Footpath, Foothold and Flowers

Footpath, Foothold and Flowers
 
In the city and the villages that surrounded it, where I grew up,  almost anything that one throws away grows (plants and seeds) on its own provided they did not rot away due to too much water. There was no need to water the plants and like a clock set, the rain did come in 10 to 14 day cycles even in the dry season.

Inter-monsoon rain was regular and now I understand and believe that the vegetation itself fashion this rain and its cycles.

More trees mean more regular  inter-monsoon rain.

Less trees mean less rain, for sure, inter-monsoon period.

I lived for short period in Kurunegala and we moved there since doctors advised my father to move out to reduce the recurrence of wheezy episodes I had in Kandy, when very young. We moved back and I never had any problems and the problems were probably, related to growing up and possibly poor nutrition,

I ponder now.

That is just to restate the damp state of affairs of my city, yesteryear.

Even Kurunegala the weather, then, when compared to the present day, with lot of vegetation and coconut trees was very mild but with more frequent dry spells than in Kandy. Now we are going through the cycle of perennial failure of rain. 
The rain that falls in the upcountry where the most important the hydroelectric  power plants are located is failing now. 

All these are related to modernization and clearing up of the scanty vegetation for what is called the accelerated development.

It is going to get worse and there is no master plan to arrest it except adding more vulnerable projects including coal power plants. 
Coal power plants will cause irreversible damage to our eco-system and by the time it is recorded by scientific pundits I would have been long gone (deadwood on a cremation site) but I hope somebody will trace back to year 2000, where I started voicing this on a regular basis in the Web.

It would have been voiced even earlier, if it had not been due to the slow pace of development of the Web and the Internet, in Ceylon.

The  neglect and the failure of the printed papers industry (especially the newspapers and their monopoly deciding what to print) to expose the inevitable economic and and environmental catastrophe made me to be active at least in the Web. 
I felt of the need to identify the proactive indicators of disaster with the economic impact in mind for a small island state which is entangled in ‘debt trap’. 

If the printed media was timely, proactive, I would never have been active in the Web, let alone it is not my field of expertise.

Now I have made it a pastime.

I have moved into a new type of study, what I call the "my sphere of activity" (very limited indeed) and ‘my limited observations’ and I want everybody who is versed in biology (or not) would contribute to this type of observation and record observable events, since we cannot believe the government and its courtiers (the better time is henchmen) to do it. 

They will never make any worthwhile investment (except pass legislation, they themselves violate with impunity) to this effort since politicians and their stooges won't understand the impact of sustainable policy on environment (the better term is mother nature).

Like the mess we have inherited with the success in limited over cricket in 1996 (little after that except 2012, T-20s) and ordering the filling up of an ancient water tank and building a cricket ground on it, is the classic example of the idiocy of our policy makers cricket or otherwise.

We are set for power cuts in spite of thermal power added to the system.

Now if I do not water the plants including water plants they will dry up and wilt away in a shorter spell of time as short as three days.

Unfortunately, there is nobody to help me with, some background knowledge in biology to look after my plants. If I go out for a short holiday for two weeks abroad, all my plants, I have collected over a period of little longer than two decades will be no more. 
This has happened to me not once but twice because of my frequent foreign sojourns.

I am very late in using my power of observations.

When we were young we did not have to worry about plants wilting away.

The observation period should have been over 25 years, or more but due to my frequent absence away from home on foreign soils for work, I have missed a big chunk of observation.

The decline probably started rapidly after 1975, when the plantation section was nationalized by the ill advice of the political leftists of this country. 
The Oil Crisis in Middle East and the Cash Crisis in Ceylon aggravated the already volatile political situation with JVP riding high and then the government in power crushing the uprising brutally, in 1971.

I am one who believes that there was no need for an armed struggle by JVP at that time and if the government took correct political steps, like the leftists’ demise in this country, JVP would have headed for its own demise and self-destruction. 

By the way, if they were able to wrestle power, they did not have  even a rough sketch a political plan for this country. What it really achieved was to spark the armed struggle by LTTE. Even,  the LTTE would have achieved much for the Tamil people, if they worked with the local politicians and people, instead of becoming a pawn of the Indian secret service, the RAW. 
This little political intermission is mandatory since India for some reason did not want us to manage our problems and succeed economically and politically. 

