why cremate?

In many of the Dharmic faiths particularly Hinduism it's common to cremate the body of the deceased once they have passed away. I Know that fire is considered sacred but I've never really gone into any depth to learn why it's important to cremate the body once someone has passed on. So after doing quite a bit of searching and not coming up with anything more then how the ritual is performed by who and when, typically it's performed by the closest relative of the deceased and must be performed within 6 days of the deceased's passing, the only exceptions being priests and infants; interestingly priests are buried in the lotus position. So why cremate? well I came across a few pages that sort of gave an explanation and here is my interpretation of what I've learned, it all goes back to the idea of the soul being something separate from the body and with each reincarnation the soul uses the body as a shell to take the form once the previous body has passed on. When a person dies, and the body is cremated the body is no longer sacred since the soul has left the body to be reincarnated into another life-form. Another reason, mostly from Hindu culture, is that by cremating the body that the soul once occupied, it helps the soul to release any attachment it may hold to the body in which it was a part and helps to transition the soul into it's next life, or eventually to Moksh, the eternal liberation of the soul from having to recur into a new life. Quite interesting. Now to start learning about why the rituals upon death came about in othe religions, mainly the Abrahamic ones.

Sources:
http://www.deathonline.net/disposal/cremation/hindu.cfm
http://www.learnnc.org/lp/multimedia/4281
http://www.giftofireland.com/Religionandcremation.htm

chimps evolving faster then humans

I was reading through some of the discovery magazine articles on animal intelligence and came across an article about how the genes of chimps are evolving at a faster rate then those of human beings. The article also stated that this rate of change doesn't imply that chimps are going be gaining on humans in terms of intelligence, but the scientist involved in the study believes that the reason that the chimps genes are evolving faster is because there is fewer interaction among the genes. But I still think that even with 100's of years of homo sapien existence we still have yet to evolve into a species that can interact on a more diplomatic scale. We tend to resolve through violence and hatred rather then through words and compromise. The one thing that troubles me the most is the justification of murder through the use of a divine power, that killing humans of another faith is acceptable because certain individuals believe that it's an action that will be forgiven because the people being killed are not of the same faith, I find that to be the most unintelligent way to live. Anyway getting off my soap box here I still think that humanity needs a evolution in culture and understanding, we are all intelligent yet we seem to carry out actions that make us seem barbaric and primitive.

A brand new year...

It's officially 2008 and we have left behind the year 2007, but the past year will definitely not be forgotten, many things happened, great scientific discoveries to political mischief and mayhem, there were breakthroughs in stem cell research and we even learned that our primate counterparts not only have a better memory but are also capable of developing tools. There was a massive campaign towards the green side, everyone from news stations to prominent figures pondered or tried to come up with a way to teach people how to live a life with a smaller carbon footprint, progress was made at the climate change conference in Bali, while at the same time developing countries have started to build more coal plants to help sustain their growing economy. We saw NBC and Yahoo! start a green campaign by introducing more content to the public to help explain their need to reduce waste and the need to improve energy usage for a more sustainable world. We also saw the release of the new Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicle from Honda called the FCX, while at the same time we learned about the setback of the release of the Tesla Roadster due to software glitches in the transmission system. But besides the topics in the Global warming front we also continued to see the disasters in the progress towards a more peaceful world. Violence broke out in Kenya disputing the results of the election. The assassination of Benazier Bhutto in Pakistan as well as the earlier protest by Pakistani lawyers over the state of emergency declaration from Musharraf, which led to state wide unrest and countless arrests, but perhaps it helped spur the shedding of the military uniform by Musharraf. Even with that momentous action there is still a dark cloud hanging over the political future of Pakistan as the parliamentary elections are set to take place in the coming month. In neighboring India we also heard about the talks regarding the Indo-US nuclear pact, we also saw the victory of the BJP party in Gujarat. But we also saw the violence between Hindu's and Christians in eastern India, the cause of which is still unknown with claims of attempted attacks of leaders by one side. Regardless, the year 2007 saw many things pass some more enriching then others but as many conflicts that may have arisen we saw the attempt at trying to alleviate them. But as I look back the question still remains what is the meaning of peace? As I put the question in the back of my mind I still stand in awe of the events of the past year and here's wising everyone a prosperous and peaceful 2008.

poem in NYC Subway...

