Hindu Nectar: Spiritual Wanderings in India

Welcome to Maharaas. Where life, love, play and meditation become one. ⚡️ #KanhaRadhe #DhyanLeela #Maharaas #RadhaKrishna #DivinePlay #Meditation #RadhaKrishnaQuotes #SpiritualJourney #dhyanwithdamini

महारास ध्यान मस्ती शुरू !

आकांक्षा का ध्यान ज्ञान, डायलॉग बाज़ी और एनीमेशन का मिश्रण, राधे और कान्हा जिसके सूत्रधार!

Welcome to Maharaas. Where life, love, play and meditation become one. ⚡️ #KanhaRadhe #DhyanLeela #Maharaas #RadhaKrishna #DivinePlay #Meditation #RadhaKrishnaQuotes #SpiritualJourney #dhyanwithdamini

Meditation Myth Buster | Lesson 101 | Is Meditation Relaxation? | The Unconscious Mind

#MythBuster #Meditation

So, what IS meditation?

In the Meditation market you will find meditation being sold as instant bliss and relaxation. Promises of healing in one workshop, or in five sessions. Most people use the word Meditation to mean they need to relax. But, is Meditation RELAXATION?

What about the anger, the pain, the loneliness, the fears that emerge as we start meditating - IF we are sincerely meditating?

What about our UNCONSCIOUS MIND? How do we deal with it?
Does it trouble non-meditators too?

Meditation needs courage. And before courage, it needs CLARITY.

A very important 7 min clip from our live session on 15th September 2024. Do watch. And do please SHARE.

In the meditation bazaar, this is LESSON 101.

Meditation Myth Buster | Lesson 101 | Is Meditation Relaxation? | The Unconscious Mind 00:00 What IS meditation? 00:36 The Structure of The Mind 03:18 Does the Unconscious pop up, even if we don't Meditate? 03:48 No Insta Bliss 04:08 Long Term ...

How can we be in Union, Yog, with the Absolute, - Sat Chit Ananda - if our heart is not brimming with joy, optimism, the sparks, the rasa, the delight of Life! Hmm?!

Join me as we explore Maitri, friendliness, diving into the joy of the heart, via some of my fav meditations from the amazing #vijnanabhairavatantra !

All this and more at the one and only #mysuruyogautsava 2023 organised by #indicayoga !

#yogapractice
#mysore
#meditation
#MindfulnessJourney

The INDIAN ART of KEEPING THINGS SWEET | Sugar | Slavery | Colonialism | Second World War

The Indian Art of Keeping Things Sweet : A Short Film by Akanksha Damini Joshi

This 22 minute film is intimate history mapped onto history, as we read in books.

It's family history of a Kayastha family from Bihar.

It is a history of :

Chai & Chini ,
Princely States & Indian Capitalism,
World War II & Colonialism,
Tehzeeb & Zamindari,
Law & Diplomacy,
International Trade & Entrepreneurship

With a list of historical characters, who are the who's who of the Modern Indian freedom struggle.

Chittaranjan Das & Rajendra Prasad Motilal Nehru &
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

All connected to one family.

Aseem is a scholar of economics , ecology and philosophy and a practitioner of yoga & meditation, a teacher who becomes a life co-traveler for his many students.

Once you experience this film you will see how the traditions of keeping differences and still managing peace, is embedded in families and cultures that were grounded in our soil and soul.

We in this subcontinent are not about this way or the highway, with us or against us, left or right , woke or work, we are about both and more.

We need to understand these cultures to negotiate life and history, now and forever.

Because these principles of life are timeless.

The link :
https://youtu.be/3Ek4J_8FBUs

A story of SUGAR. A story of COLONIAL ENTERPRISE. A story from the SECOND WORLD WAR.

In a candid conversation with Dr. Aseem Shrivastava - an acclaimed professor of environmental economics & philosophy - we hear a rich multilayered story from his family history spanning nearly 100 years, mid 1800s to mid 1900s: a time of great transition in global history.

Starting from the mid 1800s in #bhojpur, #bihar, when his great great grandfather was the Dewan of the Maharaja of Dumraon, one of India's princely states.

Moving to the late 1800's where his great grandfather was gifted 15,000 acres in Burma , now, Myanmar to make ... a Sugar Factory designed by a Dutch Chemist from Java ... all this moving onto the backdrop of the Second World War, where the Japanese, British & the Indian National Army finds itself in the war theatre of Burma.

Why Sugar?
What is its connection with #slavery in American and British colonies?

Why Burma?
What is its connection with Bhojpur, Bihar?

What happened in the London Tea Rooms?

What does this have to do with Chittaranjan Das - the freedom fighter
Rajendra Prasad - India's first President
Motilal Nehru - father of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru ?

What happened to the Sugar factory during the Second World War?

