Udemy – An Online Learning Platform

Udemy is a part of the current growing MOOC s (Massive Open Online Course) which offers Courses outside the traditional university setting. The courses are self paced and helps professional adults and everyone interested in increasing their knowledge, skills in a chosen field. 

Why do we need to learn or acquire Knowledge?. I came across an wonderful verse from vedic literature, which explains the importance,uniqueness and benefits of  acquiring the Knowledge. Of course, the verse refers to the Spiritual knowledge which frees one bondage from the cycle of Birth and death. But, while we are living our lives in this world there should be a balance of Spiritual and material activities. We all need to work, maintain ourselves and our family, a profession to provide us the bread and butter. Basically, Rabbits don’t line up to the tiger's mouth. They have to still go out and hunt or work their way. Similarly, to be successful in our job,business or profession, we need Knowledge that needs to be learnt,acquired and updated. Today, it is the era of internet where every information which is essentially knowledge is available freely. But, the problem is that the moment, you search for something on Google, you get so much information which is mind boggling, not in any particular order and cannot be authenticated. So we need a particular place or medium where we can repose our faith, cut down all the headache of trying to decide what is the required or valid information. This is where, a place where knowledge is Systematically delivered is needed. And, one of the places I found to be particularly useful for me was “Udemy”, where one can find literally, any Course dealing with numerous fields like including business and entrepreneurship, academics, the arts, health and fitness, language, music, and technology. And, importantly the Courses are affordable. In fact, I am so much impressed that I decided to promote this on my Blog. Interestingly, not many people still does not know about this. I encourage you to have a look at this and take up some courses of interest to you and increase your knowledge in the chosen profession.  

The verse that talks about the knowledge is,

Na chora haaryam, na cha raja haaryam, na bhaatr bhaajyam, na bharakaari

Vyayam krute vardhat evam nityam vidhyadhanam sarvadhana pradhanam

Cannot be snatched away by thief, cannot be snatched away by king, Cannot be divided among brothers, it does not cause a load on your shoulders. If spent daily, it always keeps growing. The wealth of knowledge is the precious of wealth of all.

Naasti vidya samo bandhuhu, naasti vidya samah sahrut

Naasti vidya samam vittam naasti vidya samam sukham

There is no relative equivalent to knowledge, there is no friend equivalent to knowledge. There is no wealth equivalent to knowledge, there is no happiness equivalent to knowledge.

Please refer to my previous blog post about, Knowledge and the real Knowledge,

http://ausram.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/about-knowledge-real-and-most.html

Finally, few words about the Udemy. It's a great place to start looking for increasing both your Professional and personal skills, at your own pace and of your choice. There are few other places where you can learn for free and for less. I will talk about them in my next article. Until then, stay tuned. Have wonderful weekend and for friends in Victoria  -Aus, have a great long weekend.

Counting my Steps,taking care of Body and Mind

These are my steps so far for the day.And, I have few more to go, before I sleep.Though, I am not a great fan of this stuff like calculating how many Calories, I have consumed,how many I burnt, monitor them through gadgets like Fitbit etc.And, although I am not a fitness freak, I like to keep myself active and do moderate exercises for a healthy body and mind.This is something my company people have recently started (Stepathlon is a mass participation event for organisations of all sizes across all industries and countries).

Ofcourse, for practicing spirituality and developing love for God, these are not the pre-requisites.A healthy body and mind does help one to take up spirituality with vigor and enthusiasm but, it may not be the case always.Someone with a healthy body and mind, may not take up the path of spirituality and may want to go in the opposite direction, that is enjoy life, eat, drink and be happy.And, the opposite can be true as well, for example the case of great Christian saint, St. Francis of Assisi, whose terrible sickness could not stop him from preaching the glories of Jesus Christ.In spite of terrible sickness,he would show so much compassion for people afflicted with leprosy, which was a bit of social stigma at that time of 11th - 12 Century.He would also show his love and compassion to animals etc.

