Hindu Students Association : Mahabharata Meeting

Hindu Students Association : Mahabharata Meeting: Our last meeting was about the Mahabharata, the presenters came up with an abridged version of the important events.  The story of Mahabharata goes back to the era of king Shantanu of Hastinapura, who married Ganga, the holy river and had as their 8th son, Devavrata, who was later on known as Bheeshma. Ganga had flown away her and Shantanu's 7 other sons into the river because they were the Vasus who were cursed. Ganga was freeing them from that curse. But Shantanu stopped her while she was going to do the same with Devavrata and so she couldn't free the 8th child from the curse and subsequently left Shantanu. When Devavrata was 16 years old and trained in arms and letters, Ganga returned him to Shantanu and Devavrata was crowned as the prince. But later on when Shantanu fell in love with Satyavati, the daughter of a fisherman, who wanted Satyavati's sons to rule the throne, it was Devavrata, who, for the sake of his father's pleasures, sacrificed his own and took the following vows (in order for Satyavati's future sons to inherit the throne):
1) He would give up his claim to the throne
2) He would stay celibate all his life (so that he doesn't have any claimants to the throne later on)
3) He would see his father's image in whoever inherits the throne and act as a regent to him to ensure that Hastinapura is safe in his hands

In return of this, Shantanu gave him the boon that he will live as long as he wished and die only when he wished. From then, on Devavrata became known as Bheeshma, because of the terrible oath he had taken. Satyavati gave birth to Chitrangada and Vichitraveeriya. Chitrangada was crowned as the king after Shantanu, but was killed soon after in a battle. He was succeeded by his younger brother Vichitraveeriya, but he was impotent and he too didn't live long. So, Satyavati called upon Maharishi Ved Vyas, who was the author of Mahabharata and also Satyavati's son from Maharishi Parashar (before Satyavati was married to Shantanu), to take the charge of giving heirs to Kuru vamsa and Dhritarashtra, Pandu and Vidur were his sons respectively with Vichitraveeriya's wives Ambika, Ambalika and one of their maid-servants. Bheeshma's characterin Mahabharata is of a pivotal and crucial importance and also he was a very illustrious character in the whole epic

Consciousness and Self

This is the beginning. The beginning of a series of potential blogs that I am seriously considering to pen down. So, this may not look attractive, especially for those who have a literary bend in their intellectual faculties. I acknowledge, I am poor at this art. I think most often, people spend a lot of time thinking how to write a very beautiful and attractive introduction. I would rather focus on the main agenda.

Today, in my first blog, I am going to write about myself, but not from a traditional point of view. I think its just a waste of time of my readers to tell them what my name is and what do I do. In fact, that doesn't define a person or reveal his or her full identity. Rather, what I will do is, give a brief introduction of my background and the course of my life so far just in order to maintain an integrity and eventually I will leave that plane and try to proceed to a more philosophical domain. That domain is of self identity, which in my opinion is quite universal in its applicability to other individuals as well.

I consider myself fortunate enough to have spent considerable amount of time in five different cultural settings. That shaped me, my personality and the way I think profoundly. I started the journey of my life from a small place in extreme north eastern part of India, called Agartala. Then have been to Allahabad (Uttar Pradesh), Bombay or, Mumbai (Maharashtra), some time in Calcutta or, Kolkata (West Bengal) and then in Austin, Texas for the last almost 3 years where I am currently trying to get a Doctorate in Electrical Engineering.

But that is just the facade, not my true identity, or for that matter, if I can generalize, no one's true identity. Who am I? What is my true self? Where did I come from? Where am I heading to? Why I am the one whoever I am and not someone else? These are questions which have occurred to human beings throughout the history and I am no exception. I have reflected a lot on them right from the time when I was about 6 years old and still do. Many religious theories about self identification came up in an attempt to answer these questions and today we have some very good scientific explanations too. I have gone through some of them but still I like to think about them a lot because I feel it takes me to a realm where I become a complete stranger to myself!!!

The last question is particularly interesting to devote time to and relates to consciousness. What exactly is consciousness and how is it built up? I don't think anyone knows for sure yet. Why I am the one who is me? An answer based on the Anthropic Principle would be, precisely because I am asking the question. If I would have been someone else, I would have asked the same question but by "I", I would have meant a different person. But thats not the point. The deeper question pertains to why or how I am at all aware of my existence and that is precisely because of consciousness. It relates to how I perceive my surroundings and myself based on the signals that are being processed by my brain. Consciousness has itself become a separate entity, separate from the physical body and brain composed of atoms and molecules but we still don't know at what level it arises. According to the Bhagavad Geeta, body is just the clothing for the soul. The soul is the true self, which according to the "Advaita" or Non-Duality principle of the Hindu Philosophy, is a part of the supreme soul or the "Brahman". The immortal soul or the "Atma" enters and leaves mortal bodies and thus makes them alive. Based on the "Karma" or the deeds that the soul makes a particular body to do, its course of journey is decided. If the particular body does good deeds, the soul gets to enter a "better" body, the next time and if the present body does bad deeds, the soul enters an "inferior" body the next time. Human bodies are considered best among all animals and plants. If a particular human being is highly righteous, then his/her soul attains "Nirvaana" or "Moksha" after it leaves the body in the sense that it gets liberated from the cycle of rebirths and gets united with the "Brahman" from which it originally came. The soul and supreme soul are both without any beginning and end, cannot be destroyed, has no quality, shape, size, form, sex etc. They are not good or bad, have no emotion. The concept of soul in the Hindu Philosophy has a lot of similarities to the present day scientific theory of Genes and their propagation, albeit with a lot of differences as well.

Going back to consciousness, it is not quite the same as the soul in my opinion and here's the reason; Soul has no beginning and no end, but consciousness has both of those. Consciousness starts with birth and ends with death of a particular individual. Consciousness is definitely not the same as a Gene either, which is a physical entity, a segment of the DNA which synthesizes a particular protein.

So, when I say who I am, it is this consciousness that is me. The consciousness is a sort of software model of the outer world as well as the inner feelings that the brain builds up based on the experiential data and results stored in it. The self is a projection of the consciousness.

Enough for today,...more on consciousness and other topics to come up soon!!!

Till then, reflect on your self and Stay CONSCIOUS!!!!!!