Life in Balance: Amit Chaudhary's Blog
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I came across a speech by Martin Luther King, first an excerpt at Charity Focus and the complete speech\sermon called Unfulfilled Dreams at Stanford’s King Institute.

If you prefer to listen to it, you can download an mp3 from CharityFocus or as a part of an audio book called A Knock at Midnight.

It is sign of a great teacher that he took a verse from Bible to this Sermon.

Some parts specially touched me and I thought of sharing them here. See the complete sermon to find what touches you.

• Civil war within us

And in every one of us this morning, there’s a war going on. It’s a civil war. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care where you live, there is a civil war going on in your life.  And every time you set out to be good, there’s something pulling on you, telling you to be evil. It’s going on in your life. Every time you set out to love, something keeps pulling on you, trying to get you to hate.  [...] There’s a tension at the heart of human nature.  And whenever we set out to dream our dreams and to build our temples, we must be honest enough to recognize it.

• Total bent of our lives

In the final analysis, God does not judge us by the separate incidents or the separate mistakes that we make, but by the total bent of our lives. In the final analysis, God knows that his children are weak and they are frail. In the final analysis, what God requires is that your heart is right.  Salvation isn’t reaching the destination of absolute morality, but it’s being in the process and on the right road.

• Trying

And the question I want to raise this morning with you: is your heart right?  If your heart isn’t right, fix it up today.  Get somebody to be able to say about you, “He may not have reached the highest height, he may not have realized all of his dreams, but he tried.”  Isn’t that a wonderful thing for somebody to say about you? “He tried to be a good man.  He tried to be a just man. He tried to be an honest man.  His heart was in the right place.”  And I can hear a voice saying, crying out through the eternities, “I accept you. You are a recipient of my grace because it was in your heart.  And it is so well that it was within thine heart.”

Bright Eyes by Catherine Guthrie, Yoga Journal

The top tips

• Reduce burn, redness, irritation in eyes with milk-soaked cotton balls

If they burn or are bloodshot or light sensitive, an excess of pitta may be to blame. To counter it, lie down for 15 minutes with milk-soaked cotton balls on your closed lids. Cucumber slices will also do the trick.

My own experience, this works particularly well for me, making them feel much better. I have not tried the rest yet.

• Vitamin C, vitamin E, and lutein as the best antioxidants for eye health

To infuse your diet with these nutrients, dish up spinach, broccoli, corn, strawberries and nuts. The researchers suggest at least 250 milligrams (mg) of vitamin C, 90 mg of vitamin E, and 3 mg of lutein daily.# These levels are higher than the government’s recommended dietary intake; hedge your bets with a daily multivitamin.

An hour of Yoga 5 times a week should help those sitting in front of monitors

Essentially, we become zombies in front of a glowing screen, blinking only three times a minute instead of the normal 20. The result? Dry eyes.

The class included asana, pranayama, and guided relaxation. Those in the other group spent equal time in the company’s recreation center talking to friends, working out, and watching TV. By study’s end, the yogis reported a 30 percent decline in eye problems like dry eye; eye complaints increased in the other group.

More tips which might work better for others

• Refresh your eyes with water

No matter what your dominant dosha, you can refresh your eyes by splashing them gently with cool water, blinking seven times (once for each chakra, or energy center in the body), and rotating them in all directions.

• Rose water for tired or crusty eyes

If you awaken to eyes that feel tired or more crusty than usual, a kapha imbalance may be to blame, says Malhotra, the author of Inner Beauty: Discover Natural Beauty and Well-Being with the Traditions of Ayurveda. To quell kapha, she suggests sprinkling the eyes with rose water. You can look for rose water in health food stores or Middle Eastern markets, or make your own by soaking an organically grown rose in filtered water overnight

• Ghee (Clarified Butter) for Dry, itchy eyes

Dry, itchy eyes may signal that your vata is out of balance. To restore them, Malhotra recommends a home version of an Ayurvedic treatment called netra basti. To start, warm a quarter cup of ghee (clarified butter) over medium heat, cool it to room temperature, pour half the liquid into an eyecup (sold at drugstores), lean your head back, and bathe the eye for five to seven minutes. Repeat on the other eye using the remaining ghee. (This treatment can be messy, so do it in a bathroom, in clothes that can handle a few drops of ghee.)

