DO NOT LOWER THE LEVEL
Sunday, 11 July 2021
Friday, 9 July 2021
THE MASTER'S MISSION ... 1
THE MASTER'S MISSION ... 1
They do not represent Thakur. Truth alone does even as Thakur represents Truth, he being its embodiment in manifest terms and its dissolution in the Absolute.
Institutionalising Truth has its pitfalls. It is even dangerous in cases as in the case of the Catholic Church which had become an organ of mass oppression and exploitation and a reactionary force that resisted civilisational progress. But institutions invariably grow and for interests of survival and associated vested interests become with passing centuries not only a force for good but also a force for evil, for decadence invariably sets in overtime. Thus, from the very outset, from the inception of a spiritual movement, individuals must take it upon themselves to be as much the guardians of the movement as any institution that represents it officially. This will act as a safeguard against the tyranny of the institution, the abuse of the power invested in it by general consent. This is why Swamiji founded both the Ramakrishna Mission and the Ramakrishna Math as complementary wings of a unified movement, hoping for equal participation by the laity and the monastics towards carrying it ahead. But later developments have shown that the laity has proved incapable of the task assigned to them by Swamiji for whatever reason and the monastics belonging to the Ramakrishna Order have taken charge of the entire proceedings of the movement with the laity relegated to a subordinate position and, for all practical purposes, titular occupancy of posts within the administrative set up of the Mission's activities. The monastics can hardly be blamed for this as the householders have largely failed them in terms of commitment to the Mission. However, this tilted development of the mission of the Master has led to its stranglehold by only one of the two wings founded by Swamiji and has hardly been the way he had wished for its progressive unfolding, and with consequent effects in terms of constricted representation of his original ideas.
Now, where do we go from here? Why? Back to Ramakrishna-Vivekananda. Their original ideas must be studied by one and sundry, by all who claim to be devotees or students of the movement, and must be given shape to in creative terms, in welfare forms over the broadest range of possible influence. Individuals should not feel shy of joining the movement and making it their own. And this they may do while offering formal allegiance to the Ramakrishna Mission or choosing to remain beyond its formal fold. After all the Master's mission is universal and knows no finite territorial boundaries for one to be beyond it. Hence, there is no reason for diffidence in this regard.
Swamiji did not much believe in the monastic system governing a society of primarily householders, although, he understood sannyas to be the ultimate ashram in life and held it to be the climactic point in a person's evolution en route to Self-realisation. In this regard he differed with the Buddha who had made monasticism the pre-eminent feature of societal life and thus opened the gateway to India's future degeneration and debilitation, for in upsetting the ancient order of varna-structured society, the Buddha had weakened the kshatriya class, and India's defence fell with it. Another weakness induced by the Buddha in the Indian polity was through his failure to keep Sanskrit as the linguistic vehicle of Buddhist scriptural writing even as he preached in the language of the people which was Pali. The decline of Sanskrit spelled the doom of the age-old spiritual culture of the Vedas whose inviolability, incidentally, the Buddha also denied. Thus, owing to the Buddha's emergence in India as the pre-eminent spiritual influence of his age, both the brahmin and the kshatriya varnas suffered immensely with irreparable damage to the country's culture, social structure and defence. These were to be avoided and, hence, Swamiji's emphasis on the resurrected life of the laity with the monastic order which he established as the nucleus for the re-emergence of India as the prime spiritual force in the world. In this he was harmonising the Vedic and the Buddhist traditions and was, thus, helping India arrive eventually at the synthesis of the earlier thesis and antithesis of her development.
Hence is it so pertinent that the householder devotees of Thakur take to understanding their prospective role in ushering in a new age in the name of Thakur as Swamiji had envisaged would in course of time come to pass. It is puerile to think that a grovelling mass of devotees lying physically and psychologically eternally prostrate at the feet of monks can ever achieve it. But it must be achieved by a mass of self-respecting devotees who will be imbued with 'immense idealism and immense practicality' to execute it. It will be puerile to imagine that help will come from any quarter other than from within and from generation of consolidated energy through mutual cooperation and coordinated action. So, onward unto realisation of the grand dream of Swamiji, the sublimest project of Mission Humanity.
Written by Sugata Bose
Thursday, 8 July 2021
PANCHAVATI AND THE PARAMAHAMSA
PANCHAVATI AND THE PARAMAHAMSA
Pranam Thakur.
The setting of this photograph is not original and has been photoshopped for sure but the setting is perfect. How many times Thakur must have sat here under the Panchavati, preaching his nectarine Gospel that, in the words of Swamiji, 'is to shower peace on earth hereafter.' How many ecstasies, rushes of divine oration, tears of bliss trickling down the sides of those eyes that beheld the world in an ethereal light have found occasion here, how many disciples like Naren, Rakhal, Baburam, Mahendra Master, how many ardent admirers and associates like Keshab, Bijoy, Trailakya and countless others have flocked at his feet here in Dakshineshwar, the seat of his visitation on earth, how many waves of the divine Ganga have sought sanctuary at his blessed feet before flooding the world with their cleansing grace, a limitless flow that has rendered this artificially generated association of environment whole and true far more, perhaps, than the original setting on the steps of the Radhakanta Temple a few yards away !
Truth prevails in falsity when the Master graces it, as his holy touch transforms aught of earth unto either the nought of the Being or the rising beams of a spiritual star. From here flowed a divine current that has been flooding the world in deeper and deeper permeation through the subliminal strata of human consciousness. The flow is from the hallowed heart of the Master unto the blessed hearts of men across the world, a force, impersonal and divine, that will need no human hand to give effect to it but shall effect human changes despite it such that the world will awaken one day to freedom with earthly shackles sundered. This then was the place, the focus of divine concentration this time, the Bodhgaya and the Nazareth, the Ayodhya and the Vrindavan, the Navadveep and the Narmada, the Sindhu and the Sarasvati, this the centre of superconscious activity, the pilgrimage perennial. The Panchavati and its Paramahamsa have become synonymous. Here Narendra takes over.
Written by Sugata Bose
UNDERSTANDING SWAMIJI ... 3
UNDERSTANDING SWAMIJI ... 3
The white man has dominated the world for a long time and still dominates. The rest of the world are yet to develop to their full potential and protect their own interests. The Mongoloid races are showing the way. A showdown could be in the offing but must be avoided.
Competition leads to conflict. It is the animal way. This Darwininan trend of evolution must be combated with enlightenment that replaces it with cooperation and harmonic coexistence. Education can mould the human race and lead to the understanding of its underlying integration. Indian thought must penetrate Western thinking and bring about higher understanding. The Vedanta must be widely dispersed in much the manner Swamiji had wanted it to be, though, despairing of its forthcoming success very much. He had said that it would take several millenia before humanity would be psychologically ready for its lofty message. He had initially pinned great hopes in the United States of America but on his second visit to that country had been disillusioned by its 'dollar imperialism' and given up on it as being the instrument for disseminating the universal principles of the Vedanta that would usher in a new age. Swamiji was horrified by the material gluttony of the West and despairing of the regeneration of the world in the short run but hopeful of it in the long run. And his hope lay in the rise of the masses.
Thus far the historical process has seen the rise of the clergy, the feudal lords and the capitalist. One more stage in social evolution is being awaited, that of the proletariat. Two such major revolutions in Russia and China, and other like revolutions in their countries of influence have after initial success, sustained for decades, failed and given way to counter-revolution. Capitalism with a vengeance has returned to these lands. The world is thus in the grip of the capitalist whose power to explore, extract and exploit the resources of the earth including human resource is increasing by the day with the help of ever-modernising technology. These dollar imperialists, as Swamiji put it, are the emperors of the day.
