Exploring Yoga with Raghu Ananthanarayanan

The conflict between doing what is true, good, right vs what is convenient, feels good and comfortable. The conflict of responding with kindness, compassion and empathy as against impatience, intolerance and anger. In general, in our daily choices, conflicts between our inner moral compass which is often subtle and not so easy to listen to, and the louder voices of our desires, attachments and habits that pull us in various directions, often clouding our judgement.

“Who were you that I lived with, walked with? The brother, the friend? Strife and love, darkness and light…are they workings of one mind, features of the same face? Oh my soul. Let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things shining.”

Our recent times are characterized by a phenomenon due to which we may refer to it as a Post Truth Era. Not only are the differences between the real and unreal fewer, and less clear, but they are regarded as irrelevant. This seems to be yet another inevitable step downward in postmodernist thinking, and it deserves our attention and reflection as it seems to be yet another warning sign for what is yet to come. In a world so heavily bombarded by an overwhelming quantity of information and stimulation

Among many other psychological diseases, our time is witness to frequent crises of indecisiveness and confusion in people.  Many are those who let their lives slip by in a constant state of dissatisfaction, produced by not knowing what to do or how to do it in order achieve effective results.

Extracts from an evening hosted by New Acropolis Culture Circle. Philanthropy can be a bridge between the ideal of fraternity and its material manifestation. Imagining a better world, with a greater sense of fraternity is intuitively appealing to many. Yet, to make a personal sacrifice in order to create that better world, is the choice that we make less often than is needed.

In this light, it is relevant to ask – what drives one to share with that urgent sense of duty? Does one need money and power to be a philanthropist? What is the relationship between our choices and our identity?

If you have visited Stonehenge on the Salisbury plains of England, perhaps you sensed a powerful feeling of mystery, of something hard to define. To the eye they are a series of immense standing stones set in circles. But rather, “Stonehenge is a symbol of Albion, the ancient wisdom of Britain and of different cultural values from a vanished time” writes Archaeoastronomer Robin Heath.

Human Values are the noble, guiding principles that must shape our behaviour, attitude and interactions with others. Cultivating these values therefore, is crucial for fostering a harmonious and inclusive society. Culture, the rich tapestry of all the fine arts, as well as the philosophy that underlies customs and traditions, plays a significant role in nurturing and developing human values. To this end New Acropolis, in Mumbai, hosted a carefully curated selection of philosophy, film, music and dance on 10th June 2023, at the Chemould Prescott Road art gallery, to celebrate culture in its myriad forms.

It is said that the founder of Buddhism in Japan, the monk Mahakashyapa, received his illumination directly from Shakyamuni (Gautama Buddha), during what is known as the Silent Sermon or the Flower Sermon. Buddha held up a white flower to a crowd of assembled monks.

I confess: I love seeking knowledge. I read a lot, and also hoard many more books than I can actually read…I am a bibliomaniac. Thomas Frognall Dobson spoke of this fictional “neurosis” that prompts an obsessive desire to collect books. (1) But there is a more fascinating Japanese word for it: Tsundoku, which essentially is to do with the hoarding of books, many of which shall never be read. We simply allow these books to pile up on our book shelves.

Hazrat Baba Bulleh Shah is believed to have been born in 1680, in the small village of Uch (Bahawalpur, Punjab) in present-day Pakistan, where his father, Shah Muhammad Darwaish, was a Paish Imam and teacher. Most historians confirm that Bulleh Shah worked as an adolescent herder in the village. Despite his poverty, however, he was able to educate himself very well, and became a well known Sufi mystic, and celebrated Kaafi poet, using the main lyrical form of Punjabi Sufi Poetry.

The Movie The Matrix, released in 1999, and its two sequels (Reloaded and Revolutions), released in 2003, have together been an international phenomena. The first movie in particular, was known as a modern version of Plato’s Myth of the Cave, and the two subsequent parts are of the same universe – the real world and the cave – although further away from Plato’s text. When The Matrix Revolutions was released, it seemed that the dice were rolled. A cycle was complete, and the sun was rising on a world where the cards had been dealt and the rules had apparently changed.

This story was created by the volunteers New Acropolis India as a part of our 16th anniversary celebration. It shows the idea that to build a better world, we need the courage to first imagine it, and then conviction and persistence to make it come true. We need to sow the seed, which we then need to nourish for it to grow and flourish.

When I was very young, I came across a book called The Prophet, by poet, painter, thinker, but perhaps above all, a philosopher, Kahlil Gibran. I clearly remember a sense of mystery; the existence of truths about myself, beyond the known. I did not know what I was searching for, but it awakened in me a desperate thirst to know myself. I had set off on a journey, and Kahlil Gibran’s works have been a shining light ever since. Gibran was born to humble beginnings in 19th century Lebanon, in a world torn by war.

In this article, I seek not to publish a scholastic investigation of Warli Art. Instead, as a philosopher studying symbolism, I humbly share my observations of a few elements from its unique tradition in which the artists seem to have been preoccupied, not with mythology, but with the strong drive to align to Nature’s order, by celebrating life and revering Mother Earth, through a unique sense of aesthetics.

Today, people throughout the world are perturbed by the degradation of the environment and the disastrous consequences of the loss of resources in the hands of an ever growing population. In such times, traditional ethics, which contained nature conservation

For many of us who live in big cities, Time is something we always lack. We find ourselves struggling to reach places on time, to submit our work on time, to wake up on time, and the list can go on and on… If only someone could give us a little more time to complete everything we want to. If only someone could teach us how to stop time from always moving forward, as if it is falling through our fingers.