GIST OF A FEW MORE UPANISHADS

I feel that we should know about the Upanishads irrespective of whether we believe in God or not.

In one of my earlier posts I have given the gist of the Ishavyasopanishad with an intention of giving the rest 9 of the principal Upanishads later. I am worried that giving them all together would tax the person who reads them and that is reason why I am giving them in installments.

I am giving the gist of 3 more Upanishads below:

KENOPANISHAD.

The power behind every activity of nature and of man is the power of Brahman. To realize this truth is to be immortal.

KATHOPANISHAD.

The secret of immortality is to be found in purification of the heart, in meditation, in realization of the identity of the Self within and the Brahman without. For immortality is simply union with God.

PRASNAOPANISHAD.

Man is composed of such elements as vital breath, deeds, thought, and the senses. All of them deriving their being from the Self. In the Self, they ultimately disappear, even as the waters of a river disappear into the sea.

BIG BANG THEORY-FORMATION OF THE UNIVERSE.

Our Sun is an average star in the Universe. 10,000 crore such stars make the Milky Way Galaxy which is just an average galaxy. There are again 10,000 crore such galaxies in the known Universe. The known Universe has a diameter of about 1200 to 1500 crore light years. We are prefixing it with known because we do not know what lies beyond this. Perhaps a vast empty area with properties unknown to us, and then maybe another Universe, and so on. Even if our science develops for another million years still we would not be able to fathom the secrets of this cosmic whole.

What is the origin of the known Universe? Most of the Cosmologists have accepted the Big Bang theory as the most plausible explanation for the formation of the Universe. This was propounded by the Belgian Physicist and a Roman Catholic Priest Georges Lemaitre in 1927. As per this theory the entire matter in the Universe is concentrated as one single mass a long time ago. At that point of time there was neither space nor time and we cannot even imagine what is outside this mass. Space and time are relative concepts and when the entire Universe is in a single mass, then they cannot be measured at all and cease to have any meaning.

As such large amount of matter together gives rise to high gravitational attraction; all the matter got attracted towards its center. As the mass shrunk on account of this huge gravitational forces an enormous amount of heat was generated. This went on increasing to a point when the entire mass exploded and started scattering in all the directions. At that time the temperature of this mass was about 4,00,000 crore degrees Celsius. Comparatively our Sun’s core has a temperature of about 5 crore degrees Celsius. Atoms started forming only 377,000 years after the Big Bang which is estimated to have occurred some 14 billion years ago. Scientists have estimated the time when that single mass exploded by simply projecting back the possibility of an explosion and counting back from now.

There is an indirect proof for the explosion of the primeval atom (what else can we call it?) and it is known as Microwave Background Radiation. American radio astronomers Penzias and Wilson found in 1964 that a microwave radiation not corresponding to any star or a galaxy or an object is found in all directions of the Universe with the same wavelength and frequency. This relates to a certain homogenous temperature throughout the Universe which can be extrapolated to the Big Bang.

BLACK HOLES IN ASTRONOMY ---WHAT ARE THEY.

Our Sun is an average star in the Universe. Each star has a life cycle and all the stars evolve with time.

Stars are generating enormous amounts of energy by the fusion reactions taking place at their core. Once the material needed for fusion gets exhausted at the center, the star becomes unstable and explodes. This is called a NOVA or a SUPERNOVA depending on the intensity of the explosion.

Whether a star turns into a Nova or a Supernova depends on the mass of the star. The Indian Nobel laureate Subramanian Chandrasekhar has postulated that for a star to turn into a Supernova it has to have a mass that is more than 1.4 times that of our Sun. This is known as the “Chandrasekhar’s Limit”.

This was later modified by the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit to over 3 times the Sun's mass.

Black holes are formed by stars with masses that are 10 to 15 times more massive than the Sun. When the star totally burns itself out slowly the gravitational forces take over and it starts contracting and finally implodes on itself. This finally collapses to what is known as singularity which has zero volume and infinite density. At this point, the gravitational attraction is so strong that even light cannot escape from it. As light cannot come out of it we cannot see a Black hole.

