The World As I See It -Einstein

I found a nice essay written by Einstein expressing his thoughts on purpose of life ,things that make life a joyous journey ,his political ideal and why he was a deeply religious man.

Five Mindfulness Trainings

Mindfulness plays a important role in Buddhism.
The Five Mindfulness Trainings provide a foundation for meditation.
One can practice meditation even while drinking tea.

The English Teacher

I was reading a review of Taare Zamin Par (I have not seen the movie yet). The Bum Bhole song and the clown act of Aamir Khan reminded me of my English teacher S in my 10th class. He was perhaps the most interesting of the teachers I studied from. I particulary remember a class. The teacher asked us to play a game.(we were not in a mood to study that day ,and as students we never were ).A student was to come forward and enact a story ,poem or drama from our English textbook and we were supposed to identify that(dumb charades).To begin with S gave us an example.There was a poem by Vikram Seth in our textbook('The Frog and the Nightingale').Now our teacher enacted the poem by jumping like a frog in the class. It was really hilarious and all the class laughed uncontrollably.His class was always such fun. While reading a drama he would modulate his voice according to the characters. In a drama there was a robotic character and when the robot's line would come he would speak in a robot's voice.The good thing about his teaching was that he tried to involve everybody in the class.His classes were never boring.His antics always drew attention from the most disinterested lot.
We had a monthly quiz in our school and it was a pretty serious affair .Every month two teachers acted as the compere .When it was S 's turn to conduct the quiz he made it a fun affair. He introduced a audience round and the question he asked the audience was "How many times in the song 'tu mera hero no. 1' from the movie 'Hero No. 1' the lines 'tu mera' repeated ?"
It seemed that authorities of our school didn't like S 's way of teaching (ie making teaching fun).They thought that there was too much indiscipline in S 's class.(which was true to an extent. We were so friendly with S that we conveniently ignored his pleas for maintaining silence in class.)As a result in the latter half of our class 10 he cut down the fun quotient and became a little more serious.

Beyond the Obvious

Why is it so that I see darkness when I open my eyes.
why is it so that I see a ray of hope when I close my eyes.

Am I in a dark corner?
or I refuse to see?

Is the hope real
or a mere illusion .

May be I know ?

I see my heart when I close my eyes.
I see the world when I open them .

The heart is pure but the world is not ,
and that's the difference.

The heart is full of love.
there is no ego.

But the world has a self ,
the self blinds the truth.

The self becomes the obvious
and the heart is beyond the obvious.