Sri Aurobindo was a firm believer in not neglecting the body

Comment on Professor Arabinda Basu: A Tribute by Shraddhavan from Comments for Overman Foundation by KIRIT THAKKAR

Thanks. We will miss Arindam da’s frankness and straightforwardness. He was there to correct slightest incorrectness in presentation of Sri Aurobindo’s Teachings.

Many summers later… Vikram Kapur looks at the many faces of Corbett’s Nainital. The Hindu July 14, 2012

Nainital is not just about long-gone British hunters and plainspeople seeking to escape the summer heat. It is also home to Van Niwas, a branch of the Sri Aurobindo ashram. The ashram, which was established in 1966, sits high up in the hills round the city. The road, leading to it, is badly rutted. Yet the bumpy ride seems worth it, as we drive in through the gates. The thick foliage, the woods, the silence after the clamour of the city centre… All of it engenders a serene feeling of calm. I am taken aback to see children playing with a tennis ball.

Youth camps: Dr. Ramesh Bijlani, from the Delhi branch of the ashram who is conducting some of the study camps, tells me youth camps are very much a part of the summer schedule.

Sri Aurobindo was a firm believer in not neglecting the body, and the main focus of the youth camps is physical activity such as trekking and rock climbing. “Many children come with their parents who are attending the study camps,” Dr. Bijlani says.

The study camps are meant for adults and are far more spiritual in nature. Dr. Bijlani is a former medical doctor who taught on the faculty of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences for nearly 30 years before taking voluntary retirement in 2005. He has written books on nutrition and yoga. He is conducting a special camp, meant for allopathic doctors, that focuses on the relationship between a healthy mind and a healthy body. Twenty doctors have registered. Over tea he explains why the resistance to the mind-body relationship is considerably greater in the Indian medical community as opposed to the West. “They are reluctant to accept anything that is not part of conventional allopathic training,” he says. “Furthermore, in India we still live in an age of convention where spirituality is connected with religion.”

LOVE: the Link Between Earth and Heaven By Ramesh Bijlani on Jul 12, 2012 68 Views 2 responses

All our earth starts from mud and ends in sky, And Love that was once an animal’s desire, Then a sweet madness in the rapturous heart, An ardent comradeship in the happy mind, Becomes a wide spiritual yearning’s space. SRI AUROBINDO (In: Savitri, Book 10, Canto 3, p. 632) Love is the one emotion worth retaining even when all others have been driven out. Emotions originate in the non-ration.. more » 

Is Spirituality Opportunistic? – speaking tree By: Ramesh Bijlani on May 09, 2012 2259 Views 37 Responses

Spiritual growth is the very purpose of life. Thus, the spiritual viewpoint makes it possible to use everything that we do, and everything that happens to us in life, for moving towards the goal of life. As Sri Aurobindo has said, “All life is yoga”. That does not mean all life, no matter how lived, is yoga. What it means is that all life gives us an opportunity for the practice of yoga. To illustrate this point, let us take three major aspects of life – the work that we do, the people in our lives, and the happenings in our lives…

Seeing the Divine in all is a part of spiritual growth. Thus, the people whom we dislike are an opportunity for spiritual growth. Therefore, we should welcome the Ravana in our life – be it the spouse, the mother-in-law, or the boss!

Obsessive-compulsive spirituality by Dr Ramesh Bijlani 28 Dec 2010 – In this context, Dr Ramesh Bijlani, who is currently affiliated with the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Delhi, has written a perspicacious article detailing ...

enowning Saturday, July 14, 2012 Mark Hansen on the différance of the body. 

"In analyses ranging over mythology and paleontology, contemporary technoscience and phenomenology, Stiegler has developed a highly original philosophy of technology, the central premise of which is that the human has always been technological. Drawing on the perspective of French paleontologist Andre Leroi-Gourhan, who argues for the coincidence of tool use and the appearance of the human, Stiegler claims that the human can be specified as that being who evolves through means other than life, through a coupling with the independent ’exterior’ evolution of technological objects. This insistence on the correlation of the human subject (the ’who’) and the technical object (‘the what’) informs Stiegler’s rereading of Heidegger"

Indian Political Thought - Page 401 - Urmila Sharma, S.K. Sharma - 2001 - 416 pages - Preview Such great men as Sri Aurobindo and MK Gandhi have always made the mistake of assuming that whatever they achieve in their individual lives can also be achieved at the collective level. For example, in his concept of basic education ...

The social philosophy of Sri Aurobindo - Ram Nath Sharma - 1980 - 230 pages - SRI AUROBINDO AND MK GANDHI Mass appeal of Gandhi's social philosophy If we may compare any contemporary Indian social philosopher with Karl Marx, from the point of view of his influence on the life of the masses, ...

Trends In Contemporary Indian Philosophy Of Education A Critical ... - Page 184 - G.R. Sharma - 2003 - Preview This spiritual nationalism inspired not only the aims and ideals but also the detailed outlines of the educational philosophies of Vivekananda, Dayananda, Sri Aurobindo and MK Gandhi. Cosmopolitanism is the key note to ...

A companion to Sanskrit literature: spanning a period of over ... - Page 188 - Sures Chandra Banerji - 1971 - 729 pages - Preview Of the modern commentators, the chief are BG Tilak, Sri Aurobindo and MK Gandhi. [Reprinted from the critical ed. of the Bhisma-parvan of the Mahabharata, ed. SK Belvalkar, BORI, Poona, 1945. See. FO Schrader, The Kashmir Recension of ...

Documents on political thought in modern India: Volume 1 - 1973 - GK Gokhale, BG Tilak, Sri Aurobindo and MK Gandhi are among the thinkers whose names are important in this debate. (See Documents 64, 65, 82 to 221 (or the ideas of Gokhale, Tilak and Gandhi.) Aurobindo Ghosc (as he then was) took the ...

India's development and public policy - Stuart S. Nagel - 2000 - 201 pages - Aurobindo and MK Gandhi. Before Independence, the reformers worked for the emancipation of women from the shackles of illogical orthodoxies, blind superstitions, unhealthy traditions and customs. Their approach was based on an integral ...

Indian political thinking in the twentieth century, from Naoroji ... - Angadipuram Appadorai - 1971 - 189 pages - Sri Aurobindo and MK Gandhi were foremost among the thinkers who worked out the theoretical conceptions of non-co-operation and passive resistance. It is not widely known that the theory of civil disobedience had its critics as well, ...

Participation in the development process: grassroot experiences - Ganapathy Palanithurai - 1996 - 201 pages - ... of humanity in the path of evolution in the modern context.7 Though a galaxy of saints in the East contributed heavily towards this theory, Sri Aurobindo and MK Gandhi have been much referred to time and again to explain the theory.