Rare video footage of Sri Sri in Texas

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Smile please....Article From Yandamuru Veerendranath

Smile Please...

Why we forget to smile? Here is an example. You are already late by ten minutes to catch the train. You compel the auto driver to steer it fast. With every red light signal your blood pressure increases. You curse the vehicles crawling before you for not giving the way. And suddenly there is a traffic jam.  Your heartbeat stops for a while. Somehow you manage to reach station just one minute before the departure time. Unmindful of receiving the change from the auto driver, you run to the platform carrying your heavy baggage.... just to know that the train is delayed for an hour due to technical reasons. You curse yourself. Now you don’t know how to spend the time. The retiring rooms are full. You want to have a coke and reach out for your purse and traumatized. In a hurry to catch the train, you have forgotten it. The burning sensation in your stomach due to sudden release of acids irritates you further. You are desperate to contact a friend who stays nearby your house. He assures you to bring your purse. But your happiness is short lived as the time tickles. There is no trace of your friend. There comes the announcement of the arrival of the train. You are desperate.

 The three virtues:

 You would have avoided all the miseries had you started half an hour early (Time scheduling), kept every required article for the journey in advance (prerequisite prudence) and enquired about the time of arrival of the train (forthought). Scheduling, preparation and prudence play important role in our day-to-day life. A student ceases to smile as the exams approach. Had he started his studies two months in advance, or allotted ten minutes more time every day, from the beginning for his studies, he would have been more relaxed. Urgency is the first enemy to smile. Unfortunately it is our greatest addiction. Frustration is embedded in doing something that you don’t really want to do. Most frustrations usually stems from mistakes, errors or losses. Searching for the root cause of the problem when you feel frustrated is essential to end your confusion. Hence the word ‘education’ is derived from the Latin word ‘educe’, which means, ‘Know yourself’. Releasing frustrations Sports and other physical activities can be great ways to relieve stress, frustration, and other emotions. When you feel frustrated or angry it’s a good idea to release those feelings by expressing your-self physically or emotionally in a healthy way. Never share your frustrations with others, unless they are professionals or friends who can understand your problem. Eighty percent of people do not bother about your problems. The remaining enjoys listening to it. You are bound to do mistakes under tension and frustration. Here is a famous test. Try to find out how many ‘F’ are there in the following sentence.

 FINISHED FILES ARE FINE FRUITS OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC DEEP STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

There are eight Fs in the sentence. If you could not find them, relax and recount. This is what we advise to the students when they go to exams. Don’t talk with anybody one hour before starting, smile while receiving the question paper, take a deep breath, forget about everything except the subject and start answering the paper. An industrialist made a surprise visit to his factory situated at the outskirts. He found a worker sleeping at the go-down entrance. Annoyed he asked how much was his present salary. ‘Thousand’ replied the worker. The owner threw two thousands at him and yelled, “don’t show your face from now. Get out. You are dismissed”.  After his departure, he turned towards his manager, who was looking confused hitherto, and enquired ‘Since how many years he is working with us?’“ He is not working with us sir. He is a delivery boy” obediently replied the manager.

                                                           -written for THE HINDU

Education is…..Article From Yandamuri Veerendranath

Education is…

“What remains after one has forgotten everything That he learned in his school.”  - Albert Einstein

What is my qualification to write the book "SECRETS OF SUCCESS - What parents don't know, teachers never tell"?. Only one.  I failed my fifth class once and sixth again.  I was my grandfather’s pampered child.  When he expired, I went to live with my father.  I was in my sixth class (second year).  He started teaching me for an hour every day.  Next year in my seventh standard, I scored cent percent marks in mathematics and never looked back.  I have broken fifty years record of my high school at Hyderabad in final exam.  This is the reason why I started believing that an average boy (like me) can be trained to success.

Instead of creating fascinating interest towards education, parents unknowingly thrust it upon their children by constantly telling them to ‘work hard’,  I strongly believe that if a Student has interest in his studies, it is enough if he studies two hours a day at home.  I told the same perception to my son who is a State Ranker in his intermediate but joined as an industrial trainee at Nagarjuna Power Project for a stipend of 1500 per month.  That’s how he simultaneously completed his B.Com (Honors) studying part time in the evening college and completed C.A., then worked for two years in World Bank and went to France to do his M.B.A.  He is now a Business Executive with a salary of rupees four million per year at the age of Twenty-seven.  Appears to be self-audacity but by intention is to inspire the students “the pleasure of studying” and enjoying the success.  The happiness is surely better than watching an idiot box or thinking twenty-four hours about cricket.

