The Quest for Wisdom

Which one should be valued more: a person’s initiative instincts, or his tendency to control his emotions and his way of consoling those around him? Which one do people scrutinize? And which is more constructive? Both of them are attributes of our mind. They are equally crucial. They establish our identity in nature, thereby procuring an implication. For one who understands, they are the hallmark of the wise. For one who yearns for just one of them, there are restrictions. The intelligent ones cannot be wise. The kind too are not always wise. As a matter of fact, wise are the ones who are both intelligent and kind. They contain both the attributes and hence elucidate divinity. Only the knowing can sense them, regardless of the truth that they are formless. These formless features facilitate the insightful to conduct inner or mental journey besides outer or social journey.

Comparing intellectual skills with empathizing nature may not be within the realms of possibility. They are distinct and equivocal. Yet they can be held by one personality. Such personality is declared as a man of wisdom, he who perceives to make sense of the structure that constitutes the world, can concede both tangible and intangible, and is in due course liberated. The cognitive and sympathetic traits equally dominate the expanded mind of a wise individual. There is neither without either, because they simultaneously accommodate him to disengage in fulfilling his pointless desires. They help him find the divinity within as well as see the same divine in every being. Thus, is wisdom found by that person.

What is wisdom exactly? Wisdom is the property which when received makes one understand the forces that are present and are concurrently acting in nature. As such, the enlightened do not discriminate success and failure, happiness and sadness, and good and evil. They seek no materialistic fulfillment, so are always content. They do not consider anyone their adversary because they can detect the inability to grasp and the agitation of the another. To know their propensity, we find some verses in the Bhagavad Gita, the God’s counsel —

“Arjuna, fearlessness, purity of heart, steadfastness in Yoga and knowledge, alms-giving, control of the senses, sacrifice, study of scriptures, austerity and straightforwardness, harmlessness, truth, absence of anger, renunciation, peacefulness, absence of crookedness, compassion towards beings, gentleness, modesty, absence of fickleness, vigour, forgiveness, fortitude, purity, absence of hatred, absence of pride — these belong to one born in a divine state.” - The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 16 — Verse 1,2,3 (reworded)

The attributes of a wise mind — knowledge and kindness are for that great role players. The hurdle that prevails is that very rare know how to develop the required perception for building up these two psychological features. They are not as if something that can be achieved just like any objective in the physical reality, which is obtained rather strategically. What we are talking about is something which is indeterminate; it is the characteristic of the mind. The path to wisdom is not discernible; we can only be aware it. So is the path to develop the characteristics. In actuality, the two paths are not at all different; they are one.

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Note: The verse used in the article was extracted from Sri Swami Sivananda’s transliteration of the Gita. Furthermore, I have paraphrased the same.�

Our Bond with Music

Who doesn’t adore euphony? The people who don’t, are found scarcely. It is that power of
music in existence - to make people vivacious and vibrant and enthusiastic. Music is held in esteem and reckoned as an out of the world escapade. It has the proficiency to make us a passionate dancer. It can make even the tedious high in spirits. Hence, music is correlated with happiness. That happiness which will give a dazzling essence when mixed with the endeavor one can ideally put into an activity. Here, music is also correlated with work. Notwithstanding the level of difficulty of a determined task, we predictably work with ease when we find some melody along with what we do. Once we’re delighted, we become aware, therefore we become more productive.

Music has innumerable strong points. One of them, which is quite notable according to me, is music’s ability to evoke imagination. And imagination is a critical part of sophistication. Some people safeguard their acquired creativity, some lose it, and some don’t develop it at all. Perhaps they assume that it is rather nonviable. But they hardly fathom its significance.
Imagination is not impractical. For, it gave birth to artists and authors and scientists and economists and politicians who include some serious flair. Imagination empowers each and every one; it is a subsistence because of its purport. Music assists to expand virtuosity in ingenuity. We listen, and our brain generates imageries correspondingly. Without the ability to visualize, we would never be capable of devising even the simplest of ideologies.