Swamiji was keenly aware of the social movements in gestation during his time and wanted such revolutions to be guided by assimilation of the best of the previous three epochs, although, he was sceptical of such harmonic success. In the absence of such absorption, culture would diminish in the age of the labouring class, he could clearly see.
Anyhow, coming to the earlier account and analysis of white domination and its reaction. With the spread of education globally, these large differences between the powers of nations will largely diminish and a better world order emerge unless, of course, the world goes to pieces before that through nuclear conflict between the current contenders for global domination or humanity ceases to be in the wake of an environmental catastrophe. Should these two extreme possibilities be averted by human wisdom, then we are in for an age of wide international cooperation which should lift Africa and Latin America out of economic chaos and render life hospitable in decent human terms there as everywhere else.
Einstein had long back suggested a World Government for administering the world. There are hindrances on the way to it, mainly cultural differences with medieval hangovers, that of race, religion, colour and what not. The League of Nations was a failure and the United Nations has been no great a success either. The human gene is selfish, indeed, as Richard Dawkins has pointed out, but humanity need not be subservient to it. Humanity must rise above the genetic plane through spiritual training and this is eminently possible as the brain responds favourably to ideas fed into it. At its worst it leads to indoctrinated fanaticism but at its best it leads to enlightenment.
Swamiji was well aware of the implications of education and its influence in fashioning human behaviour. What he was more concerned about, though, was as to what would constitute the core content of such education. Here he wished to bring to the door of humanity the message of the Vedanta in all its comprehensiveness so that human perspectives would change and with it human direction and destiny. This mission that he left behind with his followers has, however, not been adequately fulfilled on account of a lack of global vision and a consequent lack of energy and enterprise in carrying it out. This is, therefore, a task for us to do now in the larger interests of humanity and each one of us must contribute to it.
Race, colour, religion, nation, power, profit and all their dubious derivatives spring from ignorance. They have held humanity in thraldom for ages and do so even now despite the tallest of pretensions to the contrary. Here is work at hand, combative destruction of the forces of evil, the ill-begotten progeny of ignorance.
The social revolution that Swamiji had wished to see in his lifetime did not happen in his homeland. The independence that he had aspired for his motherland, undivided and whole, did not happen either. India was betrayed into a truncated dominion status and has since never recovered from its ill effects. The motherland was mutilated by the British and the fanatical Muslims who carved two nation states out of the dismemberment of India. Swamiji had never wanted it nor would he have ever approved of it. And herein lies the hope of a future reunion, the ancient motherland rising out of her severed status, individed and whole. This will come to pass as Hinduism is comprehensively regenerated in the vast body of the subcontinent.
Here we are faced with the problem of understanding Swamiji in his comprehensive wholeness. On one side he considers God and Truth to be his only politics and on the other side he is deeply concerned about the socioeconomic and political emancipation of the whole of humanity which principally to his mind consisted in the emancipation of the masses held for ages under beastly servitude. The spiritual in Swamiji here overlaps the social and makes reading into him a complex task. It requires great erudition and understanding to unravel this complexity of motivations in Swamiji and the world has been woefully short in doing so thus far. Swamiji has been understood fractionally thus far owing to vested interests. A near comprehensive study was made, though, by Sister Nivedita and by Dr. Bhupendranath Datta. But the latter's analysis, brilliant and thorough, comprehensive and all-encompassing, has been largely neglected by the Ramakrishna Mission owing to organisational compulsions, whatever one may construe of it.
There is this tendency in men to extract meaning out of an event that suits their specific convenience. Hence, interpretation and emphasis on aspects of a great human event such as Swamiji also follows this dubious fractional pattern. The spiritual person seeks in him pure spirituality devoid of revolutionary sympathies in all its extreme connotations while the revolutionary seeks in him revolutionary content overriding his essential spiritual call to humanity, labelling it as the imperative of an unripe age where religion must necessarily play its part in quickening the masses to action. Each party claims exclusive understanding of the message of the prophet and looks upon the other as being in error. This is the problem. However, a rare intellect like Nivedita can see through these opposed viewpoints and arrive at a deeper synthesis which is what makes 'The Master As I Saw Him' such a seminal literary enterprise, such a profound statement on Swamiji. But even this seminal study is misinterpreted by these shallow thinkers and Swamiji lies in gestation in the womb of Time for delivery at its fullness.
The essay may be seen to be drifting from the macroscopic to the microscopic as it deals in alternate terms with nation states and races, and then veers back to Swamiji, a mere person of however great a stature. But it must be understood that a prophet like Swamiji encapsulates the hopes and aspirations of the age and his thinking and works, message and directives are intimately entwined with the destiny of the race he represents which in Swamiji's case is the whole human race. Hence, discussing Swamiji is akin to discussing the future and fate of humanity.
There are two ways to understand a phenomenon like Swamiji. One is to posit mythological attributes and locations as Saptarshi to him and the other is to see him as the human response to the challenges of the times, thrown up from the sea of humanity itself, following the age-old adage, 'Necessity is the mother of invention.' These are radically opposed viewpoints, one a simplistic explanation of complex evolutionary phenomenon and the other the apparently truer explanation of it but only, perhaps, apparently so. Both miss the mark in as much as they emphasise one aspect of an indivisible truth. The material and the spiritual are wedded together to make such a partition unnecessary. Phenomenon is deeper than any explanation, analysis or theorising make of it.
Now coming to the central aspect of Swamiji's truest aspirations for humanity. It was the wholesale emancipation of humankind from material bondage, from primeval ignorance holding it down. Was this to be achieved only through social service, through spiritual practice or through social revolution? What did Swamiji mean when he said that earlier reformers were content to making superficial adjustments to society but what he wanted was the 'root and branch reform' of society? Did he thus imply that he was for social revolution of the proletariat, of the shudra, as he would put it? What kind of a revolution? A violent one, a la French Revolution? Why then did he aver that the entire country must be flooded first with spirituality before any worthwhile social change was to be effected?
On the other hand, did Swamiji's brother disciples understand him quite? Did they have any inkling of what he was up to in his formative years of wanderjahre as an itinerant monk? Did they ever quite grasp his social philosophy in all its revolutionary significance? Why was Swamiji so frustrated with them in terms of understanding him and his ideas, in terms of giving expression to them in quite the way he wanted? His epistles are replete with his sheer exasperation at his brother disciples and his own early disciples in this regard. Why did Swamiji, just months before his final departure, so give vent to his despair when he said, "If through the workings of Providence this body came into being, it came to be of no use. Brooding on this my mind becomes heavyladen with despair. The intelligent youth have all entered marital life or are of ill-health or enslaved to name and fame."? When the disciple, Sarat Chandra Chakravarty asked him if those who were joining the Ramakrishna Mission were not upto the mark in following him correctly, Swamiji lamented in affirmation that, alas, they were not so. He said, "Where do I find any such who can follow the drift and the range and the scope of my ideas? Those that are joining the Order are unenthusiastic about absorbing lofty ideas. However, if Thakur so wills it, out of these itself in course of time valorous ones will be born who will carry out my ideas and give them concrete shape." These words of Swamiji are of momentous significance in understanding him in essence and in all his comprehensive depth.
Written by Sugata Bose
Wednesday, 7 July 2021
YOUR SWAMIJI
YOUR SWAMIJI ... 1
Have you heard of Swami Vivekananda? Yes? But have you heard of Narendranath Datta? I am sure most of you have not but some of you may have. Well, this little boy is the subject of our story which I shall begin narrating to you, children, from today.