As an executive of a Bank, though good at spoken English, I was poor in writing better English in spite of my writing abilities in Telugu as a novelist.  The THE HINDU city editor Sri Srinivasa Reddy asked me to write a column for his daily, I was thrilled but hesitant also.  THE HINDU is famous for its unblemished literary quality.  He encouraged me and I practiced.  The letters from the readers for past two years progressively gave me the confidence that by practice one can achieve something that he feels impossible at one stage.

With these intentions I started writing this book.  This book is meant for students who are willing to work smart, practice the principles and come out as ‘Bests’.  I don’t believe that all those who read this book would become an Einstein or Newton.  But I am sure, if you practice at least fifty percent of these techniques and apply the underlying philosophy, you would be one among the top five rankers of your institution.

There is every reason for you to have a doubt.  ‘Is it necessary to know everything so scientifically?  People of previous generations, were they not living in high spirits without learning all these motivation techniques and psychoanalysis?  Then where is the need?

Here is the answer.

Earlier the farmers grew their crops without any fertilizer support.  As there was no farming research, they could only sell whatever was left after the pests masticated.  Now we spend so much time and money on exploration of scientific knowledge pertaining to fertilizers and pesticides.  The research is for a more rewarding harvest and to meet the increasing demands.

Imagine that your balcony was various kinds of potted plants.  Some should be kept in bright sunshine and some others in a shade.  Some plants require less water and vice versa.  You know the plant physiology through the experience of your elders.  You add your scientific insight to it and transfer it to your subsequent generation. When the perception continues from one generation to next, it becomes ‘science’, philosophy’ and logic.  And that is called wisdom.

The formula applies to education, intelligence and memory techniques also.  With more complicated lives, phobias, frustrations and syndromes, students are more prone to various problems and require a methodical counseling.  That is the reason for these type of books.  My intention of writing this book is to mould you different from other students. Initially you find it tough.  But note that Abdul Kalam to Amitab Bachan underwent through the same phase.  Yes, I want you to grow to a stage on par with them.  The contents of this book are helpful not only for your studies, but in all fields of life including your games, sports, painting, music etc.,

Certain techniques and modus operandi suggested in this book may not be acceptable to some people and subject to their criticism.  I am not here to morals like, ‘study six hours a day, concentrate more, be a jewel for your country etc and gain appreciation from all.  I have written what I practiced.  If I write that I hardly went to barbershop since past twenty years.  It is because I enjoy trimming my hair and above it I started believing that people see what is ‘in’ my head rather than outside.  If I declare that you, particularly boys, need not apply coconut oil to your hair and it is enough if you wash it once in three days, it is true that I have been practicing the same since thirty years without getting any headache or my head becoming bald.  In the same fashion, my advice to drink lots of water and juices, suggestions like ‘One – day two Dawn Theory’ and Developing Concentration through motivating the Five Sensory Organs’ are all practiced by me.  I am thoroughly benefited by them and hence advocating the same to you.  Discard what you don’t like in this book and follow the other techniques.

Knowledge is what you gain that is necessary and wisdom is what you leave that is unnecessary.

Taken from Preface to the Book "Secrets of Sucess" (What Parents Don't know, Teachers never Tell)

The Art Of Studying' at free Of Cost--Yandamoori Veerendranath...

Saraswathi Vidya Peetam was established on November 14th, 2006 near Kakinada in East Godavari District, Andhra Pradesh. The motto of Peetam is to educate students, mainly the tribal and poor, to reduce anxiety before exams, tension while studying. The objective is to generate interest among students towards education and make them feel that acquiring wisdom is a nice feeling, better than watching TV or fancying cricket 24 hours a day.

Inspiration

The inspiration for attitudinal change in Veerendranath to set up the Vidya Peetam is a “school like Ashram” near Dharmasthala, Mangalore established by Padma Bhushan Veerendra Heggade, wherein the poor students study, milk the cows, cultivate vegetables and sell them. This experience gives them not only education, but teaches the techniques of marketing etc at micro level and practicality towards life at a macro level. Veerendranath was told that most of the students at a later stage were financially well settled, with some of them even owning cars.



