Mechakat family's history from the time of Aanoli Brothers.

Aanoli was one of the most famous 'Tharavadu' in Kozhikode /Calicut district of Kerala.Aanoli was located near the present day Kallayi Railway station near to Calicut Railways station. The whole Railway track was built on the land of Aanoli Tharavadu. Aanoli brothers, two of the highest graded ever, Kalari fighters of late Eighteenth century and early Nineteenth century remained unbeaten throughout their life time and had only one sister who was married off to Mechakat ,in fact she was married to my great grandfather and 'Mechakat Tharavadu, was located near present day Karaparamba and Karuvussery on the way to Kakkodi in present day Calicut.

Though Aanoli brothers never went back to their Tharavadu, after the wedding of their only sister.They lived with their only sister and husband in Mechakat tharavadu.They fought all those guys and warriors including the great maestro Aromal Chevakar ,and had beaten the maestro himself. Their liking for beauty was famous and enjoyed their whole life, without ever getting married and had a special liking for Namboothiri girls.The huge land holdings they had was almost fully coconut plantations.Their wealth was so huge that they never had to toil at all for anything due to their wealth. Their fortune was mostly spent on court proceedings all their life.They lived according to their whims and fancies and never had time for harvest or collection of money due. Kallayi then was known as the largest timber/wood yard in the whole world.The Timber business then was the most lucrative,but the brothers was never bothered to make more wealth because they already owned so much more than they could ever spend.

These are historical records which may be verified,and there are still people alive who had known all these stories and the all conquering Aanoli brothers and later became part of Mechakat Tharavadu where, I was born in 1961. Mechakat too had so much land but apart from a few, all my forefathers never was greedy,  and gave it all away for those who wanted to make a living toiling hard in the soil and cultivation.

But the karmic deeds of Aanoli brothers remained in our family as a curse for generations, and most men of Mechakat died early in their thirties and forties due to the so called 'curse of the lord' perhaps. My father was the one who first broke the jinx and lived up to 64, and my grand mother and father did so much of good KARMA /deeds to help out all human beings without considering their social status caste creed etc.The result was again there to see as our generation came out of the curse and began to make a name for our-self without the tag and popularity of our family names.      

Confucius - Chinese Philosopher - Biography

CONFUCIUS - BIOGRAPHY

Confucius, or as literally translated, Master Kong (K'ung-fu-tzu or Kongfuzi), lived and worked during what is known as the Chinese Spring and Autumn Period (770-481 BCE), and is by tradition said to have been born on the 28th of September in 551 BCE in the state of Lu located on the Shandong peninsula in northeastern China and died in 479 BCE. It is said, “by tradition” because it is difficult to distinguish much of Confucius’ life between the factual and the legendary. Confucius was an infamous Chinese thinker and educator, comparable to Socrates in the West, who developed a social and political philosophy that is often considered to be the foundation of subsequent Chinese thought. He was the founder of the Ru School of Chinese thought and the philosophical school of thought that has come to bear his name, Confucianism, comes from his tradition and the fragments that were recorded in the text calledAnalects (Lunyu). One of his most renowned concepts is summed up in the often translated and transmitted phrase:

Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself

As mentioned, it is difficult to trace the historical Confucius as his myth and legend have far surpassed the mere factual coordinates of his life. One legend has it that Confucius was born in answer to his parents prayers they made at a sacred hill (qui) called Ni and hence his names attest as such: Kong equates to the thanking of prayers answered, his forbidden name was Qui and his public name was Zhongni. Fact or fiction, the majority of what we know about Confucius comes from the Analects and other transcriptions and records of his thoughts and goings-on that were mostly transcribed during the Warring States Period (403-221 BCE) in which there was an ongoing struggle among the small states in China to regain the primacy and power of the Zhou. As well, the well-known text, Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji), written by Sima Qian (145-c.85 BCE), who was court historian to the Han dynasty, includes many accounts of the life and teachings of Confucius. The latter identifies Confucius as a descendent of the Royal State of Song yet grew up in the small state of Lu due to his grandfather’s having to flee the turmoil that besieged that of the state of Song. His life in Lu was said to have begun in poverty as accounts have stated that his father died when he was just three and he was raised by his mother in which he soon had to take various odd jobs once he came of age. He apparently wed a young girl named, Qi Guan, who bore him a son, Kong Li.

