Details

Parent Category: Vedic Questions

Category: Rituals Questions

Hits: 6296

a

Details

Parent Category: Vedic Questions

Category: Rituals Questions

Hits: 10128

Namaste or Hand shake -a Microbial Dark Matter?

President Barack Obama appears to be a fan of the fist bump, which scientists in Wales are saying are more hygienic than handshakes.

Through one handshake almost 100 million bacteria are transferred from another individual reports the American Journal of Infection Control in their August 2014 journal (42 (2014) 916-7 A more hygienic alternative to the handshake

The researchers Dr. David Whitworth and Sara at Aberystwyth University, UK says that handshake has the potential to transmit infectious organisms directly between individuals.

They developed an experimental model to show that transfer of bacteria during greeting exchange dramatically reduced to 10 million in fist bump compared with a 10 fold high during handshake.

Is there a way to greet someone without any transfer of any infectious bacteria? Yes. Namaste.

When foreigners saw Indians greeting others without touching anyone by doing Namaste with folded hands, they misunderstood that Indians were practicing untouchability. In the name of education, the Indians were then confused to believe that Indian cultural tradition was merely a superstition without any scientific rationality.

Many modern Indians think they are cultured if they do the hand shake   and feel low in doing the highly scientific hygienic Namaste.

Namaste also conveys the Universal message to respect everyone as equal and love as oneself.

This is done both at the emotional and intellectual level of understanding by gesturing by both the left and right brain controlled hands put together as Namaste.

Stay tuned for the next you-tube part to understanding the scientific reason behind eating with our hands and not the western style of eating with spoons and forks.

Why eat with hands

Also Indians eating with hands vs spoons and fork is ridiculed as uncivilized gestures without understanding the scientific reasons behind it.

Medical research since 2000 throws light about One of the great recent discoveries in modern biology was that the human body contains 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells. But much of that bacteria is still a puzzle to scientists. (see reference for these exact same words)

It is estimated by scientists that roughly half of bacteria living in human bodies is difficult to replicate for scientific research -- which is why biologists call it "microbial dark matter."

One of the largest human- associated microbial habitats is the skin,  where bacterial density may be as high as 10 million cells per square centimeter of skin. The average phylotype richness observed on a single palm surface was also
3 times higher than the richness observed in a molecular survey of
forearm skin  and elbow skin.

A typical hand surface harbored >150 unique species-level bacterial phylotypes, and we identified a total of 4,742 unique phylotypes across all of the hands examined.

Although there was a core set of bacterial taxa commonly found on the palm surface, we observed pronounced intra- and interpersonal variation in bacterial community composition: hands from the same individual shared only 17% of their phylotypes, with different individuals sharing only 13%.
 Women had significantly higher diversity than men.

The most abundant genera (Proprionibacterium, 31.6% of all sequences; Streptococcus, 17.2%; Staphylococcus, 8.3%; Coryne-bacterium, 4.3%; and Lactobacillus, 3.1%) were found on nearly all palm surfaces sampled.

We observed a total of 4,742 distinct bacterial phylo-types across the 102 palm surfaces sampled, and only 5 phylotypes were shared across all of the hands sampled. On average, the communities found on any pair of palm surfaces shared only 13% of their phylotypes.

The influence of sex, handedness, and washing on the diversity of hand surface bacteria.

Details

Parent Category: Vedic Questions

Category: Rituals Questions

Hits: 7841

a

Details

Parent Category: Vedic Questions

Category: Rituals Questions

Hits: 7118

Why is cow Sacred?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4GgHEPA3Yc  (Ted talk on cow manure)

To understand this, first we have to know what the word "Sacred" means.  Sacred denotes something that is higher or divine, which comes from the root word divide or finite. So it denotes that which is higher than divided, which means something that is indivisible or infinite. The religious people call it as God. In Sanskrit "Brahman" is infinite, indivisible. So something that denotes or  reflect that highest nature or quality is Sacred.

So the question why cow is sacred can be easily understood, how cow connects us to the highest Brahman or Consciousness.

There are many good articles quoting from Vedic texts on why Cow is sacred. But here we discuss what those Vedic texts really interpret and connect us to that Sacredness. This article by Hemant  Go-matha Viswamatha  can help us to clearly understand why Cow is sacred by looking at the  Uni5 pattern to connect to our understanding (the blue words are Uni5 and the orange are the exact words from Hemant and the black scripts are literal meansign and green the implied meanings). 

Physical Body - Devataas are the Energy patterns emerging as Sraava from 33 crore minute pores from GO-Sharira,

This means the physical body and its function remind us the all the Devatas's in Trimurthy's Energy pattern of creation (Brahma), Vishnu Protecion or nourishment (Vishnu)  and  transformation or destruction (Shiva).

