Monday, November 16, 2009

What are the rules for married people?...Swami Vivekananda

God has kept this urge of regeneration in human mind only to perpetuate his creation and not for enjoyment.  Veerya is meant to be used only for procreation and not for self-indulgence.  For married people Brahmacharya can be broken only when they feel the desire for progeny.  If they realise this truth they will not become a slave to lust, nor lose their stock of vital energy.  Sri Ramakrishna used to say that after the birth of one or two children, wife and husband should live like a brother and sister direction their minds towards spiritual enlightenment.  In Sanatana Dharma marriage is considered to be a sacred act.  Marriage is not meant for physical enjoyment but only for good progeny.  A wife is considered to be a partner in life to practise dharma;  she is called dharmapatni or sahadharmini.  Children born out of prayer and self-control will certainly exhibit great virtues, but children born out of lust and over-indulgence will become weak and bereft of divine qualities.  Swami Vivekananda had all praise for mother Sita for her wonderful qualities as a wife when he said, "Sita, purer than purity itself, all patience, all suffering without a murmur, she the ever-chaste and ever pure wife, she the ideal of the people, the ideal of the Gods, the great Sita, our national Goddess she must always remain."
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Sri Ramakrishna was married to Sri Sarada Devi only to demonstrated to married people that wonderful ideal of chastity in married life.  Both were free from carnal pasions, led a life of self-control and realised the ultimate goal of life-- spiritual enlightenment.
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Therefore controlled sex life is essential for married people.  Over-indulgence will only lead them to immature old age and early death.
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Influence of Thought...Swami Vivekananda...

Just as EVERY ACTION that emanates from us comes back to us as reaction, even so our actions may act on other people and theirs on us.  Perhaps all of you have observed it as a fact that when persons do evil actions, they become more and more evil, and when they begin to do good, they become stronger and stronger and learn to do good at all times.  This intensification of the influence of action cannot be explained on any other ground than that we can act and react upon each other.  To take an illustration from physical science, when I am doing a certain action, my mind may be said to be in a certain state of vibration;  all minds which are in similar circumstances will have the tendency to be affected by my mind.  If there are different musical instruments turned alike in one room, all of you may have noticed that when one is struck, the others have the tendency to vibrate so as to give the same note.  So all minds that have the same tension, so to say, will be equally affected by the same thought.  Of course, this influence of thought on mind will vary according to distance and other causes, bu the mind is always open to affection.  Suppose I am doing an evil act, my mind is in a certain state of vibration, and all minds in the universe, which are in a similar state, have the possibility of being affected by the vibration of my mind.  So, when I am doing a good action, my mind is in another state of vibration; and all minds similarly stung have the possibility of being affected by my mind; and this power of mind upon mind is more or less according as the force of the tension is greater or less.
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Following this simile further, it is quite possible that, just as light waves may travel for millions of years before they reach any object, so thought waves may also travel hundreds of years before they meet an object with which they vibrate in unison.  It is quite possible, therefore, that this atmosphere of ours is full of such thought pulsations, both good and evil.  Every thought projected from every brain goes on pulsating, as it were, until it meets a fit object that will receive it.  Any mind which is open to receive some of these impulses will take them immediately.  So, when a man is doing evil actions, he has brought his mind to a certain state of tension and all the waves which correspond to that state of tension, and which may be said to be already in the atmosphere, will struggle to enter into his mind.  That is why an evil doer generally goes on doing more and more evil.  His actions become intensified.  Such also will be the case with the doer of good; he will open himself to all the good waves that are in the atmosphere, and his good actions also will become intensified.  We run, therefore, a twofold danger in doing evil: first, we open ourselves to all the evil influences surrounding us; secondly, we create evil which affects others, may be hundreds of years hence.  In doing evil we injure ourselves and others also.  In doing good we do good to ourselves and to others as well; and, like all other forces in man, these forces of good and evil also gather strength from outside.
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Fill yourself with the idea; whatever you do, think well on it.  All your actions will be magnified, transformed, deified, by the very power of the thought.  If matter is powerful, thought is omnipotent.  Bring this thought to bear upon your life, fill yourselves with the thought of your almightiness, your majesty, and your glory.  Would to God no superstitions had been put into your head!  Would to God we had not been surrounded from our birth by all these superstitious influences and paralysing ideas of our weakness and vileness!  Would to God that mankind had had an easier path through which to attain to the noblest and highest truths!  But man had to pass through all this; do not make the path more difficult for those who are coming after you.
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Friday, November 13, 2009

Quotes on Creativity--Good Sayings

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.


