Stop and Think - Whither We Are Going

Nowadays, the lifestyle of most of us people has become a show buzz. It's a platform of display and exhibitionism. Full of materialistic and physical notions. We tend to measure everything materialistically in terms of money, prestige, glamour, and social status. There is No Value for age, virtue, and wisdom of the person.



All our actions are centered around one goal. How to make money and how to establish our position in society. All other values are set at rest

And, to maintain your status, you try to earn more and more money, purchase more property and assets, adapt to the latest fashion of clothes, and to the so-called modern and contemporary western culture and social habits. All this at the cost of your own culture and heritage. Our age-old culture and knowledge get dumped into a corner by such pursuers of modern culture.

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Stop and Think

Why all this race for money, status, fashion, and glamour?

What will you get in all this pursuit? Instead of Tensions!

You will always be racing for this and that; and, don't have any time to rest or to enjoy it.

Further, the more money you earn, the more is tension in handling and managing it.

You will be scared of losing it. You Can't have good sleep and will be restless always.

The same thing happens to the pursuer of status also. 

You always indulge in competition with your companions and look at them suspiciously. 

You can't be friends with them and enjoy their company. 

You try to be aloof from them in order to maintain your status.

You will be losing happiness and satisfaction in your family and circles also.

This race for money and status or prestige in society- these are all causes of dissatisfaction, greed, anger, irritation, and whatnot.


The desire for money makes you restless. You try to work overtime and take up more jobs. It will decrease your efficiency and deteriorate your health also.

Thereby, you develop mental tensions and irritations in your family. You can not be happy and find fault with everybody.

Moreover, if you are indulging in false prestige and fashions and increasing your spending, it may result in more demand for money and increased pressure and tension on you.

Further, you are spending on the latest designs of clothes from western-cultured markets which are too much costlier than your local indigenous products.

Thereby, you are making yourself financially overburdened. For this, you want to make more money and the quest for money never stops.

What To Do?

So, better You stop Now and Think of all this unnecessary extravaganza.

Is all this hotchpotch necessary for us to survive in this world?

Is it not enough, if we have enough money, shelter, food, and clothe which are sufficient for our livelihood?

Why am I indulging in these unnecessary accumulations of wealth and property which will not come with me when I leave my body one day?

Why give up the present happiness and mental peace for the sake of that false prestige and status?

Why not keep satisfied with whatever I get that may be sufficient for myself and my family's needs.


Instead of running for false prestige and fame, you may better try to think of the great heritage of our country, its culture, its social, ethical, and spirituals values.

Why should I keep unaware of them or ignore them? Why not take pains to understand those values and benefit from them.

Instead of running behind the materialistic aspects and glamour of the foreign culture, try to give some value to our own cultural and spiritual norms.


Indulgence in materialistic life is not enough. It is only momentary and does not provide all that kind of satisfaction that you may get by understanding and by following the ethical and spiritual values of life.

We can not carry material wealth and false prestige with us to the other world after death. Only moral and spiritual values come with us at that time. Remember this Fact.

So, think of your Happiness and Peace of Mind.

Think Twice Before Making Donations To Schools

The present atmosphere of admissions to educational institutions is such that one may have to think twice before having children. The increasing lust for convent education and the ever-increasing fees of these institutions throw a great burden on the parents of middle=income families thereby making the situation scary. When it gets combined with the attitudes of some of those affluent classes of people who are ready to throw away any amount of money to get a seat for their wardens, the things are going from bad to worst.


Gone have the days when people used to get a quality education in the municipal or government-run schools and some private institutions. Now our people have become crazy and exhibitionist. They think of their status and prestige and don't bother throwing away money. This mentality of our people is one of the reasons for all this present state of the economic crisis that we are facing and unable to come out of it.


I don't think the necessity for such an extravaganza.

Is there any lack of teaching skills in our society?

Or, the lack of educational schools and colleges in our country?

Why such mad rush and inflated demand for convent education?

Is there more quality in them than our ordinary educational institutions?

Where is the need for going on pushing their fee structures to the sky-heights?


Let us think reasonably. Assume you are establishing a convent school with education from LKG to Class V. What you want is 7 rooms for teaching, one room for the Principal, one room for an office, and one more room for teachers to take lunch or spend leisure hours in between their turns. Besides these, we need the required furniture for these rooms like student desks, chairs, and tables.  Let us assume that the cost of furniture and other expenditure incurred for registration and obtaining the permit for running the school are a one-time expenditures that shall be recovered in a long run. Then, there is the monthly rent say 25000/-, salaries total of 50000/- roughly (for total 10 persons) including principal, and other electricity sanitation, etc. say 5000/-?- Thus the total monthly expense will come to around 80,000/- only.

Now, if there are 7 classes and 40 students in each class, and if you charge a monthly fee of Rs.300/- per student, the total fee receipts will be 84,000/- (280 X 300 = 84,000).

So, all your expenses can be met with that fees only.

Now, you can charge slightly higher fees for the higher classes which will be your sole income. It will not burden the parents much.


From the above calculation, you can clearly see that there is no loss even if you are charging lower fees. The reimbursement of your one-time capital expenditure and other time-to-time expenses can also be recovered very easily by slightly adjusting the fee structure.

So, where is the need to pay huge amounts of fees and the need for larger donations? Isn't it simply an extravaganza?


The above is merely an example to show how you can calculate things and make decisions.

You can calculate in your own way and act according to your prudence. Any suggestions and comments are always welcome.

So, you better think twice or even thrice before making unnecessary large sums to your schools and colleges. It will only result in inflation of things in the long run.

