Karma and you...

Karma is universally believed to be a leveling mechanism for our actions, or in simple words, a ‘tit-for-tat’ phenomenon. However, this perception of Karma is in its core essence, flawed because it assumes some sort of a judge or a jury who would decide on the extent of good or evil in an action and take a leveling measure sometime in the future.
The existence of this karma judge leaves you a victim, completely devoid of any sort of any responsibility, accountability or power to do anything about anything that happens! This is fundamentally against the design of the universe. The universe is designed free from third party balancing acts and has within its core, immutable laws that govern every aspect of our existence.
Consider for a moment the law of gravity. It existed long before Newton understood it. Our understanding of the law has changed since then as we develop a deeper understanding of the particles that make up the universe and even though we might now believe that an apple falls back to earth when thrown up because of the electromagnetic field created between matter, at the end of the day, the action still remains the same and will always remain the same, irrespective of our understanding.
The law of karma is similar to the law of gravity in the matter that it too is instantaneous. Just as when you throw an apple in the air, there is no judge measuring the force with which you threw the apple and later, sometime in the future, throwing the apple back down, so is no one governing your actions but an impartial, unintelligent law.
The law of karma states that any thought, intent or action creates positive or negative energy instantaneously and this energy has a direct impact on the creator. In other words, imagine yourself as a reservoir of energy. Every positive thought, intent or action that you have adds to this reservoir and every negative thought, intent or action that you have removes energy from this reservoir.
Each addition to this reservoir brings about an increased ability to add to this reservoir and each removal brings about a decrease in this ability. So whenever you think, intend or do something positive, the positivity gained from that brings about a change in you to do something else that is positive and takes you further in your journey towards real happiness and peace.
However, every negative thought, intent or action brings causes negative energy that takes away any happiness or peace that you may feel in that instant and that in turn reduces your ability to be happy and peaceful in the future.
The extent of this karmic influence depends upon the nature of the thought, intent or action. A man who has killed someone else at war is said to never be the same. In fact, there are diseases and conditions such as pneumothorax that are observed in soldiers returning from war. While the war was not started by them and often they killed enemy soldiers based on their orders, killing as an act itself is so inhuman that the negative karma caused has a large instant impact on the person. A karma of this size takes a lot of positive energy to overcome and its effects even manifest itself into the physical world.
Now that we understand what karma is, it is equally important to understand what causes karma. The general description of karma only deals with instances where action takes place. However, actions form a miniscule portion of our involvement with the universe and karma governs every aspect of our interaction with the universe.
We interact with the universe at every instant through thoughts, intentions and less often, through actions. Karma governs each such thought and intention too. For example, when you are really angry at someone and are thinking of doing that person harm, at that instant negative energy is being generated while you think about it. As the intensity of your thought rises, so does the negativity that it generates. An intention generates a higher amount of negative energy because it adds a higher degree of intensity to the thought and an action even higher because it attaches an outcome to the already existing thought and intention.
So even though the highest instantaneous karma is often created by actions, we have thousands of thoughts for every intention and tens of situations where we intend but do not follow through with an action. Thoughts and intentions thus create more karma than actions do and are much harder to master!
Understanding karma opens the doors to taking responsibility of one’s own life. Karma is not about getting even with someone through an impartial judge. Someone else’s actions are immaterial to you but your reaction to those actions themselves causes karma. One must realize that someone else’s actions can never hurt them at anything but a physical level. The only one responsible for managing your karma is you and you are the only one who can do anything about making yourself happy!
Creating positive energy once you understand karma is again very difficult and a process that needs continuous effort. One must watch his thoughts, intentions and actions and ask himself, ‘Is this thought, intention or action going to make me happy?’. For example, if someone has hurt you, and you catch yourself thinking about hurting them back, take a moment and step back to a third person’s point of view and ask yourself if that thought is going to make you happy. The answer will come from within you.

Bulldog, the oldest cafe in Amsterdam

The Bulldog is one of the oldest cafes in Amsterdam. I hope everyone knows what a cafe in amsterdam is like It's legal to buy marijuana and hash there. Funnily enough, atleast to me, you don't get beer or any other form of alcohol there!

It's a big place right on the Leidseplein square in a building that was once a police station. There are a, McDonalds-style, chain of Bulldogs across the city including the original Bulldog in the Red Light District. Each one has a different theme.

As you enter the red light district one, you come across a tiny bar with a couple of friendly bartenders. There're stairs to go down and once you do, there're comfortable couches downstairs with a counter with a guy selling a shitload of different kinds of weed! If you don't wanna roll one yourself, you can buy pre-rolled joints as well!

