Birds of the San Francisco Bay Area

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Scenes from Bangalore's IT Corridor

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The Outer Ring Road in Bangalore hosts a who's-who from Silicon Valley: Cisco Systems, Intel, AOL, Accenture, Intuit, Motorola. Among the other inhabitants of the IT corridor: The SMA Pork Stall has a vantage position. And of course, the inevitable gridlocks where nobody wants to yield the right of way.
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Sri Vishnu SahasranAmam - the forms of the Lord

The Vishnu SahasranAmam describes the 1000 names of Lord Vishnu. Some of them describe the Lord, some his attributes and some his powers. As many spiritual masters have said, there is no difference between the name of the Lord and the Lord Himself. Sri Ramakrishna said, “ There is infinite glory in God’s Name. The Name is the seed; the Name is the tree; and the Name is the fruit. God dwells in His own Name. ”  The Srimad Bhagavatam (1:1:14) states, " By resorting to His name, be it even in a mood of distress and helplessness, one entangled in the cycle of births and deaths would at once get release. " There are over a hundred names that describe the Lord in the Vishnu SahasranAmam. His vastness and His subtlety Vishnu is वामनः (152), the One who has a small body and प्रांशुः(153), One whose body is vast. He is ब्रह्म(664), the biggest, the vastest and the all-pervading and अणुः(835), the subtlest and the all-pervading. He is बृहत् (836), the greatest in dimension. He is al
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Learnings from the Ramayana: Ethics vs Duty

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The one vital duty incumbent on you, if you really love your religion, if you really love your country, is that you must struggle hard to be up and doing, with this one great idea of bringing out the treasures from your closed books and delivering them over to their rightful heirs. - Swami Vivekananda, Lectures from Colombo to Almora The occasion of the re-establishment of the Sri Rama temple at the Shri Rama Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya on 22 January 2024 is a time to reflect on and learn from Sri Rama's life as depicted in Valmiki's Ramayana. The source of much of the content below is the two-volume publication of Srimad Valmiki Ramayanam by the Gita Press, Gorakhpur. E thics vs Duty: The slaying of the demoness Tataka One of the first conflicts that Sri Rama faced was when the sage Viswamitra asked him to kill the demoness Tataka. One of the codes of conduct for a Kshatriya was not to kill a woman. Tataka was a Yasksa woman, capable of assuming any form at will and possessing at
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