Green Grass of Hope

I jus read this and fell in love with it..

source : http://www.snopes.com/photos/military/grass.asp

Do read the article.

Enjoy !!

The Choice

The Choice

Last week Wednesday I attended the MUSS meeting in Titiwangsa. On my way back I was stuck in the KTM commuter train in Sentral Station. An announcement was made that there were some technical difficulties and the train would be delayed. And the train just stood there, the doors were wide open and the air-condition was at full blast, it was very cold inside. The train was stationary for almost an hour plus !

I could see the frustration on the faces of many people, just like me they were angry too. After a long tiring day, all that one needs is to go back home and rest or spend time with your family. But here we were stuck in the middle of KL and it was approaching midnight. As time passed more people became impatient. For most of them KTM commuter is the only means of transport, that’s the only way they could get back home. Other trains went on different routes and taxis are just too expensive after midnight. Practically, we were prisoners, trapped in a train with it’s doors wide open, we could leave if we want to but we knew this was the only way home, and that is what made this prison special in a sense, because we’re angry with the poor service but we still cant leave !

Amidst all the frustrated and angry faces I saw the guy sitting next to me. He was answering some questions in a paper that has a title “Fisika” (only later I knew that it means Physics in Indonesian), the whole train was filled with an aura of resentment and one man was answering a bunch of physics questions. I was bored and my stomach was hungry. So I decided to strike a conversation with him. His name was Afiz. He was sitting for preliminary examination for an Indonesian University, thus the Physics question paper. After some talking and getting to know one another I actually ended up reading a revision book on Physics which he was having !

After some time of reading I couldn’t take the cold in the train. Some other passengers were standing outside the train, since I couldn’t bare the cold, I returned Afiz his book and walked outside. There were lots of people there, not only from my train but also from other trains that were stranded too. Some of them were talking, some were smoking, some just stared blankly, deep in some sort of imagination. But then I saw this group of two boys and a girl. They were actually practicing their Bharatanatyam (it’s a classical dance form originating from Tamil Nadu), they were spinning, turning and moving as accordance to the dancing styles. I was just amazed to see them bravely dancing amidst all those people, they were not embarrassed nor afraid of being judged.

Then it dawned to me. There are two types of personality traits that I observed. All of us were stuck in the same station and all of us were delayed. Some were frustrated and angry, but some, like Afiz and the Bharatanatyam dancers made full use of their moments, and somehow expanded their ability and talents. Someday or another we would all get stuck in some sort of situation or delay, and it’s up to us, either we frown or grow upwards. It’s a matter of choice…

In a bar in Buenos Aires

This is a beautifull story that I read in Paulo Coelho's website ...


I am with the Venezuelan writer Dulce Rojas, drinking coffee in Buenos Aires; we are discussing the idea of peace and how removed it has become from the human heart. Dulce then tells me the following story.

A king offered a large prize to the artist who could best represent the idea of peace. A lot of painters sent their works to the palace, depicting woods at dusk, quiet rivers, children playing on the sand, rainbows in the sky, drops of dew on a rose petal.

The king examined everything that was sent to him, but ended up choosing only two works.

The first showed a tranquil lake that perfectly mirrored the imposing mountains surrounding it and the blue sky above. The sky was dotted with small white clouds and, if you looked closely, in the left-hand corner of the lake there stood a small house with one window open and smoke rising from the chimney - the sign that a frugal but tasty supper was being prepared.

The second painting was also of mountains, but these were bleak and stony with sharp, sheer peaks. Above the mountains, the sky was implacably dark, and from the heavy clouds fell lightning, hail and torrential rain.

The painting was totally out of harmony with the other submissions. However, a closer look revealed a bird’s nest lodged in a crack in one of those inhospitable rocks. In the midst of the violent roaring of the storm, a swallow was calmly sitting on its nest.

When he gathered his court together, the king chose the second picture as the one that best expressed the idea of peace. He explained:

‘Peace is not what we find in a place that is free of noise, problems and hard work; peace is what allows us to preserve the calm in our hearts, even in the most adverse situations. That is its true and only meaning.

