What Idols really means.

Over the years I believe that we have come a long way from the true meaning of what the idols in Hinduism really mean. We have just accepted many things to be true without a question mainly because we are brought up with ideas of our forefathers without questioning them. We have learnt to accept things because they are thought to be true by everyone around us and anyone questioning them are thought to be rebels; who have not been regarded highly in a society which I believe is formed on lies. We see this behaviour in our education system, our government, our corporate structures and cultures alike. If you think deep you might agree with me but overall these opinions are mine alone and you have the right to question them and from your own thought set up your opinions, whatever works best for you.

I got a chance to read a graphic novel on Shiva the Hindu God in which is the description of the Hindu God Ganesha. According to the author Deepak Chopra, who explains that the idol of Ganesha is a philosophy or a way of life more than a God in whom we put blind faith but except it as a model which should remind us of how to live our life. I detail that way of life here, as the Mr. Deepak Chopra’s description of Ganesha matches with my thoughts of the deity.

We all know Ganesha the Hindu God as an elephant headed God with a huge stomach, having four arms with a snake around his belly standing on one foot with his vahana (vehicle) a rat. Symbolically broken down as following:

Large head: We must think deeply and not just say whatever comes to our mind but rationally put forth our ideas.

Large ears: We must listen more and talk less.

The broken tusk: It is to reminder us that no one is perfect, even if it is God himself. So we must learn to accept people with their faults and not be ashamed of our own faults.

The long trunk: It denotes power as well as discernment. Just like an elephant who can uproot trees with it and when needed pick an needle from a haystack. It means that power is not freedom it comes with responsibilities to care for the week and provide a helping hand to those who don’t have the power.

The large stomach: Where most Hindus give the God offerings of food which we see as modaks in one hand of (an Indian sweet) every Ganesha’s idol. It means we must know that there is someone who always cares for us, and the offerings are our worries and anxieties for which we can find solace in God or speaking about them to other who may be able to help us.

Snake as his belt: Symbolises our ego which we must not let it get to our head because lives and countries have been destroyed by a person’s ego alone.

One foot on the ground and other in the air: It reminds us that no matter how high in the social structure or power we get, we must not forget our roots as humans and who we really are. As what has begun has to come to an end someday.

The four hands: One hand he carries sweets as explained above.

In the second he has a rope which means we must always strive to climb higher and strive to make ourselves better human beings. In the third hand he has a Vedic book which represents knowledge; I need not explain the importance of that. Lastly in the forth hand he carries an axe which reminds us that we must destroy our ignorance and arrogance with the power of knowledge which is again represented by book in his other hand.

Rat nibbling at the food close to his feet: The rat symbolises our greed and temptation which is the main cause of all the worries which is symbolized as food here. Do not let greed overpower your ambition and let it not rule your will to achieve your goals, it will only lead to stress in your life.

Doesn’t it sound like all the self help and success books you have read? My point is, understand what these Idols represent rather than just praying to them because everyone prays. Overall consider any religion the bases and foundation of them are the same and to remind its followers of these there is an Idol which is created. All idols have a meaning a way of life embedded in them, embrace that ideology and follow it. There are millions of idols which represent a particular way of life, and they are there for us to be reminded of that philosophy. Hence when we see an idol it must remind you of that way of life. Thu you can make your own visual representation of these Idols and follow what best suits you.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers,

Ninad Dighe.

The Right Balance

Why is it so difficult to strike a balance between what is good to do and what is right to do?

I believe when just one person (me) is concerned in a decision you can balance right.. but when your decisions influence or require the consideration of more than just you (many people).. The decision you make is a balance not of what you want but the collective wants of all the people involved... but that is the right balance though you might think it is not your balance.

Cheers,

Ninad Dighe.

Forgotten Truth

Hindu’s holy book Bhagvat Geeta which literally translates to ‘the word of God’, is a book of Hymns which speaks of philosophy of life. It is a story on a battle field telling what is the right thing to do and how we should be accepting life as it is. Whenever I feel low and whenever I worry about what to do I read the below summary of the book. I have translated it here in English; it always brings my sprit up, because it is not about religion here but a philosophy, a truth which we always forget. Hope it does some good to you.

That what happened, happened for good,

What is happening is happening for good.

What will come your way, will come only for the best.

What have you lost, for which you weep?

What have you brought with you, that which you have lost?

What have you created that which has been destroyed?

That what you took, you took from here;

That what you gave, you gave it here;

That what is yours today, wasn’t yours yesterday;

Tomorrow it would not be yours to keep.

You were born with nothing and you shall die with nothing.

Change is the only truth of life.

