Literacy

Literacy is not education, but surely literacy is the begining of education. A literate person can later on teach himself, by reading books and analyzing the information and content in there. Literacy is equivalent to giving a person a key to the world of knowledge. 

If the person is literate he would be able to use computers, read the manuals and learn to use machines. He would be able to communicate with anyone through mails, blog posts etc. And what is literacay, its knowing the letters of a particular language, ability to compose words and write sentences.

So necessarily the person is only learning a code that would allow him to read whatever he wants. For a nation achieving 100% literacy is a must. Education is a lifelong process and runs well beyond formal education. 

Random Facts

• Prostitution is considered to be the oldest profession of mankind. However the sources for this information is unknown, definitely the first requirement of humans is food and how do you get food?By hunting or agriculture. So hunting and agriculture definitely existed much before prostitution. Again another way of gathering food back then was simply plucking fruits and vegetables from trees and plants which occurred naturally. 
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• Before the existence of money in form of coins, the way in which trade was done was through barter. Two individuals exchanged say one unit of meat for five units of rice. Money was created for convenience of people, for example it is not possible to carry tonnes of rice to the market to buy some clothes. So they would sell their produce to the government and in return they got money in terms of coins out of which they would avail other products and services.

• In India, the Hindus worship god reciting mantras from books written thousands of years ago. Now those mantras are in Sanskrit and hardly anyone knows the meanings of the words except the purohit. No one ever bothered to change the language of the mantras to current language. Most people perform pujas because they believe the it would bring them good luck and god would be happy by that. Isn't this questionable, how repeating few words in front of an image or an idol can connect one to the almighty again that too in a language that one does not understand.
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• In the caste system that existed in India, the bramhins were considered the highest cast. They held the right to knowledge. They made the rules which society were supposed to follow, while initially anyone could have become a Bramhin the system got rotten with time and later on only those were born in a bramhin family were considered bramhins no matter how dumb the person was. This led to people from lower castes being discriminated and they were being looked down upon. Naturally the people from lower castes developed lower self esteem and this was the real begining of the downfall of India. 
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Beef and Meat Eating In India

This days some state governments in India are busy banning meat for a certain amount of time citing religious reasons. All of these states are ruled by a political party which is formed out of an extremest outfit. It is busy spreading hatred among different communities. The beef ban and ban on other meat products is basically aimed to create religious tensions. 

Although today in India a major part of the population is vegetarian, but still there are at least 400 million plus people who consume meat of some kind or other. In reality the food habits of people depend on the environment and the geographical location that they live in. It depends on the availability of the type of grains, fruits and vegetables of that place. Also the health impact of different food stuff varies, depending upon the weather. 

You invariably find communities living besides sea cost consume lots of sea food. In western and southern parts of India where lots of rice is grown, there the normal staple diet of the people is rice. However in northern parts of India, wheat is grown in plenty and they consume wheat in large amounts. 

It is a well known fact that in ancient India meat was consumed, even cow's meat was consumed. In fact a Brahmin was not considered to be a good Brahmin if he did not consume beef. To quote Swami Vivekananda in this regard:

"There was a time in this very India when, without eating beef, no Brahmin could remain a Brahmin; you read in the Vedas how, when a Sannyasi, a king, or a great man came into a house, the best bullock was killed; how in time it was found that as we were an agricultural race, killing the best bulls meant annihilation of the race. Therefore the practice was stopped, and a voice was raised against the killing of cows ."[Source]

This also shows us why the practice of consuming beef was stopped. India was then primarily an agricultural country. In ancient times cows and bulls were very important for agriculture and as a means of transport, there used to be bullock carts. Also we must remember that back then there was no refrigeration technology available so the the cow or bull once slaughtered must be distributed fast and in the village, where few people lived, not everyone was able to consume all the meat. Hence a major portion of the meat would go waste , hence for consumption of little beef a large animal had to be slaughtered. This surely must have led to the reduction of population of cows and bulls, which would have had tremendous impact on the society and the economy back then. 

Hence religious rules were made in regards to beef consumption. Killing cows was totally banned and to make sure that people didn't disobey, the idea of cow mother and killing a cow as a sin was inculcated. In time the subsequent generation practiced this laws more and more strictly and in ignorance they started comparing cows to gods,and stopped its slaughter altogether. Very strict punishment was meted out on those who disobeyed the law. As Indians became more and more conservative many Indians gave up meat eating, also there was an emperor Ashok who was extremely cruel and ambitious to begin with, but later on became a Buddhist and spread the message of peace and non-violence. 