 Cow is an exception among all animals because it is directly helping in our basic Energy production, by eating grass and produces diary food (creation), gives medicinal (portection) ghee,  urine (Pharmaco-active) and cow dung as a fertilizer (transformation) to again grow more food. The cow dung is rich in microbes that favor nitrogen fixation in the feilds, improving the quality of protein in food and yield.

Cow could be the only animal that not just being a consumer but involved in sustained production of food in all means. This is one level why it is sacredly called as Kamadhenu (fullfuling all wishes  of life needs).

We have polluted soil, water and air through change in agricultural practice by avoiding cow dung. This resulted in the use of fertilizers which made plants to get infections, leading to the use of pesticides herbicides etc. Finally, we get diseases like diabetes, cancer and other diseases. This is the prime reason why cows has to be procted for us to be disease free.

Emotional - Kings nourished GO's or GO's themselves nourished the King?

Here the the king is a metaphor of our biological mother who takes care of us. This biological mother king, feeds the Go-matha (cow) and Go-matha inturn nourishes the mother during her pregnancy.

 This means the cows gives us an emotional feeling of a mother. Even if a new born's baby's mother dies, the child has a surrogate mother, the Cow, to have hope in life to get nourishment and survive.  Cow's milk unlike buffalo milk, has the right amount of digestable fat that in all human ages it is the most suitable. hence Cow is emotionally called as Go-matha (the God or King in motherly form). 

Intelligence - smelling (Aaghrana) the GO-Shira (head) itself gives ultimate knowledge (Jnana Siddhi) |

The cow whatever it drinks or eats will ultimately convert to the nourishing milk, similarly a Janani whatever he perceives will connect (convert) to the ultimate Jnana (a Siddhi) and so cow is also called Surabhi .  No animal like cow produces more milk than its calf requires. A Jnani produces more knowledge than required to quench his thirst, like a cow that produces milk more than its own little one needs.

 Awareness-  Nyaya Shastra has links to GO, where a difficult decision was judged by doing GO-Pradakshina, which gives proper knowledge about the accused!

 Pradhakshana is the feature of all forms,  right from the tiniest sub atomic particles to the giant stars, they all self rotate and also go around. This is a metaphor for Self-reflection. Only through Self-reflection we can have proper judgement. Self reflection is meditation, which is a blissful state and Cow is called as Nandini. Nandhi, the bull who escorts Shiva, the meditator also symbolize Self-reflectiveness.

Consciousness - Krishna who himself is Govinda, became famous as god just because of the GO-Sevaa,

Among all sadhana, Seva to all the forms of beings is the ultimate. Govinda is one of the greatest name, representing the one who did Seva to Go (all forms). The one who does Seva to all forms realizing Brahman.

Since Cow reflects that Seva attitude to realize Brahman (Consciousness), so killing Cows is Brahma-Hathya (killing our connection to Brahman realization).

This is the ultimate reason why Cow is considered Sacred.

 So cows should not be killed and wherever cows are killed, it symbolizes man's  disconnection from realizing the Ultimate Truth (Consciousness).

One may also read about our uni5 way of understanding why we should not be non-vegetarians. Killing or slaughter of cattle and eating meat prohibited by Hindus or vedic or vedas  also will makes sense from that level.

Also read what is culture with the example of milk from a cow. This is very much needed for India to understand. Also it should be known that the first domestication of cows happended in the Vedic soceity, with a sustainable living concept of keeping cows alive for sustained production of resources, instead of butchering and eating it as meat. Today in a hard way we are understanding that if we dont ahve sustianable living, we will deplete Earth resources in no time.

A recent study of DNA of Zebu by Chen (2009) has shown that Bos indicus or Zebu had been domesticated only in India, and not at any other place, ruling out all skepticism in the matter, and proving that it was only after full domestication in India, that Zebu migrated to other parts of the world. 

Old cows still is of use says C Srinivasan   https://www.facebook.com/nambi.vanga.santhosama.ponga/videos/410689682598528/

see also garbage to gold

 ....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6357WexayZU

Please discuss or ask question about the topic in the forum.
 

Other Sources

1. Gomatha pooja and parts of cows

2. Kamdhenu

3. Cow dung as medicine (soap for asll skin types)

Cow urine distillate as bioenhancer

 Antifungal effect of cow's urine distillate on Candida speciesAntifungal effect of cow's urine distillate on Candida species

Chemotherapeutic potential of cow urine: A review

 http://reddevonusa.com/blog/understanding-phenotype-genetic-expression-nutrition-in-livestock-production/