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Saturday,
April 13, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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International Criminal Court Schools bordering on a farce Karunanidhi’s troubles |
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Indo-Pak ties dangerously poised
In the city of temples
Hindutva might help BJP, not India
Luxury lipsticks, the latest fashion
Painless injections, courtesy mosquito
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International Criminal Court THE ratification of the proposal for setting up a permanent International Criminal Court for trying war crimes, acts of genocide and crimes against humanity should have received a loud round of applause from the global community. The reason why the formal launching of the ICC at The Hague on July 1, 2002, has received muted welcome has something to do with the American position. Ever since the idea was first mooted following the bloody ethnic conflicts in the Balkans and the genocide in Rwanda in 1998, it has, along with China and Russia, opposed it. Simply put, the setting up of a permanent war crimes tribunal means that henceforth there would be no need to set up special tribunals for trying dictators and tyrants. It is ironical that Mr Bill Clinton when he was in the White House overcame domestic pressure and put his signature on the treaty seeking the setting up of the ICC. President George W. Bush, who initiated the global campaign against all forms of terrorism following the attack on the US symbols of economic and military might, is now threatening to “unsign” the document. It can always be argued that even Mr Clinton never sought ratification of the treaty for the establishment of the ICC from the US Congress. Should it then be taken that the American commitment to combating global terrorism is selective? As self-appointed global cop it can take care of its interest. So why should it support the setting up of a court of criminal justice that may demand an explanation from it for the Vietnam-type actions in future? The excuse for not supporting the setting up of the court is based on flimsy logic and shows the double standards that the USA follows for combating human rights violation, war crimes and acts of genocide. It fears that the court may carry out frivolous trials against US soldiers engaged in overseas combat or peacekeeping missions. Most other countries could have used the same logic for shooting down the proposal. The treaty establishing the international court for trying war criminals was signed by 139 countries, including the USA. Mr Bush by not sending the treaty for ratification to the American Congress would only expose himself to the charge of weakening the campaign against global terrorism. What is more, the US boycott of the treaty has put it at odds with some of its closest allies, including Britain, France, Canada and Germany. Britain, in fact, has already changed its domestic laws to bring them in line with the rules of procedure that would govern the functioning of the ICC. Since India too is struggling to put into place an effective mechanism for combating domestic and Pak engineered acts of terrorism, it would only be fair to expect it to support the initiative and follow the example of Britain. An international court for criminal justice may prove more effective in containing the modern day scourge than domestic initiatives for protecting human rights and combating acts of terrorism. |
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Schools bordering on a farce BE it Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh or any other state, the quality of education imparted in government schools in rural areas is dismal, to say the least. But if you thought that the standard could not go down any further, you have not been to villages in the border areas of Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts. The sorry state of affairs prevalent there has come to knowledge following a raid conducted not by district education officers but by a team led by a Superintendent of Police. The vigilance checking of 100 schools has proved to be an eye-opener indeed. Most of the schools operate from buildings which are worse than sheds for animals. Absenteeism is rampant almost everywhere. Some schools have not functioned for as long as six months because the teachers hardly came there. In some, the teaching job has been "sub-let" by the appointed teachers to others like aanganwadi workers while they themselves have opened private schools in the vicinity. So, while they get the salary from the government without doing any work, they also mint money by charging exorbitant fee from the gullible people who have no choice. The most shocking is the instance where the teaching job had been handed over to an 11-year-old girl, a Class V student herself. Can such a farce be called the imparting of education at all? Yet, things have been like this for decades without any responsible person waking up to the reality. On paper, there are many schools in the border areas and everything is hunky-dory. Just because residents of these areas are too busy eking out a living and are hardly in a position to make a hue and cry about the state of the schools there, the situation has been allowed to deteriorate to such an extent. The consequences are there for everyone to see. The students passing out from such schools can neither hope to get admission in institutions of higher education nor can they get good jobs. The only avenue open for them is to continue to wallow in poverty while trying to grow enough to eat for themselves and their families from small tracts of land that they own. The disappointment with the system naturally breeds anger which turns into undesirable activities like smuggling. Enemies of the country use disgruntled youth to foment terrorism. And yet no correctives have been applied. The neglect is criminal. Now that the dirt has hit the fan, the least that the government can do is to punish the guilty and evolve a system so that such dereliction cannot be perpetuated with impunity. Border areas have to cope with special problems. They require special attention and not the standard bureaucratic chalta hai approach. |
