Beyond the headlines in Pune

There’s an angel within each one of us
The first anniversary of the BDB Book Club at the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) seminar room was an enjoyable affair where book lovers not only discussed various books, but also ate a slice of a delicious book-shaped cake organised to mark the event.

While discussing his book, The Habit of Winning, Kimberly Clark Lever’s managing director, Prakash Iyer, a guest of honour at the event, spoke of one key thought in the book that there’s an angel waiting to be discovered in every person.

Iyer referred to the famous statue of David by the great Michelangelo, who took up the challenge of creating it from a block of marble that no one wanted to touch. When a child asked the great artist why he was hammering at the piece of stone, Michelangelo replied that there was an angel trapped
inside that stone and he was helping it come out. Iyer used that story to convey the point that there’s an angel in each human being, waiting to come out and contribute to society in his or her own way.

Why Buddhists believe in reincarnation?
The Buddhist spiritual leader, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, who visited Pune recently, spoke eloquently about the four ‘seals’ or fundamental principles of Buddhism, one of them being the ‘law of impermanence’. The other three, he explained were: ‘all emotions are painful’, ‘all phenomena are empty; without inherent existence’ and that ‘nirvana is beyond extremes’.

When asked by a member of the audience at the Yashada auditorium whether even the four seals were “impermanent”, he replied, yes, a future master could very well challenge them and come up with something new. He was, however, stumped when asked to explain why a “scientific religion” like Buddhism believed in the superstitious belief of reincarnation and the self-defeatist philosophy of karma. The Rinpoche tried to defend the Buddhist point of view, but did not seem very convincing.

(Contributed by Abhay Vaidya)