Keeping oneself busy

                            Keeping oneself busy or becoming conscious 

As a part of my daily routine I read out Devi Stuti. It contains 37 lines of different names and praises of Shri Lingabhairavi Devi in ISHA Yoga centre, Coimbatore. I have a replica of the deity in my Puja Room. As it is a daily routine I must have got it by heart  by now - rote memory - where I do not need to refer to a print out. However, I prefer to read it out and aloud. The reason is that I would be more conscious of Devi in this way rather than saying it from memory, without involving the mind.

Not reciting something as a matter of routine is one way of  a developing a conscious mind. There are a few other tips and techniques also:

• When you go for a walk on the terrace and want to count say a 1000 steps, you can count in the reverse, from 1000 down to 0.
• When you collect milk from the milk vendor at the doorstep daily, you can take different vessels. The quantity of milk being the same everyday, you can observe the level it occupies in different vessels - half, one third, full etc and guess the capacity of various vessels.
• When the servant maid keeps washed (cleaned) vessels in the tub, you may guess the number of pieces and tally it with actual counting. It that more or less than the average and why?
• When you walk to throw garbage into the dustbin, observe if all the plants are sufficiently watered. Note and take corrective action
• If you have two clocks and a couple of watches, are all of them showing the same, correct time? Which are slow or fast and why? 
• From a bundle of blank sheets of papers meant for rough use, separate one side papers from others.
• If you use Mosquito coil, can you assess the average length of coil burnt in an hour or get an idea of rate of burning? Any norms specified?
• Among the footwear you have can you arrange them in the order of approximate purchase date?

 Can you add other crazy ways of keeping oneself engaged? Rather becoming conscious!

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Enhancing the value of URLs and Email IDs

Enhancing the value of URLs and Email IDs

 

URLs of websites / web pages may be self-explaining if the owner takes pains to put in extra efforts. Most often they just contain some odd number, after the main URL, meaningless to the user. When you save them on your laptop (say desktop or a special file or as a bookmark etc) you may want to enhance the usefulness by adding extra info ( a phrase, say) in the URL itself.

 

Saket Pranam is a retirement community near Hyderabad. Its website is

https://www.saketpranamam.com/

 

When you save the URL on your desktop you may add a phrase to explain it further like: https://www.saketpranamam.com/#good_place_to_explore

The way to do it is to type in your comment after the last / followed by #

Observe that no spaces (blanks) are allowed in what stuff you add. Words are connected by underscore characters. As the entire URL is a hyperlink the underscore character is not visible, but it is there.

 

Similarly in the case of Email Ids of persons with the same name, you may want to identify exactly to who you are addressing. I have SS Murthy, NV Murthy, Jayanti Murthy in my contacts. I must make sure I do not send an email to the wrong person. Their email IDs are, let us assume,  murthyss@gmail.com, murthyNV@gmail.com, and murthyj@gmail.com In order to individualise the email Ids I can add some info on the left side of@ symbol after a + character as shown below:

 

murthyss@gmail.com à   murthyss+drdl@gmail.com

murthynv@gmail.com  ->  murthynv+SCF_member@gmail.com

murthyj@gmail.com  ->  murthyj+sister_of_kannan@gmail.com

 

You may save the changes in Contacts so that they become permanent.

If you type Murthy in the To or CC or Bcc field in Gmail, suggestions crop up. You may choose the correct address carefully. I always type the addresses as the last item to fill, before pressing the SEND button.

 

Another simple tip / trick you may want to remember: You may add a dot anywhere in the left side part of an email address before the @ symbol.

For example, when I enter my email address to subscribe for some newsletter online, I may enter my email address as vyasa.moorthy@gmail.com

In this way I can create many addresses, one for each website / platform!

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Dr P Vyasamoorthy / 9490804278

Meaningless Words

Meaningless Words

We come across words and phrases that have no meaning in a specific language. Vanarugalo is one such word. If you look up the word in Google, you will draw a blank. Several decades ago, a friend of mine uttered this word. He told me that it is a chant or a spell. If you repeat it often or chant it as if it is a mantra, there are many advantages. One advantage is that your fear would disappear if you are afraid of some imminent tragedy, danger or mishap about to occur. It has worked for me. It might work for you too. The effect may be placebo or real. Only the user knows. It is experiential – that knowledge cannot be transferred.

 

I understand that in transcendental meditation the Guru gives the practitioner a word that has no meaning to chant. As several millions of people follow this method, the efficacy of the chant must be true.

 

Although meaningless words originate without meaning, they acquire different meanings to different persons over time. They do not get added to any dictionary automatically. Platitudes are a part of meaningless words. They do not have meaning or lose their meaning due to over usage. They are used to end an argument or discussion when one of the parties has exhausted his arsenal.

 

In Tamil such phrases are called Takkai Chorkal. But I could not locate enough info on the topic!

 

Leaving the essay unfinished - to continue again later!