How Ajātaśatru Was Reformed: The Domestication of "Ajase" and Stories in Buddhist History

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magadha

Magadh was the source of so many empires son which has made a huge impact on the world. Bimbisara to Ajatshatru to his successors in the nanda dynasty to the maurya empire. This empire gave rise to Buddhism Jainism and significantly enhanced Hinduism. Changed the course of history of billions of people in India and across Asia. One of the greatest empires was born here. 

And the book review talks about how this story morphs as it crosses time, countries, and cultures. Fascinating 

Love

Baba

H-Net Reviews
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=38350

---

Michael Radich.How Ajātaśatru Was Reformed: The Domestication of "Ajase" and Stories in Buddhist History. Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2011. iii + 202 pp. ISBN 978-4-906267-65-1.

Reviewed by Juan Wu (The University of Tokyo)
Published on H-Buddhism (March, 2013)
Commissioned by Dan Lusthaus

The present book provides the broadest and most systematic survey to date of the history of the transmission and transformation of the Ajātaśatru (Japanese: Ajase) narrative in the Buddhist world, tracing its two and a half millennia-long journey from ancient India, across medieval China, to premodern and modern Japan. The primary concern of this survey is to explore the process of how the Ajātaśatru narrative was changed, gradually and transculturally, from a patricide-regicide tragedy in its ancient Indian versions eventually into a story about mother-son psychological conflicts in its modern Japanese presentations. Michael Radich has performed an exemplary feat of synthesizing abundant and complex textual materials coming from a wide range of historical and cultural backgrounds and composed in a variety of languages (Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Japanese). Through demonstrating the great diversity and adaptability of the Ajātaśatru narrative throughout its history, Radich suggests that the modern Japanese domesticated versions, however unusual they appear to be, should be understood within and contextualized as part of the long and continuous process of transformation of this narrative. There seems to be no precedent study, so far as I am aware, that has offered us such a wide and holistic perspective on the history of the Ajātaśatru/Ajase narrative spanning from ancient India to modern Japan. Radich surely deserves great praise and gratitude for his remarkable contribution to our knowledge of both the historical transformations of the Ajātaśatru/Ajase narrative in particular, and the significance of Buddhist stories in the study of the history of Buddhism in general.

The Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem

Kids

I saw this atlas long time back at the British library where it was on loan. 

It's a massive tome. At the time this was made, you've got to remember that the books weren't printed in colour that easily so these were made by hand. 600 maps kids. By hand. Painted. Imagine doing such kind of painting with very very fine brushes, sometimes containing only a few hairs. 

These were meant for royalty. And the royals would commission these books for posterity. Like they would commission a painting or sculpture. 

Fine fine work. And it would open up vistas across the world. These royals will look at the maps and want to send out their people in embassies to go visit and trade and colonise. Maps are powerful things kids. Do you know that many governments still control maps? Or they force google not to show some maps of military bases or private land? It's location information. And so it's expensive. 

Cartography is a fascinating subject. Remember the map we got didu? That's almost 200 years old. She loved it. She is after all a professor of geography but you two also should realise the importance of geography and cartography. It's beautifully illustrated for Diya and it's all about politics, philosophy and economics for Kannu. 

Very interesting. See the images. And these were imagined just a few hundred years back. Lest you find this funny, remember the Malaysian airline which was lost in the South Indian Ocean? A searcher said that there are locations on the earth which are literally unknown. We know more about the surface of the moon and mars than earth. Go figure. 

Love

Baba

The Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem - Medievalists.net
http://www.medievalists.net/2014/03/23/atlas-blaeu-van-der-hem/

---

This documentary takes a look at the Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem – one of the largest and greatest atlases ever assembled. Created by Willem Blaeu and his son Joan in 17th century Amsterdam, the atlas contains nearly 600 maps charting the world. It was published in different languages – Latin, German, French, Spanish and Dutch.

This documentary also shows how publishers created a facsimile of the historical eight-volume Atlas in the Austrian National Library.

Caring for Your Introvert

I learnt quite a lot from this article. But then extroverts like me don't understand this behaviour. This can cause issues. Curious perspectives son. 

I loved the quote, hell is other people at breakfast. Completely incomprehensible of course. I love mornings. It's bright. Cheerful. New day. New battles to fight. New visions to dream. New loves to be won. New dreams to be dreamt. How can anybody be grumpy in the morning? I feel most energised in the morning. Well also in the afternoon and evening and nights aren't that bad either :) 

So I was thinking about my son. Is he an extrovert or an introvert? It was a difficult one. I'm going to say you are 50 50 son. Perhaps a bit leaning towards introversion. But you are very open and sociable with your friends. Which means you are an extrovert. Do an Myers Briggs test. See what comes up. I'm an entj if that helps. 