Only India and Indians know why they took such an action.

Everything, I observe, is in the direction of loss of biodiversity. 
The little exotic (I have lost all the orchids except one tiny specimen) plants I have, if I do not replant will be lost, not  only in the wild, but in my garden too, which is very very tiny indeed.

Lot in my neighborhood has changed, except for a few coconut trees all the trees have been felled by the owners in less less than 20 years. The trees felled include, the breadfruit tree (where the birds used to perch on their evening return), the jack trees, water pistol trees, a Kithul tree and the tall tree (I do not know the name) where birds used to feed on the leaves and stems     (I do not know why) during long spells of drought. I believe this tree produces a chemical or chemicals that down the appetite of the birds (even squirrels) but stimulate the brain when fruits are hard to come by.

I never chew a leaf of this tree to see what chemicals it has to entice me, fearing interference with mother nature.

Glad to say, I have contributed to the few remaining ones which include a few exotic palm trees and my wife’s contribution is the mulberry tree and the bamboos. None of them was for commercial value but for shear beauty of their presence in our garden. I may have brought thousands and thousands of ornamental plants over the years, since the land was barren with a big rock in the middle.

There was a plant which I used to call ‘jute plant’ that grew in the crevices of the rock, it bloomed at the top of a tall flowering stem and produced hundreds of little adventitious shoots.

I could neither get a single one to survive nor to find a new plant from even the botanical garden. Its fiber is used in India and Bangladesh to produce rice sacks.
Strangest of my observations was the little white flower.
 
I got the seeds from botanical garden and tried to grow them in our plot but never succeeded.  But they get established in a place that I did not intend to, in the first place.

Very pleasant surprise; to see the vine exhibiting its beautiful white flower near the house of a person known to me. In fact, his wife had worked under my supervision for a brief period. The owners had left to Canada 20 years ago and that house is still empty and once in 5 years somebody cleans the garden up and there was no way the cleaner, not a gardener had planted it, there.

Few of them were still there, until recently.

But to my surprise, the new owner, bulldozed the garden in two days and no more of the vines left.
 
Same day, I went to the botanical garden from where     I got the seeds (from the hanging runners coming over the fence). To my horror those runners have all gone, no flowers and dried up stems were seen on a tall tree.

I think I did some honors to the Botanical garden for picking few seeds (never able to see flowering in our garden) and spread them in our garden which (now) had got washed away and landed on a foreign soil where nobody was living.
 
The sense of sympathetic joy was overwhelming then and that is why I have to pen it down here.

But that joy is no more with the builders coming in for the final kill recently. 
I now remember few years ago, just couple of meters away there was an exotic plant and on a rainy day dug up the yams added to my collection. I now have an enormous collection (personal favorite) of it on my rooftop garden.

The comment below is now redundant.

I will be picking up some seeds from those white flowers and try again to germinate them and perhaps, I might even donate few seeds to the botanical garden chief (previous one was a good friend of mine and I never asked him for any exotic plants except those on sale).

The present one when I met, I suggested  that he should start selling water plants (which has become a monopoly of a selected few) and I am glad to say he has obliged.

I should wind up after stating from whom I learned the secret of throwing seeds all over the footpath (by accident) where I walk, at slow pace, almost ambling.

It was my wife's grandma.

She had the habit of spreading the seeds all over the garden and I used to pull most of them out to get some order in the garden. She was a sweet lady and she needed flowers for her daily offering to Buddha and we had at least 5 varieties almost everyday.

Now she and her daughter and my mother are all gone we cannot pluck two varieties on a single day except on my rooftop garden but they come not from terrestrial plants but from an assortment of water plants.

Strangely enough, my rooftop garden has three to six including, three varieties of jasmine which I grow (a trick I learned from my mother) in the memory of my mother who died well past 90s (and the other two ladies too, I fondly remember when I see these flowers).

I wish, I should not live that long since, if I do that long there won't be any birds or wildflowers to smell in this blessed island.

