Toughest luck Mr. Gray..

While the outing of Apple engineer Gray Powell (one who lost his next gen iPhone 4G at a bar in LA) was inevitable--his name was going to come out some way or the other, and there is a real if slight chance that foisting him into the public eye might help him keep his job at Apple--I think the way the tech website did it was incredibly tacky.

Do you really think Apple would hang one of its engineers out to dry like this? Gray Powell is a real person--hell, he's just a kid--who will now spend the rest of his life or at least the foreseeable future of his career living down one of the biggest gaffes in tech history. Apple may be cruel, but I don't think they're that evil.

Let us be Hindus - Speech by pujya gurudev in December 1951.

A Hindu swami to talk. A Hindu temple for the background. A crowded hall of Hindus audience, and the subject for discussion: "Let us be Hindus." Strange! It sounds like a ridiculous paradox and a meaningless contradiction. I can very well see that you are surprised at the audacity of this sadhu.

It has become a new fashion with the educated Hindu to turn up his nose and sneer in contempt at the very mention of his religion in any discussion. Personally I too belong in my sympathies to these critics of our religion. But when this thoughtless team begins to declare we would benefit ourselves socially and nationally by running away from our sacred religion, I pause to reconsider my own stand.

At the present state of moral, ethical, and cultural degradation in our country, to totally dispose of religion would be making our dash to ruin the quicker. However decadent our religion may be, it is far better than having none at all. My proposal is that the wise thing would be for us to try and bring about a renaissance of Hinduism so that under its greatness-proved through many centuries-we may come to grow in to the very heights of culture and civilization that was our in the historical past.

No doubt, in India Hinduism has come to mean nothing more than bundle of sacred superstitions, or a certain way of dressing, cooking, eating, talking and so on. Our gods have fallen to the mortal level of administration officers at whose alters the faithful Hindu might pray and get special permits of the things he desires; that is, if he pays the required fee to the priest!

This degradation is not the product of any accidental and sudden historical upheaval. For two hundred years Hinduism has remained an encouragement of the rich. Once upon a time, the learned philosophers were rightly the advisers of the state. But then the quality of the adviser-class [Brahmana] and the ruler-class [Kshatriya] deteriorated. By slowly putrefying themselves in the leprous warmth of luxury and power, they have taken us to the regrettable stage in which we find ourselves now. The general cry of the educated class is really against this un-religion. However, it is only the thoughtless, uninformed leaders who call this Hinduism.

Certainly, is Hinduism can breed for us only heartless lalas [shopkeepers], corrupt babus [clerks], cowardly men, loveless masters, faithless servants; if Hinduism can give us only a state of social living in which each man is put against his brother; if Hinduism can give us only starvation, nakedness, and destitution; if Hinduism can encourage us only to plunder, to loot, and to steal; if Hinduism can preach to us only intolerance, fanaticism, hardheartedness, and cruelty; then I too cry, "Down, Down"; with that Hinduism.

And yet the above is a realistic picture of the sad condition and plight into which the Hindu people as a nation have allowed themselves to fall. This is the tragic picture of the great Hindu disaster in present-day India.

But Hinduism is not this external show that we have learned to parade about in our daily life. Hinduism is a science of perfection. There is in it an answer to every individual, social, national, or international problem. But unfortunately the religion, which we have come to follow blindly, is not the grand true Hinduism. It is only the treacherous scheme thrust upon us sometime in the past by the selfish, arrogant; power mad priest caste whose intention was to make us slaves of their plans and our own passions. The present day Hindu ignoramuses prove the tragic success of these religious saboteurs. With their guidance we overlook the fundamental tenets in sacred scriptures that are the very backbone of Hinduism. True Hinduism is the Sanatana Dharma [Eternal Truth] of the Upanishads.

The Upanishads declare in unmistakable terms that in reality, man-at the peak of his achievement- is God himself. He is advised to live his day to day experiences in life in such a systematic and scientific way that, hour by hour, consciously cleansing himself of all the encrustation of imperfections that have gathered to conceal the beauty and divinity of the true eternal personality in him. The methods by which an individual can consciously purify and evolve by his self-effort to regain the status of his True Nature are the content of Hinduism. Hinduism in its vast amphitheater has preserved and worshiped, under the camouflage of the heavy descriptions contained in the Puranas, shastras [scriptures], and their commentaries of thousand different interpretations. This overgrowth has so effectively come to conceal that real beauty and grandeur of the tiny Temple of Truth that today the college-educated illiterates, in their ignorance of the language and style of the ancient Sanskrit writers, miss the Temple amidst its own festoons!

To inquire into the very textbooks of our religion with a view to knowing what Hinduism has to teach and how its message can be used to serve us as we face the problems of our daily life is the aim of the One Hundred Day's Upanishad Jnana Yagna, which is now proposed to commence on December 31, 1951, here in Poona.

Religion becomes dead and ineffectual if the seekers are not ready to live its ideals. For that matter is there any philosophy-political, social, or cultural-which can take us to its promised land of success, without our following its principles in our day-to-day living?

However great our culture might have been in the past, that dead glory, reported in the pages of history books, is not going to help us in our present trails. If the barbarous cavemen of the unexplored jungles want to become as civilized as the men of modern nations, they cannot achieve this total revolution through mere discourses, or even through an exhaustive study of the literature describing the ways of modern civilized nations. They will have to know and then live the civilized values of life. A mere knowledge of it will not help them. They can claim the blessing of their knowledge only if they are ready to live what they know. In order to live as civilized men, they will have to renounce completely their ways of uncivilized thinking and acting.