There is a verse (1.2.10) from Srimad Bhagavatam which talks about life's desires and healthy life.

kamasya nendriya-pritir

labho jiveta yavata

jivasya tattva-jijnasa

nartho yas ceha karmabhih

Translation:Life’s desires should never be directed toward sense gratification. One should desire only a healthy life, or self-preservation, since a human being is meant for inquiry about the Absolute Truth. Nothing else should be the goal of one’s works.

What this means is that, our lives are meant for a higher purpose which is more than eating nice food,drinking etc.One should direct his senses for the Inquiry of the Absolute truth.Who am I? Where do I come from? What is the purpose of my existence?.What is my temporary and eternal duties?Temporary could be working a full time job, taking care of your Children,wife and Parents. Eternal duties - it is said that by nature, every living being is a spiritual entity and the constitutional nature of a Spirit soul is to serve. Serve whom?It could be your family, nation, world but ultimately, to the Supreme God.

A Sweet Verse from Srimad Bhagavatam and the different Flutes of Krishna

Krishna with Flute

This is one of my favourite verses from Bhagavatam, Chapter named as “The Gopis Glorify the Song of Krishna's Flute” which explains about the way Krishna is dressed, decorated and is entering the forest of Vrindavan. Acharyas explain that, he is Akhila Rasamrta Murthi – Full of transcendental mellows, dresses up like a dramatic actor and catches the attention of everyone.

barhapidam nata-vara-vapuh karnayoh karnikaram

bibhrad vasah kanaka-kapisam vaijayantim ca malam

randhran venor adhara-sudhayapurayan gopa-vrindair

vrindaranyam sva-pada-ramanam pravisad gita-kirtih

Wearing a peacock-feather ornament upon His head, blue karnikara flowers on His ears, a yellow garment as brilliant as gold, and the Vaijayanti garland,Lord Krishna exhibited His transcendental form as the greatest of dancers as He entered the forest of Vrindavana, beautifying it with the marks of His footprints. He filled the holes of His flute with the nectar of His lips, and the cowherd boys sang His glories. Canto 10. Chapter 21,verse 5)

Talking about the Flute,in Chapter 26 of Nectar of Devotion by Srila Prabhupada explains that there are, three kinds of flutes used by Krsna, namely Venu,Murali and Vamsi.

Venu is a very small flute, not more than six inches long, with six holes for whistling.

Krishna with Flute

Murali is about eighteen inches long with a hole at the end and four holes on the body of the flute and produces a very enchanting sound.

The Vamsi flute is about fifteen inches long, with nine holes on its body. 

Krsna used to play on these three flutes occasionally when they were needed.

Krsna has a longer vamsi, which is called mahananda, or sammohini.When it is still longer it is called  karsini.When it is even longer it is called anandini. 

The anandini flute is very pleasing to the cowherd boys and is technically named vamsuli.These flutes were sometimes bedecked with jewels. Sometimes they were made of marble and sometimes of hollow bamboo. The flute is made of jewels  is called sammohini and the one made of gold, is called akarsini.

For more exhaustive description of Krishna’s Flute, you can visit this link,

http://www.forthepleasureoflordkrishna.com/2015/02/21/krishnas-flutes/

Radhastami - Appearance day of Srimathi Radharani

The deity at Raval - Srimati Radharani in Baby form 

Tomorrow, 10th September  is the Auspicious Appearance Day Festival of Sri Radhastami,celebrated by many in India and all over the world.
Wish you all happy Radhastami Festival.

"tapta-kancana-gaurangi

 radhe vrndavanesvari

 vrsabhanu-sute devi

 pranamami hari-priye

I offer my respects to Radharani, whose bodily complexion is like molten gold and who is the Queen of Vrndavana. You are the daughter of King Vrsabhanu, and You are very dear to Lord Krsna".

