“We sit in the shade under trees others have planted.”

~Walter Lippmann

Note: I heard this quote yesterday listening to Warren Buffet speak in a Learning by Giving Foundation online course. To hear a man with $50+ billion in the bank speak with the humility and awareness that he exudes gives me an awesome feeling. I loved the example he and his sister referred to: “If I was born in Bangladesh I would never have even had the opportunity to make this kind of money.” The man gets it. He understands how random the process is and how much Bigger the process is.

From Tyler Cowen:

I can think of three reasons.

First, there is a placebo effect.  For the Westerner/outsider, eating with your fingers seems exotic.  For (many, not all) South Asians, eating with your fingers brings back memories of family and comfort foods.

Second, your fingers are highly versatile and they are often the best implements for consuming these foods and blending together spices, condiments, and foodstuffs themselves.  There is a reason why humans evolved fingers rather than forks.

Third, and how shall I put this?  A lot of South Indian food is vegetarian and eating with your fingers adds flavors of…meat.  The fleshy sort.

Eating a dosa with fork and knife is a very different experience, for Tamil food on the palm leaf all the more so.

From the Comments:

Being a South Indian myself I add my two cents

1. South Indian food (The Lunch/Dinner) is essentially rice with a liquid (Sambar + Variations, Rasam, Curd) (No breads) The spices in the sambar need to mix with the rice and the mixture is not fully solid, A spoon might work but the fork is a disaster as spices do not stay on the fork. Also an important ingredient is the vegetable which generally is dry or with a thick gravy. The mix makes the taste heavenly, Also coconut being an important ingredient mixes well when the fingers are used.

2. Idli Dosas and the likes are snacks which again is eaten with coconut chutney and sambar (which is a liquid) The taste of the Dosa intensifies when it is soaked in Sambar/ Chutney and the taste is intensified when the fingers are used as the fingers allow the dosa to take the shape and absorb the spices better

3.Indians prefer using the finger!!!! We are bought up that way

-Vijay

Via Marginal Revolution

In today’s selection — the first great unifier of large parts of the Indian subcontinent was Ashoka the Great (304-232 BCE), who converted to Buddhism after witnessing the bloody horrors of his own wars, and used the moderating influence of Buddhism to help unify the widely different peoples within in his realm. He sent missionaries throughout his empire and as far away as Greece and Egypt. This was the first great expansion of Buddhism, which until then had been found mainly in the northeast near where Siddhartha Gautama himself had lived and taught. The size of his empire was not matched within India for another 2,000 years, and he was ahead of his time in enjoining “respect for the dignity of all men and, above all, religious toleration and non-violence.” Buddhism continued to figure prominently for centuries more, though it was never as deeply rooted as Hinduism, and was ultimately displaced by Islam, whose promise of equal treatment of all men resonated with many within India’s caste system. Very little of Buddhism remained after the establishment of the Islamic Mughal empire in the 16th century CE, though by that time it had become sufficiently established in other parts of Asia to flourish beyond India’s borders:

“Under the third Maurya ruler, the conquest of [the state of] Orissa gave the empire control of the land and sea routes to the south and the subcontinent acquired a measure of political unity not matched in extent for over 2,000 years. The conqueror who achieved this was Ashoka, the ruler under whom a documented history of India at last begins to be possible.

“[Under Ashoka], a royal council ruled over a society based on caste. There was a royal army and a bureaucracy; as elsewhere, the coming of literacy was an epoch in government as well as in culture. … Ashoka had himself been converted to Buddhism early in his reign. Unlike Constantine’s conversion, his did not precede but followed a battle whose cost in suffering appalled Ashoka. Be that as it may, the result of his conversion was the abandonment of the pattern of conquest which had marked his career until then. …

“The most remarkable consequence of Ashoka’s Buddhism has usually been thought to be expressed in the recommendations he made to his subjects in the rock — inscriptions and pillars dating from this part of his reign (roughly after 260 BC). They really amounted to a complete new social philosophy. Ashoka’s precepts have the overall name of Dhamma, a variant of a Sanskrit word meaning ‘Universal Law’, and their novelty has led to much anachronistic admiration of Ashoka’s modernity by Indian politicians of the present era. Ashoka’s ideas are, none the less, striking. He enjoined respect for the dignity of all men and, above all, religious toleration and non-violence. His precepts were general rather than precise and they were not laws. But their central themes are unmistakable and they were intended to provide principles of action. While Ashoka’s own bent and thinking undoubtedly made such ideas agreeable to him, they suggest less a wish to advance the ideas of Buddhism (this is something Ashoka did in other ways) than a wish to allay differences; they look very much like a device of government for a huge, heterogeneous and religiously divided empire. … ‘All men’, read one of his inscriptions, ‘are my children.’