The key question isn't "What fosters creativity?" But it is why in God's name isn't everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might be not why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate? We have got to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle if anybody created anything.


The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.


You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.


I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.


Technological change is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.


The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.


Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.


Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.


When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.


There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.


It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.


If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.


It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.


Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.


Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.


Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.


Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.


Eveyone is a genius at least once a year. A real genius has his original ideas closer together.


The world is but a canvas to the imagination.


Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it's a stinking way to create.


The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.


The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.


The things we fear most in organizations -- fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances -- are the primary sources of creativity.


There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.


Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.


The moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there.


Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.


You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.


There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.


All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.


New insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works ... images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. That is why the discipline of managing mental models -- surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works -- promises to be a major breakthrough for learning organizations.


A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely . . . but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude . . .


Life is "trying things to see if they work."


Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.


Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.


Spirituality exists wherever we struggle with the issue of how our lives fit into the greater cosmic scheme of things. This is true even when our questions never give way to specific answers or give rise to specific practices such as prayer or meditation. We encounter spiritual issues every time we wonder where the universe comes from, why we are here, or what happens when we die. We also become spiritual when we become moved by values such as beauty, love, or creativity that seem to reveal a meaning or power beyond our visible world. An idea or practice is "spiritual" when it reveals our personal desire to establish a felt-relationship with the deepest meanings or powers governing life.


Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.


The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.


Injustice can be eliminated, but human conflicts and natural limitations cannot be removed. The conflicts of social life and the limitations of nature cannot be controlled or transcended. They can, however, be endured and survived. It is possible for there to be a dance with life, a creative response to its intrinsic limits and challenges ... [A Feminist Ethic of Risk]


A successful work of art is not one which resolves contradictions in a spurious harmony, but one which expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contradictions, pure and uncompromised, in its innermost structure.


[C]reative ability and personal responsibility are strongest when the mind is free from supernatural belief and operates in an atmosphere of freedom and democracy.


I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years.


An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.


Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.


It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.


If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?


Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.


Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Just Start to Sing As You Tackle The Thing That Cannot be Done, And You will Do It...

Like a child you should always believe that everything is possible. The sky is the only limit for a child and young children are open to everything. They are closed to nothing. But a child often tends to be carried away by a childish response when he or she faces an odd at once. The same thing is repeated by a grown-up individual in a childish manner, "why have only I been placed in such a situation? It is not fair." If your response is like this, the problem only gets reinforced, leading you to struggle hard to get over the problem is like this, the problem only gets reinforced, leading you to struggle hard to get over the problem, to find a solution. This struggle is the force which motivates us to move forward. Sometimes a problem may assume a bigger dimension than you expect and it may appear impossible to be overcome. If you are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem, it means you have given up before trying to solve it.
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You should always approach the problem in a childlike manner asking yourself--"What could be good about this?" This approach will not let you think negatively and focus your mind on the positive aspects of the situation. Once your mind sets out in search of the positive aspects of the problem, there is no doubt that you will try to find out a solution. Unless you and your mind accept that there is a problem, a solution can never be found out. In search of a solution you think of various options and start the needed action.
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In the words of Edgar Guest....
There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failur;
There are thousands to point out to you, one by one,
The Dangers that wait to assail you.

But just buckle right in with a bit of a grain,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start to sing as you tackle the thing
That cannot be done, and you'll do it.

Try to learn something from a problem and if you fail to solve it in the first attempt, treat your failure as a lesson and avoid your previous mistakes. Never think that your failure is an end of your endeavor. Treat it as the beginning of your action towards the solution. Your failure can teach you more than your success can. Treat every failure as a yardstick for self-judgement. It is only by realising your mistake that you can stop repeating your mistake. You can look forward to getting better results next time by self-realisation. Life is all about learning.
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People like Usain Bolt, the extraordinary sportsman, are born to remind us of the immense power of will. In order to achieve the enviable position of the fastest human on the earth he must have had to face many odds. But his success proves that he must not have felt like giving up. He must have treated all his failures as lessons, that is why he has succeeded in getting to the top in his area of action.
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Wish you all the best....