World’s Oldest Dad

Nanu Ram Jogi, a 90 year old farmer from Rajasthan, who already holds the world’s oldest father title, has fathered another child.

“Women love me,” Mr Jogi said. “I want to have more children. I can survive another few decades and want to have children till I am 100 – then maybe I will stop.”

With rock solid genes as that of Nanu Ram Jogi contributing, looks like we are going to be improving on our birthrate of—1 person born every 1.3 seconds!

via Daily Mail

Chased by a Boxer

For someone who has canine phobia, it was absolutely frightening during an evening run yesterday, when I saw this boxer at full throttle, sprinting across the lawn towards me. My first instinct was to run faster, but soon realized I was not going to out run a dog at full speed, and there were flashes of scenes from discovery channel of a cheetah chasing a deer, only in this case I was not as fast as a deer. (more…)

Catching a Monkey

It has been so long since I posted something on here, looks like my Karmadude mojo has started to wear off. So, in the hope of getting back to blogging on here again, here is a little story about how South Indians used to catch monkeys using a coconut. I came across this story used as an example for, How can attachment bring us suffering, in an article about The Four Noble Truths.

One takes a coconut and makes a hole in it, just large enough that a monkey can squeeze its hand in. Next, tie the coconut down, and put a sweet inside. What happens next is pure attachment. The monkey smells the sweet, puts his hand into the coconut, grabs the sweet and … the hole is too small to let a fist out of the coconut. The last thing a monkey would consider is to let go of the sweet, so it is literally tied down by its own attachment. Often they only let go when they fall asleep or become unconscious because of exhaustion.

If I were the monkey and my laptop the sweet, I could totally be the monkey that gets caught!

PHOTO SHAUN ANTHONY

Loveless Tale of Karma

I don’t think I have come across a better explanation of karma, than the objective loveless tale of karma, as found in The Legends of Khasak, a book by O.V. Vijayan. Read this little story on karma, and let your imagination show you both the simple nature of karma, and the complexity that lay in the network of actions of ones karma.

It’s simply elegant how this simple story shows us that karma is not just about one life time, but rather the result of a myriad intertwine of life which came before.
(more…)

Zen Stories

Open your mind, change your thought, with these zen stories from Renegade Zen:

Tea Master, Transience, Falling flowers, Maybe, Fleeing the tiger, Empty the cup, Gutei’s finger, Knowing fish, Steal the moon, Nature’s Beauty.

By moving yourself outside of what you would call normal or rational, you can see the world and yourself from a new perspective, thereby acheiving satori, or enlightenment, in the process.
– Renegade Zen

Oldest Memory

Once in a while I do an exercise to see how far back I can remember, and I have always ended up with the same memory, and I wonder if that could be my oldest memory?
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LOST

LOST, a new meme based on Zork, an old interactive fiction computer game.

Start Game

Muddy Intersection

It’s dark and raining, you are standing at an intersection on a muddy road. There is a small alley way running east-west, intersecting the muddy road. Its pitch dark all around, except for the dimly lit intersection.

You are carrying:
1. A jar of worms

You would like to:
Go North
Go South
Go East
Go West

Remembering Agent

I would like to take a moment to remember my friend Agent (Naveen P. Engoor) who was killed by a drunk driver six years ago(article 1, article 2, article 3), in Topeka, Kansas.

I met Agent for the first time, back in August 1992, on a train from the Southern Indian city of Cochin to Ranchi, up North. Both of us had just graduated from high school, and were headed to Birla Institute of Technology for college. He was a quiet person, a calm person, a person who could be anyone’s friend, never got angry, and whose company everyone enjoyed, a rare individual. This little poem which Darren wrote in memory of Agent says it all:

For all the times
I peeped through the little crack in his door to spy on him

For all the times
I helped to re-arrange his furniture outside his room

For all the laughs
Some with him, Some at him

For all those times
I had a meal with him at the mess hall

For all the times I chased him around
Only to catch him and then proceed to tickle him to tears

For all the times
I spanked his black, shiny ass

For all the days
That he made so much more memorable

For all that
As Twisted as it may seem
I miss you, brother

Life’s good with all those memories
Life would have been great with you still in it!

– Darren

Geography of Heaven: Vrindavan

Looks like there is suddenly an interest in the media to investigate different beliefs of heaven around the word. NPR in collabration with National Geographic is running a radio expedition exploring the geography of heaven, starting with Vrindavan.

There is beauty, because Vrindavan is heaven — not a metaphor for heaven, or a way to heaven. This is heaven.

The multimedia slideshow is pretty good, and there are three articles ( the streets of holy hindu city :: pilgrims on the path of Krishna:: the embodiment of earthly divinity ) worth a read. There is also the actual radio broadcast, for those who want to listen.

As for my thoughts on all this–I will just let Richard Dawkins letter, “Good and Bad Reasons for Believing“, which he wrote to his ten year old daugher, explain it.

Life and Coffee

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university lecturer. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the lecturer went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic glass, some plain-looking and some expensive and exquisite, telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the lecturer said: “If you noticed, all the nice-looking, expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the better cups and are eyeing each other’s cups.”

“Now, if Life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the equality of Life doesn’t change.” “Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it.” So pls, don’t let the cups drive you…enjoy the coffee instead.

Source: Unknown
Via: Serendipity