Friday, November 4, 2011

Path to spiritual downfall


Path to spiritual downfall
  1. काम  – Desire.  Is desire for something, wanting something.  Wanting to posses it outside of one self..Desire make one blind to logic.  This originates from one’s vasanas and is from the senses. Its is bodily desire.
  2. क्रोध  – Anger.  When Kama is not fulfilled it results in Krodha- anger.  Anger has its origin in kama. It cannot exist independently. It is only the effect of which the cause is kama/desire/expectation. Anger is a mental state.
  3. लोभ /मोह - Obsession.  – Extreme desire, greed and infatuation.  So much so that one losses control of reality.  The object becomes more valuable than one self. Like the miser who will hold on to his money even if his wife and children are dying.  He will even try take the money with him while dying.. Emotional attachment!
  4. स्मृति  विनाश - Loss of Memory:  When moha takes over one loses all memory of what one has learned from knowledge and experience.
  5. बुद्धि विनाश - Loss of Intelligence: When memory is not functioning, the ability to learn or process new information or surroundings is also lost.  Reasoning is lost. Decision making is lost.. One gets scattered and dispelled.
  6. आत्म  विनाश - Loss of Self- When intelligence is lost everything is lost.  Human is lost. Life is lost.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Brooklyn - Colm Toibin

Feb. Pick - Meeting on Feb 13th


Committed to a quiet life in little Enniscorthy, Ireland, the industrious young Eilis Lacey reluctantly finds herself swept up in an unplanned adventure to America, engineered by the family priest and her glamorous, "ready for life" sister, Rose. Eilis's determination to embrace the spirit of the journey despite her trepidation--especially on behalf of Rose, who has sacrificed her own chance of leaving--makes a bittersweet center for Brooklyn. Colm Tóibín's spare portrayal of this contemplative girl is achingly lovely, and every sentence rings with truth. Readers will find themselves swept across the Atlantic with Eilis to a boarding house in Brooklyn where she painstakingly adapts to a new life, reinventing herself and her surroundings in the letters she writes home. Just as she begins to settle in with the help of a new love, tragedy calls her home to Enniscorthy, and her separate lives suddenly and painfully merge into one. Tóibín's haunted heroine glows on the page, unforgettably and lovingly rendered, and her story reflects the lives of so many others exiled from home. --Daphne Durham