Bhagvat Geeta.

Cheers,

Ninad Dighe.

Do we have a Choice?

The world today as we know is the only way it could have been. You might not agree with me on this but that is something I ponder upon.

We have choices to make and each of our choices even though very hard to conceive; we do certain things of which the consequence is our present. Had we done things differently in the past now that we know the consequence of that choice in the present, would you change your choice? Might be the answer to that question would be yes, for many. However at the said point in your life you chose to follow the present path and if I ask why? You would probably say that that was the best choice then. So the fact is you did not have a choice after all, since you just followed what was best for you. And at present you cannot change the past that leaves you will no choice at all. All you can do is change your present and that is the best thing you can do to make changes in your life so then that is not a choice again.

The world at present is the collective choices of all the people in the past. So it is true for the future, that the future of the world is the collective choices of the people in the world at present. As they say when a butterfly flutters its wings in Mexico could cause a hurricane in the US, is for much true. Who would have thought that an act of a falling apple would one day land a man on moon. Or for instance Columbus had got what he was looking for and not discovered US, we would have had a very different world today, might be a better world or much worse.

The question really is do we have a choice? Or just doing what is best for us, is it a choice? When given choices and if we just follow what is the best for us to do at that moment in time and that is the option that we will always chose, then is that choice?

For example when you have been hungry for 2 days and you are presented with an option in front of you or a choice:

Freshly baked cake and a cake which is stale 5 days old with maggots, what would you chose.

Is there a choice in that?

Once your character or personality is built I believe we stop making choices whenever we are presented with an option we will always go for the best option available to us that is hardly a choice. What I mean is that always going for what best suits you even though when you say I have 10 choices, is not choosing or just following what you had already made up your mind about.

I hope I have been able to put in words what I meant to say. In the end if we just don’t have a choice, is everything just destiny? I have no answer to it myself.

Cheers,

Ninad Dighe.

Don't Just Follow the RULES

Treat books as facts, I don’t mean all the books, books which give you knowledge not comic books and novels. When you have the facts or let us say information with you it is up to you what you do with it.

If you take any thoughts presented in a book and use it as a way of life by following each and every rule in it, you become very predictable and your actions become very annoying. We could as well have a computer program your actions and we would not lose anything. Over all the beauty of that computer or robot is that we could at the least SHUT the freaking thing off.

The beauty of life is in its unpredictability. That is, given the same set of rules to you that everyone else has but you using them your way than just follow them would produce beautiful results which are different and more often than not, are better. I could go on giving you the example of Newton, Einstein and so on. Might be what you think is different to me but I believe “if it works for me it does not mean it will work for you.”

Example: When Newton talked about gravity every one following Newton created this Newtonian philosophy where everything could be given a formula and everything had to follow a given set of rules. However when few scientists found that the universe does not follow a pre-set set of rules, nobody believed them. This is evident in the lives of Alan Mathison Turing and Boris Pavlovich Belousov. Which had given the world chaos theory, which states that: given all the same set of inputs to a simple equation when everything about the input is known the output is always different when the equations are run in the same known condition. This is also known as the Butterfly effect and well explained by Edward Norton Lorenz and further mathematically explained by Benoît B. Mandelbrot. Just to make a point that when we follow a preset set of rules we tend to overlook the other possibilities that could make thing better.

In my MiNd- Ninad Dighe

The Alien Philosophy.

Does God Exists??
The answer I feel is well explained in the quote below, I don’t know who said it but for sure I didn’t.
“In order for life to have appeared spontaneously on Earth, there first had to be hundreds of millions of protein molecules of the Ninth Configuration. But, given the size of the planet Earth, do you know how long it would take for just one of these protein molecules to appear by chance? Roughly 10 to the 243rd power, billions of years; and I find that far, far more fantastic than simply believing in a God.”

I don’t argue about the existence of God, but let me put forward some of my thoughts.

Humans the Ultimate Machine.

Let us consider a power above us, a superpower let me call the power “GOD”. God made a machine, the ultimate machine (no points for guessing) “HUMANS”. A machine which could think for itself, sustain itself, reproduce, organize and repair itself. In making so he made many prototypes one better than the other. These prototypes are the animals we see around us. Consider the “machines”, as I call all the animals made by God, he (I am not being bias by calling God he, its for the ease of writing) realized he could make something better so he made Apes, Chimps and then humans.

There were already other machines made on earth, before God made humans so God made more machine which could kill or let me say terminate the smaller, now not so useful machines which He created. For example before He thought of humans he made deer, now that there were too many deer to deal with he made animals like lion, tigers etc.This machines lion, tigers etc would be killed when no more deer or weaker animals remain, thus their existence to will end.