Log On To Your Soul, Do Not Neglect It

In our daily day-to-day life, we are running overburdened with too many activities due to which we often get irritated and stuck up with unsolicited problems.

Our quest for material pleasures never ends and there is no ending of desires.  We never stop even after possessing all those comforts required for a happy life. We always try to be more wealthy or more famous than our neighbors and relatives. Thereby, we are only making our lives more uncomfortable and worrisome.


What is the need for that much wealth, position, and a band of servants behind us?

Do you think all this remains with you forever?  And it will be with you wherever you go?

No, not at all!



At some point in time, you will be noticing that all our wealth is of no use. Everything will be of zero value when such a situation arises.

No one will be able to solve his problems in spite of all that enormous material wealth possessed by him. He might need some helping hand to solve any such problem and maybe looking for help from God.


So why not wake up earlier?

In spite of lamenting later, why not strengthen ourselves from now on?

Let us be more powerful with some spiritual wealth instead of running after all these material possessions.

The real wealth that will be with you and come with you forever is your spirituality. It is the most reliable wealth which you should acquire and own.

That only can give you immense strength and eternal happiness. You can rely on this wealth with utmost confidence more than all your material possessions.


Now how to acquire this spiritual possession and develop intimacy with God?


For this purpose, you will have to log on to your soul.

Here, the Soul is the Atman or the Spiritual Mind which is free of all material obstacles and attachments.

Lord Sri Krishna has said in Bhagavad Gita, again and again, that Soul or Atman has no beginning nor end. It is there before your birth and will be there after your death and will be the light showing you the path in whichever form you are.

So, wake up now and log on to your soul. The password and key for getting entry into this Soul is Introspection.

• You can enter into your soul or mind through your self-introspection. 
• You make friends with your soul. You interact with it. 
• Review all your actions performed till now. 
• Discuss them with your Soul. Analyze them. 
• Distinguish between right and wrong, correct and incorrect, mature and immature, sensible and insensible, etc. 
• Once you are able to analyze like this, it will be very clear to you how foolish and ignorant you have been all these years.

You will come to realize that all this materialistic world is an illusion. It is alluring your senses and dragging you towards physical attachments and emotions. It is making you believe that you are the boss of all your actions.

Now, you gradually begin to introspect within yourself and gradually come to know that there is some spiritual power behind all your actions.

It prompts you to act.

It makes you perform a certain act in a certain way and not the other way.

It guides you each and every moment.

It is the spiritual mind or soul or the Atman whatever you may call it. It will guide you to the eternal peace and happiness that you can find nowhere else.

Be Sensible- Don't Get Flown Away By Emotions

Sensibility means being rational and being conscious of whatever you are doing as well as keeping an awareness of others' feelings.

You must be aware of your surroundings whenever you do something or express something either through your words or actions. You must think of others around you and of the civilized society that you live in whenever you speak something or do something. You must be aware of the consequences of your acts, words used, and reactions.

That is sensibility. Sensibility reflects your personality.

Sensibility vs Sensitivity

Sensitivity is a feeling of being vulnerable to your environment or being too much attached to it.  

But, Sensibility is the awareness of being conscious of your surroundings during all your actions and deeds.

• People are sensitive and emotional by birth. 
• But Sensibility comes with maturity. 
• Sensibility shows your level of maturity, your culture, and your civilization.
• Sensitivity shows your weakness or softness often.

Now, coming to the point of our present topic, some recent speeches and statements of our prominent personalities and their actions/reactions have prompted me to write this article. I may not want to take their names or disclose them but in general, I would like to draw their attention too to my topic. I wonder how could such prominent and mature people ( maybe most people think them to be so ), could utter such insensible statements in our society and make irrelevant references which downgrade their personality and that too on public platforms.


Nowadays, politics has become the ground field of some insensible people.

Not a single day passes without some strike, some dharna, some group clash, etc.

Politics has spread in every field. Schools, Colleges, Working places, Temples, Sports. All our world has got polluted with politics.

Everywhere there is the nasty habit of falling into groups and clashing with one another on irrelevant matters. The Twitter wars are good examples of this nasty habit.

All this is the result of the insensibility of people. Insensibility leads to indulging in various undesirable acts and destructive mentalities leading to clashes among groups and destruction of public property.


Take the instance of our public and/or students participating in some rally for some cause like separate statehood for their region, or for expressing their resentment against the construction of a particular dam, or some other social or political cause. Instead of taking out their procession peacefully, they indulge in stone-pelting at police and public properties like buses, shopping malls, etc. Is it not a sign of their insensibility and a lack of their reasoning power?

If they could think a while before indulging in such activities, they could have realized that they are destroying their own daily usage property and troubling their own people by doing so. They are hindering the normal functioning of schools and colleges, disrupting the transportation services which could affect the daily life of themselves, their children, friends and relatives and all their society. This is due to a lack of sensibility.


Not only that. We often witness noisy scenes, abusive word usages, and breaking of furniture, etc. on floors of our Parliament and Assembly sessions. One can observe how absurd our MPs and MLAs have become. Why do they lose their senses for the sake of a trivial matter? Why can't they behave in a mature manner? They could solve their differences in a peaceful way. By mere bench thumping, furniture breaking, or creating a ruckus, they can't get anything. It expresses only their insanity.

And, what about the social media platform? There also you can see how cheap and irrational these people are with their senseless tweets and hate messages.

All these things are clear examples of how insensible we are becoming day by day.


So, I once again stress the need for sensibility in all our actions/deeds, speeches/writings, and even in our clothing also.

Let us create a good atmosphere in our society through our rational, sensible, good cultured, and civilized behavior and activities.