And what in the world does it all have to do with the Indian Art of ... Keeping things Sweet?! 😊

WATCH. And Keep things SWEET !

#colonisation #decolonisation #sugar #sugarcane #secondworldwar #Japan #indiannationalarmy #indiandiplomacy #india #bhojpuri #arrah
#slavery #amercia #salveryinamerica #bhojpuris #subhashchandrabose

The INDIAN ART of KEEPING THINGS SWEET | Sugar | Slavery | Colonialism | Second World War THE INDIAN ART of KEEPING THINGS SWEET --A story of SUGAR. A story of COLONIAL ENTERPRISE. A story from the SECOND WORLD WAR. --In a candid conversation with...

#NineNightsOfTheGoddess

Goddess reveals herself, not in the day, but at night.
Darkness is her playground. For she is the ultimate feminine.
In her, dissolves. Through her, is birthed. The Absolute.

One of my most beloved Goddess, #Chinnamasta.
Standing on top of desire, the copulating Rati and Kama.
She severs her own head.
And shares her primal blood, her energy with her friends,
and yes, even the smiling severed head!

If you look, beyond what is seen. You realise.

In various streams of the Indian thought,
head represents the ego.
The ultimate belief in I ME MYSELF.

The #me, with my likes, dislikes
The me with philias, my phobias
The me with my expectations
The me with my wounds
The me with my wants

The me, mechanical. The me, programmed.
Into patterns of thought and behaviour.
From lives upon lives.

These programs running the show.

Chinnamasta, shatters it all. She is transformative power. Raw.
Not theory, not books, not intellectual concepts … no.
She is a sudden … clash of lightening. A sudden storm.
A moment before which that you were, and now are gone.

Chinna - decapitating. Masta - head.
Making one headless ie, shattering all our identities.

She laughs.
You think you are your body? HaH!
You think you are your senses? HaH!
You think you are your possessions,
Your relations, your friends,
Your joy, your sorrow, your victory, your defeat?
Your age, your gender,
Your ideology, your theories,
Your religion, your sexuality?
You think you are what you #think?! HAH! HAH! HAH!

Ma Chinnamasta is the state of being Total. Of being Present.
And presence is always in the eternal, infinite.
It INCLUDES all the above, but is NOT CONFINED to them.

It’s a Revelation ... Delicate. Intricate. Artistic.
Rejecting nothing. Yet, embracing everything.

It’s feminine.
Belonging to that time of the night.
When all senses, all minds, all bodies,
All little identities … rest into the loving womb of the Goddess.

These nights.
May we be blessed with a glimpse of the mother’s love.
May we have the courage to feel her love,
that exists not in cajoling,
in pampering the ego but in destroying it.

She is after all, Ma Chinna-masta.

Jai Ma! 🙂

Prayers & Love 💕
#AkankshaDaminiJoshi

#TheSixEnemies #AncestorPrayers #India

Her grandpa had died that morning. His body lay there. He had been an extremely talented, but an equally bitter man all his life. Bitter for the pain his relations and life had offered to him. He would hardly smile.

All he did was to shout at people like her, those he loved: "Do this, do that. This is wrong, wrong, wrong." All good intentions, but his expression negative. With age, his bitterness and anger had transformed into physical frailty, pain. And then, death had come.

That morning. As his lifeless body lay there. There was no anger. No shouting. No right, wrong. Not even pain. In him. But she? She, who had heard him, respected him, loved him as a child? She was shouting at someone on the phone. The same tone, the same bitterness, the same anger.

As I heard her authoritative voice, full of anger, booming, it struck me like a thunderbolt: her grandpa was no longer alive, but his anger and pain was glowing, as if it had found another life.

--

Our ancestors died. Their life journeys completed. But their attitudes carry on, in us. Of course, the good, the loving, the kind. But also, the not-so-good. Creating vicious cycles of pain upon pain upon pain.

Desire, Anger, Greed, Arrogance, Delusion, Jealousy
(Kama, Krodha, Lobha, Mada, Moha, Matsarya)

The #ShadRipu, the six enemies.

Each person who is living, who has ever lived, or shall ever live in this world has a combination of these traits with one predominant quality. Our ancestors had it. So do we.

--

This full moon, as many of us in India step into a phase of remembering our #ancestors, it will be a good to do the rituals, of course. But also.

It may be sensible to give the external rituals an inner meaning by looking at our lives and identifying which of these six enemies that possessed our ancestors are continuing possess us, making our lives and the lives of our future generations trapped in the same circle. Round and Round.

This Pitr Paksh moon cycle it may be good to pray for our ancestors AND pray for ourselves, by umm... as they say in pandemic times - Breaking the Chain!

With prayers,
Akanksha Damini Joshi

#PitrPaksh #AncestorRemembrance #Prayers #ShraadhPaksh
#BreakTheChain