When you shake an apple tree, don’t be blind to the falling of mangoes
Suppose a hungry boy goes to an orchard and starts shaking an apple tree. Nothing happens. He prays to God for help and shakes the [...]
Suppose a hungry boy goes to an orchard and starts shaking an apple tree. Nothing happens. He prays to God for help and shakes the [...]
Going through the motions refers to doing things superficially, perfunctorily, mechanically – akin to the way a machine moves, without any emotional involvement. Bhakti is [...]
In the Mahabharata, when Arjuna disguised as a brahmana won Draupadi’s hand in the svayamvara, Drupada sensed that his to-be son-in-law was actually a kshatriya. [...]
Some people think that human will and divine will are opposed to each other – when we submit to God’s rules, we lose our freedom [...]
Work is essential for survival, as the Bhagavad-gita (03.08) acknowledges. Yet the same work that is vital can become vitality-sapping if done excessively. When work [...]
Some people, alarmed by reports of overzealous missionaries, feel that proselytizing should be banned. It’s sadly true that some proselytizers do convert by hook or [...]
Suppose we have to attend some talk on a subject that doesn’t interest us. And suppose even the speaker is apathetic and is delivering the [...]
When something we are doing goes wrong, our mind often pushes us towards two broad thought-patterns: excusing ourselves and accusing ourselves. In the first, we [...]
Suppose we flew to a distant land to meet a VIP whom we hadn’t met before. We landed, drove to his residence and knocked [...]
Some people hesitate to embark on a spiritual search because they fear that they may unwittingly end up in cults that brainwash people. Their fears [...]
When we strive to lead a principle-centered life, but falter and fail, we may lament, “I don’t have willpower.” Such feelings are natural and understandable. [...]
Sometimes when we speak something important or insightful, we may think that we have done our part. But if others haven’t understood what we have [...]
Suppose in a cartoon when two characters are fighting, one character keeps becoming bigger; and the other keeps becoming smaller. For the dwarfed fighter, the [...]
The Bhagavad-gita has two endings based on the two nested conversations that comprise its narrative. The outer, framing conversation is at Hastinapura between Sanjaya and [...]
Consider alcoholics who want to break free from their addiction. They often place themselves voluntarily in rehabilitation clinics whose monitored environment takes away their freedom [...]
The Bhagavad-gita (18.66) concludes with an intriguing call: Give up all religions (sarva-dharman parityajya). This begs the question – why would a religious book ask [...]
The quintessential image of surrender is the chaste Draupadi, raising her hands in utter helplessness while being disrobed and calling out to Krishna for protection. [...]
We do things all the time, yet we don’t often think of the various factors that go into things working out well. The Bhagavad-gita (18.14) [...]
An oft-quoted Bhagavad-gita verse (03.27) asserts that those who think of themselves as doers are deluded. But we all intuitively perceive of ourselves as doers [...]
When we are unable to give up our attachments, we may become disheartened, thinking, “I have read so many books, heard so many talks, made [...]
We all can and should learn from the past. By reviewing what we did, we can analyze what we did right and what we could [...]