But as long as I could walk up the footpath (any footpath, for that matter) I am going to pluck dry flowers and spread the seeds like how birds do.

I don't care where they start germinating and like a good Buddhist, I have lost the attachment to any worldly thing including flowers.

In this scenario, I differ slightly from Buddhist virtues.

I want our great great grandchildren to have a reminder of the old times not of my photographs but some of the beautiful and fragrant flowers which we are losing by the day.

I now collect the photographs of all the flowers.

We do not have bees and the the little innocent black variety which are there for the last 30 years, come daily to our rooftop garden to collect honey from my tiny flowers of water plants.

20 years ago, there was a seed I tried to germinate by various mean but never could. Then one day I asked the laboratory assistant who was a keen gardener and one of my patients, (until his death nearing 90s), told me that the seeds crack when there is intense heat and then when the rain comes it germinates and if I soak the seeds they will rot.

Just by accident, I picked up three of those plants to pot before they are run over by the three wheeler drivers who reverse onto the wayside in a hurry. The road is now finished with concrete to lure the voters. It gets heated up and the seeds on either side crack and germinate. 

Suffice is to say, all the seeds are coming from a plant / tree my mother in law planted.

When the older generation take the exit pathway like in America, we will have only commercial growers and mono-culture or tissue culture cultivars.

Common Sense

Common Sense

Since, I am almost about to sign off digitally from the Web few medical points of view are warranted save mostly opinion but facts checked as far as possible.

One reason, is that the Web has become a Junk Yard and Hit Rate depends on sentimentalization.

Another reason, is that I am making both spelling and grammatical mistakes due to poor vision (I do not want kill the language).

The bigger reason is that the Wisdom does not come through only medical means.

It comes through "Mindful Attention to the Mind" which is bombarded with half truths and half lies which can only be analyzed through the methods adapted by 13 qualifications of Kalama Sutta.

Coming back to medical facts that persuade the patient to take medications for life is mostly speculative and bear no scientific credence.

It is a simple principle in medicine, if one can avoid the pills and the scalpel, that is the best quality of life.

If I say each drug has 3 side effects and given drug has interaction with another drug, the side effects are in multiples not individualistic.

In this scenario only two drugs qualify for prolongation of life.

One antibiotics, the other low dose aspirin.

Immunization has prevented many infections and we have not found a vaccine for Influenza which effects all mammals, birds and the sundry.

Points of View.

1. Blood pressure treatment does not prolong life.

2. The effect of treatment on elderly patients over 65 years is flimsy.

3. Treatment itself causes hypotension and also postural hypertension (common with the elderly) and confusion.

4. That does not mean you abruptly stop medication for blood pressure.

One will end up with rebound blood pressure rise, heart failure and organ failure and even death.

5. Around 95% of the cases, cause of blood pressure is unknown, hence it is called "Essential Hypertension".

6. Blood pressure treatment slows heart failure and organ failure including kidney.

7. It prevents strokes but not heart attacks.

8. Heart attacks are mainly caused by thrombosis.

9. We really do not know why thrombosis occur in old age.

10. Thrombosis can be prevented by low dose aspirin and that is why it is in my list.

11. Blood pressure treatment should be complimented by aspirin to prevent both strokes and heart attacks.

12. Aspirin slightly increase the risk of haemorrhage into the brain (which is much worse than the stroke).

After accidental injury one may continue to bleed.

13. Excessive bleeding is a medical emergency.

14. Aspirin known to lower the risk of cancer and how it works is not clearly determined.

15. Now to my crunch point, the vital cholesterol.

Cholesterol is a vital biochemical with vast array of actions, including probably scavenger function of free radicals.

16. Its reduction does not prolong life.

17. Its treatment with anti-cholesterol drugs causes much debilitating dementia.

 

18. These drugs cause liver damage and myopathy.

Heart is a muscle and myopathy may effect the heart, too.

19. Healthy life style, exercise, sleep, meditation and vegetarian diet are probably better options for prolonging life than taking a pill that causes myopathy and liver damage.

20. Eat chocolates and dish out chocolates to your friends which has lot of feel good chemicals that are secreted during meditation.

21. Coconut oil is good for your heart and brain in dementia.

Do not succumb to the gullible lies of the American companies.

