Personal Excellence through Bhagavad Gita

Summary of talk given by Swami Sukhabodhananda on "Personal Excellence Through Bhagavad Gita" on 27th/28th Feb, 2016

Bhagavad Gita is the "book of life" - unfortunately rarely do people open it.  It has to be read not for its literal meaning but also need to understand the feelings, context, and the space (Chidambara) of what is said.

Like Punctuation in language, the Gita tells us where to place emphasis in life.  Where you place the emphasis is the most important aspect of life - and determines whether you are in a constant Worry mode (-ve) or in a constant Wisdom mode (+ve).  This is determined by whether we are in a constant Begging mode (-ve) or Giving mode (+ve).

Difficulty will be there is every life.  But it is up to us whether or not we chose to think that Difficulty = Suffering.  Don't PREPARE to live life; instead learn to live life.  Preparation does not have an end.

Be open to any experience - including failure - as every experience makes us, and the truth of who we actually are is revealed.

The wisdom of the Gita can be summarised through the Navagunas:  These are the individual's needs for .....

1. Security : will we achieve this in a correct manner (Dharmic) or incorrect manner?  On this depends whether we will indeed get the peace of security (fat fiance & diamond ring tale)
2. Insecurity : need for adventure and thrill (watch movie Mount Everest - was climbing it worth it?)

3. Connect to People - understanding life through relationships
4. Freedom, space for oneself

5. Contribute to people
6. Contentment

7. Vertical growth
8. Horizontal growth

Only when there is a balance between the polarities described above, will there be the 9th guna - Grace.

We should search for non-dependency.  Often we seek outside objects (either material objects, or other people) to complete ourselves, and fill in the void within us.

What we need to do?  4 aspects:

a. Prerana (first self motivate, and then try to motivate/inspire others)
b. Siksha (learning through observing - which helps develop acumen and alacrity)
c.  Lakshya (goal setting)
d. Dakshaha (living in the moment/ enjoying every moment - rather than worrying about past or future)

Mind only promises - does not deliver.  Hence we need to focus on the moment. (story of Geeth Sethi's Thai competitor who lost it in the finals)

Success alone does not bring about happiness - there needs to be a feeling of fulfillment.

Seeing the macro in the micro - that is the genuine Bhaktha quality (seeing the tree when he sees paper)

Thought is the greatest killer of man.  And all the negative thoughts come from our ego.

2 bits on Bitcoin

Summary of talk on "Disruptive Payment Technologies" given by Mr. Ninad Purohit, KPMG, at workshop organised by ISACA Mumbai on 27th Feb, 2016.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency - without a central issuing authority.  It is the most popular of the 669 virtual crypto currencies currently existing.  It was first conceptualised by a person called Satoshi in 2008.  The current value of a bitcoin is USD 147.

It offers absolute anonymity, and uses a peer to peer network (Nodes) to create this currency.

What is a Bitcoin?  It is a chain of transactions - each of which is verified by digital signatures. So if A pays B, then other peer individuals need to ratify that this payment has indeed taken place by "voting".

Unlike a traditional currency like the Rupee which is issued by a central issuring authority, the Bitcoin only exists in cyber space (no physical form exists).  Many people need to vote on a transaction and vote on it, before a bitcoin is created.  This transaction time (to vote) takes about 10 minutes per transaction.

People participating in validating the transaction (i.e. voting) have to solve a series of puzzles to authenticate it.  In return for their efforts, they get "brownie" points in terms of bitcoin.  So the process of creating bitcoins results in more bitcoins being created.

Each block of transaction get attached to a previous block of transations - hence resulting in a block chain.  Hence there is a complete history of the creation of every bitcoin - like a giant open ledger accessible to all - but yet protecting privacy as it only keeps track of transactions, and not who owns the bitcoins.

The owners of the bitcoins access their "wallet" containing bitcoins by using a Private key (like a digital password).  The peer group validates that the person owns it by using a Public key.  If a owner loses his Private key (e.g. when formatting his computer drive), he will lose all his bitcoins. Interestingly, if a certain number of bitcoins get lost or deleted, the value of the remaining bitcoins goes up.

The transaction fee earned for generating bitcoins halves every 4 years.  The year 2041 is a significant year as the maximum amount of bitcoins (21 million) will be reached in that year.

Bitcoins are increasingly used to make online payments and is being accepted by an increasing number of online retailers - and the chances of fraud is much lower than that for currency issued by central authorities.

Risk :  The following are the risks or fraud possibilities of bitcoins.

- Double spend : where a owner of bitcoins tries to use the same currency to make payments to 2 different people simultaneously.  When he does that, the person with the longer transaction chain gets the bitcoins, and the other person gets cheated.  Hence only believe in a transaction when the bitcoin actually gets credited into a wallet.

