Month: September 2026

Ganesh Chaturthi 2026

Well, what do you know! Ganapati Bappa is back in town.

It’s Ganesh Chaturthi.

Sept 14th begins this year’s Ganesh puja. As is my custom, I try to recall some story regarding Ganesh that I had heard as a child. We Hindus, Buddhists and Jains grow up listening to stories about our devas and devis.

Ganesh is definitely my favorite deva. He is described as “the one with the curved trunk and an immense body, whose splendour is equal to that of a million suns.” He is invoked before any other gods. There’s a story about that. Before starting any venture, he is asked to “remove all obstacles from my tasks, always and in all undertakings.”

In previous posts, I have related the story of how he got a broken tusk, how he very cleverly circumnavigated the entire cosmos three times in a minute, and other things. This time I will relate the story of Kubera’s feast. Continue reading “Ganesh Chaturthi 2026”

Mass Hysteria and Popular Delusions

Instances of mass hysteria, herd behavior, and financial bubbles may seem to be modern afflictions though actually they have been around for hundreds of years. In 1841, Scottish journalist Charles Mackay investigated them and published his findings in his 1841 book “Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.”

His conclusion: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

MacKay wrote about sociological and psychological panics such as witch hunts across Europe that led to the horrifying deaths of thousands. His book has important lessons for economists and psychologists. It provided the early framework for understanding irrational exuberance, cognitive bias, and speculative contagion. Continue reading “Mass Hysteria and Popular Delusions”

Sept 11, 2001: the Death of Islam

We can date the beginning of the death of Islam at a specific date. This is unusual. The end of no other ideology can be so precisely dated. September 11th, 2001 is that date. That’s the date that Islam took on the Western world. And it is guaranteed to lose.  It signed it’s death certificate.

Western world did encounter Islam centuries before September 2001, and resisted it. September 11th attack should have woken the West to the danger. But it did not.

But now the West is ready. Islam will die. Islam will die in the next decade or so.

Islam will die soon. It’s true that there are two billion Muslims. But the moment they realize that it’s Islam that is imprisoning them into poverty, they too will reject Islam.

For now, I pay homage to those who lost their lives on September 11th, 2001. I was in Berkeley, San Francisco Bay area that morning, on the other side of the continent from NY city. I realized the implications of Islamic terrorism. Terrorism is almost entirely Islamic. Therefore the adjective Islamic is superfluous: no other ideology promotes terrorism; only Islam does. If you see terrorism, you can safely assume that it is Islamic. It’s not likely that Buddhists or Hindus or Jains have anything do do with the death and destruction. Only Islam motivates people to kill. Continue reading “Sept 11, 2001: the Death of Islam”

The Deontological Ethics of the Bhagavad Gita

Today is Janmashtami, the day Krishna was born. Hindu dharma considers him to be the eighth avatar of Vishnu. See note 1 below for details of the dashavatara (10 avatars).

There are dozens of lovely stories about Krishna. I’d like to tell you one of my favorite stories. It is from the Bhagavad Purana. As a child Krishna was a handful and got up to all sorts of mischief. He loved butter and was known as a “makhan chor” (butter thief.)

One time Krishna’s elder brother and other cowherd playmates snitched on him to his mother, Yashoda, that he had been eating dirt. His mother scolded him severely but Krishna maintained his innocence and said, “Ma, I have not eaten dirt. If you don’t believe me, look for yourself.”

Yashoda looked into his open mouth expecting to see dirt or butter. Instead, she saw the entire cosmos: outer space, the sun, moon, stars, planets, wind, and fire. She saw all living beings, time (kala), the nature of cause and effect (karma). She even saw the village of Gokula, and in it her own home, and herself standing there, staring down into the mouth of the boy before her. Continue reading “The Deontological Ethics of the Bhagavad Gita”