I call it, the Coconut Conspiracy

 

22. Feel good hormone that prongs life is "Growth Hormone".

Meditation increases its release and benefits only with a good liver.

23. Alcohol in any form is bad except its vasodilator properties and hot flushes.

24. Smoking is the biggest killer, world wide.

 
25. Chocolates do not have growth hormone (it is internal product which act through the liver).

26. Meditation practice for one hour tends to elevate feel good hormones and reduce the cortisol levels.

27. I will end up by saying that don't take all medical advices as "Gullible Truths". 
Additionally, the web is a Junk Yard!

Benefits of Meditation

Benefits of Meditation

An old piece without any mention of "Feel Good Hormones" secreted while meditating.

Best feel good hormone is "Growth Hormone" which prolongs one's life.
Feel good hormones especially growth hormone is secreted by physical exercise, too.
Piece of chocolates has many feel good hormones except growth hormone.
One has to have a good liver for growth hormone to act.
There is no place for alcohol to boost or release social inhibitions.
Worst culprit to your health is pollution, including smoking and vehicle exhaust.
Cholesterol lowing drugs have NO PLACE and they actually cause Dementia which the drug companies are trying to hide.

Now they have changed the concept to "Free Radical Damage" and "Oxidized Cholesterol" and scavenger receptors in macrophages having a role (going back to inflammation theory of the old). 
 

Both high blood pressure and smoking produce free radicals in the vicinity of the endothelium of blood vessels.

Unsaturated fats (except perhaps coconut oil) encourages free radical formation.

It is tiny electrons that do the damage and not the big molecule Cholesterol which probably scavengers (inactivate) free radicals.

The best antidote is good sleep (in two breaks, one long one short, the memory booster).

Vegetarian diet has many benefits.

This should be read in conjunction with Ambidextrous Activity appended below.

This is part of the introduction to my Book on Meditation.
 

Benefits of Meditation

There are many claims of benefit of meditation often poorly substantiated. Some of these benefit can be obtained without resort to meditation but simple change in life style.

Suppose a meditator changes his food habits drastically say to a vegetarian diet and practice meditation as a routine and finds that his blood cholesterol is lowered significantly, and then if he or she attributes it to the practice of meditation, there is a big flow in that argument.

One is not sure whether the change in diet did effect the blood cholesterol level or the practice of meditation or both did have independent or summation effect on the level of blood cholesterol. Unless one take a random sample and assess the partial correlation then only one can attribute combination or independent effects on a particular quantity tested.

Qualitative changes cannot be tested since one cannot quantify the results. In actual fact the effect of meditation is often qualitative and very individualistic and one cannot feel the same effect a different mediator would have felt at the time of his or her meditative stance or instance/s. this is very true as far a Jhana States are concerned.

With that reservation in mind one can describe the many unmeasurable benefits attributed to meditation in Buddhist literature.

Metta Meditation 

In Buddhist literature it is claimed that one who practices Metta Meditation falls to sleep easily and get up in the morning peacefully.

It is wished in the last three lines of the Sutta. By reciting Karaniya Metta Sutta one should feel physically and psychologically better, one is made free of illness and one attains the highest goal or victory.

That is of course the Nibbana. 
 

They may be just wishful thinking or one may actually feels better physically and psychologically.

It is also claimed that the natural immunity to cancer and infections are increased by practicing  

Metta Meditation.

This is something Venerable Ajhan Brahma Wanso preaches in most of his teaching.

Present Moment Meditation

This is something that is worth discussing here.

It has direct relationship to day to day activities.

I believe it has significant contribution to the efficiency of one’s trained skill, simply due to the intense concentration one may apply in his or her work skill at hand (without any distraction).

It is simply the focused attention to task at hand.

If one is focused on any work, the efficiency goes up by leaps and bounds.

This is very well shown in management tasks.

When focused attention is combined with attitude to work and other measurable increase in environmental components the work output and the efficiency level improve.

This is something shop or floor manager can use in day to day basis.

It is called a quality drill.

It does not matter how one qualify the content or the output but the efficiency of the skill concerned improve by both repeated practice and focused attention to the moment of the activity.

