Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda

The entire collection is available here at Advaita Ashrama website.

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Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Applauses or Herd Clappings?

I attended Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan's talk yesterday at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, titled Baroda to Cambridge: A Life in Science.

No, I am not going to summarize the talk as excellent summary and news items are available at Abi, The Hindu, and Mint. I could not enter the J.N. Tata Auditorium even at 3:20pm for 4pm talk. Somehow I entered and stood near the door. My friend Hisrin said we better go to one those projection rooms. I was happy with a projection screen kept at one of the seminar rooms in the auditorium complex. The audio system was quite bad but comfortable seating had overcome other things!! No, I am not going to complain about all that!!

I noticed a queer thing in applauses. When there were applause in the main auditorium, there were hardly any in our room. Normally I make only silent applause. I am sure if we had got seats inside, most of us would have clapped little boldly and loudly. I wonder why.

Is it because that the knowledge of projection creates a gap between the event and the emotional participation? Is it because the awareness that we are actually not inside the auditorium has produced an aloofness? Is it a kind of indifference since we know we are "not" part of the fun?

Quite interesting indeed.