Emperor Ashok sent his men to different parts of world to get different crops and vegetables and once they were introduced he banned all kinds of animal killings. Ashoka's over reaction was probably due to excessive guilt for him being the reason for the death of millions of innocent people. Buddha himself was a meat eater, he only protested against the unnecessary killings of animals in which even the meats would have gone waste. 

Today we are no longer dependent on bulls for transport or farming. We have trucks, buses etc and for farming we have machines and tractors. So bulls are useless except for their seamen from which other cows are born. Even in case of cows, only those cows that can give milk are of any use,otherwise they are completely useless. So there is no need to feed this useless bulls and cows, one can simply get them slaughtered and sell the meat. It is a great source of cheap protein. 

Baul Music

It is not that search of God happens through mantras and prayers , it can happen through music as well. If you have heard the Baul singers of Bengal you will find the feel of nature and love in their music. You have to listen to them to know the beauty of their songs. They would travel around the villages of Bengal( West Bengal in India, Bangladesh ). The beauty about them is their lack of regard of caste and religion. You will find Muslim bauls singing glory's of Krishna, at the same time you will find Hindu Bauls singing the glories of Allah. 

In all monastic disciplines in India, all spiritual practitioners are initiated by a mantra from the guru. The Bauls don't have any mantra deeksha. They are all initiated by music, music is their way of gaining high spiritual consciousness.  The musical instruments they use are normally made by themselves out of wood and vegetables. 

Ektara used by Bauls

This video shows a beautiful Baul song sung by Tulika and Gangadhar Mondol. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Don't waste food for worship - an appeal!

The Hindu deity Shiva is worshipped in the form of a linga(linga means penis). Throughout ancient times there has been a practice of pouring milk over the Shivlinga as an offering to the deity. In ancient times 90% of the population was concentrated in villages and almost every one had a milch cow in their home. So milk was available in plenty of amount, pouring little bit of milk over the Shivlinga didn't make any difference at all.

Again in all Hindu pujas, ghee or butter is used. Ghee and Butter are made from milk and for the reasons mentioned earlier, both were available in plenty. So during the pujas and yagyas, plenty of ghee and butter was used. If you read ancient books of India, you can hear stories about people having plenty of butter in their meals. The story of child Krishna stealing butter from the houses of villagers are well known. It used to be butter filled in big pots.

Now consider the present situation. The population of the country has increased many times over, however the population of cows, buffaloes etc has not increased proportionately. So there is shortage of milk and hence milk, butter, ghee and other milk products are expensive. 

If in the present day we used milk freely on Shivalinga, we actually deprive someone from having the milk, specially children. It is a well known fact that across the nation there is huge amount of adultery done in milk. Packaged milk in India cannot be trusted for quality and purity, that is why there seems to be a never ending supply of milk. The truth is there is a shortage of milk in India and the adulterers are taking advantage of the situation. Also the prices of milk has increased significantly.

Everyday thousands of litres of milk in India is wasted this way

                                               

So in the present context milk should not be wasted on Shivalingas. Also ghee and butter should not be wasted in pujas and yagyas. Its better to give it to the needy people. After all as Swami Vivekananda says "Service to man, is service to god". If you feed the needy, it is a thousand times better than performing a puja or yagya, where the priest is making a fool of you by reading words from an ancient book(in a language that you won't even understand), pouring some ghee in fire, making you recite some words and all that and at the end extracting a good amount of dakshina from you. 

A request to United Nations and countries with low population density(Australia,Canada)

Dear United Nations, 

We all are aware of the condition in Syria, where people are trying to flee the country. The images of the toddler on the beach, lying dead has moved the entire world. A lot of people want to move out of Syria, to live in a more peaceful environment.

The world has enough land for people to live in. Countries like Australia, Canada are so thinly inhabited that they have a population density of  well below 3 people per square kilometre. This two countries and many others can accommodate this people without significantly increasing their population.

I request you to kindly make arrangements for the safe evacuation of this people and help them relocate to safer places where they can live peacefully. Let there be no more Aylans. Please.

Never Again

Please give it a thought, #UN

Thanks and Regards,
Rakesh