Educational Resources

If you are looking for some good educational tips and other useful information (like recorded lectures etc) on various subjects, here are some good educational resources:
http://www.youtube.com/edu
http://www.academicearth.org/
http://www.ted.com/
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

In addition, there are some good audio books available at the Orange County Public Library website. To access these, navigate to the website:
http://www.ocpl.org/
Now click on the link: "New! - Downloadable eAudiobooks" to download and enjoy audio books!
If you are a member of ocpl library, you can create an e-account with them free of cost by just visiting one of the ocpl libraries.

Hope this helps.

Jealousy

Opening:
I'd like to request all of you to close your eyes and imagine that you have won lottery worth $5 Million dollars. Now, imagine what you can do with that money. Imagine you are on a sandy beach with palm trees, blue sky, different shades of blue and green water and you are relaxing in a hammock. Feel how happy you are, how serene and peaceful you are.
Now imagine that the person sitting next to you has won $10 million dollars. Imagine what he or she can do with this money. Imagine that he or see is flying in a private jet, hovering over the clouds and it seems like heaven. You may open your eyes now.
Did you feel a tinge of jealousy while thinking about the second scenario?

Body:
Madam Toastmaster, Fellow Toastmasters and Honored Guests, this is what is Jealousy.

Jealousy is mental uneasiness resulting from success of others. It's a resentful or painful desire for another's prosperity. Jealousy is an indication that we are not satisfied with what God has given us.

A synonym of jealousy is envy.

Jealousy is a natural tendency. It limits us from sharing the joy of others success. It's observed that feelings of jealousy last much longer than feelings of anger and other similar emotions.
We feel jealous primarily related to known people, such as family members, friends, co-workers and acquaintances. We are not jealous of famous people like Bill Gates having 7 BR house with 24 bathrooms or Warren Buffett building a portfolio of $50 Billion dollars.

We are jealous when

• one of our co-worker is promoted
• our neighbor wins a jackpot
• an acquaintance made lot of money in stock market
  
• a friend buys a big house
  
• a fellow toastmaster wins a best speaker, best evaluator or best table topics speaker award

Religiously Speaking:

• The Holy Bible advises us to be content with what we have, for God will never fail or forsake us
• Islam warns us to be careful of envy, because envy destroys good deeds in the same manner as fire destroys wood
• Buddhism suggests us to use Metta Bhavana or feelings of friendship in meditation to control all negative tendencies including Jealousy

Causes of Jealousy:
Lack of self-esteem, self-confidence and self-belief are some of the causes of jealousy.

Jealousy can be controlled and avoided.
I suggest the following few steps:

• Just be aware of it
• Don't compare yourself with others
• Believe in "You get what you deserve and you deserve what you get"
  
• Count all the blessings in our life and be content with what we have
  

Conclusion:

I'd request all members and guests except for the timer to close your eyes again and imagine about the happy feelings of $5 million lottery winning. Imagine the serenity and peace. Now imagine you are driving a car and stopped at a stop light and see that this homeless man is pan handling for his meal for the day. Imagine you extend few dollars to this not-so-fortunate individual and drive away. Please open your eyes now. Did you feel this how fortunate you are for having what you have.

Mahatma Gandhi's advice:
To paraphrase "Whenever you feel depressed or sad, think of a person less fortunate than you".


Venu's Quote:
Like disease is precursor to death, Jealousy is precursor to hatred and bitterness; hence Jealousy should be controlled and avoided at the first awareness of it's occurrence.

Sense of Humor

Situation 1:

I am in an elevator going to 8th floor. Then this guy walks in and fumbles while pressing the floor number. Instead of pressing #2 button, presses #6 and #4. After realizing the mistake this person says:

Response 1 - Oh, I am so sorry, you have to stop at all these floors now. I say, it's alright, even though I am fuming with anger inside.

Response 2 - Oh, I am so sorry, but the good side is you can go for sight seeing today. I say, it's alright with a chuckle.

Situation 2:

I am about to leave after meeting a banker and I forget my iPhone at the desk. Banker's responds:

Response 1 - Excuse me sir, you forgot your phone. I say, oh thank you very much with gratitude and internally chiding myself for the forgetfulness.

