Spewing acid…

http://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/g08htHindusAtFatima_Vennari.html

This Vennari guy beats Pat Robertson! May God take pity on both of them.

I am left speechless.

Edit 1: I have several friends who are christian (some of them are ‘hardcore’).

Edit 2: Having faced several attempts to be preached at by christian missionaries during my 3+ years of stay in USA, I guess I can say that I know quite a bit on how they work in to your minds. Nothing wrong in preaching your faith… but the method’s that some of these ‘fundamentalist missionaries’ use are utterly disgusting. On the other hand, I have also had some pretty amusing experiences with them. Here’s one!

Misc. rants

1) DMK fools are up to it again. These people will never improve… including their grand old man, who has given a new definition to ‘family politics’!

2) Our fellow citizens chew too much paan. There is even one called ‘Honeymoon special’ costing Rs.100 with ‘chittu kuruvi lehiyam’ (no clue on what it is actually, but claimed to be an aphrodisiac… ). *Quack warning*

3) There are too many ’swamijis’ around. Those who want to get cheated, get cheated.

4) Too much of ‘light’ pollution… its been some years since I had a clear view of starry sky at night.

5) Too many people dig their nose and fart in public. The look on their face when ‘discovered’ is, well… I will leave at that. Nasty.

Begging and ego!

This is probably old news, but here it is anyway:

These two folks beg and eat food purchased with the money received as alms. So what? There are millions who beg every single day. The only difference here is these folks go back from their one day outing with assurance that they will actually get their next meal.

Just another (weird) publicity stunt?

Note1: I don’t understand why, but there seems to be this belief that charity and social service is equivalent to spiritual development.

Note 2: Why would anyone want to lose their ego! If they meant to lose their ‘false-ego’, then it might make a bit of sense.

Note 3: The beggar get-up sucks on both of them… you want to beg, good for you!! At the very least, make it look realistic. Oh and don’t talk to reporters (just kidding!)

Interaction on Gingerchai

I have been involved in an interaction with authors on www.gingerchai.com, on the topic of “Understanding the concept of God”.

If anyone wants to take a look, go here.

Meditation mania

Why are people so much obsessed with meditation? Not just one type… seems like there is a whole bunch of hi-fi names floating around.

You can’t even get some quiet place to sit down for 10 minutes these days. And you can hardly stop thinking about work and family.

Add to this the myriad of programs available… not to mention the money you spend on them… is it even worth it?

Atheist or Intellectual?

I was reading through a magazine last week wherein there was this in response to a reader’s query: “You need to be an intellectual to be an atheist!”.

Is that really so? Then, are all atheists intellectuals?

My friend in the blogworld, Ketan states in his profile that elements of honesty, introspection, analysis go into someone turning an atheist.

That made me wonder: Is it that one who is not an atheist is not honest nor does that one possess the gift of introspection and analysis?

Cannot one be endowed with all that and still be a strong believer in God?

What makes 2 individuals, having the same skills at analysis and ability to ascertain things and their causes, end up with completely different conclusions and yet lets them feel the other person’s conclusion is the wrong one?

Whatever happened to separation of church and politics…?

or Mutt and politics, or Mosque and politics… whatever. But this article shows how absurd our ’secular’ philosophy is.

One person has commented as follows:

Shame Shame on all who donot support BJP. A priest of a church can ask his followers to vote in the name of christ and a maulana can ask in the name of allah, but a sadhu cannot ask vote in the name of Ram!!! CPM, LJP, Congress, RJD can ask for votes to muslims and christains in the name of islam and christainity and become so called secular. When BJP asks for votes in the name of HINDUS, they are non secular!!!

I find it hard to refute his logic.

Conversion and dignity? WTH?

“Because they have failed, they are trying miserably hard,” Mathai said, adding, if conversions gave someone respect and dignity, they were not wrong.

Source is here.

For the very fact that he hints that simply converting from one religion to another gives a person respect and dignity, I will have to give Dr. Abraham Mathai a huge thumbs down.

I don’t have any love for the Bajrang Dal or whatever… but to suggest something on the above lines but then carry out conversion based on faith makes the latter a pretense and makes it look like these guys are more interested in scoring political points and number crunching rather than providing any spiritual benefit to the misled (in their opinion, obviously) masses.

Oneness… yeah right!

I don’t read tamil magazines a lot, but for the last couple of months I keep seeing in them advertisements endorsing what I believe to be the most dubious, nonsensical and probably the least appealing ‘divine couple’. Nicknamed as “Amma Bhagavan” , the male half has been around for a longer time in the name of “Kalki Bhagavan”… apparently the female half wanted in on the fetid glory showered on the male half by stupefied fools.

Propagating a preposterous and perverted philosophy of “Oneness”, all this “divine couple” and their group does is charge upwards of $5000 for their “oneness blessing” process trainings! (Damn! And here I am, having second thoughts about whether I should really pay $500 for my scrum master training! Life is strange!!)

And here’s the kill… from the FAQ page of the web site of the ‘university’ started by this… this… err… whatever

08. What is your response to the recent allegations against the movement?
We suggest that you follow your heart.

Yeah, follow your heart… fo..ll..ow.. yo..ur… he..ar..t! Nicely done! Couldn’t have thought of a better answer. Sounds like a Jedi from the Star Wars movies, doesn’t it? How else could they put the blame on the person if things went sour in the course of time for him/ her? “Hey! Your heart told you to join us! We didn’t! *shrug*”.

For those of you who would like to know more about these, head over to http://guruphiliac.blogspot.com, where you can find a lot of information on this group and more.

The 600 crore Shakti Amma

I have absolutely zero tolerance for the new age gurus who claim themselves and/or everybody to be God. Thirty-one year old Mr. Shakti Amma seems to be the latest addition to the list.

Claiming himself to be an ‘avatar’ (divine incarnation) of the ‘Narayani’ aspect, he has built a Rs.600 crore ($153 million) temple for Mahalakshmi (the consort of Lord Vishnu) and gilded the outside and insides of the temple with gold. The website of this new kid on the ‘I am a God’ block describes him as being capable of exhibiting mystical powers (siddhis) and that has done so many miracles.

*Sigh* As long as gullible people are around, these ‘avatars’ will never cease to manifest every now and then.