- Hot wallet attack : a malicious attack to steak the private keys of an individual - and hence steal his bitcoins.  To protect their wealth, many individuals stock the bulk of their bitcoin assets in "cold wallets" which are offline.  They take a paper print out of these cold wallets and keep it in an offline safe place such as a bank locker.  One needs to be careful of taking back-ups of hot wallets (online) as restoring the back-up could result in the more recent transactions getting deleted and the owner losing his bitcoins.

Bed Mates

At a corporate conference recently, delegates were put up two to a room.  The person with whom I shared the room was a young, serious looking chap.

We entered our alloted room and realised that it contained only 1 queen sized bed, and we will need to share the bed for the night.

"So we are bed mates for the night, eh?" I observed.

My room mate gave me a very confused wary look. .

"Which side of the bed will you like to sleep on?" I asked him.

"The right side" he replied hesitantly.

"Oh, that is the side that my wife normally sleeps on - but of course this time it is you" I remarked with a smile.

"You can go to sleep first.  I will sleep later" he replied.

At about 2 am I woke up with my heart pounding to the sound of a concrete mixer roaring in my ears. 

About an hour later, the concrete mixer transformed into a couple of fighter planes taking off and then repeatedly bombing the enemy with hundreds of nuclear bombs.

At about 5 am, the fighter planes stopped bombing and mysteriously transformed into a bus which was having a serious starting problem.

At about 6 am, my bed-mate finally stopped snoring, and I could snatch some much needed sleep.

I was woken up half an hour later by the sound of my bed-mate humming a merry tune.  He was already up and about - and was looking really fresh from his good nights sleep.

"Did you sleep well?" I asked my bed-mate trying to make my voice drip with sarcasm.

"Unfortunately I could not sleep a wink - you were snoring too loudly" he replied.

My fantastic School Whatsapp support group

I am part of a hyper-active school alumni Whatsapp group.

One of them mentioned on the group the best way to manage expectations about the wedding anniversary gift.  It goes like this:
*           *           *           *

You ask the wife : "What do you want for our wedding anniversary?"
The Wife replies: "Give me a Ring"

And then you give her a ring from the landline or from a Mobile.

*           *           *           *
I thought it was a good way to manage the upcoming wedding anniversary and tried it on my wife today morning.

The "ringing" sound of the knock I got on the head is still ringing in my ears.

I mentioned to the whatsapp group not to give any more such dangerous suggestions.

They have very helpfully sent me the link to the new help-line set up by the police for victims of domestic violence.

JNU, Valentines, and Siya's Ram

I dread the approaching Valentines day.

"You know my friend M... - her husband has gifted her a new Apple iPhone" said my wife thrusting a facebook photo of her friend triumphantly flaunting her new Valentine's day trophy.

I tried my best to look disinterested, and said "yeah, those things are so cheap in the US".

"Somebody is being cheap here" she countered, which I cleverly pretended not to hear.

"And look at this - my other friend from Dubai has got a jewellery necklace for Valentines" she continued.  "And it looks so much like the necklace that Ram wears in "Siya Ke Ram" serial" she said.

Now I break into a cold sweat whenever Siya Ke Ram is playing on TV - every hero in that serial seems to be weighed down with massive jewellery pieces that will need really strong neck muscles to support - the reason why it is necessary for any hero nowadays to be a weight lifter if he needs a role in a mythology serial.

Everytime a hero wears a new jewellery piece (they seem to have an inexhaustible source of heavy jewellery every night), my wife will go "ooh la la" and look at me accusingly from the corner of her eye.

I had enough of this stress so I decided to start a support group on facebook to fight this dangerous trend which has been started by "Siya Ke Ram".

I decided to call this group Jewellery Neendh Udaaye (Jewellery causes sleeplessness) or JNU for short.  So that my wife does not know about it, I go to a coffee shop, post it on facebook, and then tagged all my friends to support me on this JNU movement.  I wanted to unite all us practical husbands and correct the falsehood spread by all the paid media about the virtues of gold, and unleash a revolution against this hated metal.

I then eagerly awaited the "Likes" and comments to my post.

Comment No:1 was my friend Guru.  He wrote : "this JNU movement is a conspiracy of communists like you to descredit the noble values of Lord Rama, and people like you will go to hell".

Comment No:2 came immediately from Comrade Madan (who claims he is a neutral party) who retorted :"I am getting sick of desh bhakts like you who push up TRP ratings for useless TV serials like Siya Ke Ram through publishing such JNU posts.  You are a chaddi communalist and should be ashamed of yourself". Molotov Madan they call him.

Comment no. 50 was from my wife.  She "likes" and comments on my facebook post :"Do you want dinner today?".

I quickly delete my facebook post with all its comments and head for the nearest jewellery store. You see, while I may not be Sita's Ram, in school I was known as "Survivor Ram".