I was on the 6 train yesterday and started looking at all the ads on the top of the subway car, one of the ads had a poem, which I found interesting:

If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire.
-Vera Pavlova

I'm still trying to figure out what the poem is trying to get across because it seems that there are contradictory statements between the 2 parts of the poem which talks about the future based on the present and one which talks about the past based on the present, yet they seem to contradict each other, am I missing something here or am I just not able to figure out the logic in this poem?

Shyamalan's new film, The Happening

Well it seems like M. Night Shyamalan has written another "thriller" titled, "The Happening", I hope he has changed his writing since the last few of his films, it seems that after The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, many of his movies tend to give away too much at the ending and reveal more then should be revealed rather then leaving things to our imagination making the monster or force that is the fear in the movie even more scary when glimples of the monster are shown but not the whole. The first movie of his that I saw was "The Sixth Sense" and I admit it was very well written the use of color to highlight specific items in the movie in addition to the use of suspense with things to make things even more discreet was very well done, after that movie I watched Unbreakable, overall it was well written, a good plot with all elements of a superhero movie, the hero and the villian. But then he released 'Signs', that movie wasn't up to par with his past films, the same goes for his later releases of 'The Village' and 'Lady in The Water'. I hope that this new movie of his reclaims his reputation that he had when he wrote 'The Sixth Sense'.

Harold and Kumar 2 looks pretty funny...

It seems like they've released the trailer and a nice teaser for the new Harold and Kumar movie, titled, Harold and Kumar 2: Escape from Guantanamo Bay, the censored as well as the restricted trailers are available at the movie website, the trailer containing restricted scenes looks hilarious, but be warned the restricted trailer does have quite some graphic scenes. As of right now I don't know if this movie is going live up the reputation of the first one and I'm sure it's going to offend quite a few people, but lets see how it fares once it is officially released. Enjoy.

Sant Mat...

So I came across the biography of Shania Twain and as I was reading it it mentioned that herself and her husband practice a religion known as Sant Mat, now I personally have never heard of this religion, and so I curiously decided to surf over to my good friend wikipedia and google and started to look up more information about it. Well the premise of the religion or atleast what I sort of came across after surfing through a few pages was it's focus on the few principles of the Hindu faith mainly that of dietary practices as well as meditation, to help develop a sense of self or an understanding of your existence in this world, ok so that last statement is probably the basis for all religions that are currently practiced in the world today; all religions are there to help one find meaning for existence other then fulfilling routine or common duties but from a metaphysical aspect of what our existence means for you and the relation of our existence in the harmony of the world around you. And the idea of Sant Mat is to practice a way of life where you find a path to realize yourself and eventually find God. So Sant Mat's current spiritual master is Sant Baljit Singh, which I guess he would be the equivalent of the Dalai Lama in Tibetan Buddhism, but the way in which the current Dalai Lama was selected is probably different then how Baljit Singh came to be the spiritual master, since there is no mention of reincarnation amongst the belief of the Sant Mat faith, however more contemporary movements of Sant Mat, do believe in the idea of karma and reincarnation. Well I should say that on the Sant Mat site they mention Karma but not reincarnation... Regardless, the selection of the spiritual leader in the Sant Mat faith is not through principles of selection for some of the other Dharmic faiths (correct me if I'm wrong here). The Sant Mat movement has a very egalitarianistic belief. Which is nice in that they view everyone as equal no matter their social status of religious affiliations, regardless of their belief or their way of life. Which is the one thing that I do find a bit disconcerting in many religions, I feel that equality should be the core of all religions and placing distinctions on groups of individuals, because of their upbringings or their way of life, devoids the idea of religion as a way to discover ones place in their metaphysical existence and understanding of God. But we don't live in a perfect world, but perhaps one day we will find equality amongst all living creatures. I end this post with a quote by Mohandas Gandhi, "All the religions of the world, while they may differ in other respects, unitedly proclaim that nothing lives in this world but Truth."