Friday, September 26, 2008

Crop-Up

Crop up
Meaning
To emerge or occur incidentally or unexpectedly.
Origin
The word crop has several meanings. As a noun it is a swelling on the body, or any rounded or swollen item, for example a bird's gullet, the seed head of a ripe plant or the the rear end of a horse. As a verb it means 'to cut the top or sides off' or 'to gather in' (as in cereal crops). A less well-known meaning is 'to protrude from the earth's surface'.
The context of early printed examples of the term 'crop up' doesn't help us decipher whether that 'crop' is an allusion to the growth of crops or to the 'swollen' meaning. That is because the things that were first said to have 'cropped up' were rounded items which protruded from the ground, i.e. rocks.
The term 'crop up' has been used since at least the 17th century by miners, geologists etc. to refer to rocks that break the earth's surface - literally, outcrops. The Stuart nobleman Dud Dudley, in Metallum Martis, 1665, a record of mining in the English Black Country region, referred to the 'cropping up' of coal:
"The coles ascending, basseting, or as the colliers term it, cropping up even unto the superfices [surface] of the earth."
The later use of the term 'crop up' in its figurative 'emerge unexpectedly' meaning seems quite a natural progression. The Proceedings of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1832, include a citation that could easily be read as having a figurative rather than literal meaning, if it weren't for the geological context.
"Grey-wacke, and slaty limestone, conformably stratified, crop up above the ocean in the Booming isles to the north."
A more obvious figurative version appeared a few years later, in Benjamin Disraeli's Coningsby, or the new generation 1844:
"We shall have new men cropping up every session."
Coincidentally, crops still feature in the language of geologists and archeologists, in the form of crop marks. These are the lines which are created by variations in the growth of plants caused by buried rocks or archeological remains. Although difficult to see from the ground, crop marks materialize quite clearly when viewed from the air. They could be said, both literally and figuratively, to crop up in the landscape.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Lehman laid to Rest.

Lehman laid to rest at the cost of Investors.?

Yes, What a Pity? At last Lehman was laid to rest wrapped in glaring yellow paper bought at the cost of its investors., and to manage and lead this globally huge FI to this state of condition, the management has hired MBA’s and other financial wizards and professionals from Prime Institutes in their respective locations.

I have a number of questions to put forward :-

My question is where the Management principles did and Leadership qualities, the prime criterions to effectively and profitably govern and run Lehman Brothers vanish?

Is it that it has been swallowed by the top brasses and hierarchies of Lehman brothers to ditch their investors?

Or is it let loosing ,bypassing,ignoring,overlooking the basic principles of financial discipline and conduct at all levels in Lehman ?

.There is a good old saying “What cannot be inherited must be inculcated”. The board has miserably failed to inherit good principles of management and qualities of leadership in natural manner with their knowledge, wisdom and discipline. But what were the advisors/consultants and auditors of Lehman doing?

Could they not inculcate these highly effective principles and qualities to the management? Or they were also hand in glove with the unethical conduct, practice and a party to in transparent dealings conducted in opaque manner?

No company/organization ever comes to bankruptcy over night. It’s all accrued and accumulated adverse effects of failingly handling the finance and investment affairs of the company by its management.-Now who is going to be accountable and responsible for the investors to get their investments back?

All said and done nothing can match effective and efficient experience of the stalwarts in the respective industries( they may not be, and indeed need not be from IIMs,Havard, Stanford etc(just to name a few) but they have in them in their upper house much more than what’s being taught in these biz schools, by virtue of their years long rich experience earned through dedication, loyalty and honesty.

After Enron What ? Its Lehman, then DSP Merryl Lynch, then AIG in waiting, and then in waiting, unknown to investors and general public until it bursts and comes out in media..

At least from now on companies and organizations, open your eyes and look out for competent, effective and efficient consultants to manage your company’s affairs before it gets screwed up by your own management team and accounting reporting firms/orgs.- and if this is ignored even Lord Jesus cannot come to your rescue and bale you out- MIND IT.

J.K

Intellect & Intution.

Intellect And Intuition

Mystics never demean or belittle intellectual reasoning. The intellect is not bad. It is good and necessary when used correctly. But they also do not elevate it too highly, knowing it is not the whole mind, it is only one phase of the mind. Instinctive, intellectual and intuitive phases define the whole of the mind. We often use the terms "unfolding intuitive faculties" and "developing intuition" in an effort to encourage an individual on the path to work within himself in subduing his intellect so that he can actually observe the already functioning totality of his intuitive mind.

