sukku

This is taken from my collection of conversations for transformation by Landmark Education. I just wanted to share this with you and please read between the lines to appreciate the deep philosophy involved here. This essay is the  a collection of six on Nothing : 1.   Nothing 2.   There Is Nothing To Get 3.   High Class Zen 4.   Joshua Is Doing Nothing 5.   A Paradigm For Nothing 6.   Nothing We Can Achieve Keep your fingers out of the machinery. Notice your tendency to want to fix the machine. That is your most human quality. But the machine is already fixed. Actually it never was broken. It doesn't need you to fix it. The machine is OK the way it is. This is the way it turned out. It turned out this way whether you have an opinion or not that it should have turned out this way or differently. Be gracious with the outcome. Your energy is better spent being with it rather than resisting it ...

I would love to share the following quotes by Robin Sharma from his book "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari". I have read this book a couple of times but what got me was when I was in the Hospital after my heart attack waiting for my surgery, the book had a profound impact as I could identify myself with Julian on how he had valued work more then life and had neglected it...until he had a heart attack...and that gave him a second lease of life...where he changed ....in life we never treasure anything as we take things for granted...until we are hit by "the lightning" or given a shock treatment....thats when we wake up...like I did ....so please "WAKE UP"....before it is too late...enjoy the little pleasures in life...take time to see the sunset... Here are the Quotes: # "Blaming others is nothing more than excusing yourself.." # "Learn More to Earn More" # "We receive from life not what we want but who we are". # "Go...

By Claudette Rowley Does perfectionism plague you? Do you wish you could loosen up and embrace "good enough"? Do you procrastinate? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, I encourage you to consider the merits of imperfection. In our culture, we are steeped in the idea that if it's not perfect, we've failed, something's flawed or just gone wrong. In fact, the dictionary definition of imperfection talks about flaws, weaknesses and a state of faultiness. I agree, on the surface, that's what imperfection looks like. But here's the truth: imperfection can be liberating. The magic of imperfection lies in looking below the surface. Because we all know, at some level, that life is a deeply imperfect enterprise. It always has been, and I suspect that it always will be. Once we embrace that truth, many of our structures, beliefs and myths about perfection fall away like the scaffolding around a space shuttle. What stops us from embracing imperfe...

By LEE CHILD SHE was about 19. No older. Maybe younger. An insurance company would have given her 60 more years to live. I figured a more accurate projection was 36 hours, or 36 minutes if things went wrong from the get-go. She was blond and blue-eyed, but not American. American girls have a glow, a smoothness, from many generations of plenty. This girl was different. Her ancestors had known hardship and fear. That inheritance was in her face and her movements. Her eyes were wary. Her body was lean. Not the kind of lean you get from a diet, but the Darwinian kind of lean you get when your grandparents had no food — and either starved or didn’t. Her movements were fragile and tense, a little alert, a little nervous, though on the face of it she was having as good a time as a girl could get. She was in a New York bar, drinking beer, listening to a band, and she was in love with the guitar player. That was clear. The part of her gaze that wasn’t wary was filled with adorati...

The creative process must be revered as a spiritual search, says Paulo Coelho, one of the world’s best-known authors. His quest straddled the conventional pilgrimage and hippiedom. But the answer was to be found in a basic humanity and social entrepreneurship, he tells Bachi Karkaria Where do get your spiritual underpinnings? How much of this influences the way you are and the way you write? How much of Paulo Coelho, the man, and Paulo Coelho, the writer, can be attributed to your Roman Catholic upbringing? I grew up, like almost all Brazilians, in a strictly Catholic family. Later, at the age of rebellion, I doubted Catholicism, and felt that I must try something new. Then I became a hippie. During this time, I travelled a lot, met people of different backgrounds, and learnt different paths to come closer to spirituality. After I did a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, I returned to the Catholic faith – just because it is in my blood, not because it is the best religion. I am ...

Dhananjay Mahapatra | TNN New Delhi: Husbands wanting to lead a happy married life can rely on some useful tips given by the Supreme Court, the most important being: “Do what the wife tells you and never question her authority.” The words of wisdom came from two ‘Bhuktbhogi’ judges — Justices Markandey Katju and Deepak Verma — during the inconclusive hearing of a 17-year-old divorce litigation between a serving lieutenant colonel and his wife. The vacation bench comprising these two judges asked the counsel whether there was any scope of com promise between the two and both in unison gave different reasons to say that there was no possibility for a happy ending to their dispute. The wife’s counsel said that the Rs 10 lakh offered by the husband for complete settlement of the dispute and divorce was too little as it was not easy to bring up a teenaged daughter. While the trial court dismissed his divorce plea, the HC had allowed judicial separation. But on her appeal against thi...

Satsang: Swami Sukhabodhananda Where and how do we search for God? Remember that God is within you, but you don’t see Him because the one place you will never look is inside yourself. You will search everywhere, but never within yourself. Paradoxically, you lose sight of God because He is in you. Now look at what God has given us. Our intelligence, buddhi, is a precious gift. Yet, are we loving and grateful enough to God who has given us all these? Do we have even a little of the gratitude a dog has towards its master? No! That is why Dattatreya considers the dog as one of his gurus. Dattatreya draws four lessons from the dog. A dog doesn’t count its misfortunes or grieve over them. A dog doesn’t live in the past. It doesn’t make long-term plans either. It doesn’t live in the future. It lives instinctively, from moment to moment. A dog’s life is one unbroken straight line marked by love, devotion and gratitude to the one who sustains it. Devotion is its defining property...