Another inspiration to Veerendranath to set up the Peetam, a one Crore project; without any trust backing or donations… is the book “Pillalake Naa Hridayam Ankitham” (My soul is dedicated to children). It is a true story, wherein the author (a Russian teacher) educates the students in ‘open’, exposes them to nature, unfolding their enthusiasm and gist for life.

Veerendranath gives one day training to a batch of students, preferably tenth class, accompanied by two or three teachers sponsored by a school. The auditorium stands amidst greenish fields and accommodates around 50 students.

For the first three hours, the students are taught the techniques of concentration, developing memory and reducing tensions and anxiety. The teaching goes in an amusingly entertaining way, involving almost all the students.

The morning session includes the concept of differentiating ‘watchers’ and ‘performers’. Students are encouraged to build up confidence, give a lift to their hidden talents and a positive approach to life. It also includes various methods to develop intelligence, quick reflex actions, expressing love, maintaining health and hygiene and mainly refurbishing enthusiasm towards life. This is what parents don’t know and teachers never tell.

After lunch (provided by the school or Peetam), the kids are out in the open to productive entertainment. On one side of the Peetam, there is a railway track and on the other side, a lake. To combat Hydrophobia (fear of water) the students, mainly girls swim with the help of tubes and also enjoy a brief boat ride.

Here is a pond to catch fish. ‘Learn fishing fist’ is an old proverb. Students at the age of 15 are hyperactive and fishing demands power of control over body movements and adept attention. Fishing makes them sit motionless watching for the pray, which they can never do in normal circumstances. Thus the motto of fishing is to teach them concentration.

One can witness the out-bursting joy in the eyes of boys when they see the practicing net and cricket kit. There are other various sports for girls that include not only shuttle, badminton and ring, but also old traditional games. The anxiety levels are tested in competitions like ‘threading a needle’ and the ‘spoon and a lemon’.

In the evening the students are taught the techniques of self-hypnotism, yoga and meditation. Before the Goddess Saraswathi, they take oath to amend some of their hazardous habits (eating junk food at irregular intervals, personal unhygienic lifestyle, excessive unnecessary talk and sleep).

Finally, under the shades of falling sun, sitting on the steps of the lake near the temple, kids are encouraged to tell small stories on their own. This is to overcome lingering of thoughts, fumbling of words, fear of speaking and mainly to develop communication skills. By the end of the day, almost every kid is encouraged with a suitable gift, may it be a biscuit packet or a new pair of shoes, unearthing their hidden potentialities.

How to Participate..

Any school can send a batch of forty students accompanied by two teachers for one day. It is all free of cost.

You can contact Veerendranath on (+91) 9246502662.

Das Kapital: An Inspiring and Timeless Work

Students' Struggle, the organ of the Students' Federation of India has been carrying a section roughly titled, "The book that inspired me". Economist Venkatesh Athreya recently wrote in the section, how Das Kapital inspired him.

It happened almost, but not quite, by accident. I had completed my bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from a ‘prestigious’ Indian Institute in 1969 and had, to every one’s surprise, chosen to pursue doctoral studies in Economics at a U.S. university. The student movement against the US aggression in Viet Nam was developing powerfully at the university where I had enrolled for my Ph.D. But the courses I had to study as part of my doctoral programme in Economics did not provide any explanation for such important questions as to why the world’s most powerful nation was engaged in a war of aggression against a tiny third world country. It was then that I stumbled upon a study group negotiating Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. You may wonder why this is even worth a mention when the book under reference is a very difficult book on Economics written in the 1850s and 1860s, which many think is obsolete and irrelevant. But I had by this time realized that mainstream Economics offered no credible explanation of the unjust world we lived in, and I was willing to join the study circle. The next six months changed my life entirely.

