Empathy is a universal emotion, which is why people cry over suffering in books, stories and movies (even those about animals). Suffering at an epic scale as in a war or in the bombing of cities is rationalized by the mind as something over which no one has control. Despite…

The chimpanzee and the human have similar sensory capacities, but why can some humans do science or poetry and chimps apparently can’t? If truth be told, the memory of chimps is far superior to that of humans as revealed in the famous study on a chimpanzee named Ayumu at the…

The Russians see the war in Ukraine as their response to the attempted expansion of NATO to their borders. They feel that security considerations demand that they must thwart the expansion at all costs. But there is another angle to the war. A couple of weeks ago, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry…

Hinduism describes the nature of the outer and inner realities and instructs on ways to obtain self-knowledge. The formal name of Hinduism is Sanātana Dharma (Eternal or Universal Law) and its oldest text is the Ṛgveda. …

I There is an acute observation in ancient Indian Yoga texts that the ordinary state of the human is that of the paśu (Latin pecu, “domesticated animal”; pecūnia, “wealth” is by semantic extension from “live-stock”). The mark of the domestication of the animal is that in spite of strength it…

I When words are overused, they become debased. One must then go back to the roots of the words to reconnect to the original meanings, or bring older words back into circulation. For last year’s words belong to last year’s language And next year’s words await another voice. ― T.S…

This is my continuing conversation with Dr Abhinav Gautam; the first part is here: https://subhashkak.medium.com/a-conversation-with-abhinav-gautam-b0e53a962617 Me: What are your views on what is health? Does maintenance of good health require special work by the individual? Or should we look at it from a holistic ecological perspective. Abhinav Gautam: Good health…

This brief essay is to make a case for learning Sanskrit, not just by Indians, but by young and old everywhere, and not just at school, but also as part of self-discovery. There are some misconceptions about Sanskrit such as it is for use only in religious worship, and it…

The Brahmic view is seeing the world through a unique lens with the central idea of universal consciousness that is within each and yet transcends. In Sanskrit, this transcending reality is called (brahma, ब्रह्म). If you haven’t come across “Brahmic” before (excepting for scripts derived from ancient India’s Brāhmī script)…