Samatha Meditation

There is no specific measurable benefit of Samatha Bhavana or meditation except the attainment of the four goals or paths of entry to Nibbana,

Buddhist spiritual goal is stream entry through development of Jhana.

Smatha probably is better for those who have less intelligent level (IQ) that one is not able to master the finer scientific tenets.

Vipassana Meditation

This the highest goal of Buddhist meditative practice.

It is claimed that all states of Jhana can be attained only by Vipassana Bhavana or Meditation.

I may be wrong in this assertion but that is what is spread among the lay person without full knowledge of or understanding of mediation.

This is called the gaining of insight.

Only when aspirant has gained the 5th Jhana then one could develop the five kinds of supernatural powers (Abhiñña) the divine eye, divine ear, recall past births, thought-reading and various psychic powers i.e. walk on water.

The attainment of the supernatural powers is not the real goal of Buddhism.

The attainment of these powers may actually be a distraction or hindrance to a true aspirant or a pathfinder (Buddhist path of glory).

The ability to absorb into Jhana states is the goal of Buddhist meditation and Jhana has no hindrance but Jhana is the way forward for stream entry.

The practice of meditation may bring many benefits and they are difficult to quantify or qualify except perhaps the benefit of present moment of meditation or focus which should be practiced without a label of religion or Buddhism.

It is when one has labels and have targets or goals of attainment, the practice of meditation becomes commercial enterprise of undesirable consequences but not simple a way development of mental culture and the simple way of life.

I am one who believe that mediation has value in all wakeful hours of the day. The only exception is when one is asleep and when one dreams.

I am one who talks about dreams and write about dreams and their physiological value is unparalleled only by the practice of meditation in wakeful states.

The meditation practice is the awareness of the wondering mind and its taming. 
 

That is the Buddhist Way.

The goal is not achieving miracle powers, even though they may or may not come as a by-product.

Sleeping (and dreaming) is the practice of letting the mind go into a unobtrusive and unhindered movement and of the the mind unaware of the physiological inputs that lapses into random aberrations of all sorts with dreaming as an interlude.

On the other hand meditation is to “let go the attachments” one has with all mental faculties both sensual and mind centred.

Goals of Buddhist Meditation

The goal is the attainment of Jhana states and stream entry by progressive cultivation of meditation in basically by four methods.

1. Metta Meditation.

2. Samatha Meditation with Kasina or various Kamatahan

This is adequately dealt by Venerable Ajhan Brahma Wanso in the book Happiness through meditation.

It is also published as “Meditation., Bliss and Beyond”.

It the best book currently available on Meditation in general and my intention is to make it more global and take the religious tag in the moment of its use.

Memory and Meditation

I want to share a drill I practice on day to day basis.

This is especially because, I am beginning to lose my memory and there are short lapses infrequent though, but enough to raise alarm bells on my part lately.

Once I forgot all my password for bank cards briefly.

This was during our long industrial action when I was having laid back approach to life and was not having adequate sleep (involved in Linux downloads and testing) at night.

This coincided with forgetting passwords for half a dozen emails and Linux forum passwords.

This shook my inner senses and I now have now have a ready made retrieval method based on memory drill.

The combination of Metta Meditation and moment meditation has worked wonders for me since then.

I now even have a simple protocol to remember 16 number Visa Card.

The memory loss is partly due to gray matter losing its material and neural networks due to old age which is seriously encroaching my body if not the brain.

Metta meditation makes one sleeps well not in one go but in two short spells (Night is the shortest spell when I do most of my work to avoid mosquito menace. The mosquitoes make me aware of my lack of Metta Meditation, too).

The dog is the target animal of Metta.

Then in the morning I have a brief 5 minutes Moment Meditation practice at the end of it, I have a mental list of 10 things or map out the tasks to do.

If the list go up to 20, I do it in two spells like my sleep.

A morning list and an evening list.

That has worked well for the last one year and I still do not carry apiece of paper with all the tasks.

If I have to carry a piece of paper to to remind me day to day work, I think I should say Good Bye and take first steps in the next birth.

That is my wish list.

