Meditating in the Himalayas

Last month the Chinese government released a new set of dietary guidelines which, if followed, could reduce the nation’s meat consumption by as much as 50%. Given that China boasts the world’s largest population at approximately 1.357 billion, a cutback of this size is bound to have a massive global impact. Fuelled by health concerns, China hopes with this recommendation to minimize or even prevent heart disease, diabetes, and other diet-related illnesses that have been publicly linked to meat consumption. Academy Award winning vegan director   James Cameron, inspired by this move, teamed up with former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to film a series of PSAs to encourage North Americans to do the same. The PSAs were shot on the set of the newest  Avatar  film, and while they are still yet to be released, the following promotional video has already gone viral: In addition to tackling the health concerns...

Unconfirmed quote of Guru Dev September 1945 It is said that in September 1945, when the Second World War was over, newspaper reporters wanted to know the reaction of Shankaracharya Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath (Guru Dev). Allegedly he gave them the following statement, parts of which match other published quotations of Guru Dev... “Real victory is that, after which there can never be a reverse. Nobody can call himself a victor forever merely by crushing an external foe, because such foes can spring up again. A real victory is achieved by bringing under control the internal foes. A check over the internal enemies is therefore the only way of conquering the external enemies forever, because we should bear in mind that it is our own internal enemies which create the external enemies. These inner enemies are ambition, anger, greed, false attachment, vanity and jealousy. It is this hexagon sitting inside us which makes a cat's paw (dup...