Reaching There

 I apologize as I start this post with a negative article on  Vaiśeṣika from the online magazine The Wire. The article published in 2017 posits a question ' Were the 'Atoms' of Acharya Kanad a Product of Science or Speculative Metaphysics? ' (Note: I haven't yet reached the sutras that discuss anu or atom) The author concludes that " the positing of the idea of the atom by Kanada did not carry an explanatory burden; it was just a speculative thesis. It is outrageous to compare it with modern scientific atomic theories." Yet the author fails to states that a n inference is conclusion drawn based on observations and prior knowledge. And inference eventually leads to hypothesis which can be then proven via an experiment. So, it's the gradual evolution of observations. Here is an interesting article that discusses ' How did Einstein Think? ' Did  Vaiśeṣika  prove that atoms exist? No, during it's course of categorization it inferred that matt...

What is Dharma? In the first post of my series on  Vaiśeṣika Darshan, we started with the basic question - What is Dharma ? As Jagadguru Kripalu Ji Maharaj points out that the word Dharma ( धर्म) originates from the  Sanskrit  root word 'dhru (धृ)' , which means to bear, or support. It can be interpreted as a support system that serves a purpose for us, so by definition is not self-serving.  A purposeless life is a boring life, at least that's my imperfect philosophy. We as human beings don't just want to live a daily life centered around survival but we strive for knowing the unknown. Whether that's knowledge of oceans, stars, soil, chemicals, the human body, or other sentient beings. Just for curious minds, the  Sanskrit word for knowledge is  ज्ञान ( gyaan - from root word  ज्ञा) which means to know or to be aware of. Back to our discussion. A system that supports us should provide us a purpose and means to fulfill that purpose. But to understand...

Hindu Philosophy is unique in its way that it includes Samkhya (rationalism and atheism), Yoga (focusing on mental as well as physical study) and Nyāya (logic/rules) as part of its six philosophies. While world debates on monotheism, atheism, iconoclasm, superiority, equality, proselytization and other such subject which are bound to create controversy and divisiveness, Hinduism is comfortable in the diversity of thoughts from ancient time and is still evolving. As author, Prafull Goradia in his book Hindu Masjids , says 'it is well known that the conceptual purpose of every Hindu is self actualisation". Some call it moksha , mukti , nirvana or bhagwat prapti . Although the goal sounds a simple enough endeavour yet for a logical mind there needs to be a rationale that helps you to identify this as a goal one needs to focus & strive for. I think Hinduism is the only religion (or way of life ) which believes in self-critique, debates, logical analysis and takes considerable...

I'm not a Physicist. However the wondrous nature of the universe entices me rather than the complexity and uncertainty of the mathematics that is used to describe the rules that govern the universe we live in. Apologies to my mathematician friends but I don't "feel" the equations yet. Christian Huygens attributed certain characteristics of light, like change of speed in different medium and refraction, to the wave-like behaviour of light. Sir Issac Newton firmly believed in the particle-like nature of light based on his observations on the phenomenon of reflection & refraction. Maxwell, Planck and Einstein later provided sufficient mathematical, empirical and theoretical evidence to convince the scientific to sing the song of wave-particle duality. It's a strange behaviour to say the least, something that behaves in two different ways simultaneously; kinda like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde of R. L. Stevenson. It's a cumbersome process to come up...

Mahatma Gandhi Julius Caesar, Mbade Nzinga, Napolean I of France, Elizabeth I, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi. Am I being naive if I ask who these people are? Of course, these are some of the most notable names from ancient to modern history. Their lives were subjected to intense scrutiny and their actions were (and are) considered as exemplary. Most of them unified their countrymen and are considered as great leaders, especially in times of crisis. Atilla the Hun, Genghis Khan, Mahmud Ghaznavi, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Reginald Dyer, Slobodan Milošević and Pol Pot. Some of these names are instantly familiar to most of us. These names are ingrained in the history of mankind, perhaps etched deeper than the names aforementioned. Their lives were scrutinized to greatest possible degree, sometimes in the court of law. Their actions left thousand of lives incapacitated and brought world to the brink of anarchy. Sergio Vieira de Mello S...

A Potpourri of Spiritualism, Religion and Faith A Simple Life Chitrakoot is a small town located in the northern Vindhyas in the state of Madhya Pradesh. A small town bustling with pilgrims crisscrossing through the narrow roads into the various holy places that are scattered all across it. The new Chitrakoot shares it's holy land with the state of Uttar Pradesh as well. For a city dweller like me being in Chitrakoot felt like rewinding the clock about twenty years back, before the modern technology overwhelmed the human beings. I went to Chitrakoot on my father's behest but the next two days were a religious reunion of sorts. If ever there was a competition for "Holy of Holies" in India, the small town of Chitrakoot would win it hands down (it is described as the teerth of all teerths, you can read the history behind this  here ). "Teerth" is a Sanskrit word meaning a holy place next to a water body. And the holy river running through Chitrakoot is M...

Disillusionment is a dreaded word which we always try to avoid. It is like an illustrated scary book I had when I was very young. I didn't wanted to get rid of it neither I wanted to keep it within my eyesight! So what did I did with it? I hid it under my mattress and soon forgot about it. I wanted to keep the book as it scared me; a feeling that challenged me as well as gave me kicks! But it was a feeling I wouldn't like to be reminded of too often. I am not sure if disillusionment gives me kicks but it certainly challenges me. This is the same perplexing relationship we have with disillusionment. It scares the living daylight out of me. It dissolves all the hope and life feels like a boat without oars. If carried on for too long disillusionment is the "stepping stone" to depression. But there is an other side to it as well. Disillusionment gives a unique opportunity to contemplate on things we may never have taken a time out for. It is a self-realization tool tha...

