About Buddha

The birth of Buddha becomes a topic of conflict among India and Nepal. Gautama is now beyond doubt proved to have been born in Lumbini, Nepal. But, he was enlightened in India converting him from Gautama to Buddha which is in some sense a new birth. For me this birth raises no conflict as I belong to both countries. If a Nepalese says he was born in Nepal and is thus Nepalese then I am happy, for Nepal is my Motherland. If India says he was enlightened in India and thus is Indian then I am also happy as I was myself born and raised there.

And, If tomorrow any human comes and says he is human then I would be most happy because I am also human just like him and feel all the suffering that he had gone through. I too have my share of attachment and hatred towards things born out of my own desire of things. But, if tomorrow some God comes and says that he is God then I would slap that God and be thoroughly angry at him. First, he is not God and is not born among them. Second, The reason that Buddha is motivation to me is that he was able to transcend from being an average human to a higher state all on his own. The path he took was not like the one God would take. There was no magic to his method or is. There was no faith, let alone blind faith. However, There were failures. There were risks. There were utter disappointments. There was struggle. But, There was steadfastness that kept him throughout. And, that has kept us humans alive in this world in face of all the struggle that we face daily. Also, There was open mindedness to change and experiment. And, there was science. Don't expect Buddha to make you like him in a matter of seconds like God can. Even he had to struggle for lifetime for that. How come you get that in matter of seconds without your own focus and seriousness towards it? At the end, he is a teacher whose teaching suffers from the same fault as any human teacher have. It is highly open for misinterpretation and false judgements owing to ambiguity of human language and understanding nature of humans which applies previous assumptions over actual guidelines. If he was God, then there would not be so many division of Buddhism. Maybe there would not have been the word Buddhism at all!

So, this is message to all humans. If any Nepali says Buddha is Nepali. Smile. If any Indian says he is Indian. Smile. If entire humanity says he is human. Smile more. But, if anybody says that he is God. Hit him and hit him hard.

About Buddha

Why do plants stay fixed while we animals move?

Few months back, I watched a video Where Do Trees Get Their Mass From? in Veritasium that concludes that trees get all their mass from carbon dioxide that we animals exhale. We animals on the other hand get our mass from trees which is commonly known from our good old textbook topic called food chain. What it lacks is the fact that we in turn were being eaten by plants through our process called respiration (Are You Lightest In The Morning?) that we do continuously and photosynthesis that plants do mostly during day. So, nature does not acts like a bitch as it sounds in the food chain. The food indeed passes backwards in a circular manner. So, there starts a couple of question that bugged my mind. Are plants totally dependent on us animals for the carbon dioxide supply for its survival? What other roles does plant and animals play for the stability of ecosystem and its resources? Obviously the topic of this blog too. So, plants form the source of capturing energy from sun that forms as source of energy to all other living beings in the earth. They basically convert carbon dioxide into glucose which is petrol for us fuelling our activities. We animals lack such mechanism so we are totally dependent on them for getting that source of energy. This energy is used by us in doing all sort of activities like keeping us alive (involuntary actions) and those that we choose to do because we like to (voluntary actions). We have built complex organs in that process and us humans have gone to the extreme in developing advanced intelligence. On the other hand tree seem quite vulnerable, do not have complex systems like we animals have. They have simply skipped them all and are quite satisfied in staying fixed in one place forever making them quite vulnerable to all sorts of risks. So, just like we animals plants also respire. This is basically the process of extracting energy to allow life processes to support. The byproduct of respiration (aerobic which is most common form of respiration) is carbon dioxide. If plants respire then all the oxygen that they generate will be used by plants themselves nullifying any oxygen to be used by us. But, why it wont happen? Maybe because they don't move. I learned this during my Vipassana meditation days where we were asked to stay fixed like tree without moving virtually stopping all voluntary activities which automatically slowed involuntary activities. This helped focus all the energy being generated by respiration in increased mental activities which was then used in the stage of killing all bad thoughts in mind. Vipassana topic aside. Plant dont move or any such rapid activities that consume high amount of energy like we animals do. That allows them to survive with much less energy than us animals. The, the process of photosynthesis that yields oxygen is more then they can consume. This is where we animals come in. Our job is take that glucose generated by plants as their byproduct and burn it with oxygen to generate carbon dioxide which become byproduct for us but source of food for plants. Plants cannot generated carbon dioxide on large scale(because they don't move, right?) like we do so they need to get that carbon dioxide from us animals. All our life activities revolves around this thing. So, next time if you think that plants are dumb beings just sitting in the open land think a second. They are actually eating you all throughout your life.

Why do plants stay fixed while we animals move?