What’s more, it’s a good idea to save this self-care routine until just before bedtime, because your vision will be clouded for a few minutes afterward.

Highlights from The Way I Work: Paul English, Co-founder Kayak

• Up everyday at 6:00, Email & then Yoga. Has a meditation room.

• We work really hard for 40 to 45 hours a week, but we believe in people having strong personal lives. Over the past six years, there have been maybe five times I’ve spoken with Steve before 8 a.m., after 5 p.m., or on the weekend.

• Always drives kid to school.

• We have offices in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and California. We started with the first two because my co-founder, Steve Hafner, lives in Connecticut, I live in Boston, and neither one of us wanted to move.

• We have an open office environment. our general philosophy is that an open environment facilitates intellectual intensity. Most engineers are introverted. Here, when people overhear a discussion, we encourage them to walk over and say, “There’s another way to do that.”

• The engineers and I handle customer support. If you make the engineers answer e-mails and phone calls from the customers, the second or third time they get the same question, they’ll actually stop what they’re doing and fix the code. Then we don’t have those questions anymore.

• Real time datamining and support information. We have four monitors in the office where you can see real-time streaming information about the site — how many visitors, how many click throughs. It also displays the last customer e-mail that came in and the photo of the employee who answered it. So you’re walking by and you see, “Oh, Dan just answered a question.” We developed our own customer support software. One of the things it does is randomly select an employee response to a customer and send that response out to the entire company and to all of our investors each day. It keeps us on our toes.

• I keep noon to 2 p.m. open, because I like going out to lunch. It’s also a time for me to socialize. We have a very active work force.

• I do all of the firing. At times, I’ve fired maybe one out of every three people I’ve hired. That might make people think I’m bad at hiring, but I think I’m quite good at hiring. The only way 100 people can ever build a larger company than one that has more than 8,000 people — that’s what Expedia has — is by hiring Olympic-quality, unbelievable all stars of technology.

• Every Tuesday night, I have an open dinner at my house. Anywhere between four and 15 of my relatives will show up for dinner. I’m not a great cook, but it’s fun to have people over.

• I read for an hour every night before going to bed. I love reading books by Indian authors. I’ll also read books about global health and Africa, as well as a murder mystery now and then. But I don’t like business books. There are so many things in life that are more interesting than business.

Recently during my Yoga Ashram stay and when visiting in India, I read the Bhagavad Gita, translated by Swami Sivananda. Following are my highlights.

Balanced & Free from pair of opposites
2.45 Free from pair of opposites and acquisition. 2.48 Balanced in success and failure, evenness of mind is called Yoga **
2.50 yoga is skill in action.  **

Meditation
2.66 with no meditation, no peace and hence no joy. 18.50-52. dwelling in solitude, eating but little, with speech (silence), body and mind subdued, always engaged in meditation and concentration, resorting to dispassion. *
5.21. Engaged in meditation, attains endless peace and hapiness. *
5.27. Meditate, looking inwards. Equalize incoming and outgoing breath.**
6.10 Constant practice of meditation, in solitude.* *
6.14. Meditation steps incl sitting neither high or low.
6.15. Moderation. In eating, actions and sleep.
6.25. Little by little, quiet comes to the mind.*
6.26. Whenever mind wanders, bring it back under control.*
8.10. Fix whole life breath in the middle of eyebrows. **
8.12. Withdraw senses, gazing inwards, focusing.
8.13. Uttering OM and remembering me. **
12.8-10. Otherwise focus on me, practice Yoga constantly or do actions for my sake and you will reach siddhi (me). *
12.12. Knowledge is better than Practice. Meditation is next. Then renunciation of fruits of action. Then peace follows.**

Yoga, Pranayama & other practices
4.28, 29, 30. Yoga, Pranayama (equal breath for in & out) and moderate diet as tapas.**
4.38. Perfection in Yoga leads to knowledge within self in time.
6.40-44. A former Yogi eventually returns to his practice.
6.44. Who merely wishes to know Yoga goes beyond the written word of Brahman.*
17.6. Senseless austerities and torture of body and thereby me, are of demoniacal resolve.