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Karunanidhi’s troubles THERE seems to be no respite from worry for former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.Karunanidhi these days. Things have become too hot for him after AIADMK supremo J.Jayalalithaa’s acquittal in the corruption cases and subsequent return to the corridors of power. Raids by the state vigilance directorate on the houses of DMK leaders have become common. The Chief Minister has transferred 32 judges, including the one who had convicted her in the Tansi corruption case and the other who pulled up the police for the way they arrested Mr Karunanidhi. Politics of witch-hunting is not new in Tamil Nadu. But not a day passes without Amma taking some step or the other to cut the DMK leader and his men to size. The government’s latest move that could strip Mr Karunanidhi’s son, Mr M.K.Stalin, from either of the two posts he is presently holding — Chennai Mayor and MLA — has become a cause for major worry for both the father and the son. In the last few years, Mr Karunanidhi has been assiduously grooming his son to step into his shoes. The DMK’s defeat in the last Assembly elections dashed his hopes and his problems got multiplied. When Ms Jayalalithaa disclosed in the State Assembly the government’s plan to amend the law in the current session itself to ensure that MLAs holding two elected posts shed one of them, Mr Stalin put on a brave face and declared that he offered to quit Mayorship if the government was determined to “break a convention” and allow the Deputy Mayor (who belongs to the AIADMK) to use the Mayor’s flag in his official car “merely because he (Mr Stalin) happened to be the Mayor”. Even as Mr Karunanidhi is grappling with his problems, he is worried over the covert efforts by Ms Jayalalithaa to make up with the BJP leaders at the Centre. Her stand on the Ayodhya issue, Gujarat carnage or POTA seem to suggest that she would like to mend fences with the Centre so that her appeals for adequate funds for development are considered by the Vajpayee government favourably. Tamil Nadu’s BJP leaders seem to be too happy with Amma: they attended in large numbers the inaugural function of a new government scheme to provide free meals to pilgrims in 63 temples of the state. Reports suggest that the DMK is hobnobbing with the Congress to safeguard its own place in the political firmament. Union Commerce Minister Murasoli Maran (who belongs to the DMK) is reported to have met Congress President Sonia Gandhi “secretly” at New Delhi recently. Though what transpired at this meeting is not clear, Ms Jayalalitha’s disclosure in this regard in the State Assembly on Thursday, quoting her government’s top intelligence sources, has obviously rattled the DMK top brass. Mr Karunanidhi’s predicament is understandable — while the DMK has lost its ground in Tamil Nadu, it is finding it difficult to make its presence felt at the Centre. |
Indo-Pak ties dangerously poised INDO-PAK ties remain dangerously poised. The armies are in forward positions. New Delhi and Islamabad are not speaking to each other. An inadvertent wrong step can have terrible consequences. We have reached this point after a series of deliberate steps initiated by India in the aftermath of the attack on Parliament. That was the last straw. It drove India into uncompromising action against the sources of the terrorism that have plagued it for so long. Moreover, it was made plain that India would not flinch from the consequences of its actions, however, severe they may be. The unaccustomed firmness of India’s response has yielded results. International opinion has been sensitised to the situation as never before. Tales are told of almost daily telephone calls at the height of the crisis by the American President and his Secretary of State to the leaders of India and Pakistan. One wonders if there has ever before been this sort of awareness about our region in the distant reaches of Washington D.C. Other major countries were no less deeply engaged. The cross-border activity that had for so long failed to excite international attention could no longer be concealed or explained away. Pakistan, already under pressure at home, was pushed into promising to put an end to cross-border terrorism. India is watching carefully to see how far Pakistan will hold to its word. So, it seems, are America and others, for they, too, have come to realise how central this matter is to the peace of South Asia. It is only after the snows melt in May that the facts about infiltration will become clearer, though now some comments suggest that India intends to keep its troops at the border until autumn, presumably to assure itself that infiltration is truly curbed throughout the entire season. There is also the matter of the list of 20 wanted persons whose extradition is demanded by India. It is possible, judging from some of the comments that have been heard, that giving