His educational background is unclear except that tradition claims him to have studied with Lao Dan, the Daoist Master, as well as with Chang Hong and Xiang in music and lute respectively. What is clear is that education or study was extremely important to Confucius in which one must be dependent and independent; he is recorded in the Analects as saying: “He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.” The Analects, recorded during the Warring States era, are said to reveal the dialogues between Confucius and his pupils in which he transmits, and perhaps expands, on the ideas, or the way (Dao) of the ancient Zhou. He was known to say that he was a transmitter and not a maker, and he had a passion for the wisdom of the Zhou sages upon which his teachings were based, or transmitted from. It is worth noting that it was in the fall of the Zhou Empire that the various small states began to vie for power and such a unified loss was a probable influence on Confucius.

Confucius gathered a following or a group of disciples, the number of which has been overly exaggerated according to scholars. There are claims that he had as many as three thousand, though more accurate accounts put that number at seventy-two (though this number is also suspicious as it is a magic number and purportedly the age of his death). Regardless, Confucius was open to teaching all, no matter their class, through his interpretation of his study and centered that espousal on the edifice of learning as well. His method was never to teach in a preacher-like manner, but rather in a motivational one (so-to-speak), such that the pupil must answer for himself: “I only instruct the eager and enlighten the fervent. If I hold up one corner and a student cannot come back to me with the other three, I do not go on with the lesson.”

His teachings, as did his own learning, emphasized morality, government, speech and language and the arts. As well he focused on what was referred to as the Six Arts: archery, calligraphy, chariot, computation, music and ritual. Of the various subjects though, it was morality that was considered of utmost importance above all else. Through a proper understanding and practice of morality all else could be derived, harmonized and rectified. This is revealed in a famous lesson in which a student asks if there is one word that could guide a person through life, the master’s answer is “reciprocity” (shu), and the ‘answer’ is a suggestion, followed by the exemplifying phrase, “never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself.” A moral education, ideally, provides one with the building blocks for self-cultivation, harmony and ethical action, which can maintain and restore value and meaning for society (something which he considered lost in the loss of the Zhou reign). And for Confucius, it was in the Book of Songs, through its poetry, where one could find the epitome of such imperative study in morality.

The aesthetic is very much an important element in the philosophy of Confucius. The aesthetic is beautiful and good and as poetry can yield such manner so should man’s comportment. What by some interpretations may seem as mere etiquette is much more deeply an issue of aesthetic gratitude and respect. It is one of the key elements to his idea of a harmonious order. Such an order included a special relationship to and serving of the spirits. He maintained that he had a special relationship to Tian, the Zhou deity referring to sky or heaven. He acknowledged its changing status and relationship over time, pre-dating the Zhou, and acknowledged the ‘existential’ dilemma in such change, yet maintained a balanced interpretation in which man is subject to the parameters set forth by the Tian though is a free agent within those parameters and responsible for his actions. Therefore, there is an aesthetic, moral and social co-mingling order that ensures the highest order of harmony, which can be effected through li (ritual propriety). One must learn and perform properly and at the proper time for the greater good.

Through li one can cultivate and master the idea of ren (compassion, or the loving of others), a core component of his thinking. Together this involves deprecating oneself as opposed to being artificial in making the appearance of a better impression: to be true and sincere to oneself is to take care of the other as well; to master self-discipline not as a form or self-repression but as a way to accommodate both the self and the other. Such is enacted in the performance of li, and not as mere obligation, but precisely as sincere devotion: “look at nothing in defiance of ritual, listen to nothing in defiance of ritual, speak of nothing in defiance or ritual, never stir hand or foot in defiance of ritual.”

