Bluishmuse

While studying Vedanta, many texts written by one of the greatest thinkers and philosophers of the 7th century, Adi Sankaracharya, are referenced. He was a great writer both in prose and poetry. Bhaja Govindam is considered to be one of the minor works of Sankaracarya. But due to the melody and the rhythm in the verses, it is beautiful and has become widely popular. For an intelligent student, sincerely studying this would remove all his/her delusions (Moha) and that's why it is also called  Moha Mudgara. I just completed reading Swami Chinmayananda's commentary on Bhaja Govindam and was inspired to learn how to chant the verses. But I couldn't find a proper reference to have all the verses in one place to help me read (Sanskrit and English typefaces). So I collected them from various places and decided to jot them down here for anyone looking for them. Verse 1 भज गोविन्दं भज गोविन्दं गोविन्दं भज मूढमते | सम्प्राप्ते सन्निहिते काले नहि नहि रक्षति डुक्रिङ्करणे ॥ १ ॥       bh

In this journey of self-exploration, destiny put me at an interesting doorway almost during the same time last year. I was at peace and happy in terms of where I was in life for the most part. At the same time, I had many unanswered questions with the primary one being what the purpose of life is. I lacked clarity on what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Like I usually do, when I did not know the answers, I googled. Not surprisingly it did not give me the clarity that I was seeking :-) Many a time, I felt like when I wish for something genuinely, someone leads me there. In this case, it was my longtime college friend. One fall morning last year, I drove up to her place, making plans all of a sudden to surprise another college friend on his birthday. One of the days during my stay there, she took me along to one of her study group gatherings to meet her teacher from Chinmaya Somnath . I got a chance to have an honest interaction with her teacher. I shared with her that I was lo

It is Inktober month. For those who are unfamiliar with what that is – an artist named Jake Parker created this ten years ago in 2009 as a challenge to improve his drawing skills. Since then, it has become a worldwide endeavor where thousands of artists take part in the challenge every year. I have done this for a couple of years previously but I drew random drawings. This year I decided to follow the official prompt list provided for Inktober, and use birds as an inspiration for every prompt. I had to do quite a bit of research on birds and learned so much in the process. Most of these were drawn with watercolors. I used brush pens and white gel pens at times for highlighting. A couple of these were done digitally on my iPad. These are the art supplies I used: King Art Dual Tip Brush Pens White Sakura Gelly Roll Pens Pentel Brush Pen Copic Drawing Pen