Cheating...

I happened to have a discussion with one of my colleague about love, marriage, life and it automatically got routed to the topic "Cheating". We were talking about how people end up in one night stands cheating their loved ones. My India culture and brought up made me say "Having physical relationship with other men/women is the worst thing any body can do". To my surprise what my friend said was "I can forgive my BF/Husband for a one night stand but not the emotional cheating". We discussed for a while but never could agree with her. I was confident that one night stands were the worst.
          Around two days after this happened, I have listened to a radio show on the topic "Cheating". Its a one hour program and I have listened to the entire topic. I have listened to the facilitators, people who cheated, people who still are cheating etc etc. What all I have got is the below.

There are two kinds of cheating the we humans specialize.

(i) Physical (I still believe that Phy is the worst type of cheating, that's the reason I have mentioned it first)
(ii) Emotional

Guys, in general, would end up in one night stands; mostly knowingly. The reasons for that would be:

Emotional distress
Stress in personal life
Stress in professional life
Fights with spouse
Revenge on spouse/friends
Entertainment
Drug/Alcohol influence

Women/Men both end up (knowingly/unknowingly) in emotional cheating. This is the dangerous kind (Yes, I agreed with my friend now). I will give you an example. I remember a person who unknowingly started sharing things with a colleague. He started discussing office grief with her, which extended into personal matters. Every time he had a fight at home, he found peace by sharing with her and bitching about his wife. After a year all the important things of his life, salary, bonus, planning for children, his happiness, his grief, his fears, his tears everything is being shared with her alone. He is no more interested in his wife. Anything important in his life, his friend is the one that came to his mind. Gradually his married life began to get destroyed. Ofcourse at the brink of it, due to his friend moving to states, he became normal again. But then it was a disaster. I was the witness of the whole episode and can never forget what the emotional relationship with her made him go through.

This kind of cheating starts slowly and unknowingly, you will end up liking the other person more that what you should do. This creates a rift in you life and things will change drastically. To avoid this, you need to know that, instead of bitching about your spouse, you need to address the problem. This will not only make your life easy but also make your spouses life easy. By addressing the problem, you not only solve it many times, but also come up with an agreeable solution which will work for both of you and will avoid problems.

Guys/Girls be aware before getting into this kind of stuff. You never know when you become attached and will have to pay a big price for it.   

Afterlife and Rebirth... Belief/Disbelief

The Hindu religion (ofcourse many other religions/dharmas too) tell us that we will have rebirth and afterlife scenarios. Let me start topic with what I think... I do not believe that we will be reborn.Yeah I proudly say that "I do not believe in any of this stuff". Let me tell you a little preface before letting you know what I think.

Humans, in their life time, are prone to do many sins. 50% of the sins are done knowingly and the remaining 50% wantedly :-P
When I was young I was made believe that we have to be truthful and should never commit any sins. We should not hurt others, cheat people, hurt people, animals, birds and infact trees and also not to disturb the serenity of nature. But as a child you would have asked WHY??? The reply, generally would be, coz god will punish you for your sins. And we believe that a super power will take care of all these things and punish us in after life.

My understanding of this over these years is, there is no such power as god or goddess. Its a belief created by our previous generations to maintain a peaceful environment. Let me explain you in detail about this...

What if, our government says there is no fine if you jump signals or no punishment if you commit crime? Dont you do these things??? Yes you will (Might not be everyone, but many of us will). You will break the signals, cheat people, commit crimes and what not. But to make this society a good place to live, our government has made a rule book for us and asked us to follow it. Else you will be punished. As you would be afraid of getting caught and being punished, you would avoid risk and will try to follow the rule book. That's the reason things are going a little fine and we are able to live in this society. Likewise, in olden days, there is no proper government or controlling bodies to take care of all these stuff. So to avoid hazzeles, our elders created a super power and forced us to believe that there is a super power called god and made us believe that he is watching you 24/7. So as he notices all the things we do and will punish us for our crimes, we avoided doing the so called mistakes/sins/crimes. Due to this people would never tried to harm others and the social life continued peacefully. This was the reason, that we had less quarrels and less crime rate in the olden days compared to what we have now.