The importance of such comportment is as well, and clearly as could be no other way, integral to the operations of political life. While he deemed that the elders and the learned are to be respected and honored, that in fact the best practice of ren is through the devotion and respect of one’s elders, he was keen to make aware that such filial propriety is not to be abused. There is no ruler who is essentially “better” than a peasant, and the former should never take for granted the latter. As is true for the social is true for governance—self-discipline through compassion and the love of others.

One who rules by moral force may be compared to the North Star – it occupies its place and all the stars pay homage to it.

As well, the system of governance should follow a hierarchy, as does the notion of li in a familial setting such that a legitimate and honorable hierarchy is established and respected as it (when it) collectively adheres to the harmonic order of li and ren. This theory takes on the name of zhengming, in which the principle forms of government have their appropriate names and corresponding behaviors. “Good government consists in the ruler being a ruler, the minister being a minister, the father being a father, and the son being a son.” This notion of adjudication is considered essential, as the devolution of governance is believed by Confucius to take place in the devolution of one’s place and the attributes and performance of one’s position.

Proper, ideal governance is, above all else, dependent upon de, or virtue. It is a moral force that incorporates the performance of li and the presence of ren. The ceremonial, in this context, is far from pomp and circumstance, but rather a sincere activation of virtue, which has the effect of performing governance. Confucius spoke of such in defiance of acts of aggressive force or imposition of law and law enforcement, which would be antithetical to the force of morality. As he states: “If the people be led by laws, and uniformity among them be sought by punishments, they will try to escape punishment and have no sense of shame. If they are led by virtue, and uniformity sought among them through the practice of ritual propriety, they will possess a sense of shame and come to you of their own accord.” Virtue, metaphorically, leads on its own accord.

Confucius, himself, did not become officially involved in politics until the age of fifty. Under Duke Ding of the state of Lu, Confucius was first appointed Minister of Public Works, which was then followed by the position as Minister of Crime. Apparently, he was forced to leave his position in the ministry of the Duke due to conflicting desires of the nobility of Lu or perhaps the Duke himself—the exact reasons are not clear. He did take leave, or some have said in exile, and traveled with some of his disciples through the other neighboring states of Cai, Chen, Chu, Song and Wei. He apparently sought positions in the ministries of these states yet was unsuccessful. In 484 BCE he returned to his home state of Lu and devoted the rest of his life to teaching.

The Analects give us most of what we know about Confucius and while Confucius claimed to be a mere transmitter, scholars agree that he in fact did much more than transmit and in fact it is his interpretations, expansions and departures that honored him with such a lasting reputation. His teachings were evolutionary, radical and enlightening. His legacy has had long lasting and far-reaching impact in both the eastern and western traditions. He is an amazing figure in history and in legend as the two can never be separated and it speaks to his almost magical presence in the history of Chinese thought. His age of death, seventy-two, was itself a magic number and again leaves open the uncertainty of what is true and what is retrospective mythologizing. It has been convened that the thinker was under recognized in his time yet his legend, and more importantly his teachings, lived on. At the end of the 4th century, Mencius was to say of Confucius, “ever since man came into this world, there has never been one greater than Confucius.”

My Sympathies are with Maoists,The worst Criminals are the ones ruling India. 'Satya me va jayathe'[Truth will ultimately Triumph]

We hear almost daily that Maoists are killed by our own police, who are supposed to safe guard our citizens.But the fact remains there are worse criminals in our country and they are the ones ruling us.

Maoist are fighting for survival,they have been thrown out of their land by big Mafia in connivance with those ruling classes.They are hungry masses fighting for their daily bread and drinking water,while the so called 'honest'rulers are sucking blood and sweat out of these helpless tribal/impoverished population almost half of our populace perhaps' are or have become poorer due to the policies of the present rulers who are snobs who thinks British shit is perfume, while every thing Indian is inferior.The true fact again is that these guys are taught just that by our erstwhile colonialists [You can see each of them cloning their past masters voices,mannerisms etc.], in their so called higher rated educational institutions.I think all those snobs are trying exactly to recreate a situation where in' they get richer along with their shoe lickers , those who are willing to go to any extent to grab land , wealth and power. I have also read some blunt writers' in England such as Bernard Shaw who openly mocked these classes of the so called 'great Britain'.

