~Vipassana~

Vipassana Meditation
The Technique
Vipassana, which means to see things as they really are, is one of India’s most ancient techniques of meditation. It was rediscovered by Gotama Buddha more than 2500 years ago and was taught by him as a universal remedy for universal ills, i.e., an Art Of Living.
This non-sectarian technique aims for the total eradication of mental impurities and the resultant highest happiness of full liberation. Healing, not merely the curing of diseases, but the essential healing of human suffering, is its purpose.
Vipassana is a way of self-transformation through self-observation. It focuses on the deep interconnection between mind and body, which can be experienced directly by disciplined attention to the physical sensations that form the life of the body, and that continuously interconnect and condition the life of the mind. It is this observation-based, self-exploratory journey to the common root of mind and body that dissolves mental impurity, resulting in a balanced mind full of love and compassion.
The scientific laws that operate one’s thoughts, feelings, judgements and sensations become clear. Through direct experience, the nature of how one grows or regresses, how one produces suffering or frees oneself from suffering is understood. Life becomes characterized by increased awareness, non-delusion, self-control and peace.
The Tradition
Since the time of Buddha, Vipassana has been handed down, to the present day, by an unbroken chain of teachers. Although Indian by descent, the current teacher in this chain, Mr. S.N. Goenka, was born and raised in Burma (Myanmar). While living there he had the good fortune to learn Vipassana from his teacher, Sayagyi U Ba Khin who was at the time a high Government official. After receiving training from his teacher for fourteen years, Mr. Goenka settled in India and began teaching Vipassana in 1969. Since then he has taught tens of thousands of people of all races and all religions in both the East and West. In 1982 he began to appoint assistant teachers to help him meet the growing demand for Vipassana courses.
The Courses
The technique is taught at ten-day residential courses during which participants follow a prescribed Code of Discipline, learn the basics of the method, and practice sufficiently to experience its beneficial results.
The course requires hard, serious work. There are three steps to the training. The first step is, for the period of the course, to abstain from killing, stealing, sexual activity, speaking falsely, and intoxicants. This simple code of moral conduct serves to calm the mind, which otherwise would be too agitated to perform the task of self-observation.
The next step is to develop some mastery over the mind by learning to fix one’s attention on the natural reality of the ever changing flow of breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils.
By the fourth day the mind is calmer and more focused, better able to undertake the practice of Vipassana itself: observing sensations throughout the body, understanding their nature, and developing equanimity by learning not to react to them.
Finally, on the last full day participants learn the meditation of loving kindness or goodwill towards all, in which the purity developed during the course is shared with all beings.
A short video (5.7 MB) about the observation of breath and bodily sensations in this technique can be viewed with the free Quicktime movie player.
The entire practice is actually a mental training. Just as we use physical exercises to improve our bodily health, Vipassana can be used to develop a healthy mind.
Because it has been found to be genuinely helpful, great emphasis is put on preserving the technique in its original, authentic form. It is not taught commercially, but instead is offered freely. No person involved in its teaching receives any material remuneration.
There are no charges for the courses – not even to cover the cost of food and accommodation. All expenses are met by donations from people who, having completed a course and experienced the benefits of Vipassana, wish to give others the opportunity to benefit from it also.
Of course, the results come gradually through continued practice. It is unrealistic to expect all problems to be solved in ten days. Within that time, however, the essentials of Vipassana can be learned so that it can be applied in daily life. The more the technique is practiced, the greater the freedom from misery, and the closer the approach to the ultimate goal of full liberation. Even ten days can provide results which are vivid and obviously beneficial in everyday life.
All sincere people are welcome to join a Vipassana course to see for themselves how the technique works and to measure the benefits. Vipassana Courses are even being conducted in prisons, with great success and wonderful benefits for the inmates who participate. All those who try it will find Vipassana to be an invaluable tool with which to achieve and share real happiness with others.
For additional information on the availability of Vipassana courses in your local area, you may contact a local Vipassana representative.