When a Black hole passes through interstellar matter that is present all over the Universe, it starts attracting the matter towards it. As that matter nears the Black hole it moves faster and faster and this heats it up to a point where the matter starts emitting X rays. We can identify a Black hole by these x ray emissions.

CHE GUEVARA-----A DOCTOR WHO TURNED INTO A GUERRILLA LEADER.

Hitherto I had known that Che Guevara was a South American Marxist revolutionary. That is about all. One of my nephews posted a picture of Che in Facebook and said he is a good role model. I had then thought that it is my responsibility to know more about him. What I read about him surprised me.

He became a symbol of revolution in the world. Despite his leanings towards Marxism he had a multifaceted personality and is certainly worth knowing about.

His has embraced the cult of socialism and remained bound to it till his death. He may be wrong but he never wavered on his path and went ahead with single mindedness.

I thought perhaps some of my friends on FB who did not know about him would be benefited if I wrote a short summary of his life and that is what I am doing below.

Che was born in 1928 in Argentina. His family is a mixture of Spanish and Irish and had leftist leanings. Due to this even when he was a boy he came into contact with a wide variety of political perspectives.

Despite suffering from acute Asthma, he excelled in swimming, football, golf, shooting and cycling. He was good at Chess and poetry too. His home contained 3000 books which made him read extensively, his favorite authors being NEHRU, KAFKA, CAMUS, LENIN, SARTRE, ENGELS and H G WELLS. He made notes which included analytical sketches of Buddha and Aristotle, he examined Bertrand Russel on love and patriotism and Sigmund Freud’s ideas as well. Even the CIA acknowledged him as an intellectual.

Che joined the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine in 1948.

While studying this course he took permission to break studies and travel all over North America. He used a motor mounted bicycle for his first expedition in which he travelled 4500 KM in the rural provinces of Argentina in 1950.

Again in 1951 he embarked on a 9 month long trip on a journey of 8000 KM, this time all over South America on a motorcycle.

He received his medical degree in 1953 and became Dr Guevara. In 1953, he again traveled to most of the remaining countries of South America which he has not covered in his earlier trip of 1951.

Che attempted to take up medical internship initially but without success. This made his economic condition rather precarious. He joined the allergy section of the Mexico City hospital in 1954. He also gave lectures on Medicine at the national autonomous university of Mexico and also worked as a photographer for a news agency.

He married Hilda Gadea Acosta, a Peruvian economist who was well connected politically with leftists.

In 1955 he came into contact with Fidel Castro and joined the Cuban movement. This movement turned him from a doctor into a revolutionary combatant. He then became a leader in the movement and was feared for his brutality and ruthlessness. He got anyone who is against the movement to be executed. Fidel Castro described Che as intelligent, daring and an exemplary leader who had great moral authority over his troops.

He was recklessly brave and once ran with a pistol in the middle of battle to protect his young lieutenant who has fallen despite bullets flying all over the place. He showed exemplary results in the Cuban war and entered Havana even before Castro. In 1959 while resting after the war at Tarara, he started writing his book “Guerilla Warfare”.

He divorced Hilda and married a Cuban revolutionary Aleida March in June 1959. He became all powerful in the Cuban Government after Castro and was in charge of finance, industries and the National Bank as well.

It was Guevara's desire to see the complete elimination of money, interest, commodity production, the market economy, and "mercantile relationships". The Soviets did not opt for this so he preferred the Chinese type of socialism instead which made Castro uneasy.

Che finally resigned all his positions with Cuba due to his differences with Castro and went to Africa in 1965. He tried to aid the guerrillas in Congo but later left as he felt their leaders were corrupt and there was no will to fight.

He then went to Bolivia in 1966 but could not get reconciled with the rebel leaders there.

He was finally captured by the Bolivian troops in October 2007.He was executed on 9th October 1967 by the Bolivian troops.

Till his last he did not despair and calmly invited death retaining his single minded devotion to socialism. Today he is seen as a symbol for revolution by the world.

GIST OF EACH OF THE UPANISHADS IN A FEW SENTENCES.

