Avinash

Identification with body means considering oneself as the same as the body. It is needed for soul to reduce identification with body because soul is not body. Suppose I am wearing a clothe and I start thinking that I am that clothe, then I am identifying myself with my clothe. This identification is wrong because I am not my clothe. Likewise identification of soul with body is wrong because soul is not body. Soul drives body and therefore soul should be responsible for anything done with the body. It is the soul that should be held responsible and should be awarded or punished. I agree with this and the answer is that the soul is indeed rewarded and punished. But these rewards and punishments are different from the rewards and punishments offered to the driver of a car. If, as a driver of a car, I hit someone with that car, then I may be beaten up. So, the punishment affects me directly. But, in case of soul and body, whatever good and bad we do using our bodies do not make any changes in soul. Rather, in our next birth we will be given bodies depending on whatever actions we perform in this birth. But, is this a reward/punishment for soul? The answer is yes because body is important for soul. So, if a soul is given good body in the next birth, then the soul has been rewarded. If it is given bad body in the next birth, then it has been punished. Soul being driver of body should be rewarded/punished for any acts done by the body and indeed it is rewarded/punished. But the rewards and punishments are such that these do not make changes in the soul but in the body. Depending on how we look at it, we can say that goodness/passion/ignorance are related to body or we can say that these are related to soul. As per Gita, these are related to body in the sense that the results of our actions make changes in the body that a soul gets and not in the soul itself. It is in this sense that soul is actionless or non-doer. I can understand that the way we commonly us the words action, actionless, doer/non-doer, the sold should be called as doer as it drives body. But, I have tried to explain what is meant by non-doer in Gita. The result is that the results of our actions make no change in soul.

Hi, How do you pronounce Katelyn? Please let me know if the following is correct. You pronoune 'Kat' as 'cat' is pronounced. You pronounce 'e' in 'Katelyn' as 'e' in 'pen' is pronounced. You pronounce 'lyn' as 'lean' is pronounced.

Perhaps the word 'related' is not very precise as two things can be said to be related or not related depending on what kind of relation we are trying to find between them. So, let me use precisely what Krsna says. I think it will be best to take Krsna's statement directly from Gita as this is what we are discussing. The statement "actions whether of goodness, passion or ignorance are not related to the body" has two meanings. Let me discuss the first of these. As you proceed with Gita, you will find that Lord Krsna often suggests Arjuna to consider himself as non-doer. Or, in other words, soul is non-doer. But, is soul really non-doer? For answering this, I will borrow the excellent analogy given by one poster. He gave the analogy of driver and car. If I am driving a car and I hit someone with that car, then is it correct to say that I hit him or should we say my car hit him? Both are considered to be correct as in our conversation we make both kinds of statements. Similarly, it is the soul that drives the body. So, when we perform some actions (whether of goodness, passion, or ignorance), then we can say we did it or we can say our body did it. If this is so, then why does Krsna say that soul is non-doer? There are two reasons for it. One reason is to help us reduce our identification with body. When I say that I hit someone, I know I am not my car. But if I perform some actions using my body and I say that I did it or if some thing happens to my body (e.g. some disease), then I think as if I am my body. If I keep reminding myself "not I but the body, not I but the body", then I am reminding myself of the distinction between myself and my body. So, this is one reason to attribute goodness, passion, ignorance to body, viz., to remind distinction between oneself and one's body. I mentioned that there are two meanings. I have described the first. Now, let me come to the second. In one post, I mentioned that the word 'actionlessness' as used in Gita means the kind of action which will not result in any reaction (i.e. result), which will put us in any bondage. In the same way, soul is non-doer in the sense that whatever soul does through body, the results affect body and not the soul directly. To explain this, let me again take the example of driver and car. Let us assume that if I do something bad with my car, then I will not be beaten, will not be put in jail etc. But rather my car will be damaged. Or, may be my car will be destroyed or taken away from me and I will be given another car of a poorer quality. Also assume that if I do something good using my car, then something good will be done to my car or may be when my car is no longer of any use, then I am given a better quality car. In one sense, this has affected me because this will make me happy or sad. However, nothing has happened to me directly. Likewise, nothing happens to soul directly. When soul performs some good or bad action, then it is the body that is affected. When we die, then we get another body and the kind of body that we get and the situations that we are in depend on what we did in our precious lives. Because of attachment with the body, soul often thinks that something good or bad has happened to it. But, no change has happened to the soul directly. In its purest form, soul is always the same. In this sense soul is actionless or non-doer.

Word: William Pronunciation: viliyam (see post 'Symbols to indicate pronunciation' in this thread). Devanagiri: Explanation: As explained in post 'To break a word into parts to write in Devanagiri ', break viliyam into 1)vi 2)li 3)ya 4)m 1)Refer to post 'Consonants followed by various vowels-2'. 'vi' is written as 2)As shown in the same post, 'li' is written as 3) Refer to post 'Consonants'. 'ya' is written as 4)Again from post 'Consonants', m is written as Combine these and you get viliyam in Devanagiri as shown near the start of this post.

