Life is a campaign against foes; a battle with obstacles, temptations, hardships, and hesitations. These foes are within and so, the battle has to be incessant and perpetual. Like the virus that thrives in the bloodstream, the vices of lust, greed, hate, malice, pride and envy sap the energy and faith of every being and reduce them to untimely fall. You must strive to diagnose your own character and discover the faults that are infesting it; do not try to analyse the character of others and seek to spot their defects. This self-examination is very necessary to bring to light the defects that might undermine one’s spiritual career. People buy clothes with deep colour, so that they may not reveal dust or dirt; they do not prefer white clothes, for they show plainly their soiled condition. But, do not try to hide your dirt in darkness; be ashamed of soiled natures and endeavour to cleanse them fast.
Bazoule, in Burkina Faso, is a sprawling lakeside village around 30 kilometers from the capital Ouagadougou, with a very unique tradition—for many generations residents of this village have been living in harmony with more than a hundred ferocious crocodiles that live in the village pond, the same pond where children swim and bath and the womenfolk fetch water from.
Bazoule’s crocodiles are a distant relative to the larger and more aggressive Nile crocodile. They are a species of their own—Crocodylus suchus—also known as the West African crocodile or desert crocodiles because they are mostly found in forested regions and open habitats. These crocodiles, or rather their ancestors, have adapted to the changing environment in northern Africa, from lush savannah and grasslands 10,000 years ago to the hot and arid Sahara that it is now.
Unlike the Nile crocodile, that typically prefers large seasonal rivers, the West African crocodile generally prefers lagoons and wetlands in forested regions. Some of these wetlands, called a guelta, forms only during rains or when underground springs collect in a depression. When the water evaporates, the crocodiles pass the summer in a kind of torpor. They don’t eat and they keep movement down to a minimum.
West African crocodiles are also less aggressive than the Nile crocodile and usually does not attack humans. Like Bazoule, many communities throughout West Africa have lived in close proximity to West African crocodiles and instead of fearing them, these people revere them and protect them from harm. Bazoule’s people believe that the crocodiles came from the sky along with the rains, and if the crocodiles disappear the water will disappear too.
Sacred crocodiles are also found in the town of Sabou in central western Burkina Faso. Just over the border from Burkina Faso in Ghana, there is a town called Paga, that hosts their own collection of crocodiles that live side by side with humans. Both at Bazoule and at Paga, there are guides who will eagerly lure the crocodiles out of water with live chicken as bait, so that tourists can pat them and take pictures with them.
There are two things that draw one’s mind: hitha(the beneficial) and priya (the pleasant). Prefer the beneficial to the pleasant, for the pleasant might lead you down the sliding path into the bottomless pit. Vibhishana spoke hitha to Ravana, but he lent his ear to the priya that his sycophantic ministers spoke. He sealed his fate by this preference of pleasant over beneficial. The true doctor is interested in curing you of all illness and so, he advises hitha to restore your health; the Guru is such a doctor. Obey him even when his prescription is unpalatable, for, you will be cured! People suffer from the fever of the senses and they try the quack remedies of recreations, pleasures, picnics, banquets, dances, etc., only to find that the fever does not subside. The fever can subside only when the hidden virus is rendered ineffective. That virus will die only when the rays of jnana (wisdom) fall upon it.
Most people engage in bhajan singing, puja and dhyana (ritualistic worship and meditation) but these are mere physical exercises! Ask yourself sincerely – is your mind elevated as a result of these? Does your heart pour through during your worship? No! Hence you continue to remain at the human level and do not rise to the Divine. “Can a lake be filled when there is only a sprinkle of rain? Can thirst be relieved, with a few drops of water? Can the belly be full, if breathing is held tight? Can live cinders be secured by the burning of blades of grass?” asks a famous poet. Logs have to be burned if charcoal is needed. Only sheets of rain can fill a lake to the brim. A glass of cold water alone can cure a person of thirst, nothing less. The heart has to be offered in full. Devotion has to fill and overflow the heart, for you to rise into Divinity!
Approximately 150 miles southwest of Atlanta, in the US state of Georgia, is a network of gorges and massive gullies lovingly called Georgia’s “Little Grand Canyon.” It is considered to be one of Georgia’s “Seven Natural Wonders”, except it isn’t at all natural. These impressive canyons were created not by the action of a river over millions of years but by rainwater runoff from farm fields in less than a century.
Photo credit: John A. Kelley/USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service
Providence Canyon began forming in the early 1800s because of poor farming practices that prevailed across the nation and especially in the south. In those early days of agriculture, land was cheap, unlimited and seemingly expendable giving way to a combination of plantations, small farms, and eventually a sharecropper system that not only degraded the land but also kept farmers in debt and uneducated. Native forest cover were cleared so the land could be farmed, and no measures were taken to avoid soil erosion leading to massive loss of topsoil. Small gullies began to form and rapidly grew deeper and more extensive, until they were three to five feet deep by the 1850s. These small channels began to further concentrate runoff increasing the rate of erosion. Today, some of the gullies at Providence Canyon are 150 feet deep.
