Yama

Published on 6th September, 2019, in Economic Times Shiva is called the destroyer because he destroys our desire--Kama, and he destroys death itself--Yama. Kama is associated with life, and Yama with death. Shiva destroys both the desire for life and the fear of death and thus he is the god of liberation or ‘moksha’. Imagine a world where we don’t have to do anything, and we don’t want anything, where there are no aspirations or obligations. Then we create Kailash, abode of Shiva, a world without wants or needs. When we live like Shiva without any wants and needs, we have no desire for wealth ..

Published on 7th April, 2019, in Mid-day. Elections are a time to express desire, while the time in between is to face our destiny. For the arrow of our desire creates the noose of our destiny. In Hindu mythology, desire and destiny are the two principles governing all life. Desire propels action; action creates reaction; and reaction creates the circumstances we experience from which we cannot escape. In other words, desire eventually creates destiny. Desire emerges with the transformation of a non-living object into a living organism that experiences hunger, thirst, yearning and longing. If there was no hunger or thirst, there would not be ..

Published on 30th December, 2018, in Mid-day. The story of Nachiketa comes from the Upanishads, so from 2,500 years ago, essentially, belonging to a period in history when the theories of karma, rebirth and liberation, were being slowly consolidated in the Indian subcontinent. Nachiketa was a young boy who observed his father donating cows to secure himself a place in heaven. However, his father had cows that were old and could not bear calves and give milk. Nachiketa felt that if his father kept offering such mediocre cows as donations, he would never get a place in heaven. In his innocence, Nachiketa asked his father ..

Published on 17th November, 2018, in Mid-day. In Buddhist and Hindu mythology, birth from the female body brought one into the circle of life and death, or samsara. So, the womb-born, or yonija, experience birth as well as death. Ram is born from the womb of Kaushalya, Krishna is born from the womb of Devaki, and, therefore, both of them experience death. In Puranic literature, we come across the concept of ayonija, someone who is not born from the womb, and consequently, is able to bypass or rise above the cycle of birth and death. The story of Ganesha is a case in point. Ganesha ..

Published on 18th March, 2018, in Mumbai Mirror. When a young Adi Shankaracharya asked permission to become a monk 1,200 years ago, his widowed mother gave her assent reluctantly, but with one caveat, that he would perform her funeral rituals. As a Hindu monk, one is technically dead. The ritual of becoming a Hindu monk involves performing funeral rites of the living person who then gives up all ties to the former life, takes on a new name and is born as a sanyasi, with his guru as his new parent. So technically, Adi Shankaracharya’s mother was asking him to come back from the dead. ..

Published on 18th February, 2018, in Mid-day. As an Odia child raised in Mumbai, I am often asked about my roots. My parents told me we belong to the 'karana' caste. No one in Mumbai had heard of this caste. Later, I learned that karana caste is what is known as karanam in Andhra Pradesh, kayastha in the Gangetic plains and Bengal, and as prabhu in Maharashtra. This is a jati of people who served kings as scribes, bureaucrats and accountants, who went on to become influential courtiers and landowners. While Pattanaik and Mohanty are common karana surnames in Odisha, in the Gangetic plains there ..