Coke addicts - BEWARE !!!

To all Coke addicts or lovers, i think its a must that you read this ....
from http://www.nutritionresearchcenter.org/healthnews/?p=140

What Happens To Your Body Within An Hour Of Drinking A Coke







When somebody drinks a Coke watch what happens…

In The First

10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.

20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat. (There’s plenty of that at this particular moment)

40 minutes: Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.

45 minutes: Your body ups your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way.

>60 minutes: The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a further boost in metabolism. This is compounded by high doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners also increasing the urinary excretion of calcium.

>60 Minutes: The caffeine’s diuretic properties come into play. (It makes you have to pee.) It is now assured that you’ll evacuate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that was headed to your bones as well as sodium, electrolyte and water.

>60 minutes: As the rave inside of you dies down you’ll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You’ve also now, literally, pissed away all the water that was in the Coke. But not before infusing it with valuable nutrients your body could have used for things like even having the ability to hydrate your system or build strong bones and teeth.
So there you have it, an avalanche of destruction in a single can. Imagine drinking this day after day, week after week. Stick to water, real juice from fresh squeezed fruit, and tea without sweetener.

Primary Source: by Wade Meredith

Ever Heard of Cheeta-Merats ???

By Yoginder Sikand, TwoCircles.net

65 year-old Naseeb Khan recently arranged for his son Prakash Singh to marry Sita, daughter of Ram Singh and his wife Reshma. Three months ago, Hemant Singh's daughter Devi married Lakshman Singh in a nikah ceremony solemnized by a Muslim maulvi. Naseeb Singh's elder son Roshan had a Muslim-style nikah, and his younger son Iqbal got married in the Hindu fashion.

Salim Khan keeps pictures of Hindu deities and local Rajasthani folk heroes in an altar in his hut, and regularly visits a neighbouring dargah of a Muslim saint. He says he is a Muslim, but, like many people in his village, he does not know the kalima shahada, the Muslim creed of the faith. His neighbour and first cousin, Madho Singh, has been offering the Eid prayers in the village Eidgah for as long as he can remember. Yet, like everyone else in his village, he also celebrates Holi and Diwali with equal gusto.

These intriguing people who defy conventional notions of 'Hindus' and 'Muslims', belong to a little-known community known as the Cheeta-Merat. Some 400,000 strong, the community inhabits some 160 villages in the vicinity of Ajmer and Beawar towns in Rajasthan's Ajmer district. The Cheeta and the Merat (also kown as Kathat) are two separate clans who intermarry with each other. Most of them are small peasants and landless labourers. They call themselves Chauhan Rajputs, and identify their religion variously as 'Hindu-Muslim', or either 'Hindu' or 'Muslim' or simply 'Cheeta-Merat'. In terms of dress, language and food habits there is little to distinguish the Cheeta-Merat from the other castes whom they live with. Their distinguishing feature, however, is their unique syncretic religious identity.

Different stories are told about the origins of the Cheeta-Merat. Most of these stories are based on the claim of the community being supposedly descended from the clan of Prithviraj Chauhan, the last Chauhan Hindu ruler of Ajmer, who was killed while fighting the forces of Muhammad Ghori. This claim is not, however, widely accepted by the Hindu Rajputs and might well be a contrived means to claim a higher social status for the community, which, for centuries, roamed the Aravalli mountains, attacking and plundering trade caravans.

According to one story, a conquering 'Muslim Sultan'gave one of the ancestors of the Cheeta-Merat, Har Raj, the choice of converting to Islam, death or having his womenfolk raped. Har Raj is said to have selected the first option, but, instead of fully converting to Islam, is said to have only accepted three things of Islam for himself and his descendants: male circumcision, eating meat slaughtered in the Muslim halal fashion and burial of the dead. This is why, according to this story, most Cheeta-Merat still follow only these three Islamic practices, while being almost indistinguishable from the other local Hindu castes in other respects.