I am a non believer who does not believe in a Soul. Nevertheless I find that the Upanishads enunciate a great philosophical system and are certainly worth studying with analysis.

The Upanishads are the essence of Hindu Philosophy. There are supposed to be 108 Upanishads in all, but of them, 10 which were commented upon by Sankaracharya are considered important. The rest are considered to be a repetition of what is already contained in the 10 principal Upanishads.

The Bhagavad Gita in turn contains the essence of the Upanishads.

Very few of us would have the time to read the entire Upanishads and perhaps even the Gita, but each of the Principal Upanishads can be condensed to project their meaning in a few sentences. I am giving the gist of the first principal Upanishad below.

ISHAVYASOPANISHAD.

Life in the world and life in the spirit are not incompatible.

Work or action is not contrary to knowledge of God, but indeed, if performed without attachment, is a means to it.

Renunciation is the renunciation of the ego, of selfishness—not of life.

The end, both of work and of renunciation, is to know the Self within and the Brahman without, and to realize their identity.

The Self is Brahman and the Brahman is Self.

I will give the gist of the other Upanishads later as all of them given together would make themselves incomprehensible to a layman of philosophy.

BUDGET--WHAT ARE ITS COMPONENTS.

A budget as we all know is a document projecting the likely future incomes accruing in a country and the likely future expenditures in a period of 1 year.

A Budget allocates funds to various sectors of the economy as per the priorities of the Government and also deals with taxation and market/external borrowings to bridge the gap that arises out of shortage of Income over expenditure.

Despite resorting to additional taxation, as well as other measures like market and other borrowings, the budgetary gap in India remains unfilled and this is left uncovered. This is known as the fiscal deficit. The government would have to print additional currency notes to fill in this uncovered deficit and this leads to inflation as the money supply in the country expands.

It is normal for countries to have a budgetary deficit, but it should be ensured that the deficit does not get out of hand. If Greece is in distress today it is because of indiscriminate spending without bothering about fiscal deficit. So it went in for more and more borrowings till the time the loan burden became unserviceable.

There are two components in the union budget and they are:

1.Revenue Budget: It includes

a) Revenue Receipts of the Government received by way of taxation as well as other receipts

b) Revenue expenditure of the Government which is all expenditure incurred in running the government and all other expenditure spent on the public. This includes all the expenditure made by the government except capital expenditure.

2.Capital Budget: It includes

a) The Capital Receipts of the Government received by way of loans, small savings and recoveries of loans given to state governments

b)Capital Expenditure which is all the expenditure made in creation of a capital assets like buildings, machinery etc.

QUASARS- UNSOLVED MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way is an average sized galaxy in the Universe and contains 10,000 crore stars. Each galaxy radiates an amount of energy, that makes it visible both visually and also by emission of Radio waves depending on the distance.

A class of objects were discovered known as Quasars (Quasi Stellar Radio Sources) which are exceedingly far away from us with the farthest ULAS J1120+0641 [2] being 1290 crore light years away. At this distance we should not have been able to even know that these objects existed because the energy emission that is required for their identification on Earth would have to be enormous.

These Quasars show swift variations in energy which is possible only when the energy is originating from a compact source. For these light fast variations to occur, the size of its source has to be the size of our solar system or less. With such a small object giving out radiation which is more than 100 times that is being emitted by a whole galaxy is simply unbelievable.

The Quasars are supposed by scientists to be galaxies with super massive black holes at their centers. Due to their vast distances from us we can only detect its super radiating core and nothing else is known about their other properties.

The other properties of Quasars are unknown to us and they remain one of the mysteries of the Universe to Cosmologists.

THE PROBLEM ECONOMY OF GREECE.

Greece enjoyed a very high standard of living which ranked it 29th on the Human Development index. Greece is a good case of what corruption can do to finish off a country. Greece is the most corrupt nation in Europe if one excludes Bulgaria. Greece’s underground economy (i.e.black money)

Which is around 25% of its GDP is very high for a European nation. Along with corruption,the crisis in Greece has also come about due to uncontrolled Government expenditure and the public sector accounted for 40% of its GDP. Greece is a welfare state and provided 32% of its 2012 budget for social services and pensions.

