Meditation helps to focus

Meditation, whose ultimate goal is to take you beyond all sensory experiences has been found to reduce physical ailments like asthma and depression and help even in anger management. Researchers of meditation have also found higher mental activity, a sort that has not been in neuroscience literature, happening in long term meditators.
Now new research done on meditating Tibetan Buddhist monks in India show how the basic responses of the brain can be overridden

However, the monks – who carried out “one-point” meditation, where they focus attention on a single object or thought – were able to focus on one image. Monks who had undergone the longest and most intense meditative training were able to focus their attention on just one of the images for up to 12 minutes. Olivia Carter, of the University of Queensland, said: “The monks showed they were able to block out external information.
“This is an initial step in understanding how their brains work. “It would now be good to carry out further tests using imaging techniques to see exactly what the differences are in the brains of the monks.”
She said that could direct researchers to a broader understanding of how meditation influences what happens in the brain when someone is deciding whether to give something their attention, and what happens when they choose not to dwell on bad news, or to calm down. Ms Carter added: “Buddhist monks often report that if something negative happens they are able to digest it and move on.
“People who use meditation, including the Dalai Lama have said that the ability to control and direct your thoughts can be very beneficial in terms of mental health.” Dr Toby Collins, of the Oxford Centre for the Science of the Mind, told the BBC News website: “Meditation is a way of tapping into a process of manipulating brain activity.” He said the idea that meditation trained the brain to attend to just one thing at a time fitted in with previous research. He added: “How that’s done, we don’t yet know. But studies using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) can show what’s happening in the brain.” [ Meditation ‘brain training’ clues]

Whenever I watch a TV channel, I have this urge to flip through all the channels. Now I know what I need to do to get focus.

Hare Steve, Hare Jobs

This may not happen in any other country – a college dropout being asked to give the commencement speech in one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Steve Jobs gave the speech at Stanford University’s 114th commencement this weekend and our local TV channel which specializes in human and animal deaths around the world spent a segment on it.

Jobs began by rehashing the fact that he dropped out of college, and that Sunday’s ceremony was the closest he had ever gotten to a university graduation. He then launched into the first part of his address, which focused on having faith that the dots of one’s life will connect down the road, even if the journey so far has not followed a clear pattern.
Jobs said his biological mother was an unwed graduate student who had planned to have him adopted. She had chosen a professional couple to be the adoptive parents, but because they wanted a girl, he was adopted by a husband and wife who didn’t have college degrees, Jobs said.
They pledged to send the boy to college, and when the time came, he chose Reed College in Portland, Ore. But because all of their savings was going toward his tuition, Jobs dropped out and began taking courses that interested him instead of those that were required—such as a calligraphy course that later inspired him to design different fonts in the first Macintosh.
The last part of his speech was about death. When he was diagnosed with cancer about a year ago, Jobs said doctors expected him to live no longer than six months. He had surgery not long after and has since recovered, but the experience nonetheless taught him another lesson.
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life,” Jobs said. “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.“[After traditional Commencement antics, Jobs imparts straightforward advice]

During a certain point in time, he lived off the 5-cent recycling deposits on soda cans and the free food offered by the Hare Krishnas. One of the important lessons he had was on how to handle failure.

Jobs also recounted founding Apple in his parent’s basement and his tough times after being forced out of the company he founded when he was only 30. “I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the valley,” Jobs said. Instead, he founded Pixar Studios, which recently released enormously popular films such as “Madagascar,” and “Finding Nemo.””It was awful tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it,” Jobs said.[Apple CEO tells Stanford graduates to pursue their passions]

Here is the full transcript of the speech

Kalaripayattu gets a world audience

Kalaripayattu, according to Wikipedia is probably the oldest martial artform in the world (video here). It is now mainly practiced in Kerala and said to be the basis for most of the Chinese martial arts. Around the 16th century, chekavars (people trained in Kalari) were used to settle disputes between people, kind of surrogate warriors and they have been immortalized in Kerala folklore. (If you want to see life of people of that era, the best movie to watch is Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha, written by M T Vasudevan Nair in which Mammotty played the best role of his career)
While there have been many Malayalam movies about Kalari only one Tamil movie (Indian by Shankar) I know of and no Hindi movie has shown this martial artform. Now thanks to Jackie Chan, Kalari is getting a world audience.

Last year, Chan happened to see a CD the Kerala Tourism Department sent him, requesting him to be the brand ambassador of its tourism initiatives.
Kerala Tourism could not get Chan, but Sathyanarayanan — who performed the traditional Kerala martial art Kalaripayattu in the CD — impressed Chan so much that the superstar invited him to be part of his new film.
Sathyanarayanan flew to Shanghai for a 30-day shoot with Chan for The Myth; the film includes Tony Leung Ka Fai, Bollywood actress Mallika Sherawat and television actor Sudhanshu Pandey.
Since then, Sathyanarayanan has not looked back. “I am getting a number of offers from Hollywood. All because of Jackie Chan only,” he told rediff.com.[Jackie Chan and the art of Kalaripayattu]

Now Sathyanarayanan has been invited to act in another Hollywood movie and there are few enquiries from other film companies abroad.