Srimati Radharani is always to be found with Sri Krishna, and Madhav is always to be seen with Radhika. One is never without the other's company.She is the embodiment of Maha-bhava, or the highest transcendental ecstasy, and none of the other gopis, or cowherd damsels of Vrindavana, posses Her excellent qualities.

What this means is  - Lord Krishna is called as Madan Mohan, one who is most attractive and beautiful that he defies even cupid. And Srimathi Radharani is called as Madan Mohan Mohini, because she won the heart of Lord Krishna with her beauty and loving service.

On this special occasion, I wanted to write about a place that I previously visited and that is connected to Srimati Radharani.

Raval Landscape

Raval village - Just outside the temple

A mysterious tree on the top of the temple 

Raval is a small village situated about 10 Kms from Vrindavan.This pristine village is a special and important place because,this is the same place where Srimati Radha Rani, about 5000 yrs appeared.It so happened that one day,King Vrishabhanu went to take bath in river Yamuna and saw in the river, a beautiful, golden lotus flower that was full of radiance and splendor. When the king reached the lotus, he noticed a beautiful, golden complexioned baby girl - Srimati Radharani. Immediately, the King had the divine vision of Lord Brahma, who advised him that, because of the great austerities performed by him and his Queen in the previous life,the consort of Lord Vishnu decided to appear as their child.The king happily took the baby girl to home and along with Queen Kirtida, started looking after the baby girl with love and happiness.However, they had one concern that the child eyes are completely closed and would not open them. Nevertheless, the King as per the instructions of Narada Rishi went ahead in the performance of all the auspicious Birth ceremonies.There were great celebrations and many friends and family members were invited, which included Nanda Maharaj and along with him,came the Baby Krishna.Krishna crawled into the jewel studded cradle of Srimati Radharani. As soon as this happened, Srimathi Radharani immediately opened her eyes and looked at Lord Krishna, who is her eternal Consort.This was the first meeting of the divine couple in this material world. Thus, the first person Radha Rani ever saw was Lord Krishna and with her eyes closed, this was the moment she was waiting for.

You can see the gated garden said to belong to Radha Rani or the temple.

This place is still untouched by the urbanisation and somehow retained the simple, beautiful with typical Indian village setting. The small temple consisted of small deities of Radha Krishna on one side and next to it is the small deity of baby girl - Radha Rani.

We climbed the steps to go to the first floor of the temple, where I got some nice pictures of the landscape and fields of Raval. In front of the temple, there is a garden which is said to belong to the temple deities.By the time we went, The garden was closed and unfortunatly could not go inside the garden.From here, we proceeded to Gokul,where Lord Krishna and Balaram spent their childhood and was about 30 mins drive from here. I liked this place which is simple, fresh air, kind and innocent villagers and hope to go back there in future.

Kaliya Ghat - Place where Krishna subdued the kaliya serpent

Kadamba Tree at Kaliya Ghat

This is one of the special and a sacred place in vrindavan, where devotees visit to remind them of the amazing and blissful pastime of Lord Krishna subduing the venomous serpent kaliya.Kaliya Ghat is just at a 3 minutes walking distance from the famous Madanmohan Temple of Srila Sanatana Gosvami.Also,the bhajan kutir and samadhi of Shrila Prabhodananda Sarasvati are close by this place. As a testimony of the Lord's pastime, the place still has the old Kadamba tree which Krishna climbed up, to jump into the waters of the lake where Kaliya was residing.This place actually used to be a small lake that was part of the great river Yamuna.This is the same, same tree upon which Lord Krishna climbed to jump into the lake where Kalia was living. It is said that the poison of Kaliya was so powerful that all the vegetation,grass and trees near the lake died except this tree.It was said that Garuda who envisioned that Lord Krishna will be coming to perform his pastimes, spilled some drops of Amruta (The Nectar of immortality) on this tree and that's how it could sustain the effects of poison of Kaliya.