By Peter Shepherd Our beliefs strongly influence our behavior. They motivate us and shape what we do. For instance, it is difficult to learn anything without the belief that it will be pleasant and to our advantage. What are beliefs? How are they formed and how do we maintain them? Beliefs are our guiding principles, the inner maps we use to make sense of the world. They give stability and continuity; they are stable data that helps us to make order out of confusion. Shared beliefs give a deeper sense of rapport and community. Our Map of Reality Beliefs come from many sources - upbringing, imitation of significant others, conclusions as a result of past traumas, and repetitive experiences. We build beliefs by generalizing from our experiences of the world and those of other people. Some beliefs come to us ready made from the culture and environment we are born into. When we are young, we believe what we are told about ourselves and the world, because we have no way of testing, and t...

Times of fear Jug Suraiya Beware. This newspaper that you are reading is a carrier of the most infectious and contagious, as well as the oldest, disease known to humankind: fear. Thanks to the so-called swine flu — now renamed H1N1 by the World Health Organisation (WHO) — fear is having a field day. Newspaper and television headlines blazon the dire prognosis: the world could be facing the gravest health threat ever since the influenza epidemic of 1918-19 which claimed over 50 million lives, more than the death toll of both World Wars combined. With 13 countries — from Mexico and the US to Switzerland and New Zealand — having reported cases of the disease, WHO has raised the global health alert to a phase five level, just one short of a pandemic. The Mexican government has virtually shut the entire country down for five days in a bid to stem the spread of the disease. It’s enough to scare the living daylights out of anyone. And even if H1N1 blows over with little or no real damage ...

By Edwin Harkness Spina The Matrix was one of the most popular and thought-provoking movies of all time. Viewers all over the world were captivated by the film's primary message: People get into deep trouble when they mistake what they perceive for reality. What most viewers do not realize is that prior to the release of this groundbreaking film, western intelligence agencies were already using the term "the Matrix" to describe today's world. This was in contrast to their work with remote viewers, who would "escape the matrix" to gather intelligence. Art truly does imitate life. In the movie, the Matrix is an elaborate Artificial Intelligence computer simulation that's so captivating that people mistake it for reality. People perceive they are walking about and interacting with others, but their physical bodies are actually submerged in fluid-filled pods, "plugged into" the Matrix, while their vital life force is harnessed to power the Matr...

Climate change challenge will reshape the way we live Anthony Giddens Climate change and how to respond to it are everywhere in the news at the moment. So, of course, is economic recession, just as global in scope and itself deeply worrying. But what is the relationship between them likely to turn out to be? Every crisis, Sigmund Freud said, is potentially a stimulus to the positive side of the personality — it is an opportunity to start afresh. The point has not gone unnoticed by political leaders. Following the example of President Barack Obama in the US, many have signed up to the idea of a climate change New Deal. Investment in low-carbon technologies, the insulation of buildings and public transport, it is reasoned, can make a key contribution to getting the economy moving again. Nick Stern, the author of the celebrated Stern Review of the economics of climate change, argues that such measures should make up at least 20 per cent of the funding provided for recovery plans. ...

Taken from Robin Sharma's blog and please pass this around...... 1. You be the change you dream of seeing (Thanks Mahatma Gandhi). "If everyone of us would sweep their own doorstep, the whole world would be clean," observed Mother Teresa. She was right. 2. Make time every day to reconnect to your highest ideals and boldest dreams. Without hope, people perish.  3. Leave every person you meet better than you found them. Life's too short to withhold encouragement and kindness.  4. As I wrote in 'The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari", see every setback as a stepping stone and every problem as a blessing in disguise. Contrary to what critics might say, these are NOT corny aphorisms. They are timeless truths of humanity. (And critics are just people too scared to grow their dreams anyway - pay no attention to them. The world needs more people lifting people up rather than putting people down). 5. Go the extra mile in everything you do - you don't need a title to be a ...

Martin Luther King, Jr In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvellous new militancy which has engulfed our commu nity must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realise that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realise that their free dom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. And... even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream t...

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005. I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out the...

CHENNAI: It’s Deepavali in Tamil Nadu on Monday and Diwali in the rest of the states on Tuesday. Intriguing? While the festival basically celebrates the triumph of good over evil, there is a difference on what the day signifies for people of the State and for those in the rest of the country. In Tamil Nadu, the day is observed as ‘Naraka Chaturdasi’ — the killing of demon king Narakasura by Lord Krishna’s wife Sathyabama,— which falls on October 28 this year. For others, Diwali marks the return of Lord Ram to Ayodhya after 14 years of vanavas. For north Indians, the day after Diwali is Annakut — New Year Day. So,merchants open new account books on Diwali. The Tamil New Year begins at a different time of the year and is in no way linked to Deepavali. So is the case in Kerala (Vishu) and in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka (Ugadi). However, Diwali commemorates Rama vanquishing Ravana. Hence, the festival has come to symbolise the triumph of good over evil also. The people of Ayodhya placed ...