But reading the article was funny. While I understood why the author says what he says. But it's bloody weird. 

So don't talk to them. But that doesn't stop you from giving them a great big hug, kiss them soundly and walk off whistling while they sit there in their pool of solitude glowering at your back in irritated exasperated love. 

Because if you don't kiss them, they will be even more grumpy son. Never forget the power of a kiss. :)

Or a hug :)

Preferably both.

Have a wonderful day son. I love you. 

Baba

Caring for Your Introvert
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/03/caring-for-your-introvert/2696/

---

Personal File March 2003

Caring for Your Introvert

The habits and needs of a little-understood group

Jonathan Rauch Mar 1 2003, 12:00 PM ET

Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

If so, do you tell this person he is “too serious,” or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?

If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands—and that you aren’t caring for him properly. Science has learned a good deal in recent years about the habits and requirements of introverts. It has even learned, by means of brain scans, that introverts process information differently from other people (I am not making this up). If you are behind the curve on this important matter, be reassured that you are not alone. Introverts may be common, but they are also among the most misunderstood and aggrieved groups in America, possibly the world.

I know. My name is Jonathan, and I am an introvert.

Lunch with the FT: Mary Midgley

Son
Here are two oxford graduates, coincidentally who both studied one of the topics you are going to read, philosophy, talking about philosophy.
It's an interesting topic. At one end, it can termed as meaningless mental masturbation, full of arcane meanderings in obtuse corners of the human experience, using convoluted language which bears no resemblance to reality.
On the other hand son, philosophy underpins and originates all human knowledge. Studying physics or economics or chemistry or astronomy hard enough and you end up in philosophy land.
Have a good grounding in it son. If nothing else it will help you keep questioning yourself and challenging yourself. Search for the truth always.
Love
Baba

I saw this article when using the Financial Times app and thought you might be interested:
Financial Times,
Lunch with the FT: Mary Midgley
--
By Peter Aspden
--
The moral philosopher who was labelled a ‘heretic’ for championing common sense talks about scientific arrogance, macho philosophers and impending ‘catastrophe’
Read the full article at: http://on.ft.com/1hK1A2D

Gerard Depardieu flees France over taxes

Son

An interesting comparison between France Latvia and Greece. On the reactions to austerity. One more thing. It's easier to give than to take away. Specially other peoples money. Sooner or later you will run out of other people's money. Debt is borrowing from your children. 

My mind boggles at who would be stupid enough to do so but as you can see, there are tons of such people and nations. 

Stay away from debt son. Not good. 

Love

Baba 

NGerard Depardieu flees France over taxes: A country’s reaction to higher taxes, austerityon , or budget cuts depends on its culture, history, and national mood. - Slate Magazine
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/01/gerard_depardieu_flees_france_over_taxes_a_country_s_reaction_to_higher.html

---

Au revoir, Gerard Depardieu

Photograph by Savo Prelevic/AFP/Getty Images.

PARIS—For a brief moment before Christmas, self-doubt gripped France. The beloved French actor Gerard Depardieu—who recently played Obelix, an even more beloved French comic book character—announced he was moving to Belgium because President Francois Hollande had threatened to tax millionaires at 75 percent of their income. The nation plunged into depression. Opponents of the wealth tax geared up to attack the president. Pictures of Depardieu in his new “home” in Nechin, a Belgian town just across the French border, appeared in Paris-Match alongside an article titled “France, which is a haven for rich Qataris, is a hell for its own inhabitants.”

Now there’s my bank

I am proud of serving the community, whether with cash or with hay

Up yours

the Taliban cut off his finger for voting the first time around. So he voted again…Welcome to Afghanistan

Irony And Humor In The Semantically Subversive Byzantine Empire

You were tiny when we went to turkey son. So I'm not sure you even recall any of that trip. 

Constantinople or Istanbul as it's called now, is a fascinating city. The stones of the city echo with the sheer weight of history. It's always been torn between the east and west. And Byzantine to boot. The word itself means complex. And that's the amazing part of this empire. Not many people know about it. Unlike other empires. Bit of a mistake there. But still. Another of those places where you should go to son. It's a fascinating synergy of Christian Eastern Islamic Islamic Western thought. Total exhilarating mess. We've got several books on this so you can read up on it if you wish. 

Love

Baba

Irony And Humor In The Semantically Subversive Byzantine Empire
http://mybyzantine.wordpress.com/2014/03/07/irony-and-humor-in-the-semantically-subversive-byzantine-empire/

---

The Byzantine Empire arose after the death of the Roman Emperor Constantine. To make the empire more manageable, it was split into eastern and western halves, with Rome as the seat of the west and Constantinople as the capitol of the east. Unlike Rome of the time, the Byzantine Empire coupled military might and the religious authority of the Church.