“This may also explain his pride in what might be called his ‘social services’, which sometimes took forms appropriate to the climate: ‘on the roads I have had banyan trees planted,’ he proclaimed, ‘which will give shade to beasts and men.’ The value of this apparently simple device would have been readily apparent to those who toiled and travelled in the great Indian plains. Almost incidentally, improvements also smoothed the path of trade, but like the wells he dug and the rest-houses he set up at 9-mile intervals, the banyan trees were an expression of Dhamma. Yet Dhamma does not appear to have succeeded, for we hear of sectarian struggles and the resentment of priests.

“Ashoka did better in promoting simple Buddhist evangelization. His reign brought the first great expansion of Buddhism, which had prospered, but had remained hitherto confined to north-eastern India. Now Ashoka sent missionaries to Burma who did well; in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) others did better still, and from his day the island was predominantly Buddhist. Those sent, more optimistically, to Macedonia and Egypt were less successful, though Buddhist teaching left its mark on some of the philosophies of the Hellenistic world and some Greeks were converted.”

From J.M. Roberts and Odd Arne Westad, The History of the World, 2013

Via Delancey Place

“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the ‘normal people’ as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like ‘Have a nice day’ and ‘Weather’s awful today, eh?’ you yearn inside to say forbidden things like ‘Tell me something that makes you cry’ or ‘What do you think deja vu is for?’ Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everybody carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others.”
~ Timothy Leary

Two and half years ago, I wrote my first article for HighExistence. My fast life was turned upside down and I found myself far removed from home. Looking back, I can see this period changed my life. Drastically. And I am very happy I made the choices I did. From that moment on, I learned how to take care of myself and the others around me.

Since coming back home, I always longed to return and explore the wondrous world of the far east even deeper. There is something magical there that attracts me. When I revisit those places in my memory my pupils widen uncontrollably. Perhaps it’s because of the smiles or the rich variety of tradition. Perhaps these are just my own projected associations of the past, of a care-free time and a beautiful learning experience.

But it feels magical nonetheless. Being there I slowly started to expect the unexpected, to trust my own judgment and to look out for the little signs that will guide me on my path. I collected ideas that are still shaping my future and I found friends who will last several lifetimes.

There is one moment, however, that linked all of these experiences together. In that moment, I saw a glimpse of fate through the cracks of my chaotic reality. The invisible thread that seems to connect us all together.

I was in Nepal again. Exactly two years later. I entered the same monastery which used to be my home for a month. The same month long introduction to Tibetan Buddhism course that changed my life was going on. My heart was pulsing excitedly.

Suddenly, out of the cloud of nothingness, someone approached me. This stranger asked me if, perhaps, we had met before. After a careful study of his face I replied that this could very well be the case. He was young, bald and grinning as if he knew something I did not. I introduced myself which caused the person in front of me jumped up with excitement.

This unknown face called out my name. ‘Martijn! Martijn from HighExistence! Your post is what made me go here!’ 

I can still feel the goosebumps from that moment.

Time slowed down. I realized that I was meeting someone in the exact same place I wrote about two years earlier and we were both here now because he read what I wrote.

Inspiration is nothing more than to show it can be done so others can experience the thought, ‘I can too.’ Inspiration is to leave a trail of breadcrumbs so others can see a road where there was none before. Inspiration is invisible until you walk back down the road yourself and see that it has become populated.

This is what I love about this community. Every post we make. Every compliment we give. Every piece of advice we share. Everything we leave behind for others to find is another breadcrumb. We don’t know who is looking. We don’t know who will follow our steps, if any. But, when we look back, we know it has the tremendous potential of inspiring others.

Via Martijn Schirp and High Existence

David Butow spent 2012 traveling the world to photograph Buddhism.

Butow used a variety of strategies — and camera formats — to try to capture the heart of Buddhism. He layered reflections, employed camera motion and made metaphoric images that suggested stillness. He included double exposures, used diptychs and even physically altered negatives with a small blade.

“Among the core concepts of Buddhism is the idea of understanding your individual experience of living and the way that you are connected to other people,” he said. “As a photographer, you observe your subject, try to become connected and then capture that in a single moment.”

Check out the NYT Blog article — here.

Check out David Butow’s Seeing Buddha website – here.