Bhakti is not kamayamana or desire-driven; it is nirodh , a check on desire. When attained, bhakti makes a person into siddha , perfect and trupta , satisfied. Such a person thereafter has neither desire nor worry, hate, pleasure or excitement. Does it imply dullness? No, it implies fulfilment born of antar-aarama or inner harmony, which could so suffuse the mind as to make the bhakta look inebriated or matta . Does attaining such a state imply stagnation?

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

The enormity of death is felt by people when they lose someone close to them. Knowledge and spirituality are often the light at the end of the tunnel in such moments of sadness. A human being who has died, is like a torch extinguished.

However, the flame of his life burns in his children, friends, work, and in his ideas. He has enriched the earth on which he has walked, the rivers in which he has bathed, and the living beings with whom he has been in communion.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

We live in a world of opposites where gain and loss, good and bad, pleasure and pain, life and death are as inevitable as the two sides of a coin. Yet, there is an underlying unity between the two contrasts.

One of the principal polarities in life is the one between the male and female side of human nature. The sublime union between these two aspects is symbolised by Lord Siva's depiction as a dynamic unification of the two, as the half-male, half-female Ardhanareeshwar.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

Vedanta literally means culmination of knowledge. Veda means knowledge, anta means end. You are aware of the body, mind and intellect, but not your real Self. Vedanta helps you discover the true nature of your inherent Being.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

It is believed that the entire creation was manifested with the sound of Om, the Nada Brahman. Om is a combination of So and Ham. This sound vibrates every moment of our life till there is life in our body, till life continues to flow through the Kundalini.

When the sound travels through the various bodies it gets refined and the vibration ultimately merges in Om. It is constantly chanted within us and is thus called the highest mantra, the Mantra Maheshwara. Ham beejam, says the Guru Gita, which means the sound of Ham is the seed of the entire consciousness which pervades us.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

A punishment that destroys the condemned, degrades the executioner, arouses public manifestations of sadism and excites a hideous vainglory in certain criminals, while forestalling nothing, is in truth only a form of revenge: A punishment that penalises without forestalling is indeed called revenge. It is a quasi-arithmetical reply made by society to whoever breaks its primordial law.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

It can happen to anyone. Destiny can strike suddenly, changing your life forever. God has plans for everyone.

The wisdom and kindness of God is beyond our minds' reach. We can only try to understand it if we surrender totally to God and have deep faith. The way to deal with crisis and life-threatening situations is to resolve to do our best and let God do the rest...

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

There are some conversations that have a way of popping back to haunt you time and again. The one that I had with my older daughter when she was barely five, falls in this category.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

"Tell me mighty river! Are you changing or are you constant?" asked the butterfly. The river chortled as it sped along, over rocky pebbles and around mossy little hills. "Why, can't you see?" it replied. "Do I look still to you?"

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

The word Jain has been derived from Jina, which means conqueror, implying one who has overcome all human passions. The Tattvarth Sutra, a book of supreme wisdom, was written by Umaswati, Kundkundacharya's disciple.

The opening aphorism of Tattvarth Sutra talks about enlightened faith, knowledge and conduct leading to final emancipation. The enlightened faith comprises Jiva or life, Ajiva or non-life, Asharva or flow of karma, Bandha or bondage of karma, Samvar or shedding of karma-particles and Moksha.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

An academic can be a spiritualist, if he realises the limitations of the intellectual realm. As Jiddu Krishnamurti says, mind and thought are the source of evil. T S Eliot, inspired by the Gita, celebrates stillness amidst movement, fixity amidst fluidity, silence amidst music. The throbbing of the mind is the origin of alienation from life - the intellectual tends to divorce mind from body, but unity can be achieved through the pursuit of yoga and meditative techniques.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

Many people study religious scriptures profusely - which is a good thing. But they feel that the 'scriptural word' is enough. That is a mistake. A scripture is like a map. And a map is not the territory.

What may appear as a beautiful mountainous range on paper could well turn out to be a treacherous obstacle in real life. Similarly, a river painted in brilliant hues of blue on a map, might be infested with snakes and crocodiles in reality.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

The most well-known mystery in Christianity is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. It is said that three men died on crosses in occupied Palestine sometime during the fourth decade of the Christian era. The carrying out of a death sentence in this manner was a relatively routine matter. In this case, all three were convicted as disturbers of the Roman peace.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

Followers of Advaita philosophy say that the soul and the Divine are one. But, when a soul takes birth encased in a physical body, its new physical identity after birth and the process of socialisation overtake and even obliterate the memory of its connection with the Divine.

As the external identity strengthens with a first name, family name, religion, caste, and the "mine and thine" tendency, the ego strengthens and the world and everything in it begin to appear real.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

Karma is the accumulated impression of past activity, either of thought, emotion or physical action. The quality of the karma that you gather is not necessarily in terms of action alone; it is also in terms of the volition with which action is performed.

This moment, the very way you think, feel, understand and act, is a deep conditioning of past activity. That's karma.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

Every one of us is pre-programmed, in accordance with the culture, family, society or religion we are born into and grow up with. Most of us are indifferent to the fact that we operate with little awareness. So we end up living in a self-made prison.

We have to learn the art of inner separation and not allow inner thoughts and attitudes of negativity to eat into our lives. Negative, ignorant, addictive, narrow, foolish 'I's eat our life forces just as rats eat crops. Some 'I's in us are our friends and some, our enemies. To recognise and de-identify ourselves with the negative 'I's is 'inner separation'.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

"Hey, I'm in Nirvana!" We talk like this when we feel good. But what is it like to actually attain nirvana, otherwise known as moksha or self-realisation?

Self-realisation is the goal of life. Vedic rishis found that everything in the world that blooms is also subject to ultimate decay. Are we here just to live a brief life and then pass away? They reasoned that life cannot be devoid of some higher purpose.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

The Bhagavad Gita or the Lord's Song is one of the world's great literary works. The felicity of its verses, composed in the anusthubh metre, is more than matched by their philosophical profundity. "In comparison, our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial", wrote Henry David Thoreau.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

"Why are we here?" asked a boy of his mother. "Why, to help others, of course," she replied. "And what are the others here for?" asked the boy. The mother had no answer.

The others, especially the needy, are there so that we can extend to them a helping hand. One day, as William Gladstone was preparing a speech he was to deliver in parliament, he was called to visit a dying boy. When he returned to the writing of his speech, he said: "That speech may fail or not; but in helping that boy I have tasted exquisite joy."

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

As a teenager I always carried some cotton, antiseptic and a bandage in my pocket. After all, someone could get hurt. One day, I was in a bus. A fellow passenger got hurt. Here was my chance to become a hero, I thought excitedly. Out came my kit. I applied some antiseptic on her bruise and bandaged it.

Another passenger looked at me and said: "Do you know, you have caused this bruise - indirectly." I was taken aback. He continued: "You waited for someone to fall and get hurt so that you could use your medical kit." My take on nishkaama karma, selfless action, had failed.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)

Scriptures by themselves cannot make a person enlightened. They give knowledge, not wisdom. But the Ashtavakra Gita is different. This scripture negates every facet of life, except supreme consciousness.

Sage Ashtavakra says to Janaka: "My son, you recite or listen to countless scriptures, but you will not be established within until you can forget everything"(16.1). He stresses the import of knowing one's own self. A person may quote extensively from the Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishads. But only through self-knowledge can he even begin to discover the stainless truth.

(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)