When Greece entered the European Union in the year 2000, its Government presented manipulated figures so that it qualified to enter the union. In 2009, the budget deficit stood at 15.4% which is unacceptable for any country. Its debt stood at 126% of its GDP which is far above the danger mark. (India presently has a debt equaling 76% of its GDP and its fiscal deficit is hovering round 5%). This led to further debt to service the debt and it spiraled to 148% of its GDP.

Greece’s GDP contracted by 6.8% during the year 2011 and the unemployment rate is presently around 21%.

It was about to go bankrupt when the IMF and the other Eurozone countries intervened and bailed it out with a loan package. Whether Greece would be able to service this package later is the billion Euro question. In order to obtain the bailout package, Greece had to agree for harsh austerity measures which resulted in social unrest. The other Eurozone nations are threatening to throw it out of the European Union if it does not deliver on the austerity measures and reduce its budgetary deficit.

IS PHILOSOPHY REALLY ESSENTIAL FOR MANKIND?

Some people say that Philosophy is very difficult to understand and there is no point in wasting time in reading Philosophy. –True enough, one need not read Philosophy or for that matter any other subject and still live on, but one should remember that if such a thing had happened then man would have still been in the caves and would not have been different from any other animal.

Some people think that Science is the greatest and there is no need for Philosophy at all. They should understand that Philosophy is the beginning of science and is also its ending.

When man does not know about something he speculates and this speculation is nothing but Philosophy. Then he experiments and that philosophical concept advances to become science.

Similarly when Science ends at a point man again speculates which again is Philosophy. This in turn gives rise to experimentation again that leads to further science and so on in an unending cycle.

Apart from this there are certain human values that are beyond Science. What is meant by Good, Bad, Beauty, Love, Justice, Morals etc. which cannot be dealt by Science and Philosophy comes to our rescue.

It so happens that in philosophy each philosopher considers his system to be the ultimate. But there comes another philosopher with his system and his own philosophy. No philosophy is ultimate and there is always room for development. This is the seed that germinates into science.

VEDAS- A BRIEF NOTE

 I know that most of my friends know about the Vedas in general. But I thought I would like to tell them a little more about them. Many of you may be knowing this as well, nevertheless even if a few people gain some additional knowledge on account of this I would be very happy.

The Vedas consist of 4 parts:

1. Samhita, 2. Brahmana, 3. Aranyaka and 4. The Upanishads.

Again there are 4 samhitas:

1. Rik, 2. Sama, 3. Yajur and 4. Atharva.

A Vedic sacrifice needs 4 priests:

1. Hota who addresses hymns in praise of the Gods to invoke their presence and participation in the sacrifice.

2. Udgata who sings the hymns to entertain and please the Gods.

3. Adhvaryu who performs the sacrifice according to the strict ritualistic code and gives offerings to the Gods.

And

4. Brahma who is the general supervisor of the sacrifice.

Rik is for the Hota, Sama is for the Udgata, Yajur is for the Adhvaryu and Atharva is for the Brahma.

The Brahmanas are written in prose. They are the elaboration of the complicated ritualism of the Vedas. They deal with the rules and regulations laid down for the performance of the rites and the sacrifices. There is little philosophy in these.

The appendages to the Brahmanas are the Aranyakas. They mark the transition from ritualistic to philosophic thought. There is a mystic interpretation of Vedic sacrifices in them.

The concluding portions of the Aranyakas are the Upanishads. They are intensely philosophical and spiritual. There are said to be 108 different Upanishads in all. However, 10 of them on whom Sankaracharya has commented are considered important. They are:

1. Isha.

2. Kena. 

3. Katha.

4. Prashna.

5. Mundaka.

6. Mandukya.

7. Aitareya.

8. Taittiriya.

9. Chandogya.

10. Brihadaranyaka.

The Upanishads regard Karma Kanda as secondary, being only a help to purify the mind which is made fit to receive the real teaching about Brahman.