January 2019 - The Acropolitan Magazine

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

Wise personages and great leaders of all times have endeavored to illuminate earthly life with heavenly values. They led by selfless example, and demonstrated courage to act altruistically, conscious of the fact that individual fulfillment is intricately woven into collective well-being. As we enter into 2019, how might we use this inspiration to manifest our dreams, and empower ourselves, to give shape to our aspirations?

In order to empower real change and improve the quality of our lives, we must learn to guard our own physical, psychological, and spiritual health. It is necessary to go beyond symptoms, superficial and impermanent by nature, and investigate the root cause of our present challenges, so that like an archer, we might, with grace, Will, and concentration, conquer the goal of a new and better world, for new and better human beings.

Join us as we set off on this glorious adventure! Discover – Awaken – Transform.

ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE

Jan2019- Understanding Gandhi - An Exchange with Dr Tridip Suhrud

Understanding Gandhi: Exchange with Dr. Tridip Suhrud

January 1, 2019

By Harianto Mehta

As the architect of a non-violent civil disobedience movement that led to the independence of a nation, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has been hailed as a spirited activist, a courageous freedom fighter, and an astute politician. For his own deeply ascetic lifestyle, uncompromising ethical code, and strict adherence to human values, he won the veneration of masses, a devotion usually reserved for saints, indeed even the title of a Mahatma. His profound influence on world leaders like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King can be said to have changed the course of history.

Grace

January 1, 2019

By Tarini Vaidya

Grace has become an old fashioned word, graciousness and courtesy have become old world values, almost valueless in today’s environment. The world has gone über brash. Billboards extoll the ‘virtue’ of Attitude, with a capital A: “Wear your Attitude,” screams one, as though attitude were an aspirational achievement! A young generation has grown up with an exaggerated sense of privilege and entitlement. If you say ‘please’ or ‘thank you’, people look at you as though you were an anachronism. We are encouraged to be ‘go-getters’, to demand, to seize what we consider is ours.

Quality of Life

January 1, 2019

By Delia Steinberg Guzman

As a logical consequence of the demands of our technological civilization, which is based on the quality and performance of its products, people have finally begun to look at the human being as the main factor in any model of civilization, whether technological or otherwise.

It is now increasingly understood and accepted that the greater a person’s sense of well-being when he or she is producing something, the greater will be the objective quality of the material product.

Heal’th: Holistic Medicine

January 1, 2019

By Shraddha Shetty

We have made great advances in mainstream medicine, and have at our disposal more technology and research than ever before. This has enabled us to make great strides in diagnosis and treatment. This progress, however, has its pitfalls as well. Specialty and super-specialty are causing doctors to lose a holistic view of patients. Rather than see them as human beings, they are reduced to a disconnected organ that needs correcting, blind sighting its role and function as a single part of a complex body, animated by consciousness. While attention to detail is essential, we must also consider the possibility that by zooming in, we may at times lose the bigger picture.

Vipassana: Experience of Impermanence

January 1, 2019

By Manjula Nanavati

Twenty–five centuries ago in Northern India, a man desolated by the quantum and pervasiveness of human suffering in the world, resolved to find a solution. His investigation led him to many masters, abundant knowledge and a plethora of techniques to investigate Truth and Reality, until finally on achieving enlightenment, he devoted the rest of his life to teaching people how to come out of misery.

The Buddha, who never claimed to be anything but human, began teaching, and several hundred years afterwards, his words were compiled into Dhammapada, meaning at the feet of Dharma,