Sense control, Pratyahara
3.6. Control senses during action.*
3.37. Desire leads to Anger. It is the Foe. Both in turn lead to Sin.
3.40. Desire sits in senses, mind and intellect, clouding wisdom.*
3.41. Hence control senses.
5.20. For Brahman knower, No joy from pleasant events, no agitation on unpleasant.*
12.15. He by whom the world is not agitated and who cannot be agitated by the world is dear to me.**
12.17. He who is not attached to good and evil, who is full of devotion is dear to me.*
12.19. He to whom censure and praise are equal, who is silence oriented, homeless is dear to me. *

Conduct, Actions & Gunas (Qualities)
2.42 flowery speeches by unwise *
3.5. Action always happens due to our nature. Swayed by gunas.*
3.25. Do actions without attachment for welfare of world.*
3.27. All actions due to nature. Delusion to think I am doer.
3.42. Senses are greater than Body. Mind > Senses. Intellect > Mind. The Self, the Witness, He > Intellect.**
9.1. To you who is not jealous, I will give knowledge which combined with experience will set you free. **
12.8-10. Otherwise focus on me, practice Yoga constantly or do actions for my sake and you will reach siddhi (me). *
12.12. Knowledge is better than Practice. Meditation is next. Then renunciation of fruits of action. Then peace follows.**
14.5. Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, these qualities, born of nature, bind fast in the body, the undestructable.
14.6. Sattva, which is stainless, binds by attachment to knowledge and happiness. Comparing to others.*
14.10. Each of these dominant at different times.*
14.11. When light shines through every gate in the body, Sattva is predominant.
14.22. When one transcends the three qualities, he is neither carried away nor upset when any of the gunas is dominant.
17.8-10. Food which increase life are dear to sattvic, excessive hot to rajasic and stale to tamasic.
18.48. All undertakings have some fault as fire has smoke.*

God in all, Universe    
4.35. With truth, see all beings in yourself and in me.**
5.16. Ignorance is destroyed by knowledge of self, sheding light on the highest knowledge.*
9.4. All this world is pervaded by me in my unmanifested form. *
9.6. As the wind rests in the sky, all beings rest in God. *

Devotion
7. 22. Whatever one seeks with devotion is given.*
17.3. As a man’s faith, so is he.*
17.23. Om Tat Sat, is declared to be triple designation of Brahman.
17.24. Therefore, Om is uttered by Brahman students before Tapas and Charity.

I came across a very interesting podcast (basically mp3 files recorded by an Author or company) covering Health, Weight loss, Exercise, Motivation, Stress control, Visualization and Personal Development. It has been a revelation and I recommend you try it.
Inside Out Weight Loss: Aligning Mind, Body and Spirit for Lasting Change by Renee Stephens

Caveat: One has to be patient as it has ads and Renee has a slow pace.

Here are a few gems:

-Set a goal everyday. Small or big. From Melinda Gates. Renee’s inside out weight loss, #19: Success journal

 -My journey to health is with ease and enjoyment. Visualize the journey, not just the destination. Renee’s inside out weight loss.

-Move from saying and thinking I am tired, to expanding it. Feel it and say I am sleepy, I have pain, I am hungry. These are steps to awareness and what needs to be done. Renee’s inside out weight loss. Simple Snoozing techniques #1

Architect Moshe Safdie’s Poem:

He who seeks truth shall find beauty

He who seeks beauty shall find vanity

He who seeks order shall find gratification

He who seeks gratification shall be disappointed

He who considers himself the servant of his fellow being will find the joy of self expression

He who seeks self expression shall fall into the pit of arrogance

Arrogance is incompatible with nature

Through nature and the nature of the universe and the nature of man we shall seek truth
If we seek truth, we shall find beauty.

-From TED Talk by Moshe Safdie: What makes a building unique?

Bio & Links to his buildings in the talk

Comfort of feeling safe with a person

Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out,

just as they are — chaff and grain together — certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,

keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

-George Eliot (pen name of Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)

Wisdom and Enlightenment

Knowing others is wisdom;
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force;
Mastering the self requires strength.

-Tao Te Ching, Translated by Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English

New Paradigms for Full Engagement

Old Paradigm                         New Paradigm
Manage time                            Manage energy
Avoid stress                             Seek stress
Life is a marathon                    Life is a series of sprints
Downtime is wasted time       Downtime is productive time
Rewards fuel performance       Purpose fuels performance
Self-discipline rules                 Rituals rules

-The book, The Power of Full Engagement, page 6.

Photo of Golden Temple, Amritsar India courtesy voobie on Flickr.