Since I have not yet achieved stream entry, in spite of my mediation efforts, that will eventually happen and only option left for me.

There is another simple addition to this list.

I do not use a cell phone by default.

No electronic aids or tinkle too.

I do not want to gadget to master me.

I rather master my brain instead.

Ambidextrous of Activity
 
Instead of a programmed or rigid life style, I am proposing a balancing act or the right and the left coordination technique, in daily living and practises.
It is simple.

Learn to use both hands.
 
If you are right handed in writing try to use left hand for toilet cleaning (wipe the back with the left hand with tissues or without tissues).
Try combing with the left hand on alternative days.
 

Try the same with shaving.
 
I believe one has to be ambidextrous when shaving anyway.
 
If you take Route A for your walk (not jogging) one day, the next day make it the Route B and reroute your walking (for example turning left, where you turned right the day before and vice versa).
 
Never take the same route in two consecutive days.
 
It is difficult but with perseverance one can reschedule the routes.
 
In other words become ambidextrous in all your activities.
 
I have observed many right handed people have left handed strokes.
 
I postulate the concept that when one neglects an activity over time, that side of the brain gets less blood flowing in day to day life. 

So I believe the atherosclerotic patches appear on blood vessels supplying, that side of the brain, first. 

Or may be when shower of fat particles leave a plaque from the aorta or its major branches, the slow circulation (narrow to begin with) has a greater chance of obstruction.
 
Mind you I have been teaching atherosclerosis all my life.
 
Its emphasis changed over time and current belief is it is due to inflammation that trigger thrombosis.
 
I am entitled to have my own views about atherosclerosis / thrombosis, saga.
 
I do not even believe the cholesterol theory since cholesterol is a vital biochemical molecule which even produce sex hormones.
 
Now they have changed the concept to free radical damage and oxidized cholesterol and scavenger receptors in macrophages having a role (going back to old inflammation theory).
 
So trying to promote blood flow to the non dominant side of the brain by actively promoting ambidextrous activity is a plausible strategy.
 
This I believe is very healthy but a simple method and prevent strokes on the non dominant side of the brain.
 
I would expand on this further stating that learning a second language promotes the activity of the creative brain or the non dominant brain and the second language is located on the right side (the activities are represented in the opposite side of the brain due to crisscrossing of nerve fibers in the brain stem).
 
In actual fact the evolution has promoted this by design but we tend to neglect.
 
The Chinese are adept at using both hands.
 
The ancient Chinese wisdom was to promote children to be ambidextrous and knitting embroidery, crotchet are Chinese inventions.
 
My mother who lived up to nineties was a good exponent of these dying arts.
 
She also possessed the ability of two languages, thanks to British education.

Sphere of Activity
 
Few lines about sphere of activity is in order.

My definition of sphere of activity is the extent of the expansion of your geographical movement in your daily activities including work, shopping, going to the library or bookshops or any recreational activity, including meditation and religious activities.
 
That covers a lot and unfortunately the cellphone extends your sphere of activity beyond the shores.
 
I consider telephone as a hindrance except when one travels aboard.
 
The car also expands it.
 
I believe in reducing the sphere of activity to the minimum functionality one needs for survival.
 
Of course it reduces the traffic-jams of present day and one less person on the road is better for this planet well being (less fuming exhaust).


Why go to a meditation retreat when one can do “Moment Meditation” or “Plant Watching” as an exercise at home?

Old Dog Haven and Senior Dogs

Old Dog Haven and Senior Dogs

There are lot of myths about dogs but here I want to illustrate few human facts that I should communicate with Maha Brahma who was a yesteryear dog exterminated to make room for Perahara Pilgrims that visit this holy city of Kandy. Most of Sri-Lankan end up in hell where the All Maha Brahmas and present assistant of Maha Brahmas were dogs from this country. By clever design they ended up there and for my luck I happened to know the Present Maha Brahmas Assistant as a Paraya dog in Kandy and I am fortunate enough to communicate with him by virtual email.

First the bad news.

Lot of paraya dogs were cleared up recently in preparation for Perehara and I want a place reserved for them in hell (for the municipality exterminators not the exterminated paraya dogs).

In some countries when they are old they are sent to Old Dogs Haven.