Haritika statue discovered in Sirpur

Archaeologists have unearthed the statue of Buddhist female monk dating 6th century in Chhattisgarh state. This woman, Haritika used to abduct children and kill them and was converted by Buddha himself, by kidnapping her child.

Arun Kumar Sharma, chief of the excavation project, said that it was for the first time they have discovered the image of Haritika, which proves that female deities were as popular as their male counterparts in that era.
“This is for the first time the image of Haritiki has been found in Sirpur. So far Jambal image was discovered but this Haritiki is first, which too inscribed in 6th century. It shows that female deities were as important as the male deities,” Sharma said.
The archaeologists have also excavated a unique nine-room area with eight ladders leading to the rooms.
Rare emblems of Hindu lord Shiva have also been discovered for which the excavators are trying to trace the roots.
“So far I have excavated nearly seven mounds and this (includes) Shiva temples. This Buddha Vihar (residence) is unique. You have to climb eight steps to enter the Buddha Vihar and there are nine rooms and 12 pillared Mandapa (a columned hall) in the centre and in the south there is a sanctum sanctorum where Buddha statue must have been there, which is stolen,” Sharma said. [Sixth century Buddhist statue discovered]

Sirpur was visited by Huen Tsang in the 7th century and the treasures he described were unearthed two years back. Sirpur also has one of the oldest Laxman temples of India, built using bricks.

Book Tag

Thanks to Surya for tagging me. This is part of the meme that is bouncing in the Indian Blogosphere.
Total number of books I own:I don’t own lot of books. Right now the count will be less than 100. All the places I have lived had excellent libraries and I prefer borrowing.
Last book I bought: In Search of the Cradle of Civilization: New Light on Ancient India. After reading the columns of Subhash Kak in Sulekha, I had to get this book which offers revisions of Indian history by citing the latest archaeological, geological and linguistic evidence. This book demolishes the Aryan Invasion Theory convincingly.
Last book I read: The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman. After being impressed with his columns and two of his books, I was a bit disappointed with this one. This book is full of praise for India, but is preachy and full of irritating metaphors.
Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me: (today’s opinion)

  1. Randaam Oozham (Malayalam) by M T Vasudevan Nair: This novel is a retelling of the Mahabharata from Bhima’s point of view. There is no change in the framework of the story as put by Vyasa, but instead MT (as he is popularly known) has filled in silences in some portions of the original.
    Dritharashtra said that the reason he could not sleep was because Bhima was on the other side. For MT, Bhima was the character who won the war for the Pandavas and the person who did not gain anything at the end. His son was sacrificed to save Arjuna. At the end of the war Yudhishtira said, “Let Bhima be the king”, but later changed his mind. So what happened in all these situations and how Bhima reacts is the basis of the novel.
    You have to read the Malayalam version for the poetic language. But for non-Mallus, a bad English translation is also available.

  2. The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Thomas L. Friedman. This book explains the fundamentals of globalization in an easy to read way. Friedman travels all around the world and interviews the movers and shakers to validate his theories. My detailed review is here.
  3. The Asterix Series by Goscinny and Uderzo. The year is 50 BC and Gaul is occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely. Every character in this series is likable, from the pony tailed Gauls, with names like Asterix, Unhygenix, Fullyautomatix, to Julius Caesar, to the pirates, to the Roman foot soldiers (“Join the army they said, It’s a man’s world they said”). The drawings are filled with so much detail that you discover something about Dogmatix during each read. I love this more than Tintin since it combines history and humor.
  4. Dave Barry’s books. I did not like his work of fiction much, but his non-fiction will have you rolling down a staircase laughing. Being a fan of his columns in Miami Herald, it was finally a dream come true when I finally met him in Los Angeles.
  5. The Art of Living : Vipassana Meditation: As Taught by S. N. Goenka by William Hart. This was the technique by which Siddhartha became Buddha. This small book explains this 2500 year old technique which does not require the blessing of any God. The realization that 2500 years ago, a man was able to achieve such insights into human mind was actually, mindblowing.