This theory appears to be a newly invented one, and does not find mention in reliable historical chronicles. It is, however, forcefully articulated today by Hindu groups active in the region, such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the RSS, who are trying to bring the Cheeta-Merat into the Hindu fold. The identity of the 'Muslim Sultan' in the story is confused: some name him as Aurangzeb, others as Mohammad Ghori, yet others as Mohammad Ghazni or Alauddin, Sultan of Malwa.

A different, though related, version of the story is that the 'Muslim Sultan' provided Har Raj with a sizeable estate as a reward for giving up his community's practice of raiding trading caravans. This made Har Raj's six brothers jealous of him, because of which Har Raj chose to become a Muslim, feeling that a Muslim Sultan had treated him better than his own brothers. However, despite his conversion to Islam,his descendents, the Cheeta-Merats, retained only a very nominal link with Islam, owing to the remote terrain in which they lived. They thus practised only three customs, mentioned above, that drew from Islam. Although the Sultans of Delhi, who controlled the Ajmer region, made efforts to promote Islamisation among them (as through building mosques in their villages, the ruins of many of which still remain, and by settling faqirs of the Madari caste, also known as Sain or Shah, in the villages to instruct the Cheeta-Merats in the basics of Islam and to slaughter animals in the Islamic fashion), these attempts did not make much dent.

Another theory about the Cheeta-Merat is that their ancestor Har Raj voluntarily converted to Islam at the hands of the renowned Sufi, Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti of Ajmer. This is why, it is argued, he is also known as Pir Har Raj, having received the honorific title of Pir, which is used for a Muslim saint. No surprisingly, this theory finds favour with Muslim groups active today among the Cheeta-Merats, who are seeking to provide them with a more distinctly Muslim identity.

The Cheeta-Merats' identity as neither 'Hindu' nor 'Muslim', but perhaps a bit of both, came under increasing challenge from the early decades of the twentieth century. In the 1920s, the Arya Samaj launched efforts to bring into the Hindu fold various communities like the Cheeta-Merats who could not be easily classified as either 'Hindu' or 'Muslim', as the terms were conventionally understood. The powerful Rajput Sabha, allied to the Aryas, appealed to the Cheeta-Merats to abandon their Islamic practices and turn Hindu. Some Cheeta-Merats are said to have formally declared themselves as Hindus at this time.

'We say Ram-Ram to Hindus and salam to Muslims. We hold a laddu in each of our hands', says Salim Khan smilingly when I ask him how his community responds to the contradictory appeals of Hindu and Muslim revivalist groups competing with each other. 'Most of us do not know how to do intricate Brahminical pujas or say the Muslim namaz. We just bow our heads before temples, mosques and dargahs', he explains. He talks of how, over the years, his community is now being increasingly divided into two factions—one Hindu and the other Muslim. 'Inter-marriages still occur, but this is reducing', he laments. 'However', he stresses,'whether Hindu or Muslim, we all think of ourselves as brothers, descended from the same ancestors'.

'We are a unique community', says Rohan Singh, 'I don't think there is any other community like us in the whole of India'. His mother's brother, Buland Khan, nods in agreement. 'Our philosophy of life is to live and let live. People must be free to worship God in whatever way they like', he tells me. 'Some Cheeta-Merats', he confesses, 'feel ashamed about their identity'. 'Others mock them and say that they are confused and muddled-up and are trying to ride two boats of the same time'. 'But', he stresses, 'I think we are right. Some of us are Muslims and others are Hindus, like me and my nephew here. But still we live together in harmony. We interdine and we intermarry. Religion is a personal issue and does not affect our relations'.

Which Religion Is Good?

I visited http://www.faithfreedom.org/ and found this rather controversial but remarkable article. Though this article challenges some of the basic tenets of religion, I have to say that I enjoyed reading it. Since the article criticizes certain religions there are parts of it that I have removed, if you do wish to read the full document just visit the link below.
http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/sina/which_religion.htm

Doubt Everything Find Your Own Light.