I want the Maha to take them to heaven moment they are exterminated but make a short list of the exterminators and send that list to Apaya (Hell) Server.

I have designed a full proof program to catch dog killers and that is working nicely in Apaya Server currently but the problem is, these dog killers live longer than the dog by many a mile due to cardiac surgery performed.

How to Compare Senior Citizens and Senior Dogs

1. The have homes for the elderly.

Haven is practically hell for the dogs.  

2. Some senior citizens by that  become mayors of the holy city.   

There is only extermination decree for aged dogs signed by the mayor or a certain, Colombo University Don.

3.They never give way to juniors 

Junior dogs take charge of the brood

I have another plea.

If one wants to age with the dog please do the following.

1. Take care of a young dog at the age of 43 (when nobody seems to want you including your wife and kids) years.

2. When you are 50 your dog is 7 years old and equal to 50 years of human age.

3. In another three (3) when your dog is 10 he is equivalent to 60 human years and you will be 53 years. 

You are younger by 7 years.

4. In another two years dog (at 12 years) will be 70 and you will be only 55 years.

You are younger by 15 years.

43=0

50=7=50 (only at 50 one can be at the level of the dog age and enjoy with your contemporary to your heart content and his company prevents you from getting a heart attack, if you delay the dog will get a heart attack).

53=10=60

52=12=70 (This is the time you get a bypass operation and the dog get a heart attack).

5. Now that you have become the mayor at 55 after retiring from service would you be kind to this dog who is 12 years or sent for the Municipality exterminator.

6. They are just old senior dogs / citizens they do not have a parliament to go but only the streets but unlike you they look after our streets even at night when young, is it reasonable to put them to death?

7. How come, if I say all the senior citizens who were ex-parliamentarians and drawing a fat pension and to save money for development they should be exterminated.

Will you pass a bill and vote yes in parliament?

Are we reasonable human beings?

How to forward a dead man’s (women excluded) email

How to forward a dead man’s (women excluded) email

Internet is a bustling with activity and it has spawned new avenues for recreation. I have been specially appointed from both Apaya and Devlova (Heaven) coordinate activities and I have been asked to formulate a formula to prevent Apaya MySQL Web Server getting jammed.

As an initial remedy I had instructed them to have new server for Ceylon but Apaya does not want to vandalize limited resources on Ceylon and that is why they need a special formula.

Since, I am in regular contact with Sackra’s or Maha's assistant which I have from the time of registration of Hela Urumaya as a political party (that appointment was to give a resume of all Hela Urumaya voters who gets a call of nature through Devalays before their demise).

 

Sakcra himself handles the party stalwarts and he does not believe their own well cooked up resumes leave alone any comments that I have made about them in web publications. Unlike Apaya. They have enough memory in all the servers with my good offices, I have made an arrangement to provide a server on IMF loan facility to Hell which can be paid back while in Hell to Apaya accounts.

You may wonder how I got the appointment. 

On merit and that is due to my intense interest in Linux and the number of publication in the web by any Ceylonese.

They have just typed asoka and linux and lately asokaplus and got hold of my web counting. 

Then they have looked at the impact it made in Ceylon which was almost zero and connected me wirelessly to ask why this discrepancy. 

I promptly said I publish only in English to which they said why don’t you make an attempt to improve English. I said Sir; I am doing it right now by writing and that is the reason for me posting in the web.

They were quite happy and impressed with my answers but said your extensions will be based on your daily writings and that is why I have to post at least one a day at wordpress.

When I was at writeclique it was once in three days and at Google once in 2 to 3 days and now once a day like a poor National News Paper Editors.

I am told by the Web Administrator of the Apaya (Hell in English) a new super powered Server to handle the demand from Ceylon was installed this year (immigrants specially from Colombo 7, Hela Urumaya type who sell electricity for an exorbitant price -they have a special sub-system for Hela Urumaya).

Nobody can contact the President and the Head of Apayas since he is 24 hour on call and cannot sleep.

He was elected recently unanimously without a contest and he can go for re-election at lib.

His crime was sleeping while on call duty at President’s Office and giving false promises to the visitors and giving false statements to a judicial inquiry (perjury not punished here).