Kadamba Tree at Kaliya Ghat

Srimad Bhagavatam and also the Krishna Book by Srila Prabhupada, explains the beautiful pastime in details of how Lord Krishna tightening his turban,his belt, hitting his arms like a wrestler jumped into the dangerous, poisonous waters and sported in the water without any fear. Then, after the furious Kaliya attached him, Lord Krishna fought with it, jumped and danced on the several hoods of the wicked snake. Kaliya felt crushed by each step of Krishna and finally vomiting blood, he surrendered to Lord Krishna. Also, the Naga Patnis - the wives of Kaliya have come to his rescue and prayed to Lord Krishna to spare his life.Lord Krishna forgave Kaliya and spared from killed him but, ordered the snake to leave the surrounds of Yamuna immediately with an assurance that Garuda, the mighty King of Birds will not kill or eat him, because the hoods of Kaliya got the imprints of marking of Lord Krishna's lots footprints.

A Babaji at Kaliya Ghat

It is believed that the snake left Vrindavan to the sea and made Fiji as its home.In Fiji folkfore traditional stories, you can hear numerous stories of a great snake living in one of its caves. Many people believe that Kaliya is still living there. Also, Fiji has the Iskcon's famous temple of Shri Krishna Kaliya temple is located in the heart of Lautoka city.

Bhakti Vinod Thakur, A great Acharya of Gaudiya Vaishnavism writes that,Kaliya represents cruel tendencies or anarths like Pride, deceit, harming others, cruelty and these are the tendencies one needs to give up.

Kaliya Ghat

Upon my visit to this sacred place I met this Babaji. I forgot his name but, I think it is - Shyam Das.For sometime, he was sitting there observing me and my family.As I started explaining about the Kadamba tree, he came upto us and started talking about the pastime of Kaliya Dhaman - Subdueing the serpent Kaliya by Krishna.He even showed us how, Krishna climbed the tree, where he put his feet etc. I asked about him. He informed that he had been living in Vrindavan since last 15 years.Originally, from Gorakhpur, he came here once as a tourist and stayed back. He gave up his family, friends etc for Krishna.I asked him " Di you ever tried or planned to go back?", and he replied saying that "What can I do, Thakurji Aur Yamunaji (Lord Krishna and Yamuna Devi) would not leave me. I am unable to move away from this place". He showed me a small attic sort of place in a nearby building and told me that, he lives there. Especially in winter, when it gets cold he sleeps there.

This is the specially of the place Vrindavana - if you are lucky and keep your eyes and heart open, you can see so many of great devotees in Vrindavan leading a simple life, meditating on the Lord's pastimes by going to the various places he performed his pastimes, hearing to Harikatha etc.

I remembered a verse spoken by Srila Rupa Gosvami,

"smeram bhangi-traya-paricitam saci-vistirna-drstim

 vamsi-nyastadhara-kisalayam ujjvalam candrakena

 govindakhyam hari-tanum itah kesi-tirthopakanthe

 ma preksisthas tava yadi sakhe bandhu-sange´sti rangah

 My dear friend, if you are indeed attached to your worldly friends, do not look at the smiling face of Lord Govinda as He stands on the banks of the Yamuna at Kesi ghata. Casting sidelong glances, He places His flute to His lips, which seem like newly blossomed twigs. His transcendental body, bending in three places, appears very bright in the moonlight." (Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu 1.2.239).

Indeed, very few people have this great fortune of having the darshan of Lord Krishna in Tribhanga Form, body bent in three places and even few develop that great love and devotion that makes them the worldly attachments, family,friends, relations and assets insignificant.

As Lord Krishna himself says in Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 7: Knowledge of the Absolute,

"bahunam janmanam ante

 jnanavan mam prapadyate

 vasudevah sarvam iti

 sa mahatma su-durlabhah.

After many births and deaths, he who is actually in knowledge surrenders unto Me, knowing Me to be the cause of all causes and all that  is. Such a great soul is very rare".

Is he the same person ?

