Me Documented!

On a general note, people seem to have made science, philosophy and religion totally different subjects and almost enemies of each other. Here is
Ayurveda's take on them

Philosophy is the love of truth
Science is the discovery of truth thru experiment
Religion is the experience of truth and application in daily life

I am back from Igatpuri after attending the 8 day Satipatthana. Well, it goes without saying that the course was brilliant. Again nothing new in terms of practice but the discourse is different. It explains teachings of the Buddha himself. Maha Satipatthana is the first discourse given by Gotama, the Buddha in a place called Kuru. He explains the path for getting free from the whole process of becoming( birth after birth). Of course the path is Vipassana or to put it simply its just a process of observing objectively. To observe objectively is to maintain equanimity because it is impossible to observe anything objectively without remaining equanimous. Again, don't believe me, find it experientially. Thats the beauty of this technique, you experientially discover the truth. If we can just sit doing nothing but observe what ever sensations are cropping up on the body, nature will start revealing the whole of existence to us. It is in this context, that the Upanishads talk about non-doing.

Satipatthana is a course only for old students, hence the people are much lesser and also quite serious about the course. Indeed, its much more intensive and fulfilling as compared to the normal 10 day courses probably because the seriousness of the others rubs on to you which in midst of new students tends to be lesser. An important change that I consciously incorporated in myself was straightening my posture. I had realized that my back used to bend automatically when sitting for longer hours. Hence, I made a conscious effort to keep a straight back during Adhithana period. Of course, it was quite painful the first 3 days but the wisdom of anichya saw me through it quite peacefully. I found that for almost more than 80% of the time, I am able to observe pain as just pain and not identify myself with it. But this is only during times of meditation. The Buddha says

Version 0.3.2 is released. This version has some very minor changes as follows

• Bug fix to make it work with Ubuntu 7.10
• Minor changes to Makefile

Download here

I have been checking out Xcode on the mac and hopefully should get myself to port tiff-plugin on the mac too...... But Xcode is sooo much of a clutter :( !!! Probably I dont know much about it.

Illness is not cured by saying the word 'medicine,' but by taking medicine. Enlightenment is not achieved by repeating the word 'God' but by directly experiencing God. Talk as much philosophy as you like, worship as many gods as you please, observe as many ceremonies and sing devotional hymns, but liberation will never come, even after a hundred eons, without realizing Oneness, Wholeness.
-Adi Shankara

I am done with Isha Yoga and back to good old Vipassana. I had been to Igatpuri again for the 10 day course. It was very painful as I fell and sprained my leg and could hardly walk. But at such a place, all this hardly matters and if one has the will then there is no stopping you. Meditation wise, each Vipassana course is so different and tends to get deeper and deeper( subtler and subtler ) even though there is nothing new thats taught. In spite of the pain, there were so many wonderful moments that I can never forget. But after this trip, a huge change that seems to have come is my acceptance of Guruji.

Might seem weird, but till now I never ever happened to call Goenkaji as Guruji. It might not even seem to be a big deal, but only I know what a HUGE change this is. Intellectually, I am so egoistic that its almost impossible for me to address anyone with high respect and words like Guruji is something that I can only ridicule about. But during this course, some change happened. A chunk of my ego happened to take the beating and wow how wonderful it is to dissolve some ego now I realize. Also, there seems to be a strong urge to do some Seva. I am dead sure that my next visit is going to be for Dhamma Seva.

I also happened to meet some real dedicated Vipassi's like Alex from Russia, Manut from Germany and a lot of other people whose names I do not remember. Talking to them has been very inspirational and I am trying hard to get myself to practice both morning and evening as suggested by Guruji. Currently, I do Adhithana only in the mornings. But its all changing...... changing...... changing......

I have been reading Sadhguru's book Mystic Musings and am absolutely shocked!! The book is a series of question/answer sessions dealing in topics ranging from the body and mind to the so called paranormal. The content has made me look at life with a completely new perspective. Also, one will get an idea of what Sadhguru is capable of, probably just a glimpse of it.

I have been very attracted to Isha Yoga ever since my first course. With Sadhguru and his carefully picked lot of ever increasing teachers, one is in safe hands and headed in the right direction. But after reading Mystic Musings, I have realized that my volition is not correct. Deep within, the attraction has been more due to greed. The sudden feeling of becoming powerful and gaining control of your energies and that too in a super fast way seems to be luring me to join further courses of Isha yoga. Practices done with such volition will not get anyone anywhere. In Vipassana, I expected no magic, no mystic, no power... the goal was just to purify the mind.

Isha yoga is a quick and highly effective path but with my expectations will only make me power crazy. Vipassana seems to be the right thing for me. I am still thinking if I should continue with the practices or leave it..... probably I should....

Well, well, well.... its been a loooong time. Lots of stuff to write about but just couldn't get myself to write. I did a second round of vipassana and it definitely was a much better experience than the first time. The fact that old students get to be in the Pagoda most of the times makes a huge difference. Well its been about 6 months since i did it.

But, recently something that I thought will never happen just happened. Swapnil has been and is a strong, dedicated follower of Isha Yoga for quite some years now. He had been telling me to join the Isha Yoga courses and check it out but I kept avoiding it as I had decided that Vipassana would be the only path that I would follow. I was quite sure I would not take up any Isha Yoga course.

Last time, I was working on an open wireless network. In case of WEP encryption, just add the following commands to above the lnxreq_autojoin line which you can find here

wlanctl-ng wlan0 dot11req_mibset mibattribute=dot11WEPDefaultKeyID=0
wlanctl-ng wlan0 dot11req_mibset mibattribute=dot11ExcludeUnencrypted=true
wlanctl-ng wlan0 dot11req_mibset mibattribute=dot11PrivacyInvoked=true
wlanctl-ng wlan0 dot11req_mibset mibattribute=dot11WEPDefaultKey0=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

Replace the "xx:xx:..." with your WEP key. In case of 128 bit, it will be 13 hexaedcimal values.

A quick howto for debian and ubuntu based systems for setting up usb wireless adapters. Just plug in the usb adaptor and do the following (All commands must be run as root user or prefixed with sudo)

apt-get install linux-wlan-ng pcmciautils wireless-tools

Then, shut down all your network interfaces. Suppose you have eth0 and eth1

ifconfig eth0 down
ifconfig eth1 down

Then,

modprobe prism2_usb prism2_doreset=1
wlanctl-ng wlan0 lnxreq_ifstate ifstate=enable

If the above did not return any errors, then you are almost through. Now, you need to scan your wireless network for any access points to connect to. To do this run the following command