Response 2 - Oh, I am so glad that you are leaving this phone for me? I say, oh thank you very much but this time with a chuckle.

Greed

Introduction

What comes to mind when we talk about Bernie Madoff, Rod Blagojevish and Ramalingam Raju? Most of you would agree that it is greed, which is the cause of foreclosures, bank failures, job losses and the current turmoil in the global economy. I wanted to take few minutes today to highlight what greed is and influence you to be aware of greed and avoid it if it's possible.

What is Greed?
Greed is the self-serving desire for money, wealth, power, food, or other material possessions. Greed is excessive acquiring wealth most of the times depriving others. When one acquires more than their fair share, other people do not get what they deserve. It is a strong desire in each and every one of us that is extremely difficult to overcome.

When greed is prevalent in someone, holy thoughts such as charity, kindness and humility are lacking. The greedy person values money and possessions more than God. By desiring excessive wealth men ignore Godly thoughts and hence do not fulfill their obligatory duty of serving the society which supports them. The greedy persons try to possess many things that pleases them, making them the center of their efforts, which in turn creates pride and arrongance.

Spiritually speaking..

• According to Catholicism, Greed is considered as one of the seven deadly sins. Hence greed should be avoided.
• In the epic Mahabharata, Bhishma teaches us that Greed is the foundation of all sin. From greed spring loss of judgment, deception, pride, arrogance, and malice. Greed alone is a great destroyer of merit and goodness.
• The Tao Teh Ching, too, tells us that, “There is no greater calamity than indulging in greed;”.
• The Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of the Sikhs, questions “Where there is greed, what love can there be?”
• Buddhists believe greed is based on incorrectly connecting material wealth with happiness. Research studies in the field of happiness confirm that beyond the provision of a basic level of material comfort, more wealth does not increase happiness.

There may be greed if you:

• go to an "all you can eat" buffet and feel obliged to eat as much as possible to get your money's worth
• can't say "no" when offered money to do a job.

• are always seeking ways to make more money.


• have fallen for several "get rich quick" schemes.


• buy stocks thinking they will double in value in few days.


• joined a multi-level marketing.
  
• become perturbed when you purchase an item and find it cheaper elsewhere.
• would rather have a high paying job than one which is interesting and rewarding.
• despise paying taxes and have sympathy for those who find ways to avoid such.
  

How to avoid greed

First and foremost the understanding of greed and it's follies will help us be aware of greed in. Consciously making efforts to serving the community, doing charity work will also help.

Conclusion
I would like to conclude with the following aphorism:
It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.

Desires

Introduction
According to Buddhist teachings, desire is the cause of all suffering, pain, and sorrow. Only by extinguishing all desires can a person attain ultimate happiness, or Nirvana. However according to some modern philosophers, desire is the fundamental motivation of all human action. At the outset, these statements may seem contradictory. However, both of them are true based on our perspective and inclination.

Definition of Desire

Desire is a sense of longing for a person or object or hoping for an outcome. Desire is not an emotion. Desires can be good or bad. The more intense the desires are the more effect they have on the outcome.

Source of Desires

Desires arise from our attachments and associations. Once we realize that we have a desire, we should analyze what is the desire for, what we need to do to fulfill the desire, and what we may lose while fulfilling the desire. For example, we desire for more money by taking a position as consultant. It surely brings more money, however it will involve constant travel and reduced family time.

Classification of Desires
Desires can be classified broadly into three types. Physical desires, emotional desires and intellectual desires.

• Physical desires are hunger, thirst etc. When we are hungry, we desire food. When we are thirsty, we desire drinks. When we smell aroma of coffee, we desire to have coffee. When we see a picture of ice cream, we desire to eat ice cream. We desire food, sometimes even if we are not truly hungry.
• Emotional desires are our desire for love and affection, our desire for appreciation and acknowledgment. Desire for revenge, hoping for bad outcome for others are examples of bad desires.
  
• Intellectual desires are our desire for success, career growth, achievement, service to the society, charity work etc.
  