up even a few of these would initiate a gradual movement back to the status quo ante. However, at present Pakistan seems in no mood to fall in line with any Indian wishes in this matter. All this means that there is no sign of movement, no perceived way down from the dangerous heights of discord and tension. There are some who favour maintaining things as they are. For them, continuing along the present path means that pressure on Pakistan will be sustained, and India will not repeat past errors by seeking a premature end to confrontation. There is a belief that Pakistan is less able than we are to support the burden of mobilisation, having a much smaller economy and being already under serious economic pressure. So the argument runs that if, for once, India can summon up the resolution and show the necessary mettle, it will prevail and achieve its aim. But such assumptions beg many questions. The fact is that there is little to suggest that Indian pressure is placing an intolerable burden on its neighbour. In a recent interview to an Indian newspaper, General Musharraf expressed readiness to sit it out for as long as it takes. He also repeated the familiar argument that a forward posture makes less demands on his country than on India because it has the advantage of interior lines and its cantonments are closer to the front. Such talk may be nothing but bravado, but it could also be a sign that Pakistan has got used to the situation and no longer shows the alarm and anxiety that were once evident. Indeed, it should come as no surprise that our actions are subject to diminishing returns: it is in the nature of things that people become accustomed to prolonged risk and danger and begin to take it all in their stride, so that tough action begins to appear less intimidating. The international reaction, too, is not what it was. South Asia has been pushed into the wings by the events of West Asia, and decreased attention to the region can mean reduced pressure on Pakistan to fulfil its assurances. Moreover, Pakistan remains a key partner of America in the war. Its geographical setting, making it the most convenient platform for the campaign in Afghanistan, has once more proved an incalculable asset in the restoration of its fortunes. Gen. Musharraf has come to be regarded as a valiant fighter against terrorism and his military coup against an elected government has been virtually forgotten. He is strongly entrenched and enjoys remarkable international acceptance, witness the fact that his emerging plans to put away democracy in Pakistan for another five years have caused no stir - except, perhaps, in Pakistan itself. Unhappily, India’s prestige has been affected by the events of Gujarat. Our house is not in order, and our credentials are not what they were. The mobs let loose unchecked in Gujarat have severely damaged the country’s image. In these circumstances, our strong demonstrations on the border can look like an instinctive reaction to an ancient foe rather than a measured move against a source of terrorism. The backing and support we have obtained may dry up, and already there are signs that India and Pakistan are once more being equated with one another. Nor can it be supposed that what is happening on the border is essentially a demonstrative exercise, intended to convey serious intent without courting the actual possibility of war. Curious theories of limited war between nuclear adversaries are to be heard, trying to suggest that there is still scope for large-scale military action beneath the nuclear threshold. This looks like nothing more than wishful thinking, trying to find some way to cash in on India’s preponderance of conventional weaponry and denying the existence of the stalemate imposed by nuclear realities. The fact is that there is no military solution to our dilemma, and despite the frustrations we have experienced, we should not let ourselves believe anything to the contrary. We need to find ways of handling the peril in which we are placed while effectively pushing for a verifiable end to cross-border attacks upon us. Maintaining military pressure is not a complete answer; a more flexible strategy is needed. An immediate task is to repair lines of communication so that we do not have to depend on uncertain channels like the media, or self-appointed messengers, or third parties like America. At times of difficulty and tension, it is axiomatic that all possible misunderstandings should be avoided. The diplomatic link that was deliberately degraded to show our anger at the attack on Parliament now needs to be restored, for nothing is to be gained by keeping it at its present reduced level. It had been hoped that official communication would be improved by Mr. K.C.Pant’s visit to Islamabad, and perhaps that has indeed taken place, despite the deliberately lowkey nature of the visit. One assumes that the armies will remain where they are until we are satisfied that something is being done to meet the demands that we have raised. Active discussions and frank exchanges can only help to press our case and achieve the results we desire. This measure of flexibility is necessary in the present circumstances. It may be premature to envisage the resumption of dialogue as called for by General Musharraf, but a number of factors, regional and international, may well be driving us in that direction. We would do well to prepare ourselves to take the initiative when the time is ripe. The writer is a former Foreign Secretary. |
