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Einstein, Viktor Frankl, and the Sufi on the Meaning of Life

  “Between the stimulus and response, there is a space and in that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth .” Having survived the concentration camps during World War II, Viktor Frankl wrote his renowned book Man’s Search for Meaning in 1946. He asks the fundamental question “What is the meaning of life ?”   The answer, he says, does not lie in theories on life or in meditative thoughts. The meaning is crafted by our conduct. When we ask what life expects from us rather than what we expect from life, we

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The Where and When of Tolerance

The highest result of education is tolerance. – Hellen Keller Tolerance (tolerantia in latin) means to bear a burden, put up with, endure, forebear, allow to exist. It is considered a virtue, a moral obligation which involves respect and consideration for the other person. “ Free from bigotry, allowing different races, religions, practices, and opinions to co-exist, it is a pragmatic formula for the functioning of society, ” writes Hans Oberdiek in his wholesome book Tolerance: Forbearance and Acceptance A century ago, Einstein, in foresight said : “ Laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man

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The Companions of the Ark

Ten generations after Adam, the Earth was corrupt, filled with violence. Evil spread more than ever. Humankind believed in idols who were busy building their fortune; religion was deviated and truth was twisted. Wanting to stop this dark course, God chose a righteous man, Noah, to guide people to the right path. Noah called people to partake in true knowledge, and warned them against the coming evil. A few among them heeded, while others did not want to believe that Noah was the messenger of God who spoke the truth. They mocked him and even tried persecute him. God saw

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Dismissing Jealousy in Exchange for Joy and Self-Mastery

  “Possession is nine tenths of the law” used to say my honorable teacher at university. Years later, I came across this exceptional book, Overcoming Jealousy, the best one I have read on the prominent urge to possess and the displays of jealousy in us humans. Thoroughly illuminating this hidden emotion, it renders it both accessible and palpable while showing efficient ways to deal with it through examples drawn from real life. An intricate emotion which we do not want to attribute to ourselves, and prefer to not talk about to avoid kindling the feelings of shame, distress, and sorrow.

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Living Through the Passage of Time

  “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” says author Annie Dillard. Goethe, meticulous about the passage of time reflects:  “Every second is of infinite value”  for one who captures it. Seneca states that what we do each day figures the meaning of our life and calibrates the “relative” passage of time. He says, “ Life, if lived well, is long enough, ” and one can depart with a sense of contentment. In his renown work, Divine Comedy, Dante vividly alludes to the consequences of our conduct in life, as to how they determine

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The Wheel of Time

  In the pious wheel of time, Persephonē  Περσεφόνη, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter represents the gush of spring when seeds sprout from the ground and the earth blooms in abundance. Holding a sheaf of wheat in her hand, she is identified as the spring goddess in Greek mythology. Plato calls her Pherepapha (Φερέπαφα) in his Cratylus because “she is wise and touches that which is in motion”. Persephone was the only daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest and all the vegetation on earth. At a young age, she was abducted by Hades, who desired her to be his wife.

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What Happens After We Die?

  “When you die, you actually know you are dead because your consciousness continues to exist …” says Sam Parnia, director of the first critical care and resuscitation research lab in the world at New York’s NYU Langone Medical Center. Known with his AWARE research, his lab has been studying hundreds of people who had Near-Death Experience (NDE) – who were clinically dead but were brought back to life by resuscitation after a cardiac arrest. The time lapse in-between actual death and coming back to life varied in each case from a few seconds to more than 20 minutes .

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The Intelligent Life in the Forest

Peter Wohlleben, forester and the author of international bestseller The Hidden Life of Trees writes: “Our need of nature is an integral part of our humanity,” and “the bond that unites us with nature is never broken.” He recounts how he discovered this bond hidden in him at a time when he was working to optimize the forestry output for the lumber industry, and trees were nothing more than profitable commodities for him.  He recounts: One day, as I was doing my daily job across the forest, I stumbled over an old tree stump. When I examined the chunk of wood covering the

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Harmonices Mundi

  There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres. Pythagoras (circa 570 BC), the wise philosopher and polymath put forth that the universe as a whole was composed of harmony and numbers. The planets and stars move according to mathematical equations, their movements correspond to musical notes and that the Sun, Moon and planets all emit their own unique hum based on their orbital revolving. Their orbital resonance generates an inaudible symphony which he called Musica Universalis —music of the universe.   The seventeenth century astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), inspired and intrigued

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Cruising Life

A most asked question in the history of humanity is  “What is the meaning of life? What are we doing here?” For some, the meaning is finding food and shelter, for others it is success in work or a happy settlement, and for another, it is living on the impulse –seeking pleasure whatever that signifies individually (for example, going across town for the chocolate that I particularly like instead of finishing an important job for me and others, or perpetual travelling for somebody else who otherwise becomes restless and meaningless at home, seeking to supplant meaning by buying another house

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