Our centers policy to eradicate [poverty is the claim] our own majority of population is by banning them and killing them on sight.While the worst thieves our country has seen so far are not those invaders who ruled India for centuries, but those who ruled India after independence.They looted all that is public property,be it be land, mountains along with trees and natural resources,the idea was to have power brokers who are normally corporate honchos,individuals with criminal backgrounds who pay money for votes and our people not realizing the larger plan and conspiracy kept on voting for those who bought popularity through various means, due to their proximity in the highest corridors of power.They spend during election while after election they get back favors which makes them richer beyond such limits, that they become monsters the most cruel cannibals.I hope these few words convey the truth to those seeking to know the truth.Authenticity of these above facts are the result of my travels, crossing our country length wise and breadth wise for decades.I have lived with the most unfortunate people of our country and have seen the truth myself. Our great Sage Sankara Acharya went to Himalayas 3 times in his brief 32 years of life , while I was fortunate to travel dozens of occasions almost the same roots but did it "My Way"[Like our Singer actor Frank Sinatra] 

The roots of corruption in lower levels such as the police is due to the meager salary given to them.I would have advocated for the highest salary for our police personnel to check their temptation for wants and needs.They all deserve a better living for the hazardous job they are doing.I felt our armed forces has been compensated some what recently only, because these rulers are actually cowards of the highest nature and they are scared of our forces.[Army,Navy & Air force].Our populace must not forgive these cannibals,because in Africa they ate men due to their hunger while here they 'eradicate'men/women/children to loot wealth,so these guys deserve more punishment from the lord, than those cannibals who ate men due to hunger.       

Spiritual Happiness is the only lasting solution, for all who seek for 'real' Happiness.