In order to subdue the intellect--that partial conglomerate of thought patterns and modes of procedure which accord with the culture of the day--it is first necessary to inwardly observe how one's acquired intellect actually functions. Observation is a faculty of the intuitive mind, and this particular aspect of observation only comes into usage after daily meditation has been maintained over a long period of time. Once an inkling of success in knowing intuition and how it differs from reasoning, emotional impulses and pre-programmed patterns within the subconscious awakens, the contest is won. Then and then only we can sustain this knowledge and dive deeper into the inevitable, all the time losing the future and the past, and loosening the reins of the intellect.

Some men say they are part of God, that the God Spirit is within them. The intuitive mind we consider to be that part of God's vast mind--our inspiration. If you have ever had a hunch and had it work out, that is the intuitive mind working within you. It has temporarily dominated your conscious mind and made it possible for you to look into the future and estimate its happenings. The intuitive mind is the essence of time, yet it understands time and timelessness, its essence. It is the essence of space, yet it comprehends space and spacelessness. It is real, yet it does not exist--real only when used, nonexistent to the lower realms of the mind.

Man's individual awareness is either captured by the nerve system of external consciousness of the animal bodies which his soul inhabits as vehicles to live in on Earth, or captured by his celestial nerve system. This, then, is the intuitive nature, the natural expression of the transcendental soul known as man.

Source KHM

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Why can't we human beings be like this

WHEN A LIZARD CAN, WHY CAN'T WE?
This is a true story that happened in Japan .
In order to renovate the house, someone in Japan breaks open the wall.
Japanese houses normally have a hollow space between the wooden walls.
When tearing down the walls, he found that there was a lizard stuck there
because a nail from outside hammered into one of its feet.
He sees this, feels pity, and at the same time curious, as when he checked the nail, it was nailed 10 years ago when the house was first built.
What happened?
The lizard has survived in such position for 10 years!!!!!!! !!!
In a dark wall partition for 10 years without moving, it is impossible and mind-boggling.
Then he wondered how this lizard survived for 10 years!!! Without moving a
single step--since its foot was nailed!
So he stopped his work and observed the lizard, what it has been doing, and what and how it has been eating.
Later, not knowing from where it came appears another lizard, with food in its mouth.
Ah! He was stunned and touched deeply.
For the lizard that was stuck by nail, another lizard has been feeding it for the past 10 years...
Imagine? it has been doing that untiringly for 10 long years, without giving up hope on its partner.
Think, will u do that to your partner?
Think that will you do it to your Mom, who brought you after a big struggle of nine long months?
Or at least to your Dad, Friends, Co-workers, brothers and Sisters?
Imagine what a small creature can do that a creature blessed with


a brilliant mind can't.
As information and communication technology advances,
our access to information becomes faster and faster.
But the Distance between human beings . . . is it getting closer as well?
Please never abandon your loved ones
Never Say U R Busy When They Really Need You ..
You May Have The Entire World At Your Feet.....
But You Might Be The Only World To Them....
A Moment of negligence might break the very heart which loves you

thru all odds..

Before you say something just remember. It takes a moment to Break but an entire life to make...
To Live Use Heart and to Survive use Brains.
Then Life would be a paradise Unfurling only Love Joy and
Happiness... ..

Tide Over

Tide over

Meaning

Make a small allowance (of money, food etc.) last until stocks are replenished.

Origin

My attention was drawn to the little phrase 'tide over' on 'Meltdown
Monday' - 15th September 2008, when Robert Peston, the BBC's Business
Editor, posted this on his blog:

"As for the US central banking system, the Fed, it is endeavouring to
minimise the damage to the financial system from these shocks by
allowing securities firms to swap shares for short-term loans, to tied
them over."

As is the norm with the BBC's audience, the 'tied over' misspelling
produced a much more impassioned response than the chaos in the
world's financial system. It may well have been merely a typo - 'e'
and 'd' are next to each other on QWERTY keyboards after all. The
correct spelling is of course 'tide over'. On reflection, 'tide over'
doesn't seem any more intuitive than 'tied over'; so what is the
origin of the phrase?

'Tiding over', i.e. the eking out of a small stock until a larger
supply arrives, doesn't at first sight appear to have any direct
connection with tidal waters. That's because the meaning of this
phrase has changed slightly over the years. The original 'tiding over'
was a seafaring term. The literal meaning was 'in the absence of wind
to fill the sails, float with the tide'. This usage was recorded by
the English seaman Captain John Smith. Smith is best known for his
role in establishing the first permanent English settlement in North
America at Jamestown, Virginia. In addition to that achievement, he
had more luck as a mariner than his namesake John Edward Smith, the
master of the Titanic. His status as a sailing authority was
established by his writing the influential sailor's manual A Sea
Grammar, 1627, which includes this earliest known citation of 'tide
over':

"To Tide ouer to a place, is to goe ouer with the Tide of ebbe or
flood, and stop the contrary by anchoring till the next Tide."