Recently I read " Why the Best Solutions Are Always Temporary Ones "  by Peter Bregman   on Harvard Business Review . The article did brought up some interesting points. These points I must add are worth sharing with you. The article's central theme is (and I quote) because nothing is perfect, and nothing lasts forever. So we're better off seeing every solution as temporary, every tool as potentially valuable and probably fleeting (unquote). This belief aligns with two areas I love to read about these days:  acting  and  spiritualism.  Let's take acting first. In one of my older posts I wrote about actress Hilary Swank talking about  forgiving ourselves when things don't seem to work . In these moments we tend to exert ourselves to make things work which is most of the times counterproductive. These are the moments which destroy our psychological and emotional construct. Actress Julia Roberts talks about not burying ourselves within heaps of self...

Some of you might have seen a movie called " Good Will Hunting ". The movie is about an orphan whose family are his three other friends and his desires are limited to the neighborhood he grew up in. Although blessed with an extraordinary gift for mathematics he is too feeble to take a chance for something even slightly larger and complicated. The tag line for the movie says it all "Some people can never believe in themselves, until someone believes in them". Although my current post doesn't have much to do with the movie but it did caught your attention, right? My post is more about "God Will Hunting"  rather than "Good Will Hunting". It is about the perpetual hunting we all go through in our lives. The hunt for desires, success, money, love, passion; so it is either something or someone. We are hunting not just looking because hunt is more painstaking. We toil in our lives each day and night to build a world of our own. A world which we fee...

To err is human. This apparently implies the inherent nature of my species is flawed. The innumerable defects in me far overtake any virtues I may have been blessed with. As an engineer I know any mechanical design isn't perfect. The designer made some assumptions about the nature of work and designed within certain limits. Apparently that's how I work too! I have certain limitations within which I perform well enough to be classified as a normal human being. While in case of machines there are predefined tests which can expose any weaknesses in the design. But as a human being there are no set of "tests" which can help me find the flaws in me. So in a normal world I may live out my whole lifetime without getting a chance to know myself. In a world where technology and science have made our lives comfortable, I may never get a chance to explore myself. Although certain times in my life I have faced extraordinary events that force me to find who I am. But these events ...

Am I growing? If I am, what is the parameter of my growth? Is it the right parameter to measure my growth? These are the questions that bugs me often these days. I try to ignore these questions. But they keep stirring in my mind as small storms which don't cause much disruption but gives a feeling of restlessness. I had a meeting  with HR department a couple of days back. The objective was to listen to employees' concerns on various matters. In a room full of twenty employees the majority of questions were about finances, promotions and hikes. All relevant questions but it left me a bit dumbfounded. Is this all to it, are we living the life with a sole aim of planning the finances? Is this the only way we measure ourselves, with the money we take home at the end of each month? So as long as my paycheck increases every year I am growing? I hope it is not the parameter of my personal success. I hope I can find and experience something beyond the bills in my hand. So what is a b...

I recently watched two interesting talks on www.TED.com . It has an eclectic collection of talks by speakers all around the globe. The two speakers that got me thinking were Stephen Wolfram and George Whitesides . The former, a American chemist, talked about "Towards the Science of Simplicity. While the later, a mathematician, physicist & the developer of Mathematics, spoke on "Computing A Theory of Everything". The talks were interesting from two aspects. One, both the speakers are trying to bare down a phenomenon or a system to its' basics Dr. Whitesides is moving towards simplifying things as he quoted Antoine de Saint-Exupery as " A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. " He is working on creating a "lab" which is cheap and would be useful in quick diagnosis. While Dr. Wolfram is using mathematical computation to develop a computation engine for inf...

The biggest challenge anyone can have is to adopt a different perspective than their own. It calls us to use every ounce of trust, respect and care we can garner from our conscience or heart. A perspective not our own leaves a feeling of vulnerability and insecurity; emotions we always try to run away from. Yet these are the emotions which can lead to higher rewards and realizations if we develop the patience to sustain them for longer periods of  time. What is a different perspective? It is the point of view you haven't explored yet. It is the deviation from the fixed, the desire to find out what's beyond the horizon or simply the desire to experience the unknown. Whatever we do with our lives there is always other things that could have been done too! But it is not always about taking the bold step into the unknown. It is just about accepting the presence of unknown. This itself leads to an enlightenment that it's not always about me. It's about somethings which may...

In industrial engineering it is a very common to observe a system to learn about it and suggest ways to improve it.  As an industrial engineer I have spent numerous hours collecting data on machining assembly lines and operator moments on a shop floor. The collection and analysis of data is the heart of any process improvement process. It helps to study the current behavior of a system (a system could be an assembly line, flow of shoppers in a departmental store or your internet searching habits). After all the data has been collected analysts/engineer try and make sense of it. This leads to a baseline formation on which you can base your improvement process. After a certain prescribed time you measure the change due to the improvement and evaluate the progress. It is a long and painstakingly slow process. A major such study is called Time & Motion Study. It is very similar to our lives. Our lifetime is a series of time and motion. A time is our natural progression from being...

The physicist J. J. Thompson discovered electrons, the smallest known elementary particle until the advent of quantum physics, in 1897. He used a cathode ray tube to "detect" the presence of electrons but no microscope exists which can see the subatomic particles like proton, electron or neutron. All these subatomic particles make up an atom. The atom is million times smaller the thickest human hair. Quantum physics has further discovered subatomic particles such as quark, lepton and gauge bosons. Scientists are using a Large Hadron Collider at a cost of $9 billion, with a diameter of twenty seven kilometers; it is a particle accelerator which uses electric fields to propel subatomic particles at very high speeds so as to collide such beams of particles with an intend to study smaller particles formed as a result of the collision. But no scientist would ever see any subatomic particle with his or her naked eye. The scientists consider universe to be very large and of infini...