02nd July is the birthday of German-born Swiss poet, novelist and painter Hermann Karl Hesse. Born in 1877, Hesse exhibited traits of being strong-willed, prodigious and passionate from early childhood. Hesse won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. His best-known works include Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual’s search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality. […]
WHAT IS THE GREATEST PROBLEM IN THE WORLD? THE greatest problem or the smallest problem, it is the same: MAN. And when I say man, I do notmean something abstract. I mean I, you, he, she. There exists no man as such, separate from human beings. Man lives a problematic life, and dies a problematic
WHY DOES EVERYBODY WANT TO PROVE AND TO ASSERT? WHAT IS THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND PROVING AND ASSERTING ONESELF? PLEASE EXPLAIN. The psychology behind assertiveness, behind proving oneself, is very simple. Every child, from his very beginning, is told that he is not what he should be. Disciplines are given, commandments are given; he has to
You ask me: what is right, what is wrong? I say to you to be AWAKE is right. To be ASLEEP is wrong. I don’t determine acts wrong and right as such. My focus is your being. My effort is that you are there, in your being. Then whatever you do is right. One Zen
Recently, I saw “The Railway Men: The Untold Story of Bhopal 1984” on Netflix and now seeing “Einstein and The Bomb.” The night of 2nd December 1984 saw one of the world’s worst industrial disasters at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. Methyl Isocyanate, a highly poisonous gas, leaked from the plant killing
HOW CAN WE BE CLOSE TO YOU WHEN YOU ARE FAR AND ABOVE US IN EVERY RESPECT. In neither case am I far away or far above you. All that you need is to open your heart. Thinking creates distance. Feeling destroys distance. Between two lovers– they may be thousands of miles away but there
It is only a question of when one decides to wake up. It is up to you whether you want to have a little more sleep — then turn over and pull the blanket up. But even while you are asleep inside the blanket, enjoying a beautiful morning, you are a buddha. It is up
Swami Krishna Chaitanya Das of ISKCON introduced me to H.H. Radhanath Swami and his book “The Journey Home“. Within this extraordinary memoir, Radhanath Swami weaves a colorful tapestry of adventure, mysticism, and love. Readers follow Richard Slavin from the suburbs of Chicago to the caves of the Himalayas as he transforms from young seeker to
GREED is an effort to stuff yourself with something – it may be sex, it may be food, it may be money, it may be power. Greed is the fear of inner emptiness. One is afraid of being empty and one wants somehow to possess more and more things. One wants to go on stuffing
WHEN A PERSON ENTERS A TEMPLE, ONE FEELS A SENSE OF SENSORY APPEASEMENT – MUSIC, CHANTING, INCENSE, PRASAD, THE VISUAL BEAUTY OF THE ARCHITECTURE, ETC. CAN CORPORATE HOUSES, THE TEMPLES OF THE MODERN AGE, HAVE ANYTHING TO LEARN FROM THIS? Not only the corporate houses but every place where man dwells has much to learn
