Information

[Ravi Mayavaram]

namaste

I wanted to write this mail for last one month, I thought I will write
once things are certain.

I have got a job in Computational Mechanics Company at Austin. This
company was owned by Prof. Oden (UT Austin) but now it is a subsidiary
of Altair. I have not yet completed my Ph.D, but I am taking the 1
year practical training option and going to do the Ph.D part time. I
got my EAD (Employment Authorization Document) yesterday and I am
going to work from tomorrow. I will be working on modelling fluid
mechanics and heat transfer problems.

Advaita-L will not be affected by this move very much. I am still a
student at A & M and still have the accounts here. This will be the
case for a year from now. As of now my friend shrii Govind Rengarajan,
who is also on the list, has agreed to help me in maintaining the list.
Soon I will be able to do that from my new workplace.

For another two weeks I may have to travel daily from College station
to Austin (110 miles one way). I apologize in advance for the delays
in my reply.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Ravi Mayavaram                                            msr at tamu.edu
======================================================================
Dept. of Mech. Engg.                    4110 College Main Street
312, ENPH Teaching Wing                 Apt. 78
College Station, TX 77843-3123          Bryan, TX 77801
(409) 862 4037                          (409) 846 8578
======================================================================
namaste astu bhagavan.h vishveshvaraaya mahaadevaaya tryaMbakaaya
tripuraantakaaya trikaagni-kaalaaya kaalaagnirudraaya
niilakaNThaaya mrutyu.njayaaya sarveshvaraaya
sadaashivaaya shriimanmahaadevaaya namaH
                                 shrii rudram

>From  Tue Sep 30 11:31:14 1997
Message-Id: <TUE.30.SEP.1997.113114.0400.>
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 11:31:14 -0400
Reply-To: chandran at tidalwave.net
To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
From: Ram Chandran <chandran at TIDALWAVE.NET>
Organization: Personal
Subject: Tolerance Toward Other Religious View Points
Comments: To: ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Tolerance Toward Other Religious View Points

        Religious tolerance is the best strategy to avoid making mistakes.  It
is a sign of maturity and not a sign of weakness. Religions just like
languages are nothing more than a communication medium.  Language is a
communication medium between people and Religion is a communication
medium between human and God.  The existence of many languages and
religions illustrate individual human preferences!  The question: "Which
religion is right?" is similar to asking? : "Which language is right?"
The world consists of many religions, languages, people, culture,
traditions, beliefs, color, geography, animals, birds, insects, trees,
mountains, rivers. We are fortunate to live in a diversified and a
challenging world than a monotonous boring world.  The self-realization
is nothing more than accepting the world as it is and adopts us to this
reality.  An expression of intolerance shows ignorance and lacks of
consideration.
        Happiness, forgiveness, goodness and kindness are the gifts of God
embodied in true human nature.  The purpose of Satsang is to awaken the
divinity within us and remove prejudice and bias.  Our inborn nature is
divine and we can witness our true nature by looking at a new born
child.  The child accepts everything given and looks for human contact
at every opportune moment.   The mother of the child gets back her
inborn divinity and showers the child with infinite love and kindness.
Children bring back the forgotten memory and we are able to exhibit
enormous generosity, kindness, tolerance and understanding while dealing
with our children.  We enjoy their speeches and forgive their mistakes
and mispronunciations.  Birds, animals, flowers and trees who do not
have memory exhibit divinity all the time.  Nature is God's creation and
we are responsible for the creation of intolerance, impatience and
misery.   We are responsible for our own pitfalls and downfalls.  It is
time that we regain our memory and divinity.
        Positive mental attitude is the God given virtue.  Negative attitude is
human creation.  According to Advaita, Self-realization requires
abandonment of negative human creations! Tolerance toward other
viewpoints is just a favor to our-self.  When we accuse others, we are
the sufferers and not those who are accused!  When we learn to accept
other viewpoints, we learn to become happy.  Politeness can never hurt
us and rudeness will never help us.  Rudeness is an expression of the
agitated mind and divinity will disappear from our heart and soul.
Duality will prevail as long we engage our mind in creating negative
attitudes.  Momentarily, mind starts the cycle of evaluation between the
opposites -  good and evil, joys and sorrow, sweet and bitter, love and
hate, giving and begging, right and wrong, action and inaction, like and
dislike, tolerance and rude, polite and crude, respect and disrespect,
clean and dirty, truthful and untruthful, honest and dishonest, moral
and immoral, ethical and unethical, etc.  When we realize pitfalls of
our own creation, we can understand our true nature and the divinity
within us.  The question of you, me, he, she and they will disappear and
we can the thread that binds all of us.
        Religious scriptures signify TRUTH in different forms using different
formulas.   According to Advaita, Truth and the Knower of the Truth are
the same.  When we agree with this framework there, can be no
observations.  Observations require creation and they have no place in
Advaitic Philosophy. When we eat an apple, it is a divine experience and
tastes, textures, quality, etc. come from human creation. Adi  Sankara
who understood the fallacies of human creations and declared that
"creation is an illusion."  Conflicts and duality come from  illusory
mind which projects intolerance and rudeness.  With the absence of
illusory mind, serenity and divinity prevail in oceans, rivers,
mountains, sky, stars, trees, animals, birds and insects.  The universe
is always peaceful and serene and what right do we have to disturb the
peace with our intolerent and crude expressions?