Sin:

Anything that is not acceptable socially or the elders doesn't like and do not have explanation for it, they have termed those things as SINs. So we were always told that, if we commit sins, next birth would be disgusting... I was once told that based on your sins, your next birth would be decided. If your sins are more, you will reborn as a pig or a dog or a leech or something else. In the good olden days, the control system is not much strong due to lack of technology and administration. So to control all anti-social elements, the introduction of GOD, After birth, rebirth took place. People bought the idea and were afraid to commit sins. How I see this is, I don't care, as I wont get affected. What to know how??? Heres how...

Let us assume that there is really the concept of Afterlife and Rebirth. It implies that you were judged in hell or heaven and might got punished for your sins, which you never remembered or will know. So no point of worrying about Afterlife. And also if you believe in these, it implies that you were reborn many times. But as you dont remember what you had to go through in the previous birth, what difference does it make??? Did you ever see those animals??? They too dont remember anything about their previous birth and dont cry saying that "I was MJ and born as a monkey now. I was Saddam and now I am born like a pig in Pakistan". As long as you don't recall your previous, you won't fret. So even if you are born as a dog or a cat, you just live your life as a dog and die as a dog. So I say it doesn't really matter... 

As the people now started knowing about science and human birth secrets, they started realizing that there might not be any super power called God, and so they do not have to fear that someone is watching them all the time or about sins they are committing. Now they are ready to take risk and commit crimes whenever they are not monitored. Thats the reason for crime rate increase and the non-existent social activities started.

So as there is no God, there is not hell or heaven and no Afterlife or Rebirth. Feel free to commit the so called sins and be happy about it... Live life to the fullest... 

Raavan... God or Demon...

I happened to switch on my television after long time and what is see is "Raavan being worshiped as god". The first thing that came to my mind was "Crazy people". The argument of the Raavan followers is...

Raavan - Is a person form Scheduled Cast. He was deprived of his rights and he was killed by Rama, the upper cast culprit.

Rama - Is the person from upper caste and has conspired on Raavan and killed many of the rakshasas who also belong to SC.

What are the bases for these arguments?
Is there any truth in this?
How can people come up with these strange ideas?

My understanding of Ramayana as an Epic:

I am not going to tell what happened and whos who of Ramayana... But as a kid who listened to Ramayana from grand parents, heard Ramayana as a story, heard the preaching of the spiritual gurus, read books etc... all I know is, adhering to what is written in the Ramayana, will make you become strong as a individual and make you do the right things...

The great writer of all times Valmiki Maharsi, narrated Ramayana. With Brahma's boon, Valmiki Maharshi got to know not only what happened, but also what the characters thought at a particular situation. Valmiki in Ramayana, never told, Rama is a good person or Ravan is a bad person. All he depicted was the deeds of the person, due to which we categorized them as good or bad.

Ravana:

Ravana is a great scholar, warrior, ruler and what not... the only quality that was missing in him, that made him 'Rakshas' was the greed to forcefully get what he wanted. This quality alone made him abduct 'Sita' and thus killed by Lord Rama.

Rama:

The greatest of characteristics possessed by a human. Did I ever tell you that Lord Vishnu's incarnation is Rama. But he just quit all the powers possessed by gods and lived exactly like a human being. He was there in his mothers womb for 12 months. Gone through childhood, took pains to learn archery and other skills. Cried like a human being, lived like a human being. He showed humans the path to walk, the strength to stand for truth, the courage to fight for the weak and made the world know what to do and what not to do.

He followed Dharma, which inturn has helped him achieve success over the daemons. He showed us how to behave with elders, how to treat the young and helpless, how to behave with the same status people. He showed us the way to live.

So I request these Rakshasa's descendents to stop fretting over Ravan's birth and caste system and do something useful for the society instead.