You may wonder what is the difference between becoming head of Apaya or Devlova.

Sackra has four hours of sleep and he can delegate some of activities to the assistant and the assistant can delegate it to me. It looks as if one becomes a President of this country he can easily take up a position in Apaya since there are no delegated activities now in Apaya and super-computers have taken over mankind (beingskind- a new word coined by me for Apaya use) there.

My duty is easy to forward dead man’s emails either to Apaya or Devlova or safe house in between for scrutiny. 

By doing that all email holding companies will benefit by releasing their precious space for new comers.

I am currently doing the test run on the formula I have developed on Senior Ministers’ profiles (I am duty bound not to disclose test runs to the person while they are alive) on my computer and it got stuck due to overload and may have to update the RAM and speed.

Unfortunately, I am not paid any allowances even though, I requested 10% on testing and another 50% on running.

If you have any suggestion please forward it to me without any delay so that I can include them on the revised version. 

I have decided not to make the formula public since the Central Bank of Ceylon (Now SIRI LANKA) and IMF would get bright ideas to change roles and divest their energies in Apaya Investment Limited (newly formed company by me)

Mind you there is a vacancy for-How to forward a dead woman’s email post- any man or woman can apply by passing me.

Details are at Apaya Investment Limited website if it is in operation without any untoward attack by Sri-Lankan Government.

Mind you I did not tell the Apaya Web Admin that there is cloud computing on the offing thinking that they might reserve space on cloud farms for future use and we might not have anything left for poor souls like me.

The Common misinterpretations of a Pali Verse that states the body decays but the Name and the Tribe does not

The Common misinterpretations of a Pali Verse that states the body decays but the Name and the Tribe does not

This verse I have heard many politicians of yesteryear utter in tandem with political speeches, I often wonder from where it originated.

This has nothing to do with Buddhism or Dhamma.

Somebody with knowledge with Pali had coined this verse and all politicians of yesteryear and present use this as a phrase to propagate his or her name and tribe. 

This is how the post-colonial culture and politics developed.

“Rupam Jirati Majjanam (Body decays)

Nama Gottam Najirathi” (name and tribe do not)

The face value seems all Buddhist in nature but its implication in modern day is really disruptive to the nature of Dhamma as stated in the Tripitaka (the Three Baskets).

There is no problem with the first statement.

The second statement destroys the whole tenet of Dhamma in its entirety.

In Buddhist phenomenology self (Nama or Soul) does not exist and the tribe (Gothra) is an illusion that originate from the above wrong premise.

I have to restate the same with my own invention as below.

The meaning I am trying to derive at is, that the Mind State does not vanish at death but (Patisandhi) re-link with the next Bhava using Kamma as the vehicle or the driving force.

Rupam Jirati Majjanam

Nama (means Mind here) Kittam (means Kamma) Najirathi

(The Gotham is substituted with Kittam-Kriya)

In Abhidhamma context it is realistic to use the above version of the verse (even though I am not a Pali scholar) to express the conditional existence of Bhava. 

The term Nama Rupa occurs frequently in Abhidhamma and Nama is used interchangeably with the Mind. 

The term for body is corporeality and not Rupa in Pali context.

Who perpetuated this myth is immaterial but the damage it has done is enormous. In that context writing something of my own contradicting the statement is appropriate even though it is a departure from the original tenets of my discussions.

This I think originated with the British rule. 

It is common for us to blame the British for every little mishap we are going through in our modern history. But this one is a direct antecedent. They are the one who started naming the streets even in Kandy with British names of inheritance and their Governors. All the streets in Colombo have some relevance to British authorship. In their tradition it is a normal and is all welcome by every British administrators big and small.

What went wrong was that we adapted this tradition without scrutiny in the post-colonial period and continue to do so even now. Instead of naming the street with some meaningful road traditions like main street, cross street, first lane or second lane we started adapting our own names. Politicians in turn for their gain started naming these streets with the names of their kith and kin. 

They invented and used the above jargon riddled Pali verse for the propagation of the political agenda.

Even though, the tradition is British the wrongful doing is our own ill vision, political patronage and heritage.