Month: April 2006

Education Matters — Part 1

Yesterday I got a call from someone who wanted my advice. It was regarding his son who is in the 7th grade. The school required the parents to fill in a multi-page form with detailed information about the background of the student. The conjecture was that this information was going to become part of the permanent record of the boy. The form, I was told, required the parent to indicate – among other details — if the family belonged to scheduled caste, or scheduled tribes, or other backward classes.
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No Man is an Island

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Those lines are John Donne’s From Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. Written around the 1620’s, they are faintly reflective of Advaita Vedanta. Donne’s philosophy encompasses all humanity into a whole but places God outside and above, as you can tell from the full meditation (included below.) Advaita Vedanta negates the distinction between the “me” and the “not me.”
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Google Romance

Google Romance must be the hottest thing this April 1st. Too many people have emailed me about it. I thought it was rather lame compared to their other crackpot beta releases. (Do take their Google Romance Tour, though.) Continue reading “Google Romance”