That sense of tiding over, in which ships would tide over here and
tide over there, was superseded by a 'coping with a short-term
problem' meaning. This meaning drew on the imagery of ships floating
over a obstacle on a swelling tide. Our present figurative usage of
that image was established by the early 19th century, as in the Earl
of Dudley's Letters to the Bishop of Llandaff, 1821:

"I wish we may be able to tide over this difficulty."

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Chip on your shoulder

Chip on your shoulder
Meaning

A perceived grievance or sense of inferiority.

Origin

The word chip has several meanings; the one that we are concerned with here is the earliest known of these, namely 'a small piece of wood, as might be chopped, or chipped, from a larger block'. The phrase 'a chip on one's shoulder' is reported as originating with the nineteenth century U.S. practice of spoiling for a fight by carrying a chip of wood on one's shoulder, daring others to knock it off. This suggested derivation has more than the whiff of folk-etymology about it. Anyone who might be inclined to doubt that origin can take heart from an alternative theory. This relates to working practices in the British Royal Dockyards in the 18th century. In Day and Lunn's The History of Work and Labour Relations in the Royal Dockyards, 1999, the authors report that the standing orders of the [Royal] Navy Board for August 1739 included this ruling:

"Shipwrights to be allowed to bring [chips] on their shoulders near to the dock gates, there to be inspected by officers".

The permission to remove surplus timber for firewood or building material was a substantial perk of the job for the dock workers. A subsequent standing order, in May 1753, ruled that only chips that could be carried under one arm were allowed to be removed. This limited the amount of timber that could be taken and the shipwrights were not best pleased about the revoking of their previous benefit. Three years later, for this and other reasons, they went on strike.

Hattendorf, Knight et al., in British Naval Documents, 1204 - 1960, record a letter which was sent by Chatham Dockyard officers to the Navy Board, relating to the 1756 dockyard workers' strike at Chatham. The letter records a comment made by a shipwright who was stopped at the yard's gates:

"Are not the chips mine? I will not lower them."

It goes on to report that "Immediately the main body pushed on with their chips on their shoulders."

That's a nice story and does connect an incident concerning chips and shoulders with a belligerent attitude. We need to be a little wary of swallowing that derivation whole however. The problem with it is that the phrase isn't known to be recorded in print in England with its figurative meaning anywhere near the 18th century. The first such record by an English author doesn't seem to be until the 1930s in fact, in Somerset Maugham's Gentleman in the Parlour:

"He was a man with a chip on his shoulder. Everyone seemed in a conspiracy to slight or injure him."

A gap of nearly 200 years between the use of a phrase and the incident that supposedly spawned it in the same country is hard to explain. In my humble opinion, the 'chips on shoulders' report dating from 1756 refer literally to just that, chips carried on shoulders. There's no evidence at all to suggest 'a chip on one's shoulder' existed as a figurative phrase until the 19th century.

The confrontational challenge to knock a chip of wood off someone's shoulder does after all appear to be the correct derivation. Circumstantial evidence is all we have to go on here, but that clearly points to a 19th century US coinage. The earliest printed citations that I can find that refer to chips on shoulders are all from America, which the OED states quite firmly to be the source of the phrase. For example:

The American writer and historian James Kirke Paulding's Letters from the South, 1817:

"A man rode furiously by on horseback, and swore he'd be d----d if he could not lick any man who dared to crook his elbow at him. This, it seems, is equivalent to throwing the glove in days of yore, or to the boyish custom of knocking a chip off the shoulder."

In 1830 the New York newspaper The Long Island Telegraph printed this:

"When two churlish boys were determined to fight, a chip would be placed on the shoulder of one, and the other demanded to knock it off at his peril."

The actual phrase 'chip on his shoulder' appears a little later, in the Weekly Oregonian 1855:

"Leland, in his last issue, struts out with a chip on his shoulder, and dares Bush to knock it off."

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Devotion is the Foundation.

Devotion Is the Foundation

Devotion is a state of mind, an arrival at an inner state of consciousness. People who become angry, people who become jealous, people who are fearful, people who get confused are living in the devil's world. They are the ones who upset others and experience revenge. They have yet to come up even to the anava marga and attain a little appreciation of themselves. They have yet to experience being secure in their own identity.

They have yet to "be their own person," "find their own space." They must first close the door on channeling devilish entities. Once firmly planted on the anava marga, they begin feeling that they are God's gift to the world and may seek out a spiritual teacher. If the teacher does teach them karma yoga and bhakti yoga, they begin to realize that there are forces in the universe, souls in the universe, who are much greater than they are now or will ever be for a long time. Once this happens, the die is cast. They are on the spiritual path to their own eventual enlightenment.