That’s one thought, similarly, could we be, no no nothing else but still Machines, that were made by some aliens some many light years from earth. They brought us to earth, used us for some purpose (not know because no documents were or evidence was ever found) and when they were done with us they left us on earth and returned back. The only good news is we survived. Its not difficult to believe so.
What would you consider a super machine:

• >Some thing that thinks for itself.
• >Something on which, we do not have to spend money in Repair and maintenance.
• >Which could end itself gradually when its purpose is done.
• >Which could produce better machine with inherited property of its parent machine.

Might be the earth is one super laboratory, with some super aliens studying us. Some day they will come back to see how we have fared.

The Lunch Philosophy.
As I am a software engineer, I but obviously will think like one. I put forward a Philosophy which I call “The lunch Philosophy”. I am calling it so because this shity thought occurred to me and my friends over lunch.

Coded Humans
We are perfect machines, with our CPU being the brain, the programming language on which we are build is DNA and RNA. I will not make this article lengthy by defining all jargons like CPU, DNA and the ones I will be using, you want to know more about them you can always ask your best friend GOOGLE.

So what humans will be and what we are designed for is all present in our DNA. Now recent studies show that if your nature is good or even bad (criminal) you can blame it on your genes (or DNA), want more information on this ask your best friend.What are we (we means I, you everybody)?
We are inherited functions of our parents. That is we are part our mother and part our father.

To understand what you read further you will need to have some knowledge about programming languages (C++), if you don’t ask your best friend. We are a main function machine made from inherited machines our parents.

The machine we become.
As I said we are a main function machine, with lot of function defined within us. What parameters are passed to our main function and what be become depends on the environment in which we are born and brought up. So even though we have the same physiology and anatomy we have different psychology. All humans, for that matter even animal babies are born the same, only difference is that we have some of our parents inherited code (genes), the variables which are passed into our already defined humans functions to make us complete come from the culture, neighbors, school, place and the friends. That’s the reason why even genetically identical twins will be different because some were one of the variables passed to them (might be in terms of friend) is different. So even though genetically they are same, psychologically they will differ.

Nature is very beautiful and knowledgeable, if we want to make some intelligent machine we have to study ourselves “the ultimate machine”. That’s the reason why we have scientist and engineers studying human anatomy for subjects like Neural networks, AI and others.

Who ever designed us has designed us flawlessly. Nature has taken care of redundancy to a large extend. Consider humans, the human fetus grows as a female fetus for six weeks, in the sixth week sex differential chromosomes start to act, this is just one example, there are many out there which you will have to find our self.

Man the machine and Woman the mechanic.
We humans wont survive if we are not nurtured after we are born. If we study human anatomy the male are stronger, and build more to do physically tough work. Saying this will hurt many of our female oriented, women rights organization but I am not talking about today, I am talking about many years before the white collar jobs came, when men hunted and where work meant sweating it out physically.

The mechanic was made to take care of the machine and the help in producing newer machines and nurturing them to replace the older machines and so on. That’s the reason why women are genetically programmed to care, be more sensitive and understanding (are they I mean understanding .. hmm no comments.)

Why are we here??
All are here for a purpose said my grandma, all of us have a destiny. But I say we are the result of uncontrolled growth of never ending quest for survival and sexual desires.Let me say we are abandoned machines which were here for some purpose the purpose was met and we were left for ourselves as our masters left. Or was it that, after the purpose was met they tried to destroy us, you could say the first Armageddon which killed all the dinosaurs was planned by some alien who created us. What ever may be the reason we survived.Machines can think for themselves but machines cant think above themselves, so I say with all this weapons of mass destruction, humans differentiating between humans on basis of cast, creed, color and nationality, the second Armageddon is not far and will be brought about by we machines who cant think beyond our self.

Conclusion:
This article is not based on any research but on discussions based on research, at lunch time. I am not trying to prove the existence or non-existence of GOD. But that we all are the result of something, that we all are here for a reason which we don’t know.

Since the time we are born we are thought that we need to survive till we die of natural cause. Our parents keep us alive initially, next 20 years we study so we could survive the future, sustain and reproduce and tell the latter generation that they too need to survive and sustain. How we do it depends on family and circumstances we are in, some survive more happily than the others, some are not so fortunate.

WE ARE HERE JUST TO SURVIVE AND SUSTAIN OURSELVES FOR WE DON’T WANT TO END BEING PURPOSE LESS AS WE ARE NOW.

The world is not owned by any one person, whose death will end it.
WHATS YOUR PURPOSE ON EARTH ?

From the brains of
Ninad Dighe.