YOUR SWAMIJI ... 2
The Dattas were an affluent family who lived in North Kolkata at a place called Simla or Simulia. Rammohan Datta was the grand patriarch who had thrived in the legal profession and amassed a fortune. His sons, Durgaprasad and Kaliprasad, grandson, Vishwanath, were the immediate ancestors of Narendranath who grew up to become the world renowned monk, Swami Vivekananda. Durgaprasad excelled like his father at law but renounced life to become a monk at age between 20 and 22 after fathering a son. So, Kaliprasad became the head of the Datta family and as he was not upto earning a living, the Dattas' fortunes started declining steadily.
YOUR SWAMIJI ... 3
Durgaprasad renounced between age 20 and 22. Shyamasundari, his wife of valorous virtue, took up to rearing baby Vishwanath amidst great difficulties as Kaliprasad was not sympathetic to their lot. When Vishwanath was three years old, Shyamasundari went on pilgrimage to Varanasi by boat. En route the playful baby fell into the Ganga. Instantly the mother, forgetting the fact that she knew not how to swim, dived into the surging waters and gripped the baby, so hard that it bore the mark for several years. A fellow pilgrim and a resident of the Datta household, indigenous physician Umapada Gupta, diving suit, rescued them and hauled them overboard. The pilgrimage carried on and holy Varanasi was reached in the fullness of time.
YOUR SWAMIJI ... 4
Varanasi. The Ganga flowing by since time immemorial, sanctifying this city of Shiva. Thousands of temples of all kinds of deities thronging to get the worship of devotees who flock by the millions. The most ancient city of the world, dating 5000 years, now welcomed Shyamasundari and her little boy, Vishwanath.
YOUR SWAMIJI ... 5
Shyamasundari went on her daily rounds of the temples in Varanasi. One day on her way to the seat of Lord Vishwanath, she slipped on the way and fell unconscious. A monk passing by picked her up, laid her on the temple steps and brought her back to her senses. When she came to her own she was astonished to behold her own husband as her rescuer. Overwhelmed by sudden emotion, the couple, now renounced to the world, went their way.
YOUR SWAMIJI ... 6
Durgaprasad visited his hometown Kolkata once, probably en route to the Gangasagar, and put up with a friend. He requested confidentiality but the message leaked and he was accosted home by his family members where he was confined to a room with food and refreshments for three days. The monk, locked up thus, touched neither food nor drink for the said period and his relatives, fearing the worst, unlocked the door. The monk quietly slipped away thereafter and was never seen again. Later it was rumoured that he had become the head of a monastery in Varanasi but nothing could be ascertained with any degree of certitude. Vishwanath in his youth visited Varanasi in search of his father but failed to trace him. Thus disappeared the monk of sterling spiritual strength from the horizons of the Datta household till his gene reappeared in his redoubtable grandson, Narendranath, whose monastic future bore unmistakable marks of his predecessor, Durgaprasad.
YOUR SWAMIJI ... 7
Vishwanath, deprived of paternal care and patrimony, grew up under the loving care of his mother, though amidst straightened circumstances. But a worse fate was awaiting him. At the age of ten he lost his mother. Now, orphaned and ill-treated by uncle Kaliprasad, Vishwanath took to the hard way of labouring through to life's success. He became proficient in several languages - Bengali, English, Persian, Arabic, Urdu and Hindi, and also learnt a smattering of Sanskrit in a classical Sanskrit Tol. He studied history in-depth, astrology enough to be able to cast the horoscopes of his children, and studied music under an Ustad. After completing secondary education he attempted business, failed and apprenticed himself under Mr. Temple, a British attorney. In 1866 he qualified as an attorney and set up shop with one Ashutosh Dhar under the name 'Dhar and Datta'. Soon his legal proficiency earned him independent status as attorney-at-law in the Calcutta High Court where his practice took off.
YOUR SWAMIJI ... 8
Vishwanath's fame as a legal practitioner spread far and wide and he had to travel extensively all over India to meet up with his clients' cases. His income soared and so did his expenditure as he lived lavishly and gave liberally to seekers in need. His charity earned him the sobriquet 'Daataa Vishwanath' or 'Philanthropist Vishwanath'. He refused none and gave to all who were in need and even to some indolent relatives who abused his magnanimity by indulging in intoxicants with his money. Vishwanath lived for the day and saved nothing for the morrow, steered by the conviction that his sons, if well fed and well educated, would be able to make their way in life but that the hapless ones he helped were too weak to help themselves and, hence, needed help. The large heart of Vishwanath bled for all, perhaps so conditioned by his own stressful childhood in financial and psychological distress under an unsympathetic uncle. Anyhow, this was how he was and this liberal largeheartedness he bequeathed to his beloved sons, Naren in particular who even imbibed sterling virtues of head and heart from his mother Bhuvaneshwari.
YOUR SWAMIJI ... 9
Well-versed in the Holy Bible and the Dewan-i-Hafiz and well acquainted with Hindu, Islamic and European culture and customs, Vishwanath had a universal outlook on life and living. Progressive in thinking but guarded in giving into new-fangled socioreligious movements of the day, Vishwanath was a precursor in some sense to the modern Hindu man as yet germinating in the womb of time. His illustratious son would set the seal on the mould that was thus being cast on the dawn of this new awakening of the ancient spirit whose crest bore the personality of Ramakrishna. But we are fast-forwarding the narrative thus which we must desist from. As of now we must remember that here was Vishwanath, caught in the cross-current of the three aforementioned cultures out of which he was fashioning his own perspective, his world-view, and setting them to print in the form of three books which he authored, namely, 'Shishtaachaar Paddhati' ('Canons of Good Conduct') in two volumes and a novel in his vernacular Bengali, titled 'Sulochanaa'. Vishwanath supported Vidyasagar's crusade for the remarriage of widows but refrained from participating directly in such social movements, busy as he was with his intensive legal practice. One more pointer about Vishwanath - he was an agnostic of sorts, irreverent of superstitious religious practices that kept people down but was never irreverent towards sublime principles of spiritual and moral thought which he tried to put into practice in his own life by way of alleviating the misery of the hapless ones he came across in his life's thoroughfare. This was then the father of the future Vivekananda.
YOUR SWAMIJI ... 10
Hardly anybody recalls the name of Swami Vivekananda's maternal grandfather or the maiden surname of Swamiji's mother. That she was Basu and bore in her bloodstream the kshatriya valour of this clan from erstwhile Kannakubja (Kanauj) is forgotten in the name Narendranath Datta. But the great prophet bore in his arteries that strong blood which made him revolutionise India into rebellion against the British and break the citadel of global colonialism. Narendranath's grandfather on his mother's side was Nandalal Basu of Simla, North Kolkata, and his only daughter Bhuvaneshwari Basu, married to Vishwanath Datta, was his mother. Bhuvaneshwari, born to wealth and high culture, was aristocratic in temperament devoid of its vices and it was from her that the boy Bileh absorbed in his mother's milk that nobility of character that set him out as unique in the world of men, so much so that in later years in Paris he was mistaken to be a prince by a hotel boy who could not be convinced otherwise. Well, Bhuvaneshwari, wedded to Vishwanath at ten, mothered Narendranath as her seventh child and her first surviving son. But more of that later for here we are in the midst of the maturing of a modern Madonna for who else could hold in her womb the one whose eagle eye holds countless universes in harmonic play ? Let us dwell on this girl, Bhuvaneshwari.
