Vethathiri Maharishi

In a world flooded with gurus who claim they are Gods, here's one with a difference.
He is Vetathiri Maharsishi.
You can find more about him in the Web Site:
http://vethathiri.org

Bookless in Churchgate

Our politicians have a queer way of doing things. Some of them in Mumbai want to turn the city into a Shanghai. Of course, it is a difficult task - cutting red tape, etc. But there is also an easy way out - arrest beggars, evict slumdwellers, chase away pavement shops... the list can go on and on.
Some of the victims have been the booksellers on the pavements. Especially near Churchgate. They thought the books made the pavements look ugly (target Shanghai, remember?) So, they threw the booksellers along with the 'useless' books out.
The Times of India has an article about this by Jerry Pinto. Here it is:

JERRY PINTO

It is a matter of public record that the oldest book published in India in the Heras library at St Xavier’s College was found on the streets. It is the account of the imprisonment of a French officer in the reign of Tipu Sultan and it was bought off the streets by the enterprising Father Henry Heras sj, Spanish Jesuit and Indologist extraordinaire.
This is only one of the smallest ways in which the booksellers on the
streets have enriched the public and intellectual life of the city. When we were disbanding the PEN office, hundreds of books went to libraries and institutions across the city. The rest were in safe hands, we knew, for as one of our members put
it, “They’ll end up on the streets around Churchgate and the people who want them will get them.’’
Part of the joy of the downtown area was the stroll out of Churchgate into a vast open-air library. Here medical students bargained for marked down copies of Gray’s Anatomy and secretaries hired romantic fiction, paying an average of Rs 50 for a book, forty of which would be refunded on the safe return of the book. That’s where I bought 17 volumes of Sir Richard Burton’s translation of The Arabian Nights (11 volumes and six supplementary volumes), in faux leather and gold, one of my proudest possessions. That’s where I got talking to Kamleshbhai who could look at my list of Camus and tell me which ones I hadn’t got. Any book lover in the city can tell you of similar experiences.
And now they are gone.
This is part of the class war that the state of Maharashtra has been waging on its citizens for the past months. The demolition of the slums cannot be equated to the removal of the booksellers at Churchgate but it is part of a pattern. You know what the pattern is. In its attempt to transform Mumbai into Singapore or Shanghai, the State has decided to wage war against the poor, against anything that does not fit into the cosmetic pattern of the international city. Of course, Singapore is one of the developing nations and Mumbai is part of one of the poorest nations, but the State isn’t going to let a fact like that stand in its way.
Perhaps it is best to see the city as a dictatorship masked as a democracy. It is all very well for politicians of the ruling party to say on camera that Mumbai would collapse in two hours without its slum dwellers. It is another thing to put that into action and create a situation in which the city and the slums co-exist until the slums can be replaced by low-cost housing. It is all very well for us to prate of our glorious heritage and our respect for learning but of course, the State can neither give us a public library to which we could all go nor will it allow the spirit of entrepreneurship to create ad hoc libraries on the pavements.
The Churchgate booksellers cannot be treated like other hawkers. Where the government has made provision for markets, it has not provided for public libraries. In the absence of such libraries, these pavement booksellers are the common person’s only source of affordable books.
This is the age of the market. It is for the market that we have demolished slums. It is for the market that we have cleared the pavements of the booksellers. Not only must we spend our money recklessly, foolishly, but we must spend it so that it goes back into the market. The pavement booksellers were not part of it. They paid the price for their subversion of our new tinpot god.

J Krishnamurti on religious men

A religious man is not really one who puts on a robe or a loincloth, or has taken innumerable vows to be this and not be that, but is he who is inwardly simple, who is not becoming anything. Such a mind is capable of extraordinary receptivity, because there is no barrier, there is no fear, there is no going towards something; therefore it is capable of receiving grace, God, Truth or what you will.


J. Krishnamurti

Body is the Temple - Osho

“The body is the temple, it is the shrine; god lives in it. It has to be respected... it is sacred. But the religions in the past have condemned it very much. Because of their condemnation man has become split; they have created a conflict in man's being. They have conditioned humanity to think that the body is the enemy -- one has to fight with it, one has to crush it -- that the body is the barrier between you and god. This is utter nonsense. The body is the bridge, not the barrier. It is god's creation. How can it be against god? God has chosen it to live in as consciousness. It's god's play.

Because of these teachings -- utterly false -- man has become almost identified with the mind, and the body has become, slowly slowly, insensitive. Man has become afraid of the body too. Because of the fear, the body has lost its joy, its celebration; it has become thick. And because of the fear, the body lives only at the minimum. The mind does not allow it to dance at the maximum, and only at the maximum dance of the body does the meeting with god happen.

I am all for the body, I am all for the earth. The earth is divine, the body is divine. And we have to search for god, not against the earth but through the earth. The earth has to be used as a passage and the body has to be used as a ladder. Once this is understood, life is no more a struggle. Then it is a dance. The consciousness and the body can dance together, hand in hand, and slowly slowly that great synthesis arises where consciousness and body are not two things but two aspects of one energy. That is the state of realisation, of enlightenment.

And the priests of all the religions have taught it; it is one of their trade secrets. Once a man is in conflict with his body he can never be happy, and when he is not happy he is in the hands of the priests. Only unhappy people go to the temples, to the mosque, to the church, and only unhappy people think of after-life. Only unhappy people think of, create, paradises in their imagination. Only unhappy people can be persuaded to sacrifice their lives for foolish goals. So the basic secret of the priests' power over man is to make man unhappy. And this is the only way to make man unhappy -- to create a division between the body and the man; then he will never be happy. You have broken him into two, you have broken the unity. And joy arises only in unity; out of disunity there will be only misery. A miserable man is bound to seek the priests, somebody who can help. First create the disease and then advertise the medicine; that has been the way of the religions up to now.

When I say 'priests' I don't include Jesus or Buddha or Krishna. They are not priests -- they are prophets. And that is the distinction between a priest and a prophet: a prophet is here to help you to become more blissful and the priest is here to exploit your misery.

So let this be my message: love your body, respect your body. In that very respect you will love others' bodies and you will respect others' bodies. In that respect you will respect the very earth you walk upon. If one is in deep harmony with one's body, one automatically becomes harmonious with nature. The body is the closest point to nature. Then ripples go on spreading and dance arises. That dance is prayer.”