Despite its recent formation, Providence Canyon is a treasure trove for geologists and visitors alike. Erosion has exposed the geologic record of several million years within its walls, and minerals have stained the sediments, creating a wide range of colors.
Providence Canyon lies in a region that was formed by deposition of marine sediments between 59 and 74 million years ago. The soil in the top part of the canyon wall was deposited about 60-65 million years ago, just after the age of the dinosaurs. Its fairly coarse sand is a reddish color caused by the presence of iron oxide. Underneath this formation lies what is known as the Providence Sand, which makes up most of the canyon walls. It’s one hundred and nineteen feet thick and was deposited about 70 million years ago. The upper part of this layer is very fine sand mixed with a white clay. The middle layer is coarse and more colorful, with beds of yellow (limonite) and purple (manganese) deposits. The lowest and oldest layer is a black and yellow mica-rich clay. The bottom of the canyon floor was deposited about 70-74 million years ago, and is orange in color but is poorly exposed and overgrown by vegetation.
Providence Canyon continues to erode, however, the floor of the canyon is more resistant and growth of pine trees, buses and other vegetation has helped stabilize the soil.
Photographer John Moore, who took the picture that has come to symbolise the horror of the new family-separation policy in the United States, reveals what happened that night.
MCALLEN, TX – JUNE 12: A two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is searched and detained near the U.S.-Mexico border on June 12, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. The asylum seekers had rafted across the Rio Grande from Mexico and were detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents before being sent to a processing center for possible separation. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is executing the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy towards undocumented immigrants. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions also said that domestic and gang violence in immigrants’ country of origin would no longer qualify them for political asylum status. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
A two-year-old girl in a bright pink shirt is crying. It’s the middle of the night, and she’s only visible thanks to bright lights, likely from cars and cameras. She’s sobbing, her head tilted back in fear as she looks up at a strange man touching her mother. But nobody can soothe her.
This image of a Honduran girl crying as United States Border Patrol agents search her mother has come to represent the heartbreak being experienced by illegal immigrants separated from their children.
Pulitzer prize-winning photographer John Moore has been documenting the immigrant experience for a decade, riding along with both Border Patrol agents and immigrant trains in order to get the story.
Speaking of the image, he speaks about the June 12 ride-along that resulted in the emblematic picture — not to mention the other heartbreaking photos he captured of this mother and child.
That fateful night
On June 12, after seeking access, he accompanied Border Patrol agents to the banks of the Rio GrandeRiver on the outskirts of McAllen, Texas.
Waiting with the guards for hours, he finally heard rafts coming across the river. They waited a little longer and then suddenly moved in to see nearly dozen of them – mostly women and children.
Describing that moment itself, Moore says, “Most of these families were scared, to various degrees. “I doubt any of them had ever done anything like this before — flee their home countries with their children, travelling thousands of miles through dangerous conditions to seek political asylum in the United States, many arriving in the dead of night.”
While the agents were trying to get the families into buses, he finally spoke to one woman who identified herself as a Honduran. She was travelling with her two-year-old. “The mother told me they had been travelling for a full month and were exhausted,” says Moore, who speaks Spanish. “They were taken into custody with a group of about 20 immigrants, mostly women and children, at about 11 pm,” he was quoted as saying to Getty Images FOTO.
Describing what happened next, Moore says, “Before transporting them to a processing center, transportation officers body searched everyone and the mother was one of the last. She was told to set the child down, while she was searched. The little girl immediately started crying. While it’s not uncommon for toddlers to feel separation anxiety, this would have been stressful for any child. I took only a few photographs and was almost overcome with emotion myself. Then very quickly, they were in the van, and I stopped to take a few deep breaths.”
Moore says he doesn’t know what became of the 2-year-old Honduran girl, adding that the asylum seekers he photographed likely had no idea of the new “zero tolerance” policy that has led to families being separated from their children, since they had been travelling for a month under harsh circumstances.
Source….www.rediffmail.com
Natarajan
MCALLEN, TX – JUNE 12: A U.S. Border Patrol vehicle illuminates a group of Central American asylum seekers before taking them into custody near the U.S.-Mexico border on June 12, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. The group of women and children had rafted across the Rio Grande from Mexico and were detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents before being sent to a processing center for possible separation. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is executing the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy towards undocumented immigrants. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions also said that domestic and gang violence in immigrants’ country of origin would no longer qualify them for political asylum status. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
If you have a fully equipped car in good running condition, would you keep it in the garage? The car is primarily for going on a journey; won’t you get into it and drive? So it is with your human body. The human birth has been given to you for a grand purpose – realising the Lord within. Proceed towards the goal. Learn how to use the faculties of the body, the senses, the intellect and the mind, for achieving the goal and march on. To achieve this great consummation, you must take one step after another. Good deeds like ritual worship, repetition of holy names, meditation, observance of vows, etc., are the ‘steps’; good thoughts like prayer for greater discrimination and more chances to serve others also help. Slowly and steadily cleanse the mind, sharpen the intellect, purify the senses, and win the Lord’s grace. You have come, prompted by Divine Love; cultivate and share that selfless divine love with all.
Take off with Natarajan 