Besides, music is an epitome of vitality as it is full of expressions conveying deeper meaning. That is why we categorize songs based on our state of mind. And further justification? To make ourselves be conscious of better things around, of course. Music creates the aura either to intensify the prevalent feeling, or eliminate that feeling. That would undoubtedly work, if the tune is breathtaking and the voice is natural. And then we come across the lyrics. The best thing to do is to decipher what the lyrics has to say, especially when the song is full of metaphors. The roots of love for that song, will only go deeper, when we go deep into the sense of the lyrics. The perfect amalgamation of the tune and the voice and the lyrics makes way for imagination. What does it impart? Rather an impressive, inspirational message, I must say. Well, does it make a song essentially a guide for life, compiled pertaining to the worldview of its composers and lyricists? The answer varies, thanks to the varying standpoints. But a more sensible question comes up here. Has a song any influence on our lives? A yes would not be appropriate. No one would take a song so earnestly. A movie can be more preferable, but a song is far from being an incentive medium.

Unescorted by music, life would be miserable. It helps us discover our extremity. Our world of thought restyles itself through the changing rhythmic patterns of a simple melody. Composed of brightest passion and darkest apathy, music is certainly an irrepressible episode of existence.

The Mahabharata: An Outlook

Krishna mentoring Arjuna just before the war.

Of all the scriptures present in the Hinduism of today, the Mahabharata acquires significance from my perspective. The Mahabharata deals with a typical family issue and is a heroic poem for a householder rather than a hermit. The Hindu epic not only revolves around the war evoked from the parted ways of a family with one side demanding their share of property and the other denying them of such a right, but also the characters which are far from having an association within this affair. We see that those characters also had kept their regards high by participating in the war so declared. Those were mostly people from the mainstream, as denoted by having the living God of the Mahabharata as only a mere cowherd, perhaps as the central figure. This God does not end up siding with the army that outnumbered and downplayed the other, but with the power that gradually overpowered the other.

The Mahabharata shows how the culture was when it was over 5000 years younger than that of now, when a small game of dice entailed unethical situations, when circumstances enforced people to live incognito, when unmet demands lead to conflicts, when there still was discontentment after having won the war. It was not a bad world after all; the context seems deliberate to me, like a set-up to mark the beginning of the new age, with established dharma. India has had an marvelous civilization in that time. I wonder what led to such degradation that made India contrasting at present. Long back from then, long from Hastinapur, there was the mesmerizing Vraja-Bhoomi near Mathura. To have an essence of its culture, not the Mahabharata, but the Bhagavata, stirs us emotionally by introducing us to famous stories of Sri Krishna, the God of Mahabharata. But the Krishna of the Bhagavata is distinctive from Krishna of the Mahabharata. For instance, the latter is not discussed as a cowherd whereas it is not the case with the former. Both declare him as the deliverer, though. Krishna, though unlike men of high intellect, showed straightforwardness. This simplicity of his is prudent from his any number of actions, such as being a kingmaker but not a king, being a charioteer and so on.

Let us view the vivid Mahabharata. It is a drama related close to life, where fate rules. The epic is composed of many heroic characters with vitality. Duryodhana, the antagonist; Bhishma, the one with the terrible oath; Drona, the honorable; Draupadi, the unfortunate; Gandhari, the despondent over consequences of the war, are some of the conspicuous ones within the epic. Then there is Krishna. He never goes unnoticed, does he? The best part he is acknowledged for, however, is the famous Bhagavad Gita. I have mentioned that the Mahabharata is a book for the householder, as is relevant from the Gita’s purpose to teach world’s acceptance, rather than its renunciation. It is a householder’s job to accept the world as it to realize the Self. One example is given of a lotus flower that remains in touch with the water but does not let the water stick to its petal howsoever. This is to relate with the deeds of a realized being, how he should not shut himself at any instant. Although Arjuna was brought up among ascetics, had a substantial teacher like Drona, he needed consultancy to ignore his insecurities and focus on what was awaiting him. That guidance was given by his dear friend and charioteer Krishna, who accepted to be his counselor. But still, Arjuna persisted to display his endearment for rivals during the war, which was one of the causes that caused him to land in hell, by which the state in turn becomes a tragedy.

For something to become essentially an epic, intricacy is a compulsion. When details show
inadequacy, we have an urge to make it intricate. Now those detailed points become just a
certainty as they are produced from our ideologies and our way of observing the original
characters in an epic. That is how the Mahabharata of today is different from the Mahabharata of a long time ago. This is an impact of the retellings that emerged when Bhakti or devotion was a dominant way to experience the divine. Writing was not a thing to do before, especially for introduction to the concept of God. The knowledge was passed only orally to preceding generations due this period. When writing things down became an etiquette, we can guess if the epic was getting much more fictional at that time and a complex problem to be proved historically. Retellings or translations transmitted orally were also common as they did have a purpose to connect masses of locals with the divine. Those might have been full of faults as they do not exactly cover the original happenings, but that was what the people grasped when these were echoing in temples. Sometimes we get deferential to false speculations.