YOUR SWAMIJI ... 11
Bhuvaneshwari was wedded to conjugal life at the early age of 10 as was the custom in those days prior to the passing of the Age of Consent Bill. She bore fruit several times of which three died in infancy and she remained without a son yet. The pious girl prayed and fasted and exhorted an aunt living in Varanasi to offer prayers at the seat of Vireshwar Shiva in Kashi. Accordingly, every Monday special offerings were made there and they were reinforced by Bhuvaneshwari keeping her vigils and fasts here in Kolkata. The channel was thus being set up for the golden road that was to connect the ancient city and this modern metropolis, and when the pathway had been fully laid, Bhuvaneshwari dreamt of the meditative Shiva awaking from his seat of concentration and announcing His resolve to be born as her son. In ecstatic joy Bhuvaneshwari awoke from her divine slumber and fell prostrate at her chosen deity's feet, the adorable Umanath, who she had so ardently worshipped all these years. Bathed in tears of bliss Bhuvaneshwari felt saturated with the Lord's grace. Soon she felt that she had conceived.
YOUR SWAMIJI ... 12
12 January, 1863. Makar San°kraanti Day. Millions of pilgrims were assembled at the estuary of the Bay of Bengal to offer oblation to the Highest when heaven itself descended to earth in the form of the infant who was to steer humanity onto a new course, setting the stamp of his divine personality on the unfolding age of light that was now waiting in the wings to emerge in full flight. The forest of this world was ready for this fresh efflorescence and the bud blossomed from the womb of Bhuvaneshwari six minutes before sunrise to send a thrill of joy through the Datta household. A son had been born, Bhuvaneshwari's long-cherished dream, the parched earth's long longing, humanity's hope of redemption from its decadent state. Vishwanath grew so blissfully excited that his charity broke all bounds this hour as he started giving away to whosoever came his way anything he could lay his hands on. Finally, he had given away the very clothes he was wearing, a la Emperor Harshavardhana of old, and had to borrow his wife's saree to cover himself. The boy was named by the mother Vireshwar after the deity who had fulfilled His promise to be born as the pious supplicant's son. Soon lingustic aberration changed it to Bileh and so was how the future Vivekananda used to be called by his loving mother even in his twilight years in Belur Math when the old lady proudly strutted about the precincts of the monastery in search of her son, calling loudly, "Bileh ! Bileh !" and the son would emerge from his room and descend the stairs to fall prostrate at his beloved mother's feet. But we have much advanced in our narrative in our flight of fancy and must revert to its fresh beginnings, for we have a full lifetime to cover. Right now the baby cries in its mother's arms. Or, does it blink in wonder at the strange world around ?
YOUR SWAMIJI ...13
The boy was Bileh at home, to the world Narendranath, a name that was, as if by divine sanction, to set its stamp upon the very world. An exceeding force seemed to well up within him making him irrepressibly naughty, playful, self-willed and at times given to fits of violent temper when he would even rampage his way through whatever he could lay his hands on, furniture et al. Mother Bhuvaneshwari, driven to her wit's end, would then in exasperation exclaim, "Alas ! I had prayed to Shiva for a son but He has sent me one of His demons instead." No amount of censure, threat or even inducement would work with the turbulent child and he had to be manned by two nurses constantly to keep him in a semblance of check. Finally, Bhuvaneshwari discovered a unique way of tackling the situation. When Bileh was in one of those moods, she would pour water over his head profusely while chanting the name 'Shiva'. She would further induce fear in him saying, "If you are naughty thus, Shiva will refuse you entry into His abode, Kailash, again." Like magic this would work and calm the boy and he would be his bonny self again.
YOUR SWAMIJI ... 14
Now two very important features of the baby Bileh's personality were (a) his easy acceptance of all and sundry as his own and his consequent easing into anyone's arms who extended them to hold him, and (b) his submission to gentleness shown to him by any and equal revulsion of harshness by any in interaction with him. These traits manifest in the baby are worth meditating on as we attempt to unravel not only the secrets of the child-mind universally but also as we seek to plumb the divine depths of the future Swami Vivekananda, now, though, right in bud.
YOUR SWAMIJI ... 15
Grandfather Durgaprasad's gene was very much manifest in Narendranath from early boyhood. He had a liking for mendicant monks and would give away alms freely to them. But he was just a small boy. What did he have that he could give? Well, he gave away his first piece of dhoti from round his waist to a sadhu. Likewise he gave away whatever he could lay his hands on to these pilgrims of the Spirit so much so that when any such appeared at their door he had to be kept confined in an upper storey room to keep him in bounds. But such ploys failed when Naren flung through the open window whatever was available to him in his cell to monks passing by on the road below. Such affinity for the renunciates was early signal of things brewing up in the heart of the Divine Mother orchestrating things from behind that was to fashion Narendranath's fate. A vast force was accumulating in the child that was to inundate the world in the days to come. And in this prophetic mission of his he was to bear not only the blessings of his divine Master but those of each and every monk who he gave and who in their turn blessed him silently from the depths of their hearts.
YOUR SWAMIJI ... 16
Ebullient as he was, Naren was given to pranks galore. One of these was to tease his sisters and, when chased, to seek refuge in the open drain and makes faces and remarks such as 'Catch new! Catch me !' from there, knowing full well that they would not dare follow suit into the dirt where he lay. The future Vivekananda was worshipped in Kashi Kedarnath Temple as Shiva, was reverenced by a passing monk in the Himalayas as Shiva and venerated by many including his brother disciples like Swami Brahmananda as the same Lord Ascetic. In that sense he was Pashupati, the Lord of all animals, and to this effect he showed early signs by way of his affinity towards his pet animals. Lifelong this relation remained, even in his advanced years in Belur Math where he had quite a number of pets. The boy Bileh had a monkey, a goat, a peacock, pigeons, guinea-pigs, the family cow and his father's horse to keep him company. He with his sisters would bedeck the cow with garlands, mark her forehead with vermillion and reverence her on festive occasions. This easy relation with the dumb animals must have been a formative influence in the making of his future deep sympathy with the muted millions of his benighted motherland.
YOUR SWAMIJI ... 17
Naren's bosom buddy was his father's coachman. He spent hours in the company of the syce at the stable and nursed ambitions of one day becoming a syce himself. His intimacy with the syce drew the twain into close communication and imperceptibly lay open Naren's mind to whatever the former had to say to him. At noon every day the little boy was privy to the women folk's rendition of the Ramayana reading and with rapt attention he absorbed the epic tales which gradually endeared him to Sita and Rama. Soon he had bought from the market idols of the divine couple and with the help of a friend installed them in the attic and with floral offerings worshipped them to his child heart's content. This went on till the syce, himself victim to an unhappy marital life, criticised the very institution of marriage vehemently before Naren, thereby making the boy brood on its futility. He could no more now accept the fact that his divine ideals, Sita and Rama, were also one such married couple and in tears confided his predicament to his mother. Bhuvaneshwari instantly assuaged his grief by asking him from then on to worship the ascetic of ascetics, Shiva, instead. Naren was pacified but could not reconcile himself anymore to being in the proximity of Sita and Rama. Accordingly, he rushed to the attic, picked up his beloved idols and in the dark enveloping evening walked to the edge of the terrace railing and hurled down the images onto the road below. His ideal had been shattered, now he smashed the idols representing them. Next day he bought from the market a clay image of Shiva and began afresh his meditation on the Lord. However, Sita-Rama remained forever etched in his memory as his boyhood's first divine love and became a significant formative influence in his life and a perennial presence in his monastic life as well. Many years later he called every Indian the child of Seeta, that holy woman who unmurmering bore all her suffering in her all-encompassing love for her beloved husband, the divine Rama.
FACEBOOK COMMENTS FROM DIFFERENT PROFILES ... 21
FACEBOOK COMMENTS FROM DIFFERENT PROFILES ... 21
Sugata Bose @Sangeeta Chakraborty : Your devotion to Thakur is sincere and surely endearing to him.
