of life on Earth depends on the ideas and behavior of our species.
This course will explain how we humans have conquered planet Earth, and how we have changed our environment, our societies, and our own bodies and minds. The aim of the course is to give students a brief but complete overview of history, from the Stone Age to the age of capitalism and genetic engineering. The course invites us to question the basic narratives of our world. Its conclusions are enlightening and at times provocative. For example:
· We rule the world because we are the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in our own imagination, such as gods, states, money and human rights.
· Humans are ecological serial killers – even with stone-age tools, our ancestors wiped out half the planet's large terrestrial mammals well before the advent of agriculture.
· The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud – wheat domesticated Sapiens rather than the other way around.
· Money is the most universal and pluralistic system of mutual trust ever devised. Money is the only thing everyone trusts.
· Empire is the most successful political system humans have invented, and our present era of anti-imperial sentiment is probably a short-lived aberration.
· Capitalism is a religion rather than just an economic theory – and it is the most successful religion to date.
· The treatment of animals in modern agriculture may turn out to be the worst crime in history.
· We are far more powerful than our ancestors, but we aren’t much happier.
· Humans will soon disappear. With the help of novel technologies, within a few centuries or even decades, Humans will upgrade themselves into completely different beings, enjoying godlike qualities and abilities. History began when humans invented gods – and will end when humans become gods.
5 comments:
- N L Sriram said...
- Malleshwaram is probably unique for its confluence of Dvaita, Vishishtadvaita and Advaita, with mathas and temples belonging to all three. Of course 8th cross was Iyengar territory, nicknamed "plug road" in honour of the tufts! Come exam time, we would be extra religious, making the rounds of all the mathas and temples daily regardless of denomination in order to cover all bases.
Is the distinction between Bhagavata and Mahabharata that the former is "purana" and the latter "itihasa"? People seem to take exception to the classification of Ramayana and Mahabharata as "mythologies", since that seems to imply that they were myths, and hence did not really happen.
Regarding the "Bhagavata", DVG narrates the story of an elderly pundit who venerated the texts and would wrap them with all the expensive shawls, etc., that he would get as sambhavana for his scholarship. When DVG made fun of it asking whether the books would get cold otherwise, his answer was that since none of us has seen God, these texts were His representatives on earth! - 4 November 2014 at 07:54
- N L Sriram said...
- ABOUT EXTINCTION
Extinction by Mark Alpert
Jim Pierce, a soldier-turned-scientist, hasn't heard from his daughter Layla in years, not since she rejected his military past and started working as a hacker. But when a Chinese assassin shows up at Jim's lab looking for her, he knows that she's cracked a very serious military secret. Now her life is on the line if he doesn't find her first.
The secret is a Chinese government project called Supreme Harmony. In an effort to silence dissent, China's Ministry of State Security has developed a new surveillance system that uses swarms of cyborg insects — ordinary houseflies equipped with minuscule cameras and radio controls — to spy on dissident groups. [Real-life scientists are developing this technology for military reconnaissance.] To analyze the glut of video collected by the swarms, Chinese researchers lobotomize a group of condemned prisoners and insert electronic implants into their brains, turning them into a network of zombie-like "Modules" who are wirelessly linked to one another and to the swarms. But the project goes disastrously awry when the network develops its own intelligence, a collective consciousness that takes control of the Modules.
Acting covertly at first, the newly conscious network sets out to exterminate the human race by lobotomizing dozens of scientists and soldiers and incorporating them into Supreme Harmony. The Modules infiltrate the Chinese government and go to America as well. As Jim Pierce searches for his daughter, he realizes that he's up against something that isn't just a threat to her life, but to human life everywhere.
Luckily, Jim can fight the man-machine network because he's part-machine himself. Maimed by a terrorist bombing, Pierce wears an ultra-advanced prosthetic arm with impervious polyimide skin and high-torque motors that can punch through walls. With the help of Kirsten Chan, a brilliant and beautiful NSA intelligence agent, Jim goes to China and begins a desperate 1,500-mile journey to the laboratory where Supreme Harmony was born. To save humanity, Jim must fight the network on the ultimate battlefield — the virtual world of his own mind.
All the technologies described in Extinction are real. [The novel's author is a contributing editor at Scientific American, which has reported on the recent advances in brain-machine interfaces.] In one form or another, our machines will eventually replace us. Extinction tells the story of how it could happen tomorrow. - 4 November 2014 at 08:00
- Namjoshi said...
- Oh wow! Thts so interesting!! Thank you for sharing. Hope both of you are doing well.
Kindest Regards,
Dinesh & Medha. - 4 November 2014 at 08:22
- Chandrika said...
- Nicely written Uncle-as always. Your blogs are always an enjoyable read. Please keep them coming!
Warm Regards,
Chandrika Moudgal (Prapulla & Raghuveer Moudgal's daughter-in-law) - 5 November 2014 at 03:33
- N N Sachitanand said...
- Michael Crichton , in his novel "Prey" , wrote ten years ago about a swarm of micro-robots who
combine to develop their own intelligence. - 5 November 2014 at 19:01
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