This was a comment made on a Facebook post. One of my cousin posted his photo on the Facebook and one of his friends who saw him after a long time was surprised that the person he knew before and now looks so much different. So much so that, he looked  like a completely different person. So, is it a different person?. Yes and notify we ask the person that if he is the same person or different, he will firstly look at us, as if are you gone nuts or something?. Then, he will reply would be something like, ‘ Yes, I am changed over the time.I now have a new body which is different to the one which I had when I was a baby.But, I can still remember some incidents or memories of my childhood’ (generally from 4 to 5 years onwards).I did meet one person who told me that he actually remembers when he was a 1 year baby.

A Baby

Science tells us that, the body is always changing.As per science a human body consists of 50 to 100 trillion cells and each day about 3 billion cells are killed and similarly new ones created.

 

Bhagavad Gita 2.13 Translation

This verse from Bhagavad Gita succinctly conveys the same message,

"Chapter 2 Text 13

dehino smin yatha dehe

kaumaram yauvanam jara

tatha dehantara-praptir

dhiras tatra na muhyati”

So, to come back to the title of the article, "Is he the same person?". The answer depends on what you consider a person to be.If one considers the skin,bones, hair as 'A person' they are no longer the same because they have already been replaced so many times in the life time of a person.So the body is changing every moment manifesting as a child, youth, old man.But,inspite of all these changes, there is somthing that does not change and remains constant.In Bhagavad Gita, that changeless, non material or spiritual spark is called as the spirit soul. What happens at the time of death is that sub-atomic particle called Soul changes its body to that of another.In the saame section of Gita, it is explained that, just like a person changes his clothes and puts on new garments, the soul changes its bodies to various species of life, depending on the fruits of its past karma or actions. This process of changing bodies or transmigration of soul is called as reincarnation.As explained in Bhagavad Gita,just like an air carries the aroma, a living entity carries with it, the different conceptions of life which means, its desires, likes, dislikes, particular nature to different bodies.So when a person dies, his consciousness lives on and carries forward some of the memories, behaviours tendencies, even phobias etc.

This most important message from this section of Bhagavad Gita is about Soul, Reincarnation and transmigration of Soul answers so many questions or connects the dots which don’t normally make sense of. When we start to learn and understand this science of Soul and incarnation, we start to see things from a higher perspective and that empowers our future life. The most important distinction one can make out is that we are all spirit souls and different from the material body. 

A trip to Mount Wollumbin (Mt Warning)

I was there at this beautiful place with wonderful Tropical Rainforest few weeks ago.Mount Wollumbin as the aboriginals call it and later named as Mt Warning is a mountain in the Tweed Range in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia, was formed from a volcanic plug of the now-gone Tweed Volcano.The Mountain is about 1100 Mts and trekking both ways takes about 4 to 5 Hours. 

Mount Wollumbin (Mt Warning)

Mount Wollumbin (Mt Warning)

Mount Wollumbin (Mt Warning)

A View of the top of the Mountain

A Huge tre

Mount Wollumbin (Mt Warning)

Not for the weak hearted (I felt) but, I did see some Senior people coming down from the Mountain. Everyone's reaction was that - it's beautiful, wonderful and amazing view from the top.I did not go really far because, my intent of the visit to the mountain was that of curiosity and let us see how it looks like. Though, I was disappointed that once we start trekking that from the base of the Mountain, you cannot get the whole view of the Mountain. So, the best view is when you are on Top or driving towards it.Once I started climbing the Mountain, I somehow felt the place to be a sacred or spiritual vibration. When, my son one time hit a tree trunk with a smaller stick that he picked up,the words spontaneously came out of my mouth. "Son, Be respectful to the trees and everything in this place".Later I learnt that this is a sacred Mountain for the Bundjalung people, and to many of the other Australian Aboriginal tribes.Anyway, I was travelling with my family and running short of time, did not go long.Me and my eldest son msut have climbed for about a Kilometer or so and decided to return back because, we have people waiting for us at the base of the Mountain. Anyway, this was a mysterious and interesting Mountain to visit.