By Ali Sina,

A few months ago, in my community center I picked up a newspaper and read about a new Messiah called John de Ruiter, the hot shot guru from Canada whom some of his followers reckon to be "bigger than Jesus". The article was an interview with Joyce, his wife of 18 years, and the mother of his three children. She was rejecting the claim of her husband to be God (A man worshiped as God may shock a Muslim but not a Christian who accepts the concept of trinity and Jesus as walking God among men).
After many years of forbearance Joyce De Ruiter could not bear it any longer and one day she stood in front of his congregation and complained about her husband's sexual affairs with two of his young and beautiful followers. These two girls are sisters and their parents who are also the followers of John de Ruiter, are ecstatic to know that God makes love to their daughters.

The funny thing is that the followers of this new messiah know about the sexual interludes of their master but few give a second thought about it. Once people accept someone as a superior being, a messiah or a messenger of God they become blind to all his flaws and commend even his sins. No Muslim today, e.g. would approve promiscuity. Womanizing and lustfulness is considered immorality (Please read from the above link) De Ruiter Told his congregation that "Truth has told him" to sleep with these girls. How many of his brainwashed followers asked whether "Truth" has a mouth to speak? When someone surrenders his intelligence to someone else, he becomes a zombie who will believe anything. Truth is a concept not a person or a being. How can a concept talk or communicate? The true answer to 2+2 is 4. Any other answer is false. Can I say that 4 told me this or that? How ridiculous is this claim?

De Ruiter denies these relationships are actual affairs, because he claims to be bonded to these women in a spiritual realm (Apparently Mr. De Ruiter's spiritual realm is in his bed). "To me it's not infidelity”, says the self-proclaimed savior of Mankind “It's not unfaithfulness because my heart is still completely with Joyce." Moreover being a god his fornication with these two beautiful well-trimmed young sisters is not for lust but it is the expression of his profound love for others and that his threesomes with them has "spiritual significance", explains in a most relaxed and holy manner the "Guru of Gurus". He originally denied his adulterous relationship and when it came to the light, he brazenly rationalized it. De Ruiter says he originally denied the relationships because he was answering questions on a "personal level." And on this personal level, he is not having affairs, because the relationships are not about lust or sex or physical attraction," And added: "I'm not a sexual wanderer, emotionally. I don't live with lust. I don't struggle with that. It's not a weakness."
edmontonjournal.comwrites:

"While extramarital affairs are in many ways the private business of the parties involved, in this case they indicate a willingness within de Ruiter's group to accept behaviour that violates cultural norms, says a local academic.
Sociologist Steve Kent worries the lack of controversy within the group over the adultery is indicative of the charismatic sway de Ruiter has with followers."
Among his followers there is a well established psychologist who claims that after 30 years of practice he has no doubt of John’s mental health and that he is who he claims to be.
Yesterday in my neighborhood market, I saw his flyer pinned to the billboard. It was an invitation to his conferences with these words:
“John de Ruiter: Master of transformation; living embodiment and teacher of Truth. “

And;
“Through the living essence of Truth emanating from his words and from his presence, John de Ruiter awakens what our hearts most long for…”
See his web site http://www.johnderuiter.com/
These self-acclaimed prophets, messengers and messiahs rehash ideas that are either commonsense and people already know and accept or state empty phrases that at first seem to have a profound meaning. For example De Ruiter says, “Truth is knowable without restriction, however only honesty through openness and softness of heart reveals it”. This is absurd. Truth is the state of being factual. It has nothing to do with openness and softness of heart; it has everything to do with doubting, with rational thinking and facts. Yet despite the frivolity and banality of his teachings there is no want of idiots who would follow him blindly calling him the “master of transformation”, Impressed by such deceiving yet shallow phrases such as above.