Madhudvisa dasa	14 May (4 days ago)
to me

Hare Krishna balakrishnan mechakkat While writing this I thought of the film 'A fish is just a fish'. It is old no but I think you will enjoy watching it on the krishna.org post of this email at: http://krishna.org/a-fish-is-just-a-fish/Many people write asking why there are so many problems in the world and why Krishna is making them suffer and why they are not happy here in the material world. People do not understand that this material world is a place of suffering and death and that we can not be happy here. We are not meant to be happy here. The material world is not designed to make us happy, it is designed to frustrate us. This material world is like the prison house. If the criminals are sent to the prison they can not expect to be happy in the prison. The prison is for suffering. No matter how advanced, educated or spiritual we consider ourselves we have to realize that we are in prison so we are criminals and because of that we are going to be forced to suffer. To understand this we need to see the "bigger picture". This material world is only a small part of the creation of the Supreme Lord. The major portion of the creation is the spiritual world. This material world is not more than a quarter of the whole creation. We can live in either the spiritual world or the material world. And where we live depends on our consciousness. Everyone in the spiritual world realizes their eternal constitutional position is to serve Krishna. They know they are small and Krishna is great so they surrender to Krishna and serve him in many different ways. So everything in the spiritual world is centered around serving Krishna. Everyone has a common goal, to please Krishna, and everyone can work together cooperatively with this one purpose, to please Krishna. The spritual world is our real home, that is where we belong and that is the only place we can be happy. We are spiritual by nature. The spiritual nature is sat-cit-ananda-vigraha, it means an eternally youthful spiritual form that is full of knowledge and ever increasing transcendental bliss. That is our real nature and that is the nature of the spiritual world so we can only be happy in the spiritual world. It is like if you take a fish out of water you can give him all sorts of gold coins and nice comfortable beds and beautiful women, but the fish will not be satisfied by any of these things. The fish can not be satisfied out of the water, because that is his nature similarly we can not be satisfied in the material world because we are spiritual by nature. So it is completely pointless and an absolute waste of time to work very hard to try and be comfortable in the material world. It is not possible for us to be comfortable in the material world, no matter how hard we work, we will always be just like the fish out of water, gasping for air and suffocating. Devotees know this an therefore they have no interest in the things that materialists are very much attracted to like family members and money and sex and everything that the material senses crave for. Devotees do not want any of this because they know it is all illusory and there is no pleasure, only suffering is the result of sense gratification. If you find a beautiful women and fall in love with her then that will only be an unlimited source of suffering and pain for you. She is very expensive, so you have to work very, very hard to try and satisfy her with a nice house and jewelery made out of gold and diamonds. And no matter what you give he she will never be satisfied. And then one day, after you have completely exhausted yourself trying to satisfy her she will look over your shoulder and see a younger man and drop you and 'fall in love' with him. And of course you will be devastated, heart-broken. But you should not be surprised. That is what love is in the material world... There is no love actually in the material world. The real love is between us and Krishna and that real love is displayed in the spiritual world between Krishna and His devotees. What we think of as love in the material world is nothing but a perverted reflection of the real love that is there in the spiritual world between Krishna and His devotees. This material world in all respects is a perverted reflection of the spiritual world. When you look into a mirror you see a reflection of your face. So you can get the idea what your face looks like. But if you are shaving and you try to shave that face in the mirror then that is not possible. It is only a reflection, it is not real, it is not really there. Love in the material world is like that. It is a reflection of the real love between Krishna and His devotees that is there in the spiritual world. But all we have here is the reflection. There is no actual substance. We can get the idea about love, we can understand to some extent the feelings of love, but the actual love, that is not available here in the material world. So the material world is intrinsically frustrating. We have a general idea of what is going on in the spiritual world because everything we see here is a reflection of the real thing in the spiritual world. But the reflection we see is perverted. It is like if there is a tree on the bank of a river you can see that tree reflected in the river but the reflection is distorted because of the movement of the water. So you can not really see the tree as it is. You see a perverted reflection of the tree. Similarly this material world is a reflection of the spiritual world and the substance which distorts that reflection is our desire. In the spiritual world there is only one desire, the desire to serve Krishna, and everyone in the spiritual world is in love with Krishna. Krishna is the enjoyer in the spiritual world and there everyone else is enjoyed by Him, engaged in His service. There Krishna is the master and everyone else is serving Him. But Krishna does not force anyone to serve Him. We are all like Krishna in quality. The difference between us and Krishna is that Krishna is unlimitedly great and we are unlimitedly small. It is a question of magnitude. Krishna is unlimited and we are infinitesimal. But we are made of exactly the same substance as Krishna, our spirit soul of course, not the material body. Krishna does not have a material body. We are brahman and Krishna is para-brahman. So in the sense of quality we are the same as Krishna but we are very limited in every respect and Krishna is unlimited in every respect. So Krishna is supremely independent, therefore we, as parts and parcels of Krishna, are also independent, but not supremely independent, still we have a little independence. At least we can choose not to serve Krishna, not to love Krishna. That independence we have to have because our relationship with Krishna is one of voluntary service and voluntary surrender. So we have to be able to not surrender to Krishna, otherwise there would be no meaning to surrender to Krishna if Krishna forced us to serve Him. So because some of the living entities see that everyone is serving Krishna and that Krishna is the master of everyone, they get the idea that they would like to be the master of everyone... They want to become Krishna... Of course it is impossible for an infinitesimal living entity to become the whole as Krishna is the whole. Krishna is everything, everything is within Krishna. So these living entities who cultivate this desire to become the master, to become the enjoyer, to become like Krishna, are actually insane. Because it is not possible for one drop of ocean water to become the ocean. It is not possible for one photon of sunlight to become the sun. But still from Krishna's point of view what to do with these living entities who have misused their independence and turned against Him and who have become insane and want to become the master just like Krishna? So Krishna's solution to this problem is to create this material world that we are now in. So we have to know that we are those insane living entities who have rejected the service of Krishna, who do not want to serve but want to be the master. That is us. We are insane criminals and we have been sent here to the material world by Krishna on one hand so we can fulfill to some extent our perverted desires and on the other hand so we can suffer and become frustrated and hopefully eventually rectified to the position where we understand that we are servants of Krishna and that we can never be happy separately from Krishna and we can never become the master like Krishna... It is sometimes said that we have created this material world because if we did not misuse our independence and desire to become like Krishna there would be no need for this material world. Basically everything in this material world is manifested in such a way that all the living entities can simultaneously fulfill their karma. There is no chance in the material world. If someone is suffering they deserve that suffering. It means in the past, either in this life or previous lives, they caused suffering to someone else, so now they are suffering the reaction to that. Although we are not these material bodies when we take birth in the material world in a material body, although that body is not us, although the body is no more that a set of clothing covering the spirit soul, we identify with the body as ourselves. So I am thinking "I am an Australian man" because I was born in a male body in Australia. But I am not this body. I had many different bodies before in previous lives and when this Australian man's body is completely old and useless I will leave it behind and take on another body... It is this false identification of the self with the material body that is the source of all our suffering and troubles in the material world. We take on the interest of the senses of the body as our interest when in actuality we can never become satisfied by satisfying the senses of the body. This is the key illusion upon which everything in the material world is moving. The solution to all of this is to become Krishna conscious. If we can actually become devotees of Krishna then we will no longer be in the material world, we will be in the spritual world, even though it appears that we still have a material body, it will act as spiritual and we will no longer be illusioned by the bodily concept of life and we will be in the spiritual world... To become a devotee of Krishna requires the blessings of a pure devotee of Krishna. We have to find a pure devotee of Krishna and surrender to him and serve him and if we can please him then by his mercy only it will be possible for us to embark on the path of bhakti. Anyhow it is a very big subject that is much more eloquently covered by Srila Prabhupada in his books so please read Srila Prabhupada's books and you will be able to understand these things much more clearly than I can explain them. If you have a question or comment on this email please do not reply to this email, instead post your question or comment on the article at: http://krishna.org/a-fish-is-just-a-fish/and I will reply there. Chant Hare Krishna and be happy! Madhudvisa dasa www.Krishna.org

Story behind the success of Steve Jobs.

STEVE JOBS: This is very INTERESTING. READ ON !!!!!


 You have heard about Mr. Steve Jobs who  revolutionized the world of 

 computers and e based communications through his Apple computers. Do

 you know the following facts about Steve Jobs.

 

He used to "walk 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna Hindu Temple ".

He said in his Stanford University lecture " You have to trust in your gut, destiny, life and Karma."  He was a staunch believer of karma yoga.
He visited many Ashrams in Rishikesh particularly Neem Karoli Baba ashram , a devotee of Hanuman. After visiting first time he returned from India to US with a shaved head and in traditional Indian robes.

 

He used to walk in his company bare footed like a Hindu sanyaasee..
He used to do Yoga daily and he was a perfect vegetarian till his last breath.

He visited many ashrams in north India and used to do yoga in the holy places.
He started touring India from 1970 onwards and he was a great lover of animals.

He did not request money from his parents even when he was jobless and generally took food from Hindu temples wherever he went.

He, religiously followed and spread the 'amazing Hindu dharma' and Vedic messages.

He did not complete his studies in the university but remained in university for discussions with his friends.

He was removed from his own company by the management and later  those management people were removed from their chair and Steve jobs was brought back.

It is said that one of the Hindu swamijis in the Himalayas gave him a green apple and told him to eat it. He did and looked into the apple after biting a piece from it.  That apple later became the emblem of his Apple computers. 

Thanks Sagarmon for finding the real life story of Steve Jobs.