When the Roman Empire collapsed and led Europe into the Dark Ages, the Byzantine Empire continued on and it continued to modernize. You don’t last for a thousand years, including holding off Muslim invaders for much of that time, without doing some things right. They finally collapsed in 1453, when Constantinople was captured by Turks. It is known as Istanbul today.

But much of the literature and works of art that hadn’t already been captured (including by Christian crusaders in 1204) or purchased made their way into Western Europe at the time, including a substantial literary heritage. We can thank artwork and artisans from the Byzantine Empire for a large part of the European Renaissance that happened in the following generations but the literature gets far less attention.

Nobody’s Son

We haven't spoken much about death son. It's a funny old thing. As a scientist, you know entropy will happen. Decay is part of life and death&taxes are inevitable. 

This is a very loving and moving story about a 55 year old man coming to terms with his fathers death. 

I think the first time death touched me sort of personally was when my grandmother died. I still remember baba getting the call in the morning and him weeping on the phone. And then we left for Jabalpur. But it didn't touch me that personally. I mean I didn't feel grief son. She was too remote to me. 

But when my uncle, babaji's elder brother died, and we were taking his body to the medical school where he had donated his body, I remember sitting in the back of the van and weeping. I missed that old man. And that was because of regrets. That's why you cry son, when somebody dies. Because you regret all the things you never did or said to the departed soul. 

Babaji then went through 2 open heart surgeries and then the Bhopal gas tragedy burnt out any feeling of fear for death. But I vowed that I will never feel regret for anybody's passing son. The way to avoid regret is to do and say all what you want this life so that when the person dies you do not weep but are happy because the person lived long and prospered and was happy. No regrets son. 

I'm proud of what you have done up till now and what you have become son. If something happens to be today I will be happy and at peace because you have become a man and I know you will take care of the family son. And we have done much with each other. Laughed scolded cooked swum played and joked. But that's from my perspective son. 

That's why we are going to India next month. To celebrate babaji's 80th birthday. To make him happy and cuddly. Have his family with him. He is so proud to hear that you got through in Oxford in ppe. His heart is near bursting with pride like mine. You have exceeded both of us and that's what we want kannu. But to go back and help babaji know the love and talk to him and listen and hug and kiss and and and.  To ensure we never feel regret. 

To close it off son, never have any regrets. Laugh and smile. 

Love

Baba. 

Nobody's Son
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/01/nobodys-son.html

---

January 7, 2014

Posted by Mark Slouka

1

I lost my father this past year, and the word feels right because I keep looking for him. As if he were misplaced. As if he could just turn up, like a sock or a set of keys.

It’s not unusual. In fact, nothing about his death, or my grief, is unusual; there’s no news here—nothing remotely tragic. I know what tragic is: eight days before my father died, a skinny young man walked into an elementary school fifteen minutes from where I live and killed twenty children, something so outrageous that the laws of physics should have stuttered in sympathy, the thrown rock cleared the horizon, the bouncing ball kept bouncing forever.

My father’s death was not in that universe of things. Really, nothing happened. An old man who seventy years ago had held the national Czech junior record in the eight-hundred-metre run walked out of a restaurant in Prague that he went to every day, started making his way up the sidewalk with the cane that I had bought him, complained of feeling weak, sat down on the stoop of 74 Vinohradska street, and died. He was not a person of interest; he’d pass through the mesh of the New York Times Obituary section like dust. He’d lived a long, heartbreaking, and extraordinary life, lived it, on the whole, more decently than most, and when he came to the end of it, he died. It doesn’t get more ordinary than that—the dying part, at least.

Except that he was my father. And grief, like love, is resistant to reason. It was him and me. And now it ain’t.

I have other loves in my life that are greater. It helps. And it doesn’t.

I can’t look at his picture yet. Not yet. I will.

Of Religion and Redemption: Evidence from Default on Islamic Loans

I think I am getting religion. Fascinating study

We compare default rates on conventional and Islamic loans using a comprehensive monthly dataset from Pakistan that follows more than 150,000 loans over the period 2006:04 to 2008:12. We find robust evidence that the default rate on Islamic loans is less than half the default rate on conventional loans. Islamic loans are less likely to default during Ramadan and in big cities if the share of votes to religious-political parties increases, suggesting that religion – either through individual piousness or network effects – may play a role in determining loan default.

Looks like a great idea to me, I wonder why banks aren't cottoning on to this fact :) :P