There are so many posts in this thread asking for help in writing names in Hindi/Sanskrit for tattoing. I am really curious to know how so many people (many of whom may not have met each other) are interested in knowing how their names or the names of some of their near and dear ones look in Sanskrit. Could you please throw some light on how you got interested in seeing names in Sanskrit? Please note. I am asking this only out of curiosity. (The thread 'Do you want to write in Hindi/Sanskrit' should help you create tattoos in Hindi/Sanskrit.)

What should I do if I want to display a picture as a part of content, but do not want thumb nail for the same picture to appear in the post.

Please see the thread titled "Do you want to write in Hindi/Sanskrit". To see the examples of some words in Hindi/Sanskrit, please start reading from the post "Examples follow" in that thread. I will be adding more examples. If you follow the entire thread, then with some practice you should be able to write any name in Hindi/Sanskrit.

Word: Lindsay Pronunciation: linDse Devanagiri: Explanation: Break linDse into two parts: 1)li 2)nDse 1)As shown in post "Consonants followed by various vowels-2" li is written as 2)In nDse, three consonant sounds n,D, and s come consecutively. As per the rule the last (i.e. s) has to be written as full letter. Half letters should be used for the remaining i.e. for n and D. From post "Half letters", half letters for n and D are respectively From post "Consonants", s is written as Combine these and we get nDs as Attach the symbol for vowel sound e as shown in post "Consonants followed by various vowels" and you get nDse as Combine Devanagiri representations as shown in parts 1 and 2 and you get the Devanagiri for linDse.

Whenever you have to write a word in Devanagiri, first write how it is pronounced by taking help from the post "Symbols to indicate pronunciation" or using whatever phonetic representation you like. Then break the phonetic representation at vowel sounds. Let a vowel sound remain in the same group in which consonant(s) to the left of it is(are). Write each part in Devanagiri. Then combine the Devanagiri representations of all the parts. As an example, the following post shows how to write Lindsay. I have assumed it is pronounced as linDse. The first vowel is i. It should go with the consonant l that comes before it. So, the first part is li. Now, nDse remains. n,D,s are all consonants and there is no vowel in between, so these should belong to the same part. The vowel sound e is at the end and it should be with the consonant(s) before it. Therefore, this should also be in the same part. Hence, part 2 will contain nDse.

In a few posts I will give examples of certain words written in Devanagiri. Since Devanagiri representation depends on how a word is pronounced, I will also be writing what I have assumed the pronunciation of the word to be (Please refer to the post "Symbols to indicate pronunciation"). If you pronounce any of these words differently, please let me know. Under explanations, I will be referring to post "Consonants followed by various vowels". You can refer to "Consonants followed by various vowels-1" or "Consonants followed by various vowels-2" as the symbol for a vowel sound is the same irrespective of the consonant to which it is attached .

In the posts "Consonants followed by various vowels-1" and "Consonants followed by various vowels2" I showed various symbols attached to consonants to represent various vowel sounds pronounced at the end of these consonant sounds. But how do we represent a vowel sound at the end of a joint consonant sound (i.e. one consonant sound immediately followed by another)? The answer is that we have to still use the same symbol for vowel sound as if there were only one consonant. The only different is that instead of writing Devanagiri for one consonant, we have to write Devanagiri for the joint consonant. Let me take two examples:- Example 1: In this example we will see how to represent the pronunciation kli in Devanagiri. The vowel sound i is pronounced at the end of joint consonant kl. Suppose instead of the joint consonant, we had only a single consonant k. Then the pronunciation would be ki. How do we represent this in Devanagiri? The answer as shown in post "Consonants with various vowels-1" is:- Our aim in this example is to represent kli in Devanagiri. The consonant sound k is immediately followed by consonant sound l. As shown in the post "Half letters", half letter is to be used for the consonant sound k and the letter as shown in the same post is:- Full letter is to be used for consonant sound l and the letter as shown in post "Consonants" is Combine half k with full l letter and you get Now, add ths symbol for vowel sound i as shown in the representation of ki and you get:- Example 2: How do we write gru? Consonant g is followed by consonant r. As shown in post "Consonants followed by r", this is written as:- From post "Consonant followed by various vowels-1" or "Consonant followed by various vowels-2", you can see how to add symbol to represent vowel sound u. Attach that symbol to the above Devanagiri letter and you get:-

As explained in the post "Half letters", in case of joint letters i.e. letters to represent one consonant sound immediately followed by another without any vowel sound in between, half letter is used for the first of these consonant sounds. But I mentioned at the end of that post that the letters should be different if one consonant sound (different from 'r') is immediately followed by 'r' sound. I am giving corresponding letters in the following tables. I am assuming that the vowel sound at the end (i.e. after 'r' sound) is vowel sound 'a'. However other vowel sounds can be represented as shown in posts Consonants with various vowels-1 and Consonants with various vowels-2 (this point will be made clearer in a later post).

Both are correct. You can use anusvara or you can use 'n'. The word will be pronounced the same way in both cases. The pronunciation of anusvara depends on the succeeding sound. In this case the succeeding sound is 't'. This belongs to the group of consonants called t-varga. The consonants in this are t,th,d,dh,na. The anusvara is to be pronounced as 'n'.

