How Indian Spirituality Changed the West

 I am reading this book after I stumbled on  an article by the author in Huffington post.

This book explores about great yogis and gurus of past and present - from Swami Vivekananda, Ramana Maharishi, Jiddu krishnamurthi, Yogananda,Maharish yogi, Neemli Baba and others who  made efforts to spread vedantic annd yogic prinicples of Hinduism in  the West.  

More about the book,with photos,videos here at AMERICAN VEDA,and of course a face book page

I wish the Hindu religion as practiced in India  today stand for its high ideals.

The Last Lecture - Gems of Prof Randy

Today I experienced an intense feeling after I finished reading " The last lecture " by late Dr.Randy Pausch,Professor, Carnegie Mellon.

To ruminate ,here are some gems from the book.

1.         It is importance to have specific dreams in your life

2.        The Brick walls are there for a reason.They are not there to keep us out.The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.

3.         Not all fairy tales end smoothly

4.         The truth can set you free

5.         Time is all you have.And you may find one day that you have less than you think

6.        A professor's job is to teach students how to see their minds growing in the same way they can see their muscles grow when they look in a mirror

7.        Earnest is better than hip

8.        Don't complain,work harder

9.        Treat the disease ,not the symptom

10       Don't obsess over what people think

11.     Watch what they do,not what they say.

Life changing books recommended by Scientists

Find out what books have inspired scentists on this Newscientist article

Rare documents and photographs of Einstein-A feast

New scientist's short sharp science recommends some excellent illustrated science books ,one of which is on Einstein.

Why are there two sexes ? Why Y ?

I read a captivating book,infact quite unusual one that gives me a sense of exhilaration.The book is Power,Sex and Suicide ,Mitochondria and the meaning of life by NICK LANE.The author provides breathtaking facts to establish that Mitochondria are the Clandestine rulers of the world.



Well,textbooks of the biology mention that mitochondria are power houses,a familiar word for any biology student.Few books dwell on its role in cell death . The book celebrates mitochondria for its role in our life,from rise to fall.



It is wonderful to note that mitochondria make the complexity possible in higher organisms,it governs and exceutes the power laws of biology,fulcrum for the two sexes,and a benovolent dictator, it kills us in the end.



Coming to the title,Why are they two sexes?



Some excerpts from the book.



The advantage of the sex lies in the recombination of DNA from distinct sources.which may help to eliminate broken genes and to foster variety.Hence the need for two parents.



What's wrong with having only one sex to do this,which amounts to having no sexes at all ?



Sperm are tiny and disposable.Men and males in general produce them by bucket load.Females produce far fewer,much larger eggs. needless to say,the eggs are immobile and sperms are motile. Why is it so?



Females invest more of their resources in the offspring,biologically.fertilised egg provides not just the genes,also all the nutrients and cytoplasm for the organism to grow.Sperm add next to nothing,except their genes.They behave like parasites.



Choroplasts and mitochondria are invariably inherited only from one parent,mother.It is the female who contributes to cytoplasm of the offspring. This is because mixing the cytoplasm from two different cytoplasmic genomes creates a conflict among cytoplasmic genomes.



The mitochondria exhibits selfish behaviour.They help safeguard their own transmission in the egg by eliminating males in hermaprodites.All through the evolution numerous tricks have evolved to exclude male mitochondria altogether





For those of you interested in some of the profound questions of science,this book is a must read.

Teachers are travelling companions

Teachers, are merely travelling companions, “sharing the same uncomfortable feeling of ‘estrangement’ when confronted by ever-changing perceptions, broadening horizons, closing doors, rivers that sometimes seem to block their path and which, in fact, should never be crossed, but followed.”

Says Paul Coelho in his new book ‘The Witch of Portobello’ as quoted in THE HINDU.

Absolutely true.

Cloning the Buddha

I just happened to read a Richard HeinBerg book on Cloning the Buddha-The Moral Impact of Biotechnology . I like the views and doubts raised by the author against the tall claims made by Biotechnology and genetic engineering. I remember a saying "making money with biology is biotechnology"

There are no doubts that GE has been making various advances for the mankind especially in medicine and agriculture.But are we morally right in dissecting and moving the genes as we please? How does "MORAL" comes into the picture of this science? And what are the negative side of this technology?The book provides answers for these questions

Some points are worth pondering,before attempting to play with genes.

It is not that just by decoding DNA,we will know everything to know about life The situation is, there is more to life than just DNA. DNA ,infact is conditioned by organism itself and by the environment.

There is a lack of corelation between an organism's size and the amount of DNA.Also various researches have pointed out that each gene is not encoding the same meaning in different species ,as we thought earlier.Almost every gene studied in higher organisms has been found to affect more than one trait.So the genetic code is still ambiguous

There is no one-to one reading of the genotype onto phenotype.There are lot of intervening steps .DNA just influences the developmental process,not direct them.

Each living organism has an inner purpose.The intuition,perception or belief that other beings have a self with an interior experience comparable to one's own is the basis of ethics.In the deployment of Biotechlogy ,we are profoundly altering our relationship with the living world.

To put it in a nut shell,we should treat nature as the cooperative,interdependent,self directed activity of numberless creatures.It implies a respect for wholes,whole natural systems that arise from intertwined homeostatic relationships between and among living beings.

The entire genetic engineering and Biotechnology which functions around the reductionist view that genes are everything is against this holistic view.

Take a look.It is intriguing.