You can read all my book reviews here.
Tag five people and have them do this on their blogs:
Niraj – tags
Parag
Babu
Ashish – tags
bhavane – tags

A tale of two Kuttys

Q: How do two Mallu strangers get to know each other?
A: Zimbly using GMail.
It all started when one G.S. Kutty started getting GMails meant for a Narayanan Kutty. If those emails contained some juicy information, it would have been interesting, but these emails contained photos of fish farms and technical papers as Narayanan Kutty was a former United Nations official specializing in acqaculture. G.S.Kutty knew something was fishy and he wrote to Narayanan Kutty’s correspondents that they stop sending mail, which Narayanan Kutty did not like.
N. Kutty contacted Google for help, but never heard back. Maybe he is still on hold. But finally the mystery was solved by N. Kutty himself.

Kutty has found some relief. At a certain columnist’s suggestion, he checked his GMail settings and found his account was set to forward mail to an E-mail address that was one letter off from his own alternative address.

One letter.
Kutty says he doesn’t recall choosing the forwarding option, but he is glad the problem is fixed. So is G.S. Kutty.
“Thank the Lord,” he said by phone from Mumbai.
The other bright side to the delayed solution? If Narayan Kutty had fixed the problem immediately, he never would have gotten to know the other Kutty.[A GMail fan bobbles his account settings, and brings strangers together in cyberspace]

This can be made into David Dhawan movie with Akshay Kumar as one Kutty, Salman Khan as the other Kutty and Suneil Shetty as fish.

New rock carvings in Mahabalipuram

The shore temple at Mahabalipuram survived the tsunami and now the waters have revealed some carvings on two rocks which has been interpreted by K.T. Narasimhan, Superintending Archaeologist of ASI.

..the west-facing carving inside a socket on the smaller rock was that of Yoga Narasimha. This beautiful carving depicted the Yoga Narasimha squatting and doing penance.
The socket is framed by a lion’s carving, typical of the Pallava dynasty, which built the monuments at Mamallapuram. On the socket’s right side on the rock face is a carving, depicting a Varaha (Boar) lifting Boodevi (earth). Varaha is visible but not Boodevi.
The adjacent bigger rock has carvings on both sides. On the western side is a socket with a carving of seated Siva.
This socket is also framed by a lion’s sculpture. On the rock face are Siva ganas such as Singhi and Bringhi. There is also a carving of Mahishamardini, riding a lioness and slaying a buffalo. On the eastern face (that is towards the sea) are carved an elephant and a horse.
Above the elephant’s head is a socket with a carving of Siva depicted as Gajasamharamurthy

Freedom to dissent

Legislation that would have increased the scope of Stem Cell research in Massachusetts was vetoed by the Governor, Mitt Romney because he is opposed to the idea of human embryo cloning.

Following expectations that he would again reject the Legislature’s plan to sanction embryonic stem cell research, Romney announced his veto of the bill last week. In his veto message, the governor said he could not “in good conscience” allow the bill to become law due to his objections to embryonic cloning and changing the definition of when human life begins.[Gov vetoes stem cell bill]

But then not wanting to be Kansas, the legislature overturned the veto.
Iin California, there was a voter initiative to fund stem cell research and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his support for it. Now here is the interesting thing – both Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger are Republicans.
It is a sign of maturity in politics that two diametrically opposite view points can be held by people in the same party and they can express it publicly without fear of retribution from the high-command. The freedom of expression that Americans have is not curtailed by the leadership of political parties

The High Court verdict on Coke

Recently the Kerala High Court told the Coke authorities that they can consider the plant in Kerala open even if the local panchayat does not renew the licence. Many people suggested that the courts have gone anti-people because they did not issue the order they wanted to hear. But then why did the Court issue such an order ?

The court allowed the plant to reopen after an expert committee concluded that drawing 500,000 liters of groundwater (5% of the available water in the area) a day would not cause drought as claimed by protesters. According to the company management, the plant was drawing 460,000 liters of water a day at the time of its closure and water supplies continued to decline even after the facility was shut down a year ago.It said the panchayat made its decision without the benefit of any scientific review of the plant’s actual impact on the local aquifer.
The court also said the panchayat was not authorised nor did it have the expertise to consider allegations that the wastewater sludge from the plant were contaminating the land, or that company’s products in India contained pesticide residues.The judge ruled that any private person or company has the right to extract groundwater within reasonable limits. According to the company, the maximum groundwater usage at the Kerala plant has not exceeded 460,000 liters per day.[Court allows Coke to reopen Kerala plant]

If there is proper evidence that the plant is causing harm to people, it should be shutdown legally. But here people in their zeal for fighting anything American and anything that can generate employment are using emotional arguments. These don’t fly in a court of law.
Update: Guess who is going to benefit from this judgement? – The Communists, of course. They are going to start a water theme park in Parassinikadavu in Kannur district and face the same allegation as Coke.

The CPI(M) has been leading the protests against the Coca-Cola plant in Plachimada, Paalakkad, on the grounds that the soft drink company is exploiting the area