Good Morning Sunday,
How do you guys spend your Sunday Mornings? My Sundays start late around 10am with a bottle of water and a newspapaer! there were many Sundays in between I didn't even browse the Newspaper I found them a source of negativity affecting me as first thing in morning. But then reading newspaper has been part of me from long time and so discontinuing it seems difficult.
The today's newspaper was full of news related to: Corruption, Murder of RTI activists, eveteasing, rapes and poverty in India. What to do when day after day news on front page doesn't change? In a country like India where Billions are living and millions born every day does the negativity seem a part of you and you try to mould your ethos to suit the greater ecosystem.
My travel to office is just 15kms but in Mumbai due to traffic snarls it take easily 1 hour. On my way I see slums, people using footpaths as toilets, people spitting everywhere and eating "Gutka"(tobacco). When Media highlights spirit of Mumbai I think economics is all that matters. While I travel I see mothers taking their children from schools wearing those maxi dresses but I fail to see happy Mothers, just pre-occupied and lost somewhere but with no smile. Like a clock people do their jobs and duties and if they stop the balance stops.
I wonder what childhood these slum children bring with them when God sends them here, living literally on foothpath where footpath toilets and foothpath play grounds fill the childhood dreams. But then God has shown some mercy and given them parents and families. Many of them may grow as fine men/women conscious of good and bad.
Then there are traffic signal posts where small children come and beg, begging, getting abused has become a part of their life. What happens to them when they grow old? Do they end up as labour in services or they end up as part of gangmen and prostitutes? With these thoughts week on week I travel to to my Office.
Front pages of newspapers depict nothing but issues in society due to greed of a human being. Greed for Money, greed for fame, greed for control, greed in men to control women i.e. greed for ego boosters, greed for multiple children.
http://veda.wikidot.com/dharma has a quote from Bhagwat Geeta:
"Worship, study, charity, austerity, truth, forgiveness, compassion and freedom from greed, this is the eightfold path to Dharma.
The first four can also be performed by a hypocrite, but the last four can only exist in a great soul."
This quote states all, do a good job in society, make it progress but don't let greed to control your consciousness.
Other day I was having discussion with my friend and she said why can't poor people restrain to 1 kid policy. they very well know how bad their condition is, why cant they use family planning methods. I thought about all the slum children I come across how their parents can provide them better if only there is only 1 kid rather 3-4 that we normally see.
How Mumbai could be better place if Government didn't bend to builders, how all children can have gardens and playgrounds to play. Infact looking at Mumbai today there is so much scarcity of Pubilc infrastructure for Playgrounds, rich get to live in vast gated green spaces but middle class and poor have to suffer. This is nothing but greed for money that builders as well as politicians have.
There also is greed for children mainly in poor sections which has forced many to adopt small dwellings than a bedroom kitchens set in a municipal society.
Greed for son is also a peculiar greed that cuts across class and religion in India, many Hindus kill the baby girls for same. Though in other religions the killing of an infant baby girl or foetus is not much heard of but then they are not far behind in this greed. Many keep on having children till son is not born.
I wonder if Greed is a emotion in itself or a means to fulfill emotion. Whatever it may be, it is core component of Human's psychology. All humans have desires and wishes, similarly all of us can become greedy also. Where to draw a line between desire and greed is important. As a human we need to understand desires, their root causes and then try for them at same time we need to understand when this desire becomes greed.
If as a society we can differentiate between desire and greed and not term greed as desire then we can see better Newspapers. Front pages which will make mornings a pleasant experience. But how to do this is very difficult. Desire and greed are not weighed on mathematical scale, they can't be measured. But they can be intuitively felt if human is open to conscience. For invoking conscience I think Yoga may help us.
Meditation on a person's thought if made a subject in schools then there may be possibility of better society. As I read somewhere in past that all we need to do is to feed good thoughts in us.We all have good human-bad human characteristics. All we need is to hone the good human and ignore the bad human. Bad Human will slowly go in background and by practice may never return.
I love listening to this Shiva song which makes you understand the depth of our soul, our existence, our ASTI.