How to prepare for telephone interviews

After years of conducting telephonic interviews — and even appearing for some — I have realised that many candidates miss major opportunities due to some minor slip-ups during interviews.
More so when the interview is telephonic, and you can’t see the interviewer.
Here’s help on how to ace those telephone interviews.
5 questions you must ask your future boss
Be punctual
If you have agreed to an interview at 4 pm at one or more numbers, ensure you are ready and have access to those numbers by 3.45 pm.
If you are unavailable for any reason, the interviewer has to contact you again after a few minutes. The number of times they are willing to do this will depend on the interview panel. Some may be lenient enough to try your line three or four times to give you another chance. Others may not be so lenient.
Even if they are lenient, the damage is already done. The interviewer’s first impression of you is of an unpunctual person. Don’t lose out on this simple way to impress. Be punctual.
Also, if you realise even an hour or half-an-hour before the interview that you are not going to be able to make it — whatever be the issue — try to notify your consultant about it and get him/her to reschedule the interview.
It is far better to inform in advance rather than risk the wrath of an interview panel huddling around the phone, waiting for you.
Is it time to change your job?
Speak slowly, clearly
We all know how unreliable phone lines and mobile networks are. The line may disconnect, the voice may break or the disturbance may make it impossible to converse. Most of these are unavoidable and beyond our control, but to maximise the effect of your answers, it is best that you speak slowly and enunciate each syllable.
If you have a tendency to talk the way a 27-year old software developer from Bangalore told me the other day, ‘MynameisArvindandIamaJavaSwingExpert’ — that is, in a way such that words fuse into each other, it’s time to curb that habit.
This applies to a face-to-face interview as well. Practise by reading the newspaper aloud to friends or family and get their feedback. Try recording your newspaper-reading session and play them back. An added advantage of doing this — you will be updated on current affairs.
Know when to stop talking
Often, people have a tendency to ramble on when asked even a simple question such as what are you working on currently. A 30-something software developer from Chennai once lectured me on the myriad aspects of his project for approximately 25 minutes, during which I couldn’t even get a word in edgewise.
For any questions, if you feel the answer can turn potentially as long as a politician’s lecture, you’re in trouble. Be succinct, summarise, and provide only the significant points in your answer. By significant, I mean points that will highlight your knowledge and your role in the project.
Don’t be uncomfortable about the silence once you have finished an answer. Many people tend to fill in awkward pauses in the conversation by digressing from the main topic or just repeating the same points. Avoid this. Get comfortable with the silence. Anyway, it will only last a few seconds until your interviewer comes back at you with the next question.
Don’t be too brief
At the other end of the spectrum are people who give answers that are too brief.
Let me cite an example. I was recruiting .Net developers, and asked a 28-year old programmer about a particular project in her resume. Her curt reply was ‘It is an ASP.NET project’. The answer might be 100 per cent correct, but it is also 100 per cent incomplete.
You don’t have to give a rundown of every technology used in the project, but an overview of the project and its salient features would be handy.
Accept that new job — the right way
Be prepared
It is likely that at the culmination of the interview the panel might ask if you have any questions for them. If you truly have none, say so. But at this point the safe and good questions to ask the interviewer are:
What kind of role are you hiring for?
What kind of work would you have for my skills?
What is the career path followed by this work profile?
It is not a good idea at this point to casually enquire — like a 32-year old software engineer from Delhi did — ‘So, what does your company do?’
Even if you have no clue what the company does, look it up on the Internet later. But flaunting your ignorance is not going to curry favour with your interviewer.
Don’t chitchat
Resist engaging your questioner in a conversation. Don’t ask him for feedback — he cannot give it to you.
If he calls at the scheduled time but you can’t give the interview at that time, don’t try to reschedule the interview with him. This is not his job and will be done by the HR department. He will notify his HR who will either inform your placement consultant or talk to you directly.
I had the strangest experience of a 35-year old project leader from Mumbai telling me: ‘Madam you state the time. Please you tell me when you are free. It is very boring to go through HR!’
–Gauri Mitra is a project leader with a well-known IT company.