Teachings from Bhagawad Geeta

Ancient Hindu teachings, The Bhagawad Geeta teaches us, like the smoke covers the fire, like the dust covers the mirror, like the womb covers the embryo, desires cover the truth. To truly be blissful, we have to extinguish all our desires, bad as well as good. Higher the intensity of desire, higher the effort needed in extinguishing the desire. By blowing air with little effort, the smoke can be blown away and radiant fire can be uncovered. It will take little more effort, to dust off and see the shining mirror. However, it takes a lot of hard work and patience for 9 months, for the embryo to grow into a baby.

Conclusion

Desires are seldom fulfilled. As soon as one desire is fulfilled, a new and more potent desire replaces the old one. Unfulfilled desires cause anger, dissatisfaction and sorrow. If desires cannot be avoided then let's have selfless desires, which not only serve us, they serve the society as well. Desires are always a step ahead of achievements.

The meaning of Love

What is Love?
Love, it's a very powerful word. It brings peace and harmony to this chaotic world. With love many a people have brought peace to the world.

The word love has many meanings and manifestations. The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes. Due to this diversity of meanings, it is difficult to define love. As an abstract concept, love usually refers to a deep feeling of tenderly caring for another person. Love involves concern for the other person's welfare and feeling.

Philosophically, where Anger is like fire, Love is like Ice. It is cold, calm and strong and brings coolness to the surrounding. Most often when we love others, others will love back and peace will permeate in the environment.

Examples of different meanings of love:
I love my spouse (romantic love, intimacy, commitment, attachment)
I love my parents (respect, devotion)
I love my children (affection)
I love God (devotion)
I love Tennis, I love Movies, I love my car (impersonal love, attachment)
I love my job (commitment)

What is not Love?
Let's also understand what is not love.
Infatuation: A teenager falls in love with another teenager. Many kids and young adults feel crazy about Hollywood stars, Musicians, Singers etc. That is not love, but infatuation. Infatuation is the state of being completely carried away by unreasoned love; addictive love. Infatuation usually occurs at the beginning of a relationship. Usually infatuation lasts for shorter period of time. Longer lasting form of infatuation is called Limerence, which can have pathological consequences.

Passion is an emotion of feeling very strongly about a person.
Friendship between two people may exist and might be liking each others attributes, characters, but it is not love.

Manifestations of Love
Various manifestations of love are self (narcissistic) love, romantic (erotic) love, filial love and divine (agapic) love.
Love for self is the lowest form of love, and believe it or not is one of the strongest. We as humans love ourselves first. Even if we love others, the root cause would be to have reciprocation. To recount a story, King of Kosala Pasenadi and Queen Mallika were both disciples of Buddha. One day the king casually asked the queen, who does she love the most, expecting his name to be mentioned. But to his surprise, queen said that she loved herself the most. Normally, any other king would have banished the queen for saying such. But king said, strangely even I had the same realization during my mediation today that I love myself the most.

Love most often means the romantic love between people. This kind of love is necessary primarily for progeny. This kind of love lasts for short amount of time. There are many memorable and tragic stories between people. Love between these people and their sacrifice is memorable. Some such pairs are Romeo Juliet, Laila Majnu, Heer Ranjha and their love seem to be eternal. The Taj Mahal in India is one of the greatest symbol of love. Mughal emperor Shah Jahan was so much grief stricken by his third wife Mumtaj Mahal's passing away, that he immediately started to build a tomb in her memory and today people from all corners of the world visit Taj Mahal as a symbol of love.

Filial love or love for family is the next kind of love. This kind of love builds strong families, and good societies. One story from Hindu Mythological story Ramayan recounts that King Dasaratha could not bear the separation of his eldest son Rama and died with grief. Another story from Mahabharata, the blind King Dhrutarashtra was so much attached to his wicked son Duryodhan that he allowed the war between the family members and in turn was the cause for the destruction of entire Kaurava clan. It is believed that Humayun the eldest son of Mughal emperor Babur was sickly ill. Babur with love for his son, circled his bed and cried out to God to take his life and spare Humayun's life. Historians dispute this claim, however it shows the strength of love for children.

Divine love is the most important and highly regarded love. People following Judaism, Christianity and Islam belive in Abraham their patriarch. With divine love, he was about to sacrifice his own son as an offering to God. Meerabai, one of the famous devotees of Lord Krishna, once drank poison as proof of her devotion to God. Divine love is infinite, unconditional and pure. When we are able to display this love even in traces, will serve a great deal to the society. Compassion, forgiveness are some of the forms of this divine love.

Conclusion:
One of the most important longing for all human beings is to love others and be loved by others.
For some love for self is the strongest, for some love for family is the strongest and for some love for God is the strongest.
Selfless and unconditional love is the purest love of all.

Persian Poem

Even after all this time

The sun never says to the earth "you owe me".

Look what happens with a Love like that!

- It lights the whole Sky. (Hafiz)

Anger and It's Control

Anger and It's Control - CC Manual - Project#2 (Organize)
By Venu Swamy Kovela (September 7th 2008)



Anger and it's nature:
Anger is an emotional state of mind, where in our mental equilibrium is disturbed and our mind is agitated. It can range from mild annoyance, irritation to violent rage.

Anger is like fire (philosophically), it burns within and burns anything that comes to its contact. If it finds dry brush or wind, it becomes much more violent and if it finds moisture it slows down. Similarly when we are angry, we not only burn/agitate ourselves, we agitate everyone who is around. If the person in front of us talking back at us, we get much more angry. But, when we are in the company of noble people or children, we tend to calm down little bit.

Why do we become angry?
Bhagawat Geeta (one of the ancient Hindu scripture) teaches us that when our desires are not fulfilled we get angry. Either something happened which we do not want to happen or something we wanted to that did not happen. Behind each angry instance, we will find that there is some wish that is unfulfilled.
We think that the cause is someone else, something outside of us. We get angry to make that happen, we try to teach a lesson, we try to correct someone.

What happens when we are angry?
Physically, when we are angry, our breathing becomes heavy, our heart beats faster, our blood pressure goes up, our voice becomes loud and it trembles, and our brain stimulates release of certain chemicals such as adrenaline and Noradrenaline. It's one way of our brain to prepare us for flight or fight response.

Bhagawat Geeta also teaches that when we are angry, we lose our memory, which in turn diminishes our intellect, which in turn fails to discriminate between the right and wrong. This leads us to say or do lots of bad things, we damage ourselves, we hurt feelings of our near and dears, we destroy our relationships.

Most often we regret later after the damage is done. We want to correct others, but the result is counter productive. Even if we say something absolutely correct while angry, the result is negative and the desired affects are obtained.

How do we control Anger?
Holy Quran (Holy teachings from Islam) teaches us, that when we are angry we should drink a glass of water. If we are standing, we should try sitting down. If that didnt help, lie down. If that didn't help then keep quiet for sometime.

Following are few more suggestions:
Take few deep breaths.
Count upto 10.
Forgive others.

Personal tips:
First and foremost realize that anger is bad.
Resolve in our own mind that we are not going to get angry.
Even if we get angry, have the awareness that we are angry at that moment.
Resolve that we will calm down as soon as we realize.
Tell ourselves that by remaining angry, the outcome is counter productive.
Think about maintaining good relationships.
Think about all good things about the person.

Conclusion:
Realize that anger builds in stages from annoyances to rage. Minor dissatisfactions and disappointments if not resolved sooner, gets accumulated and becomes stockpiles. And suddenly all the issues comes to the forefront and adds fuel to your anger. Hence, if we care about the relationship, we should resolve the issues immediately and not keep anything unresolved. We should forgive more.

Cone Example:
When we get angry, we regain our composure surely and certainly. But some of us are like the cone with the pointed side is on the ground, minor disturbance will disturb its equilibrium and it takes some outside support for it to stand. Some of us are like the cone which lies on its side. Little bit of disturbance, rolls the cone side to side but comes to rest after sometime. And some of us are like the cone with its base on the ground and no matter what happens the cone does not get disturbed. All of us are in this range, and obviously we should try to be like the cone on it's base.