মঙ্গল গ্রহে যা। ভগবান যা করে মঙ্গলের জন্য করে।

 মঙ্গল গ্রহে যা। ভগবান যা করে মঙ্গলের জন্য করে।

D

 A

For most people, life seems to taper off around 70–75. I’m 72, and I may end up living to 90 or beyond, like many on my mother’s side — though I’m not sure that’s a blessing.

It can be lonely. My friends began passing away in my fifties, and each year I lose another one or two. I’ve also outlived both of my husbands — one died at 72, the other at 67. At this age, you start living each day as though it could be your last. Even when you feel perfectly fine, illness can strike suddenly and without warning. Covid took a couple of my friends who had no underlying conditions. One day you’re well, and the next you might be gone. I suppose my only wish is that, when the time comes, I don’t see it approaching.

MC x fast

 Mental Conditioning and Self-Restraint

Extended fasting became a structured method of mental conditioning. Impulses became easier to observe without acting on them. Decisions felt less reactive and more deliberate. Discipline transitioned from effort to baseline behaviour. Control is not suppression, but the ability to remain unaffected by impulse. The effects extended beyond fasting—into work, communication, and emotional regulation. The ability to pause strengthened across all areas.

SS Beyond thoughts, you are the silent witness.

 You aren’t the thoughts that appear and disappear.

You don’t create them — you simply notice them.

Thoughts themselves don’t perceive;
they are what’s being perceived.

They rise, they fade,
they come, they go.

So who is the one noticing all this?
Turn your attention toward that.

Rest there — in silent, wordless awareness —
without trying to explain it or grasp it.

 Srila Prabhupada..."In this regard there is the story of a thief who went on a pilgrimage to a holy town, and on route he and the other pilgrims stopped to rest overnight at an inn. Being addicted to stealing, the thief began making plans to steal the other pilgrims’ baggage, but he thought, “I’m going on a pilgrimage, so it doesn’t seem appropriate that I should steal this baggage. No, I shall not do it.” Nonetheless, due to his habit, he could not keep his hands off the baggage. So he picked up one person’s bag and placed it in another place, and then another person’s bag and placed it elsewhere. He spent all night placing different bags in different places, but his conscience bothered him so that he could not take anything from them. In the morning, when the other pilgrims awoke, they looked around for their bags and couldn’t find them. There was a great row, and eventually, one by one, they began to find the bags in various places. After they were all found, the thief explained: “Gentlemen, I am a thief by occupation. Being that I am habituated to stealing at night, I wanted to steal something from your bags, but I thought that since I am going to this holy place, it is not possible to steal. So I may have rearranged the baggage, but please excuse me.” This is the characteristic of a bad habit. He does not want to commit theft anymore, but because he is habituated, sometimes he does. Thus Kṛṣṇa says that one who has decided to refrain from his immoral habits and make progress in Kṛṣṇa consciousness is to be considered a sādhu, even if out of past habit or by chance he yields to his fault."

From Srila Prabhupada's book; On the Way to Krsna ; The Way of Chanting and Knowing Krsna

A

3 key points from the story (Śrīla Prabhupāda)

1. Habits can overpower intention.
   The thief sincerely decides not to steal, yet his deep conditioning still drives him to handle others’ bags. The story shows how past habits continue to influence behavior even when one consciously wants to change.
2. Moral direction matters more than temporary slips.
   A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada explains that someone who has resolved to abandon wrongdoing is spiritually progressing—even if they occasionally fall back due to conditioning. The key is sincere intention and commitment to transformation.
3. Spiritual practice gradually replaces conditioning.
   In the context of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, the message is that reform is a process: one becomes saintly (sādhu) by deciding to change and continuing practice, while past tendencies weaken over time rather than disappearing instantly.

Neuroskepticism x Nirvana

 3 key points from the passage

1. Neuroscientific determinism denies free will by reducing mind to brain activity.
   The article critiques thinkers like Robert Sapolsky, Francis Crick, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett, who argue that behavior is fully determined by prior biological causes. In this view—rooted in determinism traced back to Pierre‑Simon Laplace—mental events are just physical brain processes, leaving no room for genuine agency.
2. The author argues materialism overlooks subjective experience as a real causal force.
   According to Andy Karr, scientific materialism treats neurons and hormones as causes while ignoring thoughts, emotions, and perceptions as causal factors. He claims this is a mistake: science itself depends on cognition, and subjective experience shapes behavior. Thus, determinism doesn’t eliminate agency—mental processes themselves participate in causation.
3. Buddhism reframes the debate: freedom comes from transforming causes, not asserting free will.
   The teachings attributed to the Gautama Buddha accept universal causation but include both objective and subjective causes. Suffering arises from craving and mental constructions; freedom comes from cultivating different causes through ethics, meditation, and insight. The goal isn’t metaphysical “free will,” but liberation from compulsive mental conditioning 

B

We are compelled more by the dreams of things than the things themselves. We crave and cling to mental fabrications. Even the “I” that is seemingly propelled along by this compulsive flow is an endless series of mental constructs.

 

Andy Karr, “Between Neuro-Skepticism and Ultimate Liberation”

Samadhi

 are a mind, and you are a body. that is what you are, that is what you experience yourself as. You are, on the most fundamental level of reality, awareness. You are awareness the same way you are particles - atoms, protons, electrons, quarks. It is your most fundamental nature that you don’t experience, but that causes you to be self aware.

You are a self-aware body mind.

Samadhi is when the awareness that you are, fundamentally, expands to such an extent that you not only experience it directly, but you become it. In samadhi you are awareness experiencing itself directly.

This experience is analogous to suddenly experiencing your body as a cloud of quarks. I mean literally looking down on yourself and seeing particles swirling around where your body should be. This would be the equivalent of samadhi, when you experience directly what you are actually made of.

There is nothing you can do to achieve it. You, the mind, can’t do anything to make awareness expand like that. It doesn’t matter what the mind let’s go of or clings to. The mind doesn’t matter to samadhi at all. Samadhi is an event of awareness itself, and the mind has no influence over that.