Vyasa, the compiler of the epic, hired two persons to narrate this story to. One was the scribe, who was the popular Ganesha, and the other was the listener, Vaishampayana, a disciple of his. When the original Sanskrit book was finally completed by Ganesha, it was stolen by the devas who were impressed by the beauty of the book, which is eccentric. The Mahabharata we know is what Vaishampayana thought was prominent in the whole story, or we can call it a fragment of what Vyasa had spoken. That fragment too is a matter of supposition, for the epic had further been transformed as more ideal and less practical for people to believe.


All in all, the Mahabharata is my favorite saga, howsoever be it altered. This is because Krishna is a person in Hindu mythology who deserves noteworthiness. He has always been unique. To live a life of true happiness, following his path is the foremost resolution to take. My inquisitiveness in the complex Krishna is just growing, but I doubt if I will ever be able to cope up writing about all his integrities.

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I am greatly interested in Vedic and Upanishadic philosophies. Being just a teen, I do not feel that I am an adequately capable of creating a commentary on a great phenomenon like the Mahabharata. Still, I produced my simple outlook on it. May be I was passionate about this. Follow me on twitter @sakeez6.

Why This Will Be My Favorite Anime Movie Of All Time

This past weekend I decided to put up a search on Google sentenced like this: 'The Best Movies Of 2016'. I haven't watched one for a long time. The year of 2017 has just got a kickstart, so I don't hope to get to watch just so recent movies as of now. Starting from January 2016 to its December, I made an analysis so that I could figure out which movie was a must-watch for me. I found out articles and comments talkative about this awesome name of an movie I didn't know then: Your Name (Kimi No Na Wa in Japanese), which was actually seeming to be compelling itself.

I found out a lot about this movie (without reading spoilers) and checked its rating. I was amazed, massively. Its IMDB rating is around 9.0. It is the second highest grossing anime movie in Japan, Spirited Away being in the first place. Its total gross about $290 million USD, which makes it the second most famous movie in Japan. It is a big success and shattered records in China. Already preoccupying the east, the film is set to release in UK and US in 2017. Also, the film is expected to bag a nomination for an Oscar. But after watching Your Name, all those facts may not seem surprising.

Anime fans are massively stacked in Japan, but in a world where the admired place of being at the tops is occupied by Studio Ghibili films, it is not easy for a film not made by it to become a favorite for most of the anime fans. Take me for an example, I'm totally obessed with Your Name and it is harder to get over it than ever.

The awesome film has a revolutionary plot, with a gut wrenching twist, add to it the beatiful real life landscapes and the precise detail. Let me mention, to put all these things into an almost two hour movie is not easy. It takes long for the story to be meticulous.

The story revolves around two teenagers, Taki and Mitsuha. The former is a city boy, who lives in Tokyo, whereas the latter is a girl living in a rural village of Japan who wishes to live as a boy in Tokyo. She gets her wish when she suddenly wakes up in Taki's body. Even Taki, wakes in her body.
The body-exchange phenomenon goes on for weeks, but unfortunately, it comes to a stop. Taki wonders what has happened so that it has stopped all of a sudden.
SPOILER AHEAD!
He suddenly realizes that they were not only separated geographically, but also by a timeline. The place where Mitsuha lives was struck by split comet 3 years ago. Mitsuha, along with most of the villagers becomes a victim. What makes the story more special and unforgettable is the remaining part.
NO SPOILER ANYMORE!

The film literally made me weep. The heartwarming graphics, the heartfelt characters, and the fascinating storyline make it feel realistic to a milestone. The way it goes through the immense and the twisted part, leaves us hallucinating. But it simply maintains the offical tone - the reunion. As much as it leaves you in suspension, it makes you plead for the characters to reunite. So it is pretty easy to consider it a great film for those who are craving for giving themselves a blend of romance and thrilling fantasy. **One salute to the maker, please.**

Your Name is surely to show what Japan can do in terms of animation. I bet it will be a successful one also in the west, you'll know why. But for now, English subtitles.

P.S.: I really like the soundtrack, though I can't even understand Japanese!
Check this songs out:
Zen Zen Zense
Sparkle
Kataware Doki

They are my favorites from this movie.