Shri Ramana Maharshi 30-December

Sri Ramana Maharshi (December 30, 1879 – April 14, 1950), bornVenkataraman Iyer, was a Hindu spiritual master ("jnani"). He was born to a Tamil-speaking Brahmin family in Tiruchuzhi, Tamil Nadu. After experiencing at age 16 what he later described as liberation (

moksha), he left home for Arunachala, a mountain considered sacred by Hindus. He lived at the mountain for the rest of his life. Although born a
Brahmin, he declared himself an"Atiasrami", a Sastraic state of non-attachment to anything in life and beyond all caste restrictions.
The ashram that grew around him, Sri Ramana Ashram, is situated at the foothill of Arunchala, to the west to the pilgrimage town of Tiruvannamalai.

Sri Ramana Maharshi maintained that the purest form of his teachings was the powerful silence which radiated from his presence and quieted the minds of those attuned to it. He gave verbal teachings only for the benefit of those who could not understand his silence (or, perhaps, could not understand how to attain the silent state). His verbal teachings were said to flow from his direct experience of Atman as the only existing reality. When asked for advice, he recommended self-enquiry as the fastest path to moksha. Though his primary teaching is associated with Non-dualism, Advaita Vedanta, and Jnana yoga, he recommended Bhakti to those he saw were fit for it, and gave his approval to a variety of paths and practices.

Discovery by Westerners

It was in 1911 that the first westerner, Frank Humphreys, then a policeman stationed in India, discovered Sri Ramana and wrote articles about him which were first published in The International Psychic Gazette in 1913. However, Sri Ramana only became relatively well known in and out of India after 1934 when Paul Brunton, having first visited Sri Ramana in January 1931, published the book A Search in Secret India, which became very popular. Resulting visitors included Paramahansa Yogananda, Somerset Maugham (whose 1944 novel The Razor's Edge models its spiritual guru after Sri Ramana), Mercedes de Acosta, Julian P. Johnson, and Arthur Osborne. Sri Ramana's relative fame spread throughout the 1940s. However, even as his fame spread, Sri Ramana was noted for his belief in the power of silence and his relatively sparse use of speech, as well as his lack of concern for fame or criticism. His lifestyle remained that of a renunciate.

Teachings

Sri Ramana's teachings about self-enquiry, the practice he is most widely associated with, have been classified as the Path of Knowledge (Jnana marga) among the Indian schools of thought. Though his teaching is consistent with and generally associated with Hinduism, the Upanishads andAdvaita Vedanta, there are some differences with the traditional Advaitic school, and Sri Ramana gave his approval to a variety of paths and practices from various religions.

His earliest teachings are documented in the book Nan Yar?(Who am I?), first written in Tamil. The original book was published by Sri Pillai,although the essay version of the book (Sri Ramana Nutrirattu) prepared by Sri Ramana is considered definitive as unlike the original it had the benefit of his revision and review. A careful translation with notes is available in English as 'The Path of Sri Ramana, Part One' by Sri Sadhu Om, one of the direct disciples of Sri Ramana. Selections from this definitive version follow:

• As all living beings desire to be happy always, without misery, as in the case of everyone there is observed supreme love for one's self, and as happiness alone is the cause for love, in order to gain that happiness which is one's nature and which is experienced in the state of deep sleep where there is no mind, one should know one's self. For that, the path of knowledge, the inquiry of the form "Who am I?", is the principal means.


• Knowledge itself is 'I'. The nature of (this) knowledge is existence-consciousness-bliss.


• What is called mind is a wondrous power existing in Self. It projects all thoughts. If we set aside all thoughts and see, there will be no such thing as mind remaining separate; therefore, thought itself is the form of the mind. Other than thoughts, there is no such thing as the world.


• Of all the thoughts that rise in the mind, the thought 'I' is the first thought.


• That which rises in this body as 'I' is the mind. If one enquires 'In which place in the body does the thought 'I' rise first?', it will be known to be in the heart [spiritual heart is 'two digits to the right from the centre of the chest']. Even if one incessantly thinks 'I', 'I', it will lead to that place (Self)'


• The mind will subside only by means of the enquiry 'Who am I?'. The thought 'Who am I?', destroying all other thoughts, will itself finally be destroyed like the stick used for stirring the funeral pyre.


• If other thoughts rise, one should, without attempting to complete them, enquire, 'To whom did they arise?', it will be known 'To me'. If one then enquires 'Who am I?', the mind (power of attention) will turn back to its source. By repeatedly practising thus, the power of the mind to abide in its source increases.


• The place where even the slightest trace of the 'I' does not exist, alone is Self.