In fact without renunciation no progress is ever possible. We must renounce the thrills of our childhood games in order to grow to be young men of noble actions. Again, unless we renounce our youthful spirit, we cannot come to the reverence of old age.

Unless we are ready to renounce the low animal values of material life and replace them with the noble values of the truly religious life, we cannot hope to gain the blessings of religion. A study of a cookbook, however thorough it might be will not satisfy our hunger. No matter how long we may meditate upon and repeat the name of a medicine, we cannot get the cure we need until we actually take the medicine. Similarly, the blessings of religion can be ours only when we are ready to live the recommended values. To condemn unpracticed religion is as meaningless as those cavemen sitting around their open fire and querulously decrying advanced civilization.

During these one hundred days of the Upanishad Jnana Yagna, we shall be trying to discover the eternal happiness and bliss that is the succulent essence of all true religions. In the light of the principle of Truth declared in the Upanishads, we shall be trying to get at the scientific significance of the various practices that are considered part of our religion. In a spirit of communal living for these one hundred days we shall come to discover the Science of Perfection, the true essence of Hinduism.

Let us know what Hinduism is! Let us take an honest oath for ourselves, not only for our own sake, but for the sake of the entire world: That we shall, when once we are convinced of the validity of the Eternal Truth, try honestly to live as consistently as possible the values advocated by this ancient and sacred religion.

Let us be Hindus, and thus build up a true Hindustan [home of the Hindu] people with thousands of Shankara, hundreds of Buddhas, and dozens of Vivekanandas!

A masterpiece quote for the master blaster

Time Magazine's quote on Sachin:

"When Sachin Tendulkar travelled to Pakistan to face one of the finest bowling attacks ever assembled in cricket, Michael Schumacher was yet to race a F1 car, Lance Armstrong had never been to the Tour de France, Diego Maradona was still the captain of a world champion Argentina team, Pete Sampras had never won a Grand Slam. When Tendulkar embarked on a glorious career taming Imran and company, Roger Federer was a name unheard of; Lionel Messi was in his nappies, Usain Bolt was an unknown kid in the Jamaican backwaters. The Berlin Wall was still intact, USSR was one big, big country, Dr Manmohan Singh was yet to "open" the Nehruvian economy. It seems while Time was having his toll on every individual on the face of this planet, he excused one man. Time stands frozen in front of SachinTendulkar. We have had champions, we have had legends, but we have never had another Sachin Tendulkar and we never will."

Hey Mr. Writer, Jobless???

If you have been writing articles, blogs, poems etc., you might have often encountered a very common question from people around - Hey buddy, no other work than writing? While, at least I have encountered it repeatedly.

Many in this world think that writers are the most jobless people on this planet. Actually, a writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.

I hope this suffices the curiosity/misconception that people have about writers.

Peace.

P.S. Next time you meet me, DO NOT ask me Why do I write...

Boooo.....Apple has 3G through AT&T

As i always tell my friends about the iPhone, Its like driving a Mercedez SLK on a freakin dirt track...Yes that's analogous to the iPad using AT&T's 3G network and WiFi hot spots.
But the good thing- No Contract...
big news! No frickin’ contract. Cancel anytime.
I hope Verizon pitches in soon but that's a rarity.
International contracts will be available in June.
Sorry, rest of the world (including Mac fanatics back in INDIA)!
As always the USA gets it first. Hahah
Cheers..

The iPad iBooks App uses free, open-source ePub format

Oh, suck it, Amazon.

In demonstrating the iPad’s new slick iBooks e-book reading application, it was explicitly stated that the iPad uses the free, open e-book standard, ePub format.

This is a surprisingly rare but welcome move for Apple in embracing a non-proprietary media format.

ePub doesn’t mean no DRM, but it does mean you’ll be able, if only through third party Apps, to transfer your own books from other devices.

Yippy...Thats a super smart move by apple (Like always)... :-)

Jeff Bezos has got to be nursing a migraine right now. lolzz..

Remember and Realize.

The 26/11 terror attacks In Mumbai shook India and stunned the world, revealing huge chinks in the country's anti-terror armour. A year later, the sole surviving terrorist captured by authorities, Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, has not been convicted, the masterminds of the deadly assault are free, and the country harboring the terrorists, Pakistan, is probably laughing at our weakness, dismissing us as a state whose outrage is easily calmed by tokenism. Our leaders say war is not the only way to assert one's strength, dialogue with Pakistan is the best recourse given the volatile situation in the country. But, is this 'avoid-confrontation' policy responsible for India's failure to check terrorism? Is India a soft state?
Let the politicians and bureaucrats not decide this. I urge the people of INDIA and all INDIANS around the globe to participate and co operate in the working of the biggest democracy in the world. At times even i feel sad that i just INDIA. But lets not forget we are a nation of a billion and have millions of NRI's, and if all contribute in some way or the other i bet it would make Osama pee out of fear
I quote, "Lets all remember what happened a year ago in Mumbai, let our spirits stand tall unaffected by the bullets or grenades, let the terrorists realize that in our stoic state we are bent but not broken, let us all forget about sex, caste, lingual discrimination and stay united as INDIANS".
Jai Hind.