I read Das Kapital in English, and the first time as part of a study circle of ten persons, most of whom were doctoral students at the university from various social science disciplines. At first, I found I had to read the text very carefully, as each sentence was significant in a different way each time I read it. Slowly, I realized that the manner of Marx’s argument was relentlessly logical, and I began to enjoy the book a great deal, as an engineer with an inclination to analytical argumentation. As I read the book over and over again over the next several semesters of my stay in the university, I began to see something else in Capital. Even in translation, Capital read like poetry! So immense was Marx’s scholarship, apart from his acute grasp of political economy arising from his basic theoretical framework of dialectical and historical materialism, that the pages of Capital, in the middle of abstract argument, would be enlivened by an apt quotation from Shakespeare or Goethe! The other striking aspect of Marx’s style of writing was the sharp sense of humour, with devastating sarcasm marking his references to some bourgeois economists like Nassau Senior and Jeremy Bentham who were apologists for the capitalist system.

What did I, an engineering graduate trained in mathematical economics, learn from Capital? First, I learnt that to understand a society and its dynamics, one needed to look at it in historical perspective. Second, the basic determinants of the dynamics of a society lay in the manner in which the means of production were owned and the relationship between the direct producers and the means of production. Third, the capitalist mode of production in essence is based upon (i) a separation of the direct producers (working people) from the means of production and their transformation into free wage labourers at one pole, (ii) the transformation of the means of production into the private monopoly/property of a class of capitalists at the other pole, and (iii) the logic of relentless pursuit of profit on private account, with all production taking place on private account for sale in markets with a view to profit. Marx demonstrates that this profit-driven system is necessarily expansionist, both in terms of geography and in terms of the range of activities that can be brought under the drive of profit. To read the discussion on the circuit of capital as well as the last part entitled ‘the modern theory of colonization’ in the first volume ofCapital is to understand the inherently globalizing nature of capitalism. After all, if the sole goal is profit, why should the pursuit of it be confined to one part of the world or only one set of activities? If making money is the name of the game, why not make it in any manner possible, be it running a factory or a self financing college or worse! Surely, business ethics is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms! Marx’s analysis of the capitalist mode of production and its inherent logic enables one to understand colonial expansion and what Lenin later called the system of imperialism with its global expansion and colonization and enslavement of people all over the world.

Marx’s analysis in Capital brings out the contradictory nature of capitalism as an economic system. On the one hand, both the competition among capitalists and the struggle between the class of capitalists and the class of workers leads to constant mechanization and automation of production, leading to the rapid development of society’s productive forces. On the other hand, these very processes, which are part of the pursuit of profit, limit the growth of consuming power in society by creating increasing unemployment and limiting wage increases over time, and by dispossessing producers in pre-capitalist sectors/ economies. Periodically, this contradiction between the rapidly growing producing power of capitalist society and the much slower growth of consuming power, results in a demand crisis, with massive amounts of goods and services remaining unsold and large numbers of people thrown into the ranks of the unemployed. Capitalism being an unplanned and anarchic system, sectoral imbalances can also lead to overall economic crisis. Thirdly, in so far as technological progress is also unplanned at the systemic level, the rise in productivity does not always keep pace with the increase in the underlying investments that make the technological progress possible, leading to a tendency for the rate of profit to fall now and then. All these and other factors historically have made the capitalist system prone to large fluctuations in output and employment, causing immense misery to working people. Besides, the competition among capitalists and rivalry among capitalist nation states on a global scale led, in the 20^th century, to two global wars resulting in misery for millions of people and massive profits for a handful of large corporations. Currently, the world is in the midst of a global recession, whose predicted recovery is unlikely to make any dent on unemployment until 2011.

The current global crisis of climate change has brought into sharp focus the wasteful ways of the global capitalist system driven by relentless pursuit of profit and the accompanying disregard for the environment and the fate of future generations. It was Marx’s Capital that boldly proclaimed the historically inevitable demise of the capitalist mode of production in the face of the apparently triumphant march of capitalism across the globe that seemed self-evident to defenders of the capitalist system in the nineteenth century. The twentieth century experience showed that vast numbers of people across the world, both in the industrially advanced countries and in the colonized countries, were ready to revolt against the inequities of the capitalist system. The first decade of the present century has once again highlighted the inability of the capitalist system, despite enormous advances in science and technology, to solve the basic problems facing humanity, including the rather modest goals of food, shelter, clothing, education and health for all. Marx’s analysis in Capital, and his prognosis of the system of capitalism promoting the accumulation of wealth at one pole and misery at the other, remains relevant and inspiring.