Hi Folks,
Last Friday, I was watching a show on TV with a few celebrities on a hunt to dig into their family histories. This concept has always fascinated me. In some ways there is a lurking belief that there is a true cosmic connection between your ancestors and yourself. To put this into perspective, Hindu philosophy talks about the family and "environment" of birth being chosen very carefully by the "lords of karma" to enable the development of the soul. Well so here I was trying to put different parts of the puzzle together really talking this over with my parents in Shimla, India. Here's what I was able to gather:
My grandfather Lala Parmanand Sood was a really noble man - a very loving grandfather and true gentleman. I did have the great fortune of spending several years of my childhood with him around. He had emigrated from our ancestral village "Lambagaon" in H.P and took to business in Shimla. He was also the one to set up the now famous Hira Lal Salig Ram business for the family. My paternal grandmother was Smt. Jagtamba Devi Sood. She doted on me and I was really close to her as well - have fond memories of her presence in our small 2 room house right on top of the family shop in Lower Bazaar. "Ammaji" is what the the kids used to call her.
Discussing with my father, I learnt my grandfather's father was Sh. Tulsi Ram Sood, who had a grocery business in Lambagaon, H.P (our ancestral village). His father was Sh. Bhuttu Shah, again having a general purpose business in that area - "Draman" to be more precise. Bhuttu Shah was a respected elder in the area. On the grandmother's side, her father was Sh. Jassa Shah. He also had his own business in Bharanta (a medium size town) in H.P, India.
I liked my maternal grandmother Smt. Paarvati Devi Sood as well, and feel her blessings are always with me, though it would be fair to say that i did not spend much time with her. Call it a matter of fate, I was able to take part in some of her funeral ceremonies in "Maniyara" H.P during a visit to Shimla in late 2009. I never saw her husband, my maternal grandfather, Lala Amarnath Sood. He had a partnership business in "Bharanta" in H.P. His father was Sh. Jog Raj Sood, and he earned his livelihood writing applications and composing documents for people in the village.
With some basic guessestimates, it can be conjectured that this leads to a family tree dating to the late 1700's/early 1800's. I am curious to more about my ancestors and their forefathers and will be on the lookout for opportunities to expand this critical knowledge. After all isn't it always good to know where you are coming from to help assess where you want to go!
Incidentally, this weekend Shallini and I visited the museum of natural history in DC - it was really interesting and one of the key takeaways for me was that was that pretty much all human beings can trace their origins to Africa from where they migrated to different parts of mother earth. And this might surprise you, but we share 99% of our DNA with each other!! - really there is much truth to the maxim that our differences are "skin deep" at best.
So what other benefits are there to knowing your family history over a prolonged period of time?
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
I am actually doing it!!
Hi Folks,
It is a beautiful Monday morning here in Richmond, Virginia. I have been thinking a while about starting to write my own blog, and after some trepidition, here I am - feels awesome!!
The contents of these posts are likely to my personal musings about a variety of topics - from things as abstruse as the philosophy of life to day to day blocking and tackling. So follow along and hopefully you'll enjoy the ride.
Today I'll start with what's been on my mind most recently - the Hindu theory of Karma, the relevance of astrology and how "free will" plays in all of this.
To set the context, the basic theory of Karma posits that all human beings are part of the universal divine. They are born from the subjective realm into the objective realm, journey through various lives constantly evolving and finally merge into the universal divinity once the journey is over. The "Lords of Karma" have a well defined path for each living entity for its lifespan (actually several lifespans over) and they closely monitor and tweak the conditions around each soul so that the soul's journey towards final emanicipation can be actualized. In every event that a soul faces, conditions are created so that it can evolve towards its final destiny. Scriptures suggest that there is some element of free will in terms of how a human being responds to the conditions that are presented to her.
At this point itself I'd like to share a few observations - this construct seems profound. In some ways I believe that the best human designed constructs are "wannabe" replicas of analogous natural phenomenon e.g. the camera tries to emulate the mechanism of the human eye, the computer tries to emulate a small part of the human brain etc. So thinking on those lines, this karmic construct could be the fatherfigure to organizational constructs of people development - as a rising executive you are assigned the right "platforms" by your bosses so that you can develop on your areas of opportunity while building on your strengths. The similarities between these 2 worlds only begin here and as a person who is neck deep in professional organization life I'll leave no opportunity to surface these on a regular basis. Every human ego in the final stages of its development (close to reaching home!), starts to develop on one of the 7 distinct rays for the evolution of the soul (just like a rising executive could be seen as a finance or a marketing or an operations guy). At this point in the soul's journey the "mentorship" of the ego is usually taken over by the moon (first) and then the sun - a bit like the most promising candidates in corporate life getting the attention of the president and then the CEO (the sun is widely recognized as the king of the planetary kingdom and the moon reflecting the light of the sun is the queen).
Astrology is an attempt to understand the divine plan and prognosticate it for the benefit of the individual being so that she can understand the divine plan for her and adjust her life and thought process to be in sync with what nature purports for her. The discipline was founded and nurtured by seers with "sidhis" ages ago and their wisdom is cloaked in mysterious vague language that can only be deciphered after much perseverance. Well that all makes perfect sense but.... it does beg several questions, atleast a few of which are:
Why does the soul separate from the universal divine in the first place to start its journey with the implicit aim of becoming one with the divine as its end goal?
What are the boundaries under which free will operates ?
If the final purpose of all life forms is to become one with the divine, and we think of this as a "stream flowing" from place A to place B (divine destination), once all souls, in a very very long time, reach their destination, would life cease to exist?... Or if not, then how is "new water" being added to this stream to create a cycle. In some ways this question is realted to the first question but in other ways perhaps has other accents to it...
So what do you think?...
Feel free to respond, critique or just share your own observations...
Best,
zenith_n
It is a beautiful Monday morning here in Richmond, Virginia. I have been thinking a while about starting to write my own blog, and after some trepidition, here I am - feels awesome!!
The contents of these posts are likely to my personal musings about a variety of topics - from things as abstruse as the philosophy of life to day to day blocking and tackling. So follow along and hopefully you'll enjoy the ride.
Today I'll start with what's been on my mind most recently - the Hindu theory of Karma, the relevance of astrology and how "free will" plays in all of this.
To set the context, the basic theory of Karma posits that all human beings are part of the universal divine. They are born from the subjective realm into the objective realm, journey through various lives constantly evolving and finally merge into the universal divinity once the journey is over. The "Lords of Karma" have a well defined path for each living entity for its lifespan (actually several lifespans over) and they closely monitor and tweak the conditions around each soul so that the soul's journey towards final emanicipation can be actualized. In every event that a soul faces, conditions are created so that it can evolve towards its final destiny. Scriptures suggest that there is some element of free will in terms of how a human being responds to the conditions that are presented to her.
At this point itself I'd like to share a few observations - this construct seems profound. In some ways I believe that the best human designed constructs are "wannabe" replicas of analogous natural phenomenon e.g. the camera tries to emulate the mechanism of the human eye, the computer tries to emulate a small part of the human brain etc. So thinking on those lines, this karmic construct could be the fatherfigure to organizational constructs of people development - as a rising executive you are assigned the right "platforms" by your bosses so that you can develop on your areas of opportunity while building on your strengths. The similarities between these 2 worlds only begin here and as a person who is neck deep in professional organization life I'll leave no opportunity to surface these on a regular basis. Every human ego in the final stages of its development (close to reaching home!), starts to develop on one of the 7 distinct rays for the evolution of the soul (just like a rising executive could be seen as a finance or a marketing or an operations guy). At this point in the soul's journey the "mentorship" of the ego is usually taken over by the moon (first) and then the sun - a bit like the most promising candidates in corporate life getting the attention of the president and then the CEO (the sun is widely recognized as the king of the planetary kingdom and the moon reflecting the light of the sun is the queen).
Astrology is an attempt to understand the divine plan and prognosticate it for the benefit of the individual being so that she can understand the divine plan for her and adjust her life and thought process to be in sync with what nature purports for her. The discipline was founded and nurtured by seers with "sidhis" ages ago and their wisdom is cloaked in mysterious vague language that can only be deciphered after much perseverance. Well that all makes perfect sense but.... it does beg several questions, atleast a few of which are:
Why does the soul separate from the universal divine in the first place to start its journey with the implicit aim of becoming one with the divine as its end goal?
What are the boundaries under which free will operates ?
If the final purpose of all life forms is to become one with the divine, and we think of this as a "stream flowing" from place A to place B (divine destination), once all souls, in a very very long time, reach their destination, would life cease to exist?... Or if not, then how is "new water" being added to this stream to create a cycle. In some ways this question is realted to the first question but in other ways perhaps has other accents to it...
So what do you think?...
Feel free to respond, critique or just share your own observations...
Best,
zenith_n
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