How do you guys spend your Sunday Mornings? My Sundays start late around 10am with a bottle of water and a newspapaer! there were many Sundays in between I didn't even browse the Newspaper I found them a source of negativity affecting me as first thing in morning. But then reading newspaper has been part of me from long time and so discontinuing it seems difficult.
The today's newspaper was full of news related to: Corruption, Murder of RTI activists, eveteasing, rapes and poverty in India. What to do when day after day news on front page doesn't change? In a country like India where Billions are living and millions born every day does the negativity seem a part of you and you try to mould your ethos to suit the greater ecosystem.
My travel to office is just 15kms but in Mumbai due to traffic snarls it take easily 1 hour. On my way I see slums, people using footpaths as toilets, people spitting everywhere and eating "Gutka"(tobacco). When Media highlights spirit of Mumbai I think economics is all that matters. While I travel I see mothers taking their children from schools wearing those maxi dresses but I fail to see happy Mothers, just pre-occupied and lost somewhere but with no smile. Like a clock people do their jobs and duties and if they stop the balance stops.
I wonder what childhood these slum children bring with them when God sends them here, living literally on foothpath where footpath toilets and foothpath play grounds fill the childhood dreams. But then God has shown some mercy and given them parents and families. Many of them may grow as fine men/women conscious of good and bad.
Then there are traffic signal posts where small children come and beg, begging, getting abused has become a part of their life. What happens to them when they grow old? Do they end up as labour in services or they end up as part of gangmen and prostitutes? With these thoughts week on week I travel to to my Office.
Front pages of newspapers depict nothing but issues in society due to greed of a human being. Greed for Money, greed for fame, greed for control, greed in men to control women i.e. greed for ego boosters, greed for multiple children.
http://veda.wikidot.com/dharma has a quote from Bhagwat Geeta:
"Worship, study, charity, austerity, truth, forgiveness, compassion and freedom from greed, this is the eightfold path to Dharma.
The first four can also be performed by a hypocrite, but the last four can only exist in a great soul."
This quote states all, do a good job in society, make it progress but don't let greed to control your consciousness.
Other day I was having discussion with my friend and she said why can't poor people restrain to 1 kid policy. they very well know how bad their condition is, why cant they use family planning methods. I thought about all the slum children I come across how their parents can provide them better if only there is only 1 kid rather 3-4 that we normally see.
How Mumbai could be better place if Government didn't bend to builders, how all children can have gardens and playgrounds to play. Infact looking at Mumbai today there is so much scarcity of Pubilc infrastructure for Playgrounds, rich get to live in vast gated green spaces but middle class and poor have to suffer. This is nothing but greed for money that builders as well as politicians have.
There also is greed for children mainly in poor sections which has forced many to adopt small dwellings than a bedroom kitchens set in a municipal society.
Greed for son is also a peculiar greed that cuts across class and religion in India, many Hindus kill the baby girls for same. Though in other religions the killing of an infant baby girl or foetus is not much heard of but then they are not far behind in this greed. Many keep on having children till son is not born.
I wonder if Greed is a emotion in itself or a means to fulfill emotion. Whatever it may be, it is core component of Human's psychology. All humans have desires and wishes, similarly all of us can become greedy also. Where to draw a line between desire and greed is important. As a human we need to understand desires, their root causes and then try for them at same time we need to understand when this desire becomes greed.
If as a society we can differentiate between desire and greed and not term greed as desire then we can see better Newspapers. Front pages which will make mornings a pleasant experience. But how to do this is very difficult. Desire and greed are not weighed on mathematical scale, they can't be measured. But they can be intuitively felt if human is open to conscience. For invoking conscience I think Yoga may help us.
Meditation on a person's thought if made a subject in schools then there may be possibility of better society. As I read somewhere in past that all we need to do is to feed good thoughts in us.We all have good human-bad human characteristics. All we need is to hone the good human and ignore the bad human. Bad Human will slowly go in background and by practice may never return.
I love listening to this Shiva song which makes you understand the depth of our soul, our existence, our ASTI.
Hope we all have better and happy Newspapers across the World :)
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