• Self itself is God

Sri Ramana warned against considering self-enquiry as an intellectual exercise. Properly done, it involves fixing the attention firmly and intensely on the feeling of 'I', without thinking. It is perhaps more helpful to see it as 'Self-attention' or 'Self-abiding' (cf. Sri Sadhu Om - The Path of Sri Ramana Part I). The clue to this is in Sri Ramana's own death experience when he was 16. After raising the question 'Who am I?' he "turned his attention very keenly towards himself" (cf. description above). Attention must be fixed on the 'I' until the feeling of duality disappears.

Although he advocated self-enquiry as the fastest means to realization, he also recommended the path of bhakti and self-surrender (to one's Deity or Guru) either concurrently or as an adequate alternative, which would ultimately converge with the path of self-enquiry.

 

Rajesh Khanna Birthday - 29-December

Rajesh Khanna (born Jatin Khanna on 29 December 1942) is an Indian actor of from Hindi films, and has been Hindi film producer and an Indian politician.

During his career, he appeared in 163 films of which 105 had him as the solo lead hero and 21 were two hero projects. He won three Filmfare Best Actor Awards and was nominated for the same fourteen times. He received the maximum BFJA Awards for Best Actor (Hindi) – four times and nominated 25 times. He was awarded the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. Khanna is referred to as the “First Superstar” of Hindi cinema. He made his debut in 1966 with Aakhri Khat and rose to prominence with his performances in films like Raaz, Baharon Ke Sapne, Ittefaq and Aradhana.

Khanna was born in Amritsar on 29 December 1942. He was adopted and raised by foster parents who were relatives of his biological parents. Khanna lived in Thakurdwar near Girgaon. Khanna attended St. Sebastian’s Goan High School in Girgaum, along with his friend Ravi Kapoor, who later took the stage name Jeetendra. Their mothers were friends. Khanna gradually started taking interest in theatre and did a lot of plays in his school and college days and won many prizes in the inter college drama competitions. Khanna became a rare newcomer who struggled in his own MG sports car to get work in theatre and films in the early sixties. Both friends later studied in Kishinchand Chellaram College(KC). When Jeetendra went for his first film audition, it was Khanna who tutored him. Khanna's uncle changed Khanna's first name to Rajesh when Khanna decided to join films. His friends and his wife call him Kaka.

Adult Life
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Khanna fell in love with the then fashion designer and actress Anju Mahendru.They were in the relationship for seven years. Mahendru states that the couple did not speak to each other for 17 years after the breakup.Later Khanna married Dimple Kapadia in 1973 and has two daughters from the marriage.Khanna and Dimple Kapadia separated in 1984 as his schedule kept him away much of the time and Dimple became interested in pursuing an acting career,and thereafter lived separately, but did not complete the divorce proceedings.In the eighties Tina Munim was romantically involved with Khanna till the time she decided to leave the industry to pursue her higher studies. Years of separation brought about mutual understanding between Rajesh Khanna and Dimple Kapadia.Reporter Dinesh Raheja stated that “the bitterness between Rajesh and Dimple washed away", noting that they are seen together at parties and that Dimple campaigned for Khanna's election and also worked in his film.Their elder daughter Twinkle Khanna, an interior decorator and a former film actress, is married to actor Akshay Kumar while their younger daughter Rinke Khanna, also a former Hindi film actress, is married to a London-based investment banker Samir Saran.
Happy Birthday ! 

Indian National Congress 28-December

The Indian National Congress (Hindi: भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस) (abbreviated INC,and commonly known as the Congress)

 is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being theBharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It is the largest and one of the oldest democratic political parties in the world. The party's modern liberal platform is largely considered center-left in theIndian political spectrum. Founded in 1885 by members of the occultist movement Theosophical Society—Allan Octavian Hume, Dadabhai Naoroji, Dinshaw Wacha, Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee, Surendranath Banerjee, Monomohun Ghose, Mahadev Govind Ranade and William Wedderburn—the Indian National Congress became the leader of the Indian Independence Movement, with over 15 million members and over 70 million participants in its struggle againstBritish rule in India.

 After independence in 1947, it became the nation's dominant political party, led by the Nehru-Gandhi family for the most part; major challenges for party leadership have only recently formed.

In the 2009 general elections, the Congress emerged as the single largest party in the Lok Sabha, with 205 of its candidates getting elected to the 543-member house. Consequently it, along with a coalition of allies called the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), was able to gain a majority and form the government.

History

The history of the Indian National Congress falls into two distinct eras:

• The pre-independence era, when the party was at the forefront of the struggle for independence and was instrumental in the whole of India;


• The post-independence era, when the party has enjoyed a prominent place in Indian politics, ruling the country for 48 of the 60 years since independence in 1947.

In the pre-independence era, the Congress was div

 

ided in two groups, moderate and activist. The moderates were more educated and wanted to win people's faith to lead the nation to independence without bloodshed; the activists however wanted to follow a revolutionary path and make it a militant organization.