For those who cannot see a mentally disturbed man behind those blue eyes of John de Ruiter a quick review of his writings reveal the confusion and incoherence of his thoughts. Words are jumbled in tautological statements and hollow speeches that leave the listener gasping for meaning while the redundancy of vibrant words such as "Truth" and "consciousness" subliminally suggests that something very profound is being said that its full meaning eludes the ken of the listener. But after reading a few of his speeches, after getting over his monotonous catchphrases and mulling over their contents one learns that there is nothing to be learned from them.
(Please read from the above link)

I looked at the picture of one of De Ruiter's conferences and saw the attendees were well-dressed middle-class people most of them supposedly with university degrees. I asked myself what is it that these people see in this confused and disturbed man? Why so many educated and "apparently smart" people are so eager to surrender their intelligence to charlatans like John de Ruiter and other impostors like him?

It seems that people are looking for the Truth and guidance in all the wrong places. We somehow believe that there is someone who can tell us what to do and what route to take sparing us from making responsible decisions on our own. We feed the multi million-dollar psychic network industry in the search of response and finance multi billion-dollar religious industry in the hope of salvation. We look for magic bullets; we believe in fairies, angels and ghosts. We follow gurus and prophets because we are not willing to take the responsibility of our lives in our own hands, think with our own brains and live conscientiously.

When there are people who want to be followers, there will come those who will claim to be leaders. When people think like sheep, there will be wolves that pose as shepherds. When we are willing to give a free ride, there will come those who will take us for a ride.

But the real religion starts taking form when these self-proclaimed prophets and gurus die. Then their devotees fabricate myths and legends, attribute miracles to them and portray them as gods and demigods. (Please read from the above link)

These fables pass from one generation to another and eventually the passage of time seals their credibility until everyone believes in them considering their antiquity and their universal acceptance the proof of their truthfulness and the veracity of the claims of their prophets.

But can anyone really tell us how to find the truth? Is there any religion that can lead us to salvation?

Obviously, the truth is one and it is absolute. It is unchanging, eternal and infinite. If you believe in God, irrespective of your idea of it, you believe that God is the Absolute Truth. The question is whether humans with their limited intellect can grasp the Absolute Truth? Can the finite contain the infinite? Can a cup hold an ocean?

If I am aware of my limited capacity of understanding, I am aware of my ignorance. I know that I don’t know. The truth may be one and infinite but can I grasp it? The answer is no! Yet that does not mean that I should stop searching. In order to understand, I have to ask, I have to be open and non-judgmental, but also I have to realize that I will never find the entire truth.

To reach this level of openness, one has to realize that his thoughts and beliefs are largely influenced by his education and environment. In other words, our present beliefs are the result of our past learning. Since every day we learn more, our understanding of the Truth also expands and therefore differs. Heraclitus once said, "you cannot cross the same river twice", because the next time those waters are not the same and you too have changed. As we change our beliefs change too. This happens gradually and subconsciously, even if we consciously resist the change. During the course of our lives we constantly change and with that our views of reality change simultaneously.

Once I know that the change is the constant. I don’t have to hold to my beliefs with tooth and nail. I know they are bound to change. I become detached. I will not try to impose them on others nor will I try to preach to others. I will not try to lead people to the right path as I realize that truth is pathless. Truth is not something that you can reach or grasp. Truth is not a destination. No one can lead you to it because it is not a place. No one can show it to you because it is not a thing.

The process of discovering the truth is not unlike the experiments done by scientists to understand how things work; it starts by making theories, but accepting to discard them once those theories are proven wrong. This is the scientific approach.

Galileo doubted the commonly accepted notion of the geocentric universe. He found that the truth was much different from what was universally believed. Many learned men of his time simply accepted the conventional belief. We remember him and have forgotten them. Darwin is another example. Although a very religious man, he questioned and doubted the biblical story of creation and thus found out the mystery of evolution. All discoveries are made after doubting and questioning the validity of the commonly accepted and the time honored beliefs.

Spiritual realities are not dissimilar with scientific ones and the same process of doubting and questioning should be used to unravel the hidden mysteries of the spiritual domain. We have to doubt everything, including our own beliefs. When we doubt, we question, we learn and we change our mind. Although we will never learn the truth, we can get closer to it. Truth cannot be contained, not in a mind and definitely not in a book. If the knowledge of God is infinite how can an infinite knowledge be contained in few pages of a book?

Once we learn something new, we don’t discard our previous beliefs but our understanding of it changes. I do not discard the Divine reality. Just like Galileo who did not reject the Earth but people’s understanding of it, I do not reject God but people’s understanding of it. For example, the whole notion of a personal God that does not care about us for billions years of evolution and then suddenly, when we have evolved and become humans with a little bit of intelligence, appears in our lives, hiding behind the clouds of secrecy, telling us irrational stories through less than educated men whom he sends as messengers, demanding us to worship him or roast us for eternity in his cosmic rotisserie, does not make sense. (Please read from the above link) I am not saying that the truth is somewhere else or that I have found it! Only an impostor or a fool could make such claim. The truth cannot be found in a doctrine or religion. That realization is liberating.

It is time that we stopped looking at other people for guidance. As long as people are willing to be fooled, there will come those who fool them. As long as they want to be followers, there won't be shortage of charlatans who will mislead them.

Doubt everything that you are told and believe. When you doubt you empty the glass of your mind and become receptive to new knowledge, but don’t hold fast to that knowledge either. Be open and let yet fresher insights breath new life into your mind. Religions demand absolute and blind faith. They claim to be the ultimate truth. If you think the faith is superior to doubt, you don’t doubt. When you don’t doubt, you don’t search and when you don’t search you don’t find.

Dear friend, if you look for meaning in life, don’t look for it in religions; don’t go from one cult to another or from one guru to the next. You can spend all your life or look for eternity and will find nothing but disappointment and disillusionment. Look instead in service to humanity. You will find “meaning” in your love for other human beings.

You can experience God when you help someone who needs your help. The only truth that counts is the love that we have for each other. This is absolute and real. The rest is mirage, fancies of human imagination and fallacies of our own making.

Sounds exciting !!!

Allies or Enemies...

Recently some trouble have been taking place in France. The French government had said in 2004 that Sikh students could not wear turbans to schools as turbans were religious symbols, these law also apply for the Muslim headscarve (worn by girls). And so, large-scale protests among the Sikh community started, which argues that wearing a turban is not just a religious symbol but a part of Sikh identity. But the protests have had little impact on France which has steadfastly refused change in its policy.

I've learnt about all these happenings through http://www.sikhnet.com/ and while browsing through it's news i found a really exciting presentation about the relationship between sikhs in WWI and WWII with the french people. This presentation slides were obtained from http://unitedsikhs.org/.

so just watch it, and I hope you enjoy. (Click the link below)

http://alvindar86.fileave.com/French_Sikh_History_Presentation_Combined.pdf

Pre-school racist

This is another experience I had when I was in University…

Once I was sitting in the library. A man and his daughter came and sat not too far from me. The daughter was very young, still in her pre-school. The man was using the computer on the table, probably finding the location of a book. I kept reading the book I was holding. The girl was quite chirpy, she kept on signing some tunes, I guess she learned it in her kindergarten. So this was going on for some time, I was reading…her dad was surfing…and she was singing. Then she said something that TRULY shocked me…
All of a sudden I heard her say “Orang India Orang Cina tak boleh masuk syurga” (The Indians and Chinese will not go to Heaven).

This was quite upsetting. How could a child say, or even think of something like that? I do know of elders who say that, we elders have a lot of ego, a lot anger and hatred for one another. It’s understandable if a man or woman says that, the older we get, the more we’re caught up in the web of confusion, and the more we’re farther from the universal truth.
But what made this simple child say that?
My first guess is her parents or pre-school teacher. I’m surprised that elders could instill hatred and discrimination on such an innocent girl.
I doubt if we’d ever reach zero racial tolerance.

Who shall we hold accountable for her words ??