What do you see in front of you?

I read this really amazing tid bit on bhakti mala online edition today... the ending is simply amazing!! opens your eyes to some illusion right in front of you. Read carefully..

See what exists

Reading Vedantic scriptures, making eloquent discourses on those subjects, boasting in front of his Guru about a particular speech he made in a particular congregation etc., were some of the habits of that retired Professor. The Guru used to praise him always. But not today. All of a sudden, the Guru posed a question.

Guru: What do you usually tell? What you have seen or what you think you have seen?
Professor: Gurudev! I am not a person who says whatever comes to the mind. I always tell what I have seen.
Guru: Seen where? In the books or in real life?
Professor: I read in books; and experience in real life.
The Guru took some water from his Kamandalu (pot) and with his wet fingers, drew a zero on the ground.
Guru: Are you seeing this or experiencing this?
Professor: This is a zero. There is nothing to experience here. I am simply seeing it.
The Guru took a piece of chalk and drew another zero on the ground.
Guru: What are you seeing here?
Professor: This is also zero.
Guru: This is also zero! That is also zero!! Is there no difference between them?
Professor: This is water, this is chalk.
Guru: Where then is the zero?
Professor: Zero is a symbol. Because I am an educated person, that symbol is there in my mind. With its help, I am able to know that this is zero.
Guru: Zero is in your brain. What I am asking is, ‘what are you seeing here?’
The professor lowered his eyes and thought for a long time. Finally, he said slowly –

"Gurudev! I am not seeing what is here. What is here, is reminding me of something. I am forgetting what is in front of me because I am drowned in its thought. Because I am forgetting, I think that I saw outside what I had inside my mind. Based on what I have heard, I am narrating about the inside thing. From now onwards, I will learn to see it."

From that day onwards, the Professor became silent.

Richard Stallman visits UIC!

Just had an upclose meeting with Richard Stallman, the founder of GNU foundation! He is visitng UIC for a talk on the philosophy of free software tomorrow. But today evening, all computer science students at UIC were invited for an informal chat. This guy is really motivated to do something he likes to do! So much so that he doesnt care if he didnt have a day time job. It is very rare to see such people around. Everyone is worried about making money first and then doing what they like to do; thats one of the fisrt commnets he had made in today's session.

The one thing that stuck like new to me today is his philosophy that proprietary software is unethical! is it? or is it not? I dont know. I have to listen to the bigger talk tomorrow. For today, that topic is almost taboo coz he didnt want to repeat things. Therefore we decided to ask him about "careers" in free software. Hmm, thats a crazy idea and once the question is put out Stallman sais "Thats a stupid question to ask! People contribute to free software during their spare time. They dont get paid for it generally". Well well, if we kill proprietary software and write free software for free, what are computer science graduates going to live off?

"Write custom software" he says "thats not evil". Other questions were like - do you still maintain emacs? (he was the author of GNU emacs), whats the status if GNU HURD (a GNU kernel), what should universities do to support free software - now theres an interesting answer to that one - "stop using proprietary software. Use free software for all assignments!". To that we asked if GNU Linux was really easy to use for a beggining computer user. "Yes" was the simple and clear answer. Apparently he had seen it employed in several schools and places. He even mentioned about a state in spain that has adoopted a rule to use only free software.

Hmm, he seems to be a determined guy. He says one day he'd like to see the whole world using only free software. At the end of it all somebody asked him how he'd explain this concept to someone new to computers - "Recepies!!" he says. Software should be like recipies. Anyone who had followed and customized a recipie would know the pain if the recipie was proprietary and cannot be modified or distributed!!!!!!!!!!!

blogging in the middle of a race with time

A race with time isnt the smartest thing to do on the planet yet. But I wonder how many other people are doing it right now as I write this blog post. Final exams are coming up fast (May 2 and 5th) and although I am done with projects, there is a hefty amount of subject material to read up;

Meanwhile I found this google calendar pretty interesting. I have my schedule up there, and I also made it public. So, you can search for my calendar via google search!

Yahoo! Next and Microsoft Live!

While Google is enhancing its popularity by publicizing its projects-in-the-pipeline thru Google labs , Yahoo is showcasing its own doodles at Yahoo! next. They've got some good stuff here including flash based Yahoo! maps (there is a cool flash maps API that I am using for my own college project) and a mind reading web search that employs machine learning to guess what you are really going after! hmm, can Microsoft be far behind?! no way; check out their mind boggling tour of seattle or their own maps and local search!

Joe Satriani another time!

Just back from Joe Satriani's show at the "House of Blues". What can I say; the last time he came to play in bombay, i was somewhere far away in the open ground; this time he was like a few feet away from me! In bomaby, the ads said "Let the angels rest their harps, god is here to play guitar"!
He played the guitar with such ease and grace, makes me think guitar playing is not as hard as i think! He had quite a few of his popular numbers in his lineup including the summer song. Eric Johnson opened the show for him! this guy is great too!
The biggest surprise for the evening came vey unexpectedly! The house of blues has a big AUM on top of the podium along with a star and a half moon (with a star). And in the center of them all, there is a big picture of puttaparthi saibaba !!!!!! Can you believe it?!