A vowel sound can be alone or it can come at the end of a consonant sound. Consider the word 'are' pronounced as Ar. Here the first sound is a vowel 'A' sound. The letters for such vowel sounds are shown in post titled 'Vowels'. But consider the word 'father' pronounced as fAdar. Here vowel 'A' sound is not alone but is pronounced at the end of consonant 'f' sound. The letters for such consonant-vowel combination is given in this post and the next post. A row containing pronunciation is followed by another containing corresponding Devanagiri letters. As you can see I have taken letters from the post 'Consonants'. In each letter I have added some marks to indicate the succeeding vowel sounds. You will notice that the for a given vowel sound is the same irrespective of the consonant after which it comes. So, if you know the marks for one, you do not have to remember for others.

J. N. Das Ji, You have carried out food-relief programs in Orissa. However, I am interested in knowing the situations of some villages where people know Hindi. Please note. I am not against other languages, but for some reason, as of now, I am asking about villages where Hindi is spoken. If you have spent time in such villages in recent past (either for food-relief program or for any other reason), please post their names, locations and most importantly the kinds of problems the people their face. The problems could be bad roads, bad sanitation, lack of good hospitals, lack of good education system or any other. Thank You. Note: I have addressed this to jndas. However, if some others have experience of such villages, please post.

A consonant cannot be pronounced without the help of a vowel. Often vowel comes just after the consonant, but it is not a must. Sometimes, a consonant sound is immediately followed by another consonant sound. In such cases, the symbol used for the first of these consonant sounds is different from what I showed earlier. These symbols are often called as half letters. Consider the English word bulb. Notice how l is pronounced in it. The consonant l sound is followed by consonant b sound. Contrast this with how l is pronounced in love. Here, consonant l sound is followed by vowel a sound. In the following table, I am giving half letters for various consonants. The table has three rows. The first row contains the pronunciations of various letters (when followed by vowel 'a' sound). The second row contains Devanagiri for these pronunciations. (You have already seen the contents of this row in a previous post). The third row contains corresponding half letters, i.e. Devanagiri when these consonants are immediately followed by another consonant. The symbol for half r sound needs special mention. This symbol is to be put above the next letter. Note: As explained in case of joint letters (one consonant immediately followed by another), half letter is used for first consonant. The half letters are shows in table below. However, if a consonant (other than 'r') is immediately followed by 'r', then letters are different. Such letters will be shown in a later post.

What do you exactly mean by offering food to Krsna? Does it mean keeping food for sometime in front of a picture/statue of Krsna? Does it mean mentally telling Krsna that food is being offered to Him? What exactly does a person do when he offers food to Krsna?

Here is how you write consonants in Devanagiri. http://www.audarya-fellowship.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=1097&stc=1&d=1145611386

In the following table, I am giving how to write vowels in Devanagiri. The first row contains phonetic symbols (as explained in the post above). The second row contains corresponding representation in Devanagiri script. http://www.audarya-fellowship.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=1096&stc=1&d=1145610357

I saw that picture earlier. I thought that perhaps it was a simplified representation. As the picture shows, Maha Visnu has one head and four hands. As you mentioned earlier, He is completely alone. I thought Adi Shesha was with Him. But now I stand corrected. Garbhodakshayi Vinsu is the one from Whom Brahma comes. Is Garbodakshayi Visnu the Purusha incarnation having thousands of heads, feet etc.? Is He with Adi Shesha? Is He with Laxmi?

It is the soul that sins. The soul sins with the help of body and because of its identification with the body. Note:- I think this question of yours is far more important than any of the questions that you have asked so far. This is because this question is relevant to many of Gita verses that you will read further. As you read further, you may have further doubts on this topic (as I had once) and some parts of Gita may even seem inconsistent. However, rather than trying to clarify all those doubts now, I think it is better to clarify as and when those doubts arise.

It is better to keep longer ee sound as in see. In that case, in Hindi, it will be:- maneesha.bmp

What is the form of Mahavishnu? I mean how many heads, feet, hands does He have? In Bhagavatam, I read about a Purusha incarnation who has thousands of heads, feet etc. Is He Garbhodakshayi Visnu? You have written that Maha Visnu is completely alone. Does it mean that even Adi Shesha is not with Him? I was under impression that Adi Shesha was with all forms of Visnu.

The standard set of symbols to show pronunciation is IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). But it uses lots of special characters, which require special fonts. Therefore, I am giving here the symbols that I will be using in this thread. These symbols can be written using normal English keyboard and normal English fonts like Times New Roman. The symbols are on left. Against each symbol I am giving a word (sometimes more than one) on the right. In each word one letter or a combination of letters are bold and underlined. This letter or combination shows how the symbol is to be pronounced. Vowels:- a cup A father i hit I see u put U food e bed @ cat o no O box Consonants:- k cat g give c church z zoo, pleasure, vision, just, large T tea D do th think d mother n no p pet f father b bed m man y yes r red l love v voice, woman, five, window s sun S sharp h how, hello Next I will post the mapping between these symbols and Devanagiri.