Sugata Bose @Diganta Sengupta : How lovely ! Divine looks. What eyes ! The quintessential classical Indian beauty.
Sugata Bose @Vandana Agrawal Jain : Only you appreciated. The rest are content with devotions and photograph.
Sugata Bose @Munish Kumar : Yes, the teachers must always be abreast of the latest developments in their field of academic activity for them to effectively impart knowledge and excite due curiosity in their students for further exploration of the subject.
Sugata Bose @DrAjeyy Shinde : No. Because the Jews are scientific unlike the Hindutvavaadis who are up to medieval religious pursuits wholesale nowadays in a most regressive manner oblivious of future consequence.
Sugata Bose @Aniruddha Bhattacharjee : The Arya culture is falling into disuse because of massive ignorance about it. Instead of sloganeering we should study and write about it for proper propagation of the pristine principles of this grandest of all philosophical systems.
Sugata Bose @Randeep Bhattacharya : No, a strict governance only on the basis of economic issues is the way ahead. Religious regressiveness cannot take us forward. Modern nations cannot afford to have archaic religious basis to their polity. The sociological issues are complex and need scientific handling which medieval religious culture can scarce cater to. Religion must be kept aside and apart from politics and allowed to run its private course with neither governmental patronage nor pandering to garner political support.
Sugata Bose @Randeep Bhattacharya : No, this religious favouritism which is the bane of all democracies must go. What we are seeing now is Hindu reaction. But it cannot save the country from impending economic disaster. Religious appeasement of a lowly type as is practised by the authorities in India must be robustly replaced by equal treatment of all. Crony capitalism must be checked and corrosive conversion must be checked as well. The Arya culture must be upheld which pronounces the equal divinity of all and this must be our national culture. But it has to be understood in depth and implemented duly with a view to national development and the overall evolution of the polity. Science and the Vedanta must cooperate in a classlesss, casteless society to bring happiness to all. Capitalism must not be allowed to bring in wide disparities in ownership of wealth, neither must Christianity or Islam be allowed to corrupt the age-old cultural course of the country. For this false propaganda, religion-based politics and collusion of political parties with their favoured business magnates must stop. But it can only be if the masses are made aware of their rights, if the middle class provides effective leadership and if the leaders are of character and merit. A far cry as of now in a nation of little understanding of its cultural identity, little willingness to sacrifice for the well-being of the country and a polity suffering from a surfeit of levity.
Sugata Bose @Bhaskar Nath : Religion is the root of all evil in politics. Christianity and Islam have been more political movements historically than religious. Hence, their emphasis on conversion to gain popular control of territory and consequent political power. The Arya culture has suffered thus terribly through the ill-effects of Christian and Islamic invasion and has hardly been itself for the past 1300 odd years. The climactic death-deal dealt by Islam was the Partition of the motherland and the wedge driven into the polity then is breeding its foul harvest in regressive politics of the day, perhaps, a due development in antithesis following the dialectics of historical materialism. But modernity demands scientific development in rapid terms notwithstanding the other cultural compulsions that may seem to be of overriding importance. Else, a vast population will flounder so foul that it will face a catastrophe unthinkable as of now. India is no small village that religious arbitration may rule. This vast nation has a Constitution that must duly be abided by in truth and in all sincerity of intent and action. Medievalism must be universally supplanted by modernity, regressive religion by progressive science and crony capitalism by welfare economics that works.
Sugata Bose @Randeep Bhattacharya : I agree wholeheartedly with you here. When the question of religious freedom came up in the debates of the Constituent Assembly it was decided to not only allow religious freedom of practice but also that of propagation. Hence, the two Semitic religions, Christianity and Islam, which had done such damage to the Arya culture for more than a millennium, were given a free rein to keep corroding our hoary Vedic culture through continued conversion. When Morarji Desai in 1977 expressed the will to bring in the Anti-Conversion Bill, it was our beloved Mother Teresa who had entreated with the Prime Minister to refrain from passing the Bill as it would deny the people of India the free choice of religion, if even through conversion. The Government for whatever reason did not go ahead with the tabling of the Bill. The conversion programme carried on and we are where we are now.
Sugata Bose @Randeep Bhattacharya : Uniform Civil Code, yes. Ban on Religious Conversion will be antithetical to democracy. Hence, it will be difficult to implement unless India declares herself to be a theocratic state, a Hindu Rashtra. Population policy, of course, is a must and needs urgent implementation. The term 'secular' ought to be defined clearly for sure. The French Revolution had given it a distinctly atheistic character. But later world developments have defined it as the government being guided in its rule by Constitutional provisions as opposed to the dictates of religious scriptures which theocracies follow in governance, that is, the political state and religion are to be kept completely separate and disjoint.
Sugata Bose @Subhrajyoti Bhowmick : ধর্ম হল যা মানুষকে একত্বের পথে ধারণ করে রাখে ।
Sugata Bose @Subhrajyoti Bhowmick True. But for some this dual face is basic to their character, born out of the need to impress others and rise in people's estimation. Such ones are self-deluded and as yet unfit for the inner life, leave alone Self-realisation.
Sugata Bose @Sanjay Sarkar : পাকিস্তান আলোকপ্রাপ্ত -- ওটি শ্লেষাত্মক ।
Sugata Bose @Rítãm Màitrà : Which branch centre of Ramakrishna Mission have you discovered in Pakistan since they wound up bag an baggage in 1948?
Sugata Bose @Subhrajyoti Bhowmick : Today we are en masse being led into the regressive trappings of medieval reactionary Hinduism rather than the original Vedic Dharma. The invasive influence of Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity and Islam led the Sanatan Dharma into reverse reactionary gear which was medieval Hinduism. What we are now up to is adhering to its worst decadent form. This is certainly not the kind of dharma that the Arya rishis had discovered and introduced into the body politic of the then Bharatvarsha. What the rishis taught was not at all contradisposed to what we today term modern science. Rather it was the culmination and the fulfilment of it. Read Bhupendranath Datta's 'Swami Vivekananda Patriot-Prophet' and you will understand what I mean. In it is detailed this decadence and the historical process determining it. The religion that is popular today and is being politically popularised is Pauranic Dharma and not Vedic Dharma. The way ahead, though, is courtesy modern science and the ancient Vedanta.
Sugata Bose @Subhrajyoti Bhowmick : Not quite that way because ISKCON spreads superstition in the name of religion, irrational doctrinaire imposition which are not Vedic in spirit but have a decadent reactionary basis to it, courtesy invasion of India by Islam. But you are right in the sense that Hinduism in general must take the cue from this organisation's proselytising zeal and accordingly with more reasoned and seasoned steps move ahead with the spiritual conquest of the world. Perhaps, ancient Buddhism is a better exemplar in this whole business.
Sugata Bose @Sujoy Mukherjee : I am with you in the same boat by the riverside, anchored to hope and refusing to as yet set sail till the Mother Faith be safely settled onto its all-conquering course.
Sugata Bose @Vidya K : True. Therefore we must preach the pristine principles of the Vedanta to enlighten the world just as science has done in case of the material world. But Christianity and Islam are corrosively converting. Hence, by way of self-defence also we can no longer be passive onlookers to our own brethren being converted en masse to these proselytising faiths but must aggressively reach out to them by way of guarding them against such prospective conversion as well as actively opposing such moves by Christian missionaries and Islamic clerics.
Sugata Bose @Subhrajyoti Bhowmick : Yes, they are. Veda is the source and Tantra the derivative.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : Glories are always finite, hence untenable. Enumeration can never be infinite and attributes being conceptions are ever bound with limits. Hence, untenable.
Sugata Bose @Subhrajyoti Bhowmick : Islam is limited in that sense and cannot rise to the highest conception of the infinite God, Brahman. Hence, like its other two monotheistic Abrahamic siblings, Judaism and Christianity, it cannot look beyond its narrow, exclusive, totalitarian view about the One who words fail to describe, conceptions fail to reach and who cannot be possibly circumscribed by text or prophetic injunction, by arbitrary individual assertion or imposition of any sort whatsoever. That Sri Ramakrishna criticised the Vaishnava intolerance and not that of Islam may be purely because of his greater interaction with adherents of the former faith and little interaction with that of the latter. Moreover, the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna only records what M was witness to of the Master's sayings. Hence. However, Sri Ramakrishna was never too tired of remonstrating against all forms of exclusiveness of faith which surely absolves him of any such selective statement about it as you have referred to.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : First of all there is an assumption here that there is after all a Creator, that it is at all necessary to have one. Secondly, manifestation being always finite, attributes are finite as well. Hence, to define God as a being with infinite good attributes is a contradiction in terms. God, if He is, cannot be thus described and may be only admitted as a transcendent impersonal being beyond finite reach. What is being attempted to be reached within phenomenal bounds is a human conception which is necessarily limited and not infinite as such. Hence, such a God falls flat and fails His own existence in finite human understanding. The Vedantic view is the only rational way out of this dubious predicament and that is of a transcendent reality with no phenomenal appendage.
Sugata Bose @Swami Nikhileshwarananda : M's original birthday was on 14 July, the Bastille Day.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : This is the stated stance of the faithful but is illogical as such. Maya is manifestation and is as such finite. So, the immanent God, the so-called ruler of Maya, is necessarily finite. ''God and the universe rise together and God and the universe fall together,'' says Swamiji. There cannot be two infinities. God being Maya has no real existence just like the universe has none such. He, like the universe of name and form, is an appearance in either name and form or attributes which is in altered terms the same. God disappears in Brahman which is the only reality. Hence, all this infinitude ascribed to God in devotional terms is unreasonable, logically invalid and philosophically flawed. There is only one reality and that is the Vast Void of the attributeless substratum, the existential substance of a delusive vacuous world.
Sugata Bose @Partha Pratim Adhikary : What else is God? Nirguna is hardly ever referred to anywhere as God.
Sugata Bose @Bhaskar Sen Sharma : But glorification of personality, be that of man or a supposed God, is in a sense propaganda and, hence, commercial, however sublime the commerce may be held to be. Whether man derives profit out of it in immediate tangible terms or more deferred benefit of a mass following with its accruing assets following suit, the propagation of personality which dualistic religion invariably does is fuelled by the gregarious commercial instinct, if you get what I mean by it.
Sugata Bose @Bhaskar Sen Sharma : But subservience to personality is fundamentally a weakness born out of bodily weakness and borne by the sense of physicality. Hence, such adherence has wasted the early promise of the Vedic religion as it has stultified its impersonal philosophical growth which modern science has through its impersonal endeavours taken up and flourished thereby. The Sanatan Dharma was never such a debilitation in terms of personality worship. Unfortunately, its latter-day aberration post the Islamic conquest of India has become so and the decadence continues.
Sugata Bose @Bhaskar Sen Sharma : That's what I like about you, honesty par excellence and filial adherence to truth felt or being in consonance with.
Sugata Bose @Pijus Kumar Dey : The goat body is being eaten which is not Atma. Atma is the underlying Spirit, the substratum of phenomenal existence.
Sugata Bose @Pijus Kumar Dey : Has God made any rules ever, unless you mean to say that natural law is God's rule?
Sugata Bose @Abhisek Metya : We can only hope for such a utilisation of available talent. But I have been hoping for it since my childhood and have now become a senior citizen, still hoping. Alas, hope, the eternal duper, never dies, although, having reposed faith in it and not in our abilities, we die despicable deaths! Indeed, as a nation we are only expected to hop about hope!
Sugata Bose @Pijus Kumar Dey : Sure enough. But where is all this 'food stuff' coming into discussion here in the first place? It is your introduction, not the post's.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : Read 'Is Vedanta the Future Religion?' However, it has to be understood as well. Mere reading may not suffice. But, nonetheless, we can only begin somewhere and a good way is to begin by reading the text before we read into its meaning and eventually its essence which must not just be read but realised comprehensively.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : One can experience this supposed God on the basis of a hypothesis that one exists. But it is just a hypothesis and nothing more. Since one's phenomenal existence cannot be proved, such assertions of dualistic God-vision do not hold any credible ground.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : There is no question of Shakti gracing any for neither in essence exist. Experience non-dual, ever frozen in solidified, solitary, existential solidarity of being, is its self-validation.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : These stories are myths within the myth of phenomena, dreams having no significance as such, for they are bred and born in the primeval ignorance of name and form which cannot be ascribed any existential reality. The question of aspiration, aspirant, realised soul, grace and entry into and exit from the transcendental state are all myths. Hence, they are to be discarded in this deliberation on the Absolute Reality which, after all, has no need of deliberation whatsoever, such deliberation itself being mythical and, so, unreal. Brahman alone is. There can be no Brahmajnani as the latter is a conception yet again of name and form which cannot approach the Transcendent Reality.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : All is unreal. Brahman alone is, though not the way it seems to be, clothed in this fine epithet adorning it. Truth cannot be conditional.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad: Who is Totapuri and who is Ramakrishna? Who is Swami Bhuteshananda? Does Brahman need props to stand on by their presence or to fall by in their absence? It is its own support and needs no authentication or otherwise by myths, however magnified as holy and sacrosanct. Brahman, rather Tat, alone is.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : Rosy stories.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : Provided the 'I' has any validity. All rosy stories bred in ignorance.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : All your statements are on the basis of the original assumption of phenomenal reality. Hence, they are invalid as substantive evidence. Phenomena cannot be substantiated except through their like falsehood in other phenomenal assertions.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : Multiplicity simply is not. Oneness alone abides. Hence, your arguments seem extraneous.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : Quotation and authority do not validate truth or negate it. Brahman is its own authority, none else is.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : This dualistic stand on the non-dual is amusing, although such amusement is Maya, too.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : But Swamiji, to quote him for once, seriously doubts the efficacy of the dualistic method in arriving at the Absolute Truth. He much disapproves of resorting to the dualistic falsehood to attempt to realise the Truth. Read 'Is Vedanta the Future Religion?'
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : How do you know it? All your cognition of such assertions is based on dualism.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : Then you admit that you are discussing being based in unreality or falsehood?
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : We have been discussing truth, not any assumed aberration of it. Hence, the question of breadth or narrowness of deliberation does not arise.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : But can anybody ever attain illumination? Illumination ever being impersonal, the personality dissolves to reveal it. No one is illumined. Illumination simply is. The Atman abides in itself, none ever reaches it. One simply disappears at a distance to reform again at a distance while the Atman in separation abides in Self-brooding, in Self-witnessing. The term 'Brahmajnani' (Knower of Brahman) is erroneous, an equal myth as the universe all knowledge and knowers belong to is.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : Hence, the dualistic misconceptions that are being constantly brought in by dogmatic assertion of authority as opposed to sane logic. Absence of subtle intelligence is causing it. Age-old superstition is at the root of it. Samadhi alone will clear conception. No wonder Swamiji laments in 'Is Vedanta the Future Religion?' what he does lament. Quotation is one, a quickening of consciousness another. Egotism will not allow access to understanding. So, words by means of copious quotes flow tantamount to nothing substantial. So, let vanity reign even as the Atman in serenity witnesses the panoramic nothingness.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : Swamiji's innermost message is enshrined in 'Is Vedanta the Future Religion?' There he categorically states it all. Moreover, why bring in authority, however hallowed, to refute what has been forwarded in logical, realised terms, if one, of course, has the like understanding to corroborate for oneself what has been stated, though? Authority comes in only when facts fail or understanding cannot cope with logic afforded. The scientific process of both the Vedanta and that if modern science stands independent of establishment of truth by authority. Truth, infinitely greater, is no authority's bondman. It is it's own authority. No wonder the Vedas refute their own authority in the apprehension of Truth. 'Naymaatmaa pravachanena labhya na medhayaa na bahuaa shrutena.'
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : Endless, infinite -- these are finite attempts at enumeration of the Infinite which is a contradiction in terms as I have at the very outset sufficiently explained but which you failed to apprehend. Hence, 'the fault lies dear "Durga Prasad" not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.'
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : Cosmic Maya is not infinite. It is the misapprehension of Brahman which is infinite. Neither is it beginningless in the sense that it is eternal. It means that the cause of ignorance is ignorance itself. Likewise, and not contrarily as is often supposed, ignorance vanishes in a trice in the quickening of absolute consciousness. Maya is, thus, neither eternal nor infinite. It may be posited that one man's liberation does not end Maya which then continues for others. But a counter-argument to this is that others simply don't anymore exist when ignorance has been dispelled. At any rate, Maya is insubstantial and, hence, neither infinite nor eternal in any substantive sense.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : Everything is conceptually limited, bounded by the limited mind. Even the phenomenal God is a conception, hence, limited. Likewise the universe and all its seemingly endless paraphernalia are limited by mental conception.
Sugata Bose @Durga Prasad : That the mind is limited means that its conceptions are necessarily limited as well. There cannot be anything called unlimited limit which is an absurd proposition. Hence, the very question is a fruitless one that serves no purpose.
Sugata Bose @Subhrajyoti Bhowmick : Meditate on the meaning of my writings instead of quick conclusion about their content. Deep thought will help you catch the drift of my writings and your confusion will generally be clarified. If they still persist, then ask pertinent questions. You are a student of law and ought to know better what I mean by it. The court overrules extraneous questions, I am sure you know very well.
Sugata Bose @Subhrajyoti Bhowmick : You read my posts and so shall you benefit. But when your queries are met with copious explanations by me you ought to at least acknowledge the same.
Sugata Bose @Subhrajyoti Bhowmick : Cultivate your talents, hone your skills, enhance your learning, expand your heart and develop your individuality so that the best fruits of all these you may present to our beloved motherland. This is my exhortation to youths like you.
Sugata Bose @Subhrajyoti Bhowmick : I will be only too happy to help you along but only if you are very sincere, otherwise not.
Sugata Bose @Subhrajyoti Bhowmick : Very well. I will seek other seekers then to carry on with my mission.
Sugata Bose @Gopa Sarkar : You truly have a fine sense of humour. Makes good the day.
Sugata Bose @Susmita Das : But dualistic ignorance does survive aeons, often much more in this phenomenal play of time.
Sugata Bose @Rítãm Màitrà : Rationalisation of the country, disciplining it physically and mentally, free of spiritual superstition and social prejudice. Mass quality education, good food, productive employment and facilities for creative exercise of latent talent must be made available. Spiritual mumbo-jumbo must be replaced with scientific training of the population. These are the first measures. Accuracy in work must be catered to and mediocrity discouraged and discarded. Excellence in everything must be the norm. Nationwide punctuality must be maintained. Organisation is the key. Accuracy and precision is the other criterion. Then the nation will be fit for the next stage of sporting development. Overmuch of fanfare must be disallowed and keen and fair competition must be made for. Hero-worship and hullabaloo about small or big achievement must be categorically cast away. Let this spirit first come in. The rest will follow.
Sugata Bose @Sangeeta Chakraborty : তুমি অসাধারণ ভাল মেয়ে | আমি আজ কয়েক বছর তোমায় চিনি ফেসবুক মারফৎ | মুগ্ধ হয়ে যাই তোমার সরল, কোমল, উন্নত, উদার ভাব দেখে | ভাল থেকো | ঠাকুর-মা আশীর্বাদ করুন তোমায় মুক্তহস্তে |
Sugata Bose @Subhrajyoti Bhowmick : No. I want India to exclude religion totally from politics. The mix is dangerous for the integration of our polity. Hence, India should remain a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic but she should stand on her own now and gradually ease herself off from the British Commonwealth of Nations, but slowly, securely and in measured magnitude as economic interests are at stake.
Sugata Bose @Subhrajyoti Bhowmick : Why not the whole universe and the whole of the endless number of universes from beginningless manifestation unto endless manifestation and all manifested beings as my siblings?
Sugata Bose @Chandra Kumar Bose : That's the pity, no progression. (My reply to Chandra Kumar Bose's post : Once a politician, always a politician.)
Sugata Bose @Maths Formula: In different steps degrees are vanishing and in following steps they are reappearing. This lack of mathematical rigour is neither expected nor is it acceptable.
Sugata Bose @Satyendra Singhji, it's a dream come true. A riveting account it will be, I'm absolutely sure. Will campaign for your book extensively. Have already started it.
Sugata Bose @Rítãm Màitrà : Your punctuation needs perfection.
Sugata Bose @Maths Formula : A lot of right angles to be proved in order to establish the rectangle before Pythagoras may come alive. Too often we see assumptions made from common sight which ought not to be in keeping with mathematical rigour.
Sugata Bose @Somnath Acharya : It is for you to study deep and get clarified. A consistent anti-Gandhi stance as is evident on Facebook by a section of people only compounds ignorance and proves that we are a perverse polity today not deserving our very best. That, of course, is indicative of a dangerous trend and portentous of our imminent downfall. Fortunately, vast numbers of sane people do not subscribe to such anti-Gandhi fanaticism.
Sugata Bose @Mathematics for Learning : The last option is incorrect. 2½ here an additional appendage in the murky solution. (50×2½) ÷ (2×2½) = 25 and not 25×2½.
Sugata Bose @Abhisek Metya : I like the way you write. Clear, concise, succinct, unminced articulation with proper data input and an accuracy in presentation that I do not much see in my compatriots, my countrymen in general.
Sugata Bose @Abhisek Metya : Well said. Yes, we must pull in our might to deal them the deathblow, they who had reduced our national hopes to ashes for so long through colonial-imperial oppression. Let us pray then for our girls and cheer them on to victory.
Sugata Bose @Rituparna Basu : You are a most engaging writer. Riveting is your style, simply absorbing.
Sugata Bose @Bhaskar Mukherjee : Discuss the contentious issue of the post in relative terms and in consequential terms relating to the future of our country and its impact thereof on the world, Bhaskar. You are such a well-read person, dear friend, and you must bring in your erudition to shed light on this subject for us to benefit from. These five schools, indeed, have wielded tremendous influence on our polity in one way or the other and continue to shape both our civic consciousness and our national destiny. Hence, I request you and Bhaskar Sen Sharma to initiate a worthwhile discussion on this issue which we may all join in.
Sugata Bose @ Swami Nikhileshwarananda : Bad advertisement. Are we losing sense and sanity to commercialise Thakur thus? Is this exemplification of what 'Taka maati, maati taka' and 'Kaminikanchan tyaag' is supposed to be? The ideals are being lost as oblivion of the original mission sets in. This is not only regrettable but is a sign of decadence that ought to be urgently redressed. Else, a reappearance of Thakur and his divine entourage can only set things in a newer mission right. Terrible is this decay, catastrophic the prospective consequences. May Ramakrishna rescue himself from commercial consequence thus, for his followers are sinking in the quicksand of the degenerate times! (In relation to Swami Nikhileshwarananda's post of a newspaper clip showing the film superstar Rajnikanth's statement that Sri Ramakrishna was his first Guru.)
Sugata Bose @Ratan Pal : Right. Prannoy Roy is the brother-in-law of Prakash Karat. But you have written the CPI(M) leader's name in lower case. Was it deliberate or common error? Also, you did not end your sentence with a full stop. Was that deliberate, too, meaning that do you believe Mr. Karat has an indefinitely long future political career in his party?
Sugata Bose @Ratan Pal : That's the spirit. At a time when we are going euphoric in celebration of our Olympic achievements I thought it pertinent to mischievously point out our casual approach to things in general by making the above remark about your irregularly punctuated statement, knowing full well that you write eminently good English. Hence, I thought you would not mind the reference thus where another person of lesser linguistic capability might have taken offence to. But, surely, you do agree with me on this pertinent point of our casual imperfection in ordinary things whose larger impact is in producing mediocrity at the highest level of international attainment as in science and sports, to quote but two disciplines off-hand. This we must improve upon if we are to rationalise our polity well enough to be able to consistently produce excellence in the diverse disciplines of life. My observation was to that effect to you, my illumined friend. There was no political overtone or undertone to it.
Sugata Bose @INDIA'S OLYMPIC DREAMS : It was a trifle disturbing to see that players' safety was overlooked during the felicitations in these terrible times of the pandemic. Unmasked crowding is not quite sporting, neither conducive to the scientific temper which is the imperative for winning at the highest level of international sports.
Sugata Bose @Riya Bhattacharya : The poor participation in the group (INDIA'S OLYMPIC DREAMS) is proof of our national lack of energy and enterprise despite all the hoopla for a few days over an equally few medals won at the Olympics. We are a tamasic race yet and need to go a long way before we mature as a sporting or a scientific nation worth the call. Right now let us try our best and redress this lost balance in our national life.
Sugata Bose @Riya Bhattacharya : The nation sleeps or at best yawns when it comes to putting in sustained hard work for the attainment of excellence at the highest international level. Individuals may excel but there is yet mass failure characterizing us as a nation. We excel in procreation, pollution, perverse politics, pernicious propaganda and the progressive build-up of personality cult. All this must be swept away if we are to sweep the medals in future Olympics.
Sugata Bose @Riya Bhattacharya : Grand editing done. Persistent in achieving perfection. This is the way, my friend, the unmistakable sign of future greatness, so very missing in our countrymen.
Sugata Bose @Colour politics, indeed! Who says royalty is gone? Blue indicates royalty, blue blood, does it not? And so is it with Indian politics where dynastic dispensation is still the norm despite the Anti-Zamindari Act of 1955. This is unrelated to the post but is by way of a quick quip with obvious implications for dynastic degeneration in Indian politics to which West Bengal for all its pious pretensions is no holy exception.
Sugata Bose @Sujoy Mukherjee : Works both ways. The intent of the post was different and has as usual, on account of its unexplained brevity, missed its mark.
Sugata Bose @Subhrajyoti Bhowmick : Go ahead on your own first. Show your courage of conviction. Others will follow suit.
Sugata Bose @Subhrajyoti Bhowmick : Do it on your own first. Lead by personal example.
Sugata Bose @Sulekha Basu : Indeed. Reading is becoming increasingly rare if I have read into it right.
Sugata Bose @Utsav Datta : Yes. But you can include those you have not seen as well but have read about or heard about from connoisseurs of cricket, players who have graced the game in the past and attained to superlative heights of excellence. Such a selection will give historical balance and depth to the side.
Sugata Bose @Utsav Datta : I admire your ready response.
Sugata Bose @Subrata Sengupta : Even after being cleared by biometric tests multiple times, Murali in popular conception is beheld as a chucker. Unfortunate indeed. Steve Waugh has hailed him as the Bradman of bowling. His extraordinary strike rate, exceptional abilities of turning the ball square on all types of pitches, spinner-friendly or otherwise, his deceptive doosra or the off-spinner's wrong-un, his deadly accuracy and his phenomenal wicket-taking capacity that allows him to almost singlehandedly win test matches, ought to be in popular imagination by better propagation through the media that chooses to highlight Warne alone. Hence, the myth of Murali the chucker is sustained despite contrary evidence testifying to his legitimacy as a spinner, and Murali the magician, the marvel, is lost to the world. We must reverse this trend and restore his respectability as a bowler, the like of whom test cricket history cannot testify to nor is it is likely that it will see any such emerge in the near or the distant future, much like the Don who yet remains unparalleled in cricketing attainments. We were privileged to witness this phenomenon unfold before us and evolve to magical proportions. The Don we missed but Murali has been right before our eyes. Let us now have the eye to see it in perspective once more.
Sugata Bose @Abhisek Metya : You have a point but it can be contested as well. Murali was unduly harassed by Australian umpires that did not allow him to bowl properly for any length of undisturbed time. Moreover, Murali's genius unfolded gradually with ever-increasing strike rate in the second half of his career after he had perfected some of his other deliveries including the 'doosra'. It must be remembered that Sri Lanka to begin with was a very weak Test team and it was Murali who almost singlehandedly developed the side into a match-winning one with his extraordinary performances later on. Warne is surely the legend of leg-spin and there can be no adverse comparison made between the two spinners of opposite art but it must be borne in mind that Muralidaran never toured Australia again after being called by Umpire Darrell Hair repeatedly for throwing. Hence, it would be unfair to judge his performance in Australia. But he excelled in England to prove his point. Warne failed in India more than Murali did. So, what of it? Experts favour Warne because of his clean and beautiful action as opposed to Murali's ungainly action and seemingly demonic demeanour in delivery. But the control that he exhibits is no less than Warne's, if not more, and his ability to take wickets is likewise more. Had the Aussie pacers not cleaned up many of the scalps early on and the tail thereafter, and had Warne been allowed to bowl on from one end constantly like Murali did, the Aussie would have gathered a greater number of wickets in his kitty for sure. So, we must objectively study the two, analytically understand their relative strengths and weaknesses, and then alone come to considered conclusions about the twain.
Sugata Bose @Aloke Mukherjee : They have forgotten that they are self-locked. The common human predicament, you see -- venturing forth while remaining locked within. All the strife in the world arises from this common propensity of self-preservation while plundering others. Colonialism, imperialism, all have this locking self while engaging in expansionism as their basis. Trade restrictions imposed at home on other countries while freely trading in theirs is the practice in China, India etc. as is evidenced by the constant complaint lodged by major players like the USA in this regard. People have now provided this new variant of profile-locking while knocking on others' profiles. However, to come back to what you have pointed out, it is an irritant to behold this offering of supposed friendship while remaining incognito for it betrays the fundamental principle of faith reposed in a friend-in-the-making about the trustworthiness of the latter and confidence in his person as to honouring information about one's self laid at his disposal. This, however, despite pretensions of fraternising, is the trend of the times, irritating but true. The best way out is to ignore them and move on. No good fraternising with shadowy figures. That's my take on it.
Sugata Bose @Vandana Agrawal Jain : You are a rare sympathiser of my thoughts.
Sugata Bose @
POESY
POESY
1)
Rootless one remains when parents go.
How few can strike roots in the Self !
Hapless ones in a hopeless world,
Drifting on the sea of delusion.
Composed by Sugata Bose
POESY
2)
Humility is not an act.
It is a state of being.
It doth not show in verbal terms.
It's a fragrance free that spreads.
The showy humble are the least of it,
The unconscious ones are humble.
Composed by Sugata Bose
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