What should not be sold?

There is a very interesting program relayed on DD chandana on every sunday at 9:30 AM.

The intent of the program ofcourse is to help us understand , what the ancient vedas state and how over a period of time as tradition, we have totally changed the application of these concepts and how these have become meaningless now.

The presenter is a Veda expert by name Sudakara Sharma.

One of the interesting things he mentioned recently in one of the episodes was - What are the things which Vedas say should not be sold.

There are three things which Vedas say one should not sell. Firstly "Anna"   - Anna translates to food. Secondly "Oushada" - Medicine and thirdly " Vidya" - Education.
Because these are so essential for the society, selling them will bring in imbalance in society was the thought process. So how would somebody get one of these if they dont have it. All of these are to be shared, shared from one who has abundance of it with the one who does not , and not to be sold.

Today, all three of these have become bigger industrial areas - Food is no more food alone, its a complete industry in itself. Education in India is a business, every school has its own rules about how much donation the child's parents should pay. Thirdly, Medicine, this is now a booming industry with a lot of the people moving to higher per ca pita income, medicine and medical facilities are as important today as food.

Although we have gone so far that it would almost be impossible to get us to a situation of not have these three sold, it goes on to show the high thinking expressed in Vedas. By probably studying it , we will be more wiser humans than studying the current curriculum which is more fact based.

If you can make out time and get the TV's appointment for this time on Sunday and if you can understand Kannada, do not miss watching this 30 minutes program. Another interesting program relayed after this is again based on Vedas and Upanishads in the form of smaller stories from Indian history. This starts at 10.00 AM on Doordarshan National .
 

Where god's presence is felt

Usually my travels include places which will have religious importance, architectural importance, a river close by. Reason for such choice is my family.It  includes my parents , my sister's kids and us - basically the old, young and the middle aged. So to satisfy all the sections we end up choosing places which have something for all of us.

In all such travels in the last few years, what I have observed is that there are smaller places close by to the main place which are much better and enjoyable than the actual place itself.

Here are some examples
Tirupati , Tirumala
The name of Tirupati takes one back to thoughts of  the long and lengthy queues, the hot weather and lots of people with hardly any peace for mind, sometimes making you wonder - "I am soaked in sweat and I will feel Godliness once I reach the sanctum of Balaji ".  So our usual journey included the traditional visit to Tirupati, the lower temples of alamelu Mangapura,a Papanasanam . But on our second day we headed to a place called "Applaayakunte", this was not more than 40kms from the main Tirumala. Here we found the real peace, the drive itself was wonderful in the midst of paddy fields with the view of how the seven hills look like Sesha - the snake on which Lord Vishnu rests . Once we reached there , unlike the hot weather we had lived with so far, this place had cool breeze and the sculpture of Lord Venkateswara was also beautiful and so huge.Not just this , the water from the well was very sweet , most of all there were far less people and the ones who were there were a lot sweeter.

Mantralaya
Second in such experience is Mantralaya. Good thing about Mantralaya is , it has lesser crowd compared to places like Tirupati. We enjoyed the river on the first day, but were really upset after seeing that the sewage was let into the same river not too far from temple. So we decided not to goto the river the second day. On the second day, after the darshan of Raghavendra Swamy's Brindavana, we headed to cross the river Tungbhadra in a coracle and visit Panchamukhi Anjaneya. We visited another place called Bichhali, this was the most serene place and as the story goes, Raghavendra Swami's disciple used to come here for meditation. Apparently, the place has a lot of Nagarakallu - snakes carved on stone and worshipped. Place is famous to have had very frequent snake visits.
The places was serene and the river's flow was aggressive. So visit to Bichhali made our visit to Mantralyam more memorable.

Udupi
Udupi is known for the Krishna Matha and is a hub for the various dwaitha matha  Matas.The main city of the Udupi was very hot since we went in early may. Here we went to a place called Pajaka Kshetra which is the birth place of SrimadvaCharya. The place was about 15 kms from Udupi.This place again was very serene and scenic.

We usually goto religious places to get a divine place and reach out to the divine energy.But sometimes, we cannot get the real peace we need and we believe we get when we reach the sanctum because of the now common long queues for darshan . But In all the smaller places the biggest difference from the main place is the number of people. The reality is that when with nature, man feels the presence of god more than in the actual temples.