CUP OR COFFEE...

A group of alumni, highly established in their lives, got together to visit their old university Professor.

Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned
with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups porcelain, plastic,
glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite -
telling them to help themselves to hot coffee .

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: "If
you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving
behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want
only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and
stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you
consciously went for the best cups and were eying each other's cups.

Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the
cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life
doesn't change. Some times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to
enjoy the coffee in it."

Don't let the cups drive you... Enjoy the coffee instead

GOD

What is GOD? My question is important. I do not ask 'Who is GOD?,' instead I ask 'What is GOD?.' 'Who is GOD?' is a religious question, while 'What is GOD?' is a spiritual question. Religion is a way of life – not the way of life. Religion is 'getting answers', while Spirituality is 'experiencing answers'. I feel 'What is GOD?' is a more important question than 'Who is GOD?.' So how do we answer this question?

'Sahasra Seersha Purushah' – thus starts the Purusha Suktam. The Purusha Suktam extols the personality of the Supreme Being, the Almighty God. What does the first verse in this Suktam mean? By literal translation, it means 'One with thousand heads'. The Suktam goes on to praise the purusha as one with thousand hands and feet and eyes. Does this mean God has thousand heads, hands, feet and eyes? What is the significance of the number 1000? It is well known that in Hinduism the holy numbers are 18, 108, 1008, or numbers like 11, 51, 101, 1001, etc. Why then 1000? Large numbers are often used to represent uncountable. The meaning of the beginning verses of the Purusha Suktam is, to me, means God is everyone. The Vedas extol the qualities of an ideal person. Humans need to strive to attain those qualities.

So coming back to the question, What is GOD? God is the ideal human being, the human being with all the ideal values. So attaining these values is the goal of life. This is exactly what the non-theistic religions are about. They talk about being good and ideal and do not mention about an external GOD.

Speech Vs Silence

Hi all,

This is a contribution by our friend....Anand aka Andy.....

Speech dissipates energy, Silence conserves it.

Speech needs Company, Silence needs Solitude.

Speech is outside, Silence is inside.

Speech makes you self-centered, Silence makes you God-centered.

Speech is heard by creatures, Silence hears the Creator.

Speech receives appreciation, Silence receives adoration.

Speech seeks to conquer others, Silence helps to conquer oneself.

Speech is mind bound, Silence is soul bound.

Speech demands respect, Silence commands it.

Speech is self-expression, Silence is self-experience.

Speech asserts ego, Silence effaces it.

Speech is Human, Silence is Divine.

GOD....

Dear All,

Who is GOD????????????????????????????

This is one question that I am sure that would have rung in everyone’s mind at some point of time or the other. It is a very simple and a straight forward answer…well that’s what I thought, but then can God be defined at all. We mortals can only explain God, if at all we can, in terms that are familiar to us and the knowledge of God in which we were brought up by our parents. Some call Him the all powerful Super power that pervades over all of us. Some call Him as the unseen yet indispensable part of ones life. But we cannot pin point and say that God means this or God means that. After all do we need to define God at all. All that we need to know that there is an entity called God and that we need to remember Him and be thankful to Him for all the things in life. I did not specify that we need to thank him for only the good things in life. I will explain later as to why we should and why we should not.

As of now suffice it to say, that God is Omni-present, Omni-potent and Omni-scient.

Or in simpler terms God can be perceived as anything or anyone that you Love the most and revere the most in your life. To begin our quest into understanding (or should I say experiencing God) it would be best to start seeing God in every instance, situation or person that you come across.
I am sure this will provoke more interest and inqisitivenes

Life and its Small Miracles.

The Lord says, among all species, to be born as a human is the rarest and the most gifted births. It is only a human who can identify himself with God and understand the essence of life. It is said that a human birth is the highest ranked in the order of evolution and is just a step away from recognizing his true nature. The purpose of human existence is to realize his true nature and yearn to merge with the Divine and attain eternal bliss. God fills a life with experiences that are good, some bad, some disturbing and some totally unnerving. These experiences shape up individual's thinking

God provides man with a life filled with small but sweet experiences that act on the human, developing him into a more complete and helps him lead a more fulfilling life. Take the example of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of our nation, India, whose life was molded by the happenings around him. In his youth he was influenced by the western culture, their polish and their lifestyle. But later, he was influenced by the realities of life in India and he began to lead a life of an average Indian. Examples are galore when one looks at the way situations have molded the human beings. Hitler would not have been a name to reckon with if he had not gone through the hazards in his childhood. Abraham Lincoln would have been an ordinary American, had he not been influenced by the happenings. One can go on quoting examples from the past and the present about people who otherwise lead normal life rise to become heroes, leaving their mark in history and in the hearts of people across the globe.

Getting influenced by the happenings around one is like a double edged sword. One can get mis-led if one gets wrongly influenced by the situations. What brings man down to abyssal depths of sin is the influence of the dark and the polluted forces of nature. Man gets easily carried away by the ever inviting hand of sin, veiled in the garb of a saint. Everything looks all good and rosy for him in the beginning and he falls for it. But as time rolls by, he realizes that what seemed to him as a bed of roses, is actually a coffin of thorns.

Man has to understand that though getting influenced by the situations around him, but use his discretionary powers vested upon him by God to differentiate between the positive and the negative. Life offers man both the good and the bad. It all depends on him as to how he utilizes it and makes the best use of the circumstances. One can use a knife for killing some one or use the same for operating and saving a life. Man is bestowed with the unique attribute of discrimination. One has to use it wisely and ensure the development and evolution of all around him.

When one talks of small miracles in life, these are the ones that we often forget to remember and cherish. These are moments that pass us by without us giving a thought about it. How many of us remember the smile on the face of a poor man when we gave him a packet of food to eat? How many of us remember that tears of gratitude of an old woman, who barely had anything to cover her shivering body, in the middle of the night, when we gave her a blanket to face the chill nights?

Let this space here be a window to let go some of those small miracles that has enriched our lives....that has made us into better human beings....