Our scriptures, the Saiva Siddhanta scriptures, are filled with stories of the greatest jnanis who performed karma yoga and bhakti yoga and also spoke out the highest truths of jnana. The tales explain that during auspicious days of the month they performed intense raja yoga tapas. This is the yoga--the arms and the head and the torso of yoga. You do not perform only one yoga without all the others. It is an integral whole.

On occasion we observe devotees pilgrimaging to a temple, prostrating so devotedly. But after leaving the temple, they slap one of their children. We know that upon entering the house they argue with their spouse and complain about their in-laws. Where is the true devotion here? This is what devotion is not. Unfortunately, the children who observe this hypocrisy remember it for a long, long time. A child might think, "You love Lord Ganesha, Mom, but you can't love me." When you love a baby, you will not hit it when it cries, even if the crying disturbs you.

Wise Masters will not initiate anyone into raja yoga techniques who does not have a sweet nature and a natural outpouring of devotion. No one auditions for the symphony orchestra until he has mastered all that his first, second and third music teachers have taught him.

Suppose a devotee who is not virtuous is taught an intense raja yoga meditation and practices it ardently over a long period of time until a burst of light is seen. Then the devotee, now feeling quite above others, argues with his parents, or flashes out in anger when talking to a friend. At that moment, all the good merit and benefits of the raja yoga awakening are erased. This is because the prana of higher consciousness has been dissipated by the angry words, which now burn deeper into the mind of others than they would have before. No, a kindly, gentle nature must precede raja yoga sadhanas. That is for sure.

Devotionis the base and the bedrock of spiritual unfoldment. A devotee who has an amiable nature, who is a good, considerate and giving person, is obviously a devotee. The disciplines of bhakti yoga make one a devotee, and a devotee is a very selfless type of person. These disciplines can take many forms, but the fruit of bhakti yoga, which is a loving disposition, must be attained before one can go further on the path with security. The proof is in the actions and attitudes of the individual. If he really sees Lord Siva in and through all things, how can he not be a bhaktar? If he truly understands the law of karma, he cannot possibly resent any happening. He knows that the experiences of today were created in the past. He truly knows that today's actions mold the experiences of a future time. Yes, bhakti yoga is the bedrock of all minor and major enlightenments. Devotees who are very kind people, devotional, obedient, intelligent, will fulfill whatever assignments their Master gives--be it a pure advaitic path, the raja yogas or the path of karma yoga.

Source KHM

Bringing Up Child(ren)

Bringing Up Children
Many families look at their children as intruders, as strangers. There is great power and wisdom in the knowledge of astrology in bringing the necessary information to the parents to know the nature of their new arrival. Non-Hindu families generally do not have this kind of insight into the nature and future of their offspring and are generally at a loss to understand or know how to deal with patterns and developments as they arise.

Hindu parents view each child as an adult in a very young body, growing up into the fulfillment of its potential. Using the knowledge gained through astrology, they work to strengthen the strong character traits and never aggravate the weaker or antagonistic ones. This is to say that should the child have a propensity toward anger, jealousy and argumentativeness, and another propensity toward generosity, creativity and acquisition of knowledge, the wise parents will, of course, never argue with the child, because they do not want to awaken and strengthen this quality; they would carefully refrain from angering the child and quickly quell the anger when it flares up. In order to avoid strengthening the tendency toward jealousy, they would seek to secure the child's relationship with friends and things so that he never felt unloved or disadvantaged. They would praise his creativity, generosity and acquisition of knowledge. For all this he would be rewarded with kind words and gifts, because once these tendencies are strengthened, the negative ones will fall aside.

This example is given to explain the way in which mother and father must work together to formulate patterns of positive discipline that they will understand and implement in the same way, so as to bring out the best qualities within the child. When these best qualities are brought up and become a part of the child's daily life, the worse qualities will naturally be subdued by the best qualities. It is an interactive mechanism within the child himself that brings him closer to perfection.

Everyone is on the path to perfection, and they are instinctively and superconsciously seeking out those who are capable and able to help them progress. Saivites want this to happen within the home itself, and hence welcome the involvement of the guru, the swamis and the entire community.

Because people are human, differences arise. If everyone were the same, humanity would be called a herd, with the instinctive nature the predominant functioning intelligence. But humans are not a herd; they are individuals, each and every one of them. Each has a destiny and on the path to fulfill that destiny must go through an intricate series of unique experiences. Saivites appreciate the differences. If any sameness exists, it is because of the shared understanding of the Dharma and each one's ability to live up to it in his own way, helped or restricted by his prarabdha karmas.

Source KHM