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http://www.budgettraveller.info/forum/index.php/topic,75.0.html

Christiania in Copenhagen

Thought i'd add some dope specially on Christiania coz tht place is worth i

Christiania, also known as Freetown Christiania (Danish: Fristaden Christiania) is a self-proclaimed autonomous neighbourhood of about 850 residents, covering 34 hectares (85 acres) in the borough of Christianshavn in the Danish capital Copenhagen. From an official point of view, Christiania is regarded as a large commune, but its relation to the authorities has a unique status in being regulated by a special law, the Christiania Law of 1989 which transfers parts of the supervision of the area from the municipality of Copenhagen to the state.

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http://www.budgettraveller.info/forum/index.php/topic,54.0.html

Ricky Gervais on Creationism!

Osho ebooks...

Hey guys...
I know people have this perception of Osho that is tainted by his views on sex. What he said about sex was taken out of context and magnified to define who he was. That however, is absolutely inconsequential to anyone but those foolish enough to hold on to a judgment without exploring the truth behind it. Osho is about buddhism and his views and meditation practices can be a life-altering experience. If you have reached that intellectual stage where you are capable of challenging yourself and everything you have been brought up to believe in, try reading a few pages of Rinzai....
You can down load it from ->

My take on atheism

I believe that being an atheist defines an important facet of my existence. Atheism is not just a concept that sounds good on your orkut profile. It's a system of belief that if you've put in enough effort thinking about, is an extremely bold step to take. God, no offense to any of you believers out there, is a safety net. So is destiny. Atheism does not give you that luxury.
God, as Ayn Rand puts it in 'Atlas Shrugged' is a perfect being that man cannot be. Her position is that without God it is up to man alone to pursue his own happiness and create his own values. That on any day is a difficult thing to do because it's like opening Pandora's box. Everything that you have implicitly taken to be right can now be questioned. And that is What i believe defines the source of atheism - To question instead of implicit judgement based on past conditioning.
I did not just wake up one day and said,'I've tried believing in God.Lets see what the other side is like!'. I had no issues believing in God when i explored the concept of atheism. That is what i believe gives me the credentials to ask any believer to try this out. Just imagine for a second that God does not exist. And by God i am referring to a conscious all-powerful being. I am not even talking about an ever-monitoring God that dictates terms because the premise of that falls flat when you consider that God is a supreme being. Should a supreme being be subject to the trivial vagaries of human nature?
So if there isn't an extremely powerful being with a conscious, what we are left with is pure energy. Something that we know exists and something we know can be directed in certain manners. For certain laws to exist without explanation does not require the existence of God. For prehistoric man, fire was an act of God. Today we accept and dismiss it as a physical phenomenon. Science seems to be at loggerheads with theology. But science is just the understanding of laws that theology accepts and yet does not strive to unravel.
In my experience, some practices like Reiki work and i have come across people with the ability to see the past,present and the future,most notably, my own father. There isn't an exact scientific explanation for a lot of these and yet they work. That, as i mentioned before, does not prove anything or disprove anything. It merely indicated that there are ways to manipulate the unconscious energy within certain boundaries.
Lets look at the world from a tinted glass of an atheist for a moment now. Our universe came into existence with the big-bang which spewed out a seemingly infinite array of things. That gives you seemingly infinite ways in which things can combine. Is it strange to expect life to arise from one of these insanely large number of combinations? Life on earth was gradual and we have proof of that beyond doubt. There were prophets and messiahs and a number of religions in the history of man. We can believe religious writings and accept that God, sometime in the past was there on earth. Or we can look at the fact that irrespective of anything written, there hasn't been a single event or sign that proved the existence of God without doubt during our lifetimes or during that of those we can accept beyond reasonable doubt.
If you are with me so far, look at the world around you forgetting the fact that God ever existed. It's a complex maze that looks so intricate in it's design and yet could've just arisen out of pure chaos. Look at everything you've ever done and seen and you'll see that at every juncture you've made a decision that has defined you and the decisions you will make in the future and everything that has happened to you is a combination of that and the conditioning of people you've come in contact with.
Chaos too has a precision of it's own which is often mistaken as destiny. The reason why lightening strikes a particular tree can be because lightening had to strike something and the tree on that fateful day was something. Or if you look at it in a way that gives someone control, it was the tree's destiny. Out of the million outcomes that can come out of a random experiment, the one that does come out seems to have a purpose magnified by the enormity of the sample set. The catch is that we forget that there has to be one outcome that come out.
And the best thing about atheism is that it's not a religion. So i am not bound by what others accept on this matter. My views are my own and a work in progress. I have the freedom to question myself at every juncture and when i disagree with those at any point, i have the freedom to change that and grow.
That is my take on atheism.....