In the city of temples FOR six months every evening I walked to Raghunath Mandir. This long walk used to be from the old locality of Pacca Danga through the maze of Jammu’s lanes and roads to the city’s best-known temple. I walked with my grandfather, Ram Chandra Dar, a retired educationist who had worked as an inspector of schools and knew a large number of old students and teachers who rushed to him to greet him. It was not only me walking but also my two brothers, Brijnath and Rajnath. This was an evening ritual, a kind of evening walk for grandfather and a temple excursion for us, the family’s young boys. We came to Jammu from the Valley and would be there in the winter to live with an uncle to escape the rigours of Kashmir’s winter. Jammu would be warm and lively. The Maharaja also shifted there some time in November with his darbar, which meant the ministers and the secretariat. The highlight of Jammu city was the bustling. Raghunath Bazar which led to this temple. In importance it was like Connaught Place of Delhi. You could go there every evening and meet everyone of note. Raghunath Bazar had cinema houses and hotels and the Residency, perhaps once used by the British Resident, which later came to become the Government dak bungalow, a sort of a guest house for officials. In later less picturesque days it became a major bus stop for buses travelling from and to the Valley. Raghunath Bazar used to be almost everyone’s destination. There is a temple in the centre of a complex surrounded by smaller temples each devoted to a deity. After the main prayers at the main temple we would go for the parikarma, a round which took us to all the smaller surrounding temples. Everywhere you got a small prasad which for boys like us was a great attraction. In time we came to know the priest who would give us the prasad of sacred water which we accepted on the palms of our hands and a small bit of a sweet. This was a treat to which we looked forward to as much as the tilak he marked on our foreheads. He must have been a predecessor of the present purohit, Jiwan Anand, who was the target of the recent attack. I am talking of 60 or more years ago. Raghunath Mandir still continues to be the highlight of this “City of Temples”. After praying before the main deity we used to go round the smaller temples. It was wonderful if we reached at the time of the evening aarti which was uplifting in prayer. We stood before the deity with our hands folded. As we walked grandfather would tell us stories about the gods before whom we prayed. We were fascinated. Something uplifting about these temples was that even though we prayed every day we did not become Hindutva followers or come to gather narrow religious bigotry. We were simply devout. There was nothing beyond. Halfway through on the roadside sat a seller of chaat. Grandfather treated us to chaat every evening. The chaat-seller was an institution. He attracted hundreds of customers. We were his daily patrons. Nothing more delicious than a plate of chaat from him. This was a delight we savoured in leaf containers on the busy roadside. This is what made our walk so very delightful, apart of course from the darshan at Raghunath Mandir. I do not know how much grandfather spent on this daily excursion for the family’s boys. It must not have been much. He, of course, did not eat anything. He enjoyed feeding us. Sometimes we also went up to the Shiv Mandir which was a little off our main route, almost on the other side from Raghunath Mandir. It is built at a higher level, at the foot of a small hill, and is reached by a long flight of stone steps. It has images of Shiv and Parvati. On the sides there are hundreds of small stone Shivlings over which we took turns to pour sacred water. Always there were stories of devotion. One story which ran through the city those days was of a man who in his sleep discovered Goddess Kali come to him and demand a portion of his tongue. He immediately got out of the house and went to a nearby temple, cut out his tongue with a knife and offered it to the image of the goddess. He stayed in the temple for many days, surrounded by hundreds of men and women. I don’t think I went there but other members of our family did go there. The last I heard was that one morning suddenly the tongue had re-grown. This became the talk of the town. This indeed, if it was true, was a miracle and brought to him thousands more devotees. Many days later I saw the garlanded man being taken out in a procession as an incarnation of the divine. I did not hear him talk but he moved about normally. How I wish that some magic, some divine power, would similarly bring peace to Jammu and Kashmir. But would the gods be so kind? |
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Hindutva might help BJP, not India LAST week I spoke to a friend in Ahmedabad to find out if things were getting better. He is a Hindu who for about a year has been telling me that the communal atmosphere in the city has become so bad that he would hate to be a Muslim. Since he is completely apolitical he found it hard to explain exactly what had made him feel that communal tensions were rising. 'I don't know' he said 'but you should come and see for yourself what is going on'. I did not go, so last week when I rang to ask how he was, there was a told-you-so tone in his voice. I admitted that I had been wrong not to have gone but asked if things were better now. Well, he said, I am planning to move elsewhere. I cannot live here any more after what has happened. He had two Muslim servants, he said, and they had been so terrified by the violence that they did not leave the house unless he was with them. They wanted to go home to Lucknow last week and dared not go to the railway station so he had to arrange an army escort for them. 'So, they tell us that its better now, that there will be no more violence but we are still afraid to go out and night and Muslims are still afraid of going out even during the day. They know that there is nobody who is going to protect them'. We were speaking a day after Narendra Modi's policemen attacked journalists in the Sabarmati Ashram and my friend said it did not surprise him at all that this had happened. It is as if there is no government in Gujarat, as if the mob has taken over. I asked him lots of other questions. Why had so many people — including educated middle class people — been involved in the violence. India Today, in its last issue, calculated that if the number of FIRs (First Information Reports) were totalled up then an astounding 12 lakh people were involved in rioting. My friend said he did not know why it had happened, only that there was still not even a semblance of government and that he feared for Muslims, especially those who now lived in camps in the city. He did not think it would ever be safe for them to return to their homes. 'If there is one thing I do know, though, is that as long as Modi is chief minister there will be no return to normalcy'. But, as the Bharatiya Janata Party's president, Jana Krishnamurthy, informed us last week there is going to be no change of chief minister in Gujarat. On national television he denounced the demand for Modi's resignation as an attempt by the 'secularist' parties to discredit the BJP. He appears not to have noticed that they do not need to try very hard because the BJP already stands discredited after Gujarat. In Delhi I discussed this with BJP friends before they left to attend the party's national executive and they admitted that there were deep divisions in the party over what it should do to try and retrieve its image. There were many who felt that the party should sever its links with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, they said, but unfortunately a sort of consensus if building up around the idea that it is too late to rectify the damage of Gujarat. The Prime Minister tried, they point out, when he went to Ahmedabad and talked of the shame of what had happened and openly advised the Chief Minister to fulfil his 'raja dharma' which meant treating all citizens with equal respect. But, the general reaction to the Prime Minister's speech had been that if this is all he had to say on his first visit after five weeks of some of the worst communal violence India has ever seen then it was unlikely to make any difference. On the other hand the Hindutva card could bring better dividends. After all were there not strong rumours that Narendra Modi had risen like a shining hero out of the carnage and destruction in Gujarat? Were there not signs of Hindu consolidation in the communal violence? Had Dalits, Adivasis and other non-BJP voters not joined the mobs alongside more upper caste killers? So, why not go back to Hindutva since it was the Ayodhya movement that had first brought the BJP to national attention. So, an odd sort of churning is going on within the BJP. An odd, almost evil, elation over what happened in Gujarat. It is almost as if the party had conducted an experiment without knowing the outcome and it had worked without the formula being fully understood. The experiment, as other more learned commentators than I have pointed out, has been Gujarat. The BJP has ruled this state for more than ten years now and discovered through last month's violence that their methods of building up a Hindu vote had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. The main feature of the experiment was to target Christians and Muslims so that Hindus could see them as a common enemy and forget caste differences as a result. This worked a couple of years ago with the Christians when even semi-literate, technically non-Hindu, tribals rose up against them burning churches and bibles. And, now it has happened with the Muslims so if Hindutva can work in Gujarat why should it not work at the national level when the next general election comes round in 2004. I write this before the party's national executive meeting concludes its deliberations in Goa. So, I cannot predict which way the party will go but from what I have managed to glean from wandering in BJP circles in Delhi it looks as if there is going to be a back to Hindutva plan that emerges. It could also be the only way forward since the party's first Prime Minister has proved singularly incapable of converting the party into the sort of right-wing conservative political party that we see in almost every European country. This would have been a perfect foil to the Congress which has clung to its left-of-Centre position too long to be able to change but to build a new image and ideology for a party takes time, energy and will and Mr. Vajpayee seems to singularly lack these things. Perhaps, because he was too old in the first place, perhaps because he saw his prime ministership as a sort of well deserved reward at the end of a long career on the opposition benches or perhaps because the RSS and its sister organisations never gave him a chance to do very much. One way or another whether you and I see the violence in Gujarat as a terrible shame, a blot on India's name, this appears not to be the majority view within the BJP. If there is a return to Hindutva it might work for the party but seeing what happened in Gujarat it would be a disaster for India. |
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Luxury lipsticks, the latest fashion GONE are the days when lipstick cases were consigned to the dusty depths of make-up cases. Manufacturers these days are coming up with ornamental designs that spruce up the well-dress woman’s dressing table. “The aim is to create something that flatters the hand”, said designer Andrea Brandt, who creates cosmetics products at the Peter Schmidt Studios in Hamburg, Germany. “We use high quality materials so that the case does not look shabby after a short time”. The Divinora lipstick by French manufacturer Guerlain, for example, gives the impression of gold work with its hammered surface. The upper part even has a small foldaway mirror. But another French manufacturer Dior considers itself the trendsetter. “Our Diorific was the first lipstick at the end of the 1990s that was positioned strictly as a designer object”, said Daniela Rogall, product manager at Dior in Dusseldorf. Women flocked to shop displays of the dumbbell shaped lipstick. “The colours and the cosmetic formula were secondary to them”, said Rogall. Now many more designer products are competing on the market, including Pure Color from Estee Lauder, Rouge Miroir by Givenchy, or a lipstick by Anna Sui decorated with a rose. At the end of last year Dior launched a new line called Addict with a blue-grey case that is closed with a golden button — “function meets glamour”, according to its advertising slogan. Cosmetics designer Brandt explains why manufacturers are going to so much trouble for lipsticks: “They are the crowd puller of decorative cosmetics,” she said. No other make-up accessory is used as often as a lipstick. It is also the cosmetic most likely to be used in public. So if it looks good, other people with see it and want one too. “It is something to be seen with, to show your friends ... and show off with a little bit,” says a Helena Rubinstein advert in German. But vanity has its price. The new designer lipsticks generally cost between 18 and 22 euros. But the consolation is they do last for quite some time. Most women have more than one shade of lipstick, said Brandt. “You hardly ever finish one,” she said.
DPA |
Painless injections, courtesy mosquito MOSQUITOES to help give pain-free injections? Sounds strange, but if scientists have their way, this might very well become a reality. A mosquito’s bite is painless and, according to researchers at Kansai University in Osaka, Japan, this is so because its proboscis, i.e. the elongated mouth parts, is provided with a saw-like edge. While syringe needles are smooth and leave a lot of metal in contact with skin tissue, the proboscis leaves only small points in contact, reducing the stimulation of nerves. Keeping this fact in mind, the team of microengineers, led by Seji Aoyag, have created a replica of the mosquito’s proboscis in a needle. Their research has been published in New Scientist magazine. The team created a tiny needle — one millimetre long and 0.1 millimetres in diametre by cutting slices of silicon dioxide into a jagged shape and then bonding them together. he needle’s walls were just 1.6 micrometres thick. Then a 5mm-wide tank, which could store blood or fluids collected by the needle, was added. Doctors could analyse the samples via an optical fibre inserted into the tank. ANI Baby aspirin lowers colon cancer risk
A daily baby aspirin modestly reduces the risk of colon cancer by preventing the growth of ominous polyps, according to a US study. Based on a variety of indirect evidence, scientists have long speculated that aspirin protects against this kind of cancer. But the new study is the first to put the idea to a rigorous test. The experiment was intended to see if aspirin prevents a recurrence of polyps after the growths have been removed during routine colonoscopies. It found the 80-mg baby aspirin size taken daily reduces this risk by 19 per cent. The dose is the same one already taken by millions to prevent heart attacks. The new work suggests they may be getting an additional benefit.
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Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Listen. Just that — Listen. There are sounds near to you. Let the “Listening” go out to them. Just listen to those sounds. Did you “contain” them? Were the sounds “outside” you.... or did they, somehow, seem to be inside you — or rather, “in mind”? Concentrating on the experience of the sound, is it honestly true to say that “you” were separate from the sound? In this experience of listening, did you not, in a stange way, become the sound... or the sound became a part of you? Then there was only the sound.... Try it again. In the moment of listening, the listener and the sound are joined as one. Listen again. This time beyond the near sounds. Listen to the distant sounds. Are there more distant sounds still? Let the listening go out to them and “contain” them.... — From William Corlett and John Moore, The Hindu Sound *** When you are deeply empty, whatsoever you do or speak is not from you — because you are no more. It comes from the emptiness. It comes from the deepest source of existence. It comes from the same source from which this whole existence has come. Then you have entered the womb, the very womb of existence. Then your words are not yours, then your acts are not yours. It is as if you are just an instrument — an instrument of the whole. — Osho, The Book of the Secrets, Vol. II *** Blessed are they who hold fast to the cord of compassion and kindness and are detached from animosity and hatred! — Baha ‘u’llah, Bahri World Faith, page 16 |
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