Monthly Archives: July 2013
Day 5, Balakanda – Chapters XXXI to XLII
We have come to our fifth session, today is July 7, 2013. We seem to be developing into an intimate group. Sri Surendra Vaidya has shown up. Sri Rathi has come. My special friend Sri Mahesh Sharma has come by. … Continue reading
Day 4, Balakanda – Chapters XIX to XXX
Today we have the Day 4, it is June 23, 2013. My wife Subarna has shown up, she knows Sanskrit, but cannot read Devanagari script very well. She is a fan of Swami Viditmananda, a monk from Arsha Vidya Gurukulam … Continue reading
Day 3, Balakanda – Chapters XIII to XVIII
Today is our third session, Day 3. The date is June 9, 2013. It is a hot day, everybody has already arrived. Among the people I notice Sri Kodandapani and his wife Geeta, and Sri Prem Nagar and his wife … Continue reading
Day 2, Balakanda – Chapters III to XII
Today is Day 2 of the journey, spaced by three weeks. It is May 26, 2013. I arrive at 3 PM in the Temple. The doors are still locked. I see a woman waiting outside with a tray of food. … Continue reading
Day 1, Initiation, Balakanda – Chapters I and II
Sai Temple in Billerica For about three years now, I have started visiting the Sai Temple in Billerica. I was invited to participate in a Tulasi Ramayana reading in October, 2010, organized by my friend Sri Prabhulal Rathi. The Temple … Continue reading
Reading the Valmiki Ramayana
Indian Society and Ramayana Thirty years ago, I joined a group of immigrants in Boston assisting in their effort to create an Indian cultural school offering Sunday classes. The individuals came from the State of Gujarat in India, which deserves … Continue reading
Reading the Valmiki Ramayana
Indian Aesthetics and Ramayana The foundational characteristic of “mana” we spoke earlier is creativity. It is a design process how to create, maintain and develop the large entity we call “the universe.” We have fire to burn things and cook … Continue reading
Reading the Valmiki Ramayana
Indian Literature and Ramayana Indian thinkers distinguished themselves in the olden times by an important empirical realization that the universe must be run by a cosmic concept, which they called “mana”, in English we translate as “mind”. But “mind” as … Continue reading
Reading the Valmiki Ramayana
Background Strange stories are told about the origin of Poet Valmiki. It is taught in the school that the poet began his life as a violent robber, killing men for robbing them and killing animals for food. He went by … Continue reading
Reading the Valmiki Ramayana
Introduction I start this blog on July 10, 2013, to record my experiences of the experiment I am doing by taking the task of reading the complete text of Valmiki’s Ramayana with a group of associates at the Sai Temple … Continue reading
Valmiki's Ramayana 