Beauty of mathematics

1 x 8 + 1 = 9
12 x 8 + 2 = 98
123 x 8 + 3 = 987
1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876
12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765
123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654
1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543
12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432
123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321

1 x 9 + 2 = 11
12 x 9 + 3 = 111
123 x 9 + 4 = 1111
1234 x 9 + 5 = 11111
12345 x 9 + 6 = 111111
123456 x 9 + 7 = 1111111
1234567 x 9 + 8 = 11111111
12345678 x 9 + 9 = 111111111
123456789 x 9 +10= 1111111111

9 x 9 + 7 = 88
98 x 9 + 6 = 888
987 x 9 + 5 = 8888
9876 x 9 + 4 = 88888
98765 x 9 + 3 = 888888
987654 x 9 + 2 = 8888888
9876543 x 9 + 1 = 88888888
98765432 x 9 + 0 = 888888888

Brilliant, isn’t it?
And finally, take a look at this symmetry:

1 x 1 = 1
11 x 11 = 121
111 x 111 = 12321
1111 x 1111 = 1234321
11111 x 11111 = 123454321
111111 x 111111 = 12345654321
1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321
11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321
111111111 x 111111111=123456789 87654321

Benifits of fruits

Fruit is one of the most healthy and natural foods in existence. There are thousands of different types of fruit available to eat, all of which provide us with strong health benefits. Fruit contains a large number of naturally occurring vitamins, minerals and plant phytochemicals that help benefit health. It has also been shown that eating the whole fruit or juice is best to gain the benefits rather than taking supplements to provide each nutrient separately. It has been recommended that we should be eating at least 5 pieces of fruit every day in order to gain theFull health benefits of eating FRUIT
Fruit can also benefit many people wanting to lose weight. Energy consumption is thought to be mainly influenced by the palatability, fiber content, density of energy and the variety of foods. Eating fruit has the benefit of affecting some these factors. Fruit is also low in sodium so they help reduce the chance of gaining water weight.
Providing you are eating about one-third of the diet as fruits & vegetables, you should notice rapid weight loss because the ample fruit consumption helps fill the stomach faster encouraging less high calorie foods to be consumed. The total calorie consumption will automatically reduce even if we are eating plenty of fruit and vegetables. There is such a variety of fruits available that many can be freely eaten without consuming too many calories thereby controlling weight more effectively.
Overweight and at risk for stroke? Fruit and vegetables may be what you need say researchers. In a recent study researchers say they found antioxidants in fruits and vegetables which may reduce the risk of ischemic strokes, the most common type of stroke caused when blood clots cut off oxygen supply to the brain. Carotenoids are the antioxidants found in fruits and vegetables.For the study researchers measured the levels in blood samples of nearly 22,000 men. The results showed patients who had higher carotenoid levels were at a 40-percent lower risk of having a stroke.Based on these findings, researchers suggest a diet high in fruits and vegetables which may reduce stroke risk
Keep it in BalanceLike dieting, exercise should not be taken to an extreme. Studies show that athletes who work out excessively often suffer from an increased number of colds and other respiratory illnesses, and have an increased risk of musculoskeletal injuries. Also, regardless of what sort of exercise program you decide to take on, you need to make sure that you are getting enough calories to keep going. An extreme low-calorie diet combined with a dose of unaccustomed exercise is a prescription for exhaustion. Not many people will keep up with an exercise regime if it feels akin to torture and is making them feel ill.The Weight Loss FormulaDecide how much weight you would like to lose. Then, keeping in mind that it takes a deficit of approximately 3500 calories to lose one pound, decide how many calories you must both burn through exercise and cut from your diet. A safe guideline is no more than two to two and a half pounds per week. So, if you would like to lose two pounds a week, you will need to cut and burn 7000 more calories than normal. That amounts to 1000 lost calories each day. Instead of crash dieting, or overexercising, simply cut 500 calories from your diet, and add in 500 calories worth of exercise. If you are more than a few pounds overweight, you’ll be surprised at how quickly you can burn 500 calories through exercise. There are exercises that burn fat quickly and efficiently.

The Simple Fact

Did you know you share your birthday with atleast 9 other million people in the world?

The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginiastill had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.

The human heart creates enough pressure whenit pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.

On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.

The strongest muscle in the body is the TONGUE.

“I am.” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

The longest word in the English language is 1909 letters long and it refers to a distinct part of DNA.

It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

Feb 1865 is the only month in recorded historynot to have a full moon.

You can’t kill yourself by holding your breath.

Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

Every time you lick a stamp,you’re consuming 1/10 of a calorie.

Cat’s urine glows under a black light. Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

Babies are born without knee caps.They don’t appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age. Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.

The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers…they saw it as competition.

You know that you are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

There are 2 credit cards for every person in the US.

The name Wendy was made up for the book “Peter Pan.”

If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas
is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.

Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, dogs only have about ten.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing