Doc's Near Death Experience

[Bharat@n]

Shocked to hear this extremely sad news!!
My hearfelt condolences to Shri.Bhushan's family and S-I forum.

[gvhvhg]

Was just going through my inbox and looking at old messages...Look at this one from a year ago to the day!

Hi,

The Philcrest Tennis Club that hosts the Tulsa Challenger had its board meeting today and my colleague, Dr David Siegler proposed that Somdev be given a wild card at Tulsa Challenger and it was accepted. He called me tonite to let Somdev know about it and for him to apply for the wild card. As he told me, it would be an honor for Tulsa Challenger to have a player of Somdev's caliber in its field. I have passed on the message to Somdev's coach and people handling him (Lisa and Janice) with whom I have been in touch for past two weeks or so.

I have not posted this news at Sports-India since I do not know if it is public knowledge or not and perhaps Jay would know more about it. Anyways, Somdev has a wild card at Tulsa Challenger if he chooses to come to Tulsa. By next year, Somdev will no longer be playing Challengers and I will have to travel far to see him play. May be, Sports-India can have a get together at US Open next year.

Best wishes.

Bhushan

What a guy. (Somdev is still playing challengers though!) I still wish we could have met at the US Open this year as he said (not that I will be in New York this September.)

RIP

[Varma]

Today would have been our dear Doc's 59th birthday. He was aptly named "Bharat Bhushan" for having born on India's independence day and absolutely lived up to his name in every sense. It still pains me everytime I realize that he is gone. I hope his family is recovering from the big blow.

RIP, Dr.Sharma!

- Varma

PS: It's about time we revived the idea of the trust that we wanted to start in his memory. Any ideas?

[sanjay5goel]

Today would have been our dear Doc's 59th birthday. He was aptly named "Bharat Bhushan" for having born on India's independence day and absolutely lived up to his name in every sense. It still pains me everytime I realize that he is gone. I hope his family is recovering from the big blow.

RIP, Dr.Sharma!

- Varma

PS: It's about time we revived the idea of the trust that we wanted to start in his memory. Any ideas?

This is the part I feel bad about. Everyone saying RIP for every good/decent soul that passes away from his/her body. However, do we understand what RIP means? We should know that the soul is ever active and that it is always going through different bodies - "transmigrating through the different species". Refer Bhagavad Gita if at all you are interested to know more - especially read chapter 2 for a summary description of the knowledge of the soul http://vedabase.net/bg/2/en

Every soul has to keep going through different bodies depending on the law of karma. The object of life is to get out of this cycle of death and re-birth - key problems of life per Bhagavad Gita are: janma mrtyu jara vyadhi (birth death old age and disease) and these need to be solved. That is the purpose of life - especially human life.

Sanjay

[prasen9]

I think everybody roughly knows what RIP means. You are entitled to whatever opinions you have but I would hope you would not impose your beliefs and push your conjectures on other people. I don't want to go into a protracted argument, especially on this thread.

[jayakris]

I agree with prasen's line that one should not impose any beliefs on people who do not want to hear it. But I take issue with a casual item prasen imposed on us -- that bhagavat geeta is "conjecture". It is a scientific system of explaining the world that does not conflict with the western science postulates that I assume prasen believes in .. But it makes those who want to stop with the (post 15th century?) western science's fundamental principles to feel that it is conjecture.

I also have used RIP a few times, only because I know most people just use it and nobody usually gets offended. Inside I have indeed cringed at the usage myself because I do not want any soul to rest anywhere -- but I have gone with the popular usage.

Knowing some of what Bhushan wrote, I am certain that his soul is not waiting for us to tell RIP, but he had a universal enough view not to be offended by it at all - his soul would appreciate our thoughts anyway.

Jay

[sanjay5goel]

I think everybody roughly knows what RIP means. You are entitled to whatever opinions you have but I would hope you would not impose your beliefs and push your conjectures on other people. I don't want to go into a protracted argument, especially on this thread.

It's not that simple Prasen. Bhagavad Gita is not "conjecture" as Jay mentioned. It is the "science of the soul". And I am not imposing anything on anybody - hopefully we all know from personal experience that it is not possible to impose anything on anybody. It can be done on the physical level but not on mental & intellectual levels.

What do you mean by "I think everybody roughly knows what RIP means"? I have no idea what to think about this. When a person is alive we don't want him/her to die and when the person leaves the body we want to say RIP - why shouldn't he continue to live (in whatever way shape or form)??

What is the sense of just being polite and saying a few words - which are meaningless anyway - saying things just because others who have no knowledge or intelligence about the soul - are used to saying/hearing that ?

Sorry - if someone feels offended by saying these things in the Doc's thread - this will be my last post on this.

Sanjay

[sanjay5goel]

Knowing some of what Bhushan wrote, I am certain that his soul is not waiting for us to tell RIP, but he had a universal enough view not to be offended by it at all - his soul would appreciate our thoughts anyway.
Jay

Thanks Jay for defending me - at least in part.

I am not talking or worried about Bhushan being offended. What is really worrying is the casual attitude of life of 99.99% of people - well, I was in the same boat till a couple of years ago. Nobody is inquiring the basic essential question posed by the first sutra in Vedanta Sutra.

The Vedanta-sutra begins athato brahma jijnasa. The word brahma-jijnasa refers to inquiry into the Supreme Absolute Truth, and it is recommended for those who have been elevated from the lower stage of addiction to the karma-kanda portion of the Vedas to the position of interest in the jnana-kanda portion.

In other words how many are asking the question - Who am I? What am I doing here? Why am I forced to suffer - diseases, old age, death etc? Who is forcing these sufferings on me??

Sanjay

[prasen9]

why shouldn't he continue to live (in whatever way shape or form)??

This depends upon the definition of life. Perhaps you have a different meaning of the word. To me, a person is not alive after his physical body stops functioning. That is by and large the sense in which the term is used by most English-language speakers. If you mean something else, you should provide a re-definition of the term. Otherwise, discourse is meaningless.

[jayakris]

I think he did define it in the phrase just before the one you quoted - "when the person leaves the body we want to say RIP - why shouldn't he continue to live (in whatever way shape or form)??" ..

Prasen and the "english-speaking" people do not seem to have a problem in accepting a "soul" that "rests in peace" (which implies that the soul continues to exist and it does something - which is "to rest"). All sanjay did was to call the "soul" the "person" in his definition. Perhaps Prasen and others would not consider the soul's act of resting to mean that the soul is "living", though.

I don't know why I am injecting myself into this discussion... Can't help it. Especially as I know that Bhushan understood Bhagavat Geeta and I feel a duty to do that.

"nainam chhindanti SastRANni,
nainam dahati pAvakA:
na chainam kLEdayantyApO
na SOshayati mArutA:"

I believe that is what bhagavat geeta says about the soul if I remember correctly. It never goes away. Cannot be destroyed by weapons, cannot be burned by fire, cannot be dissolved by water and cannot be removed by wind - for a quick translation. It "lives on". Bhushan is very much there - just left the body' that's all. Why ask his soul to rest, was what sanjay was asking? .. Let him do whatever he wants - like being thoroughly amused at our doing this discussion from within a limited reference frame defining our existence, but unable to tell us that till we get past our reference frames ("mAya").

Actually all the folks who ask for anybody's soul to rest, usually also talk about them "looking down from above" and "watching over us" and all that (with other associated imageries in mind like a God with a flowing white cassock sitting nearby!) ... That shows a big conflict with asking for the soul to take rest - so do you want a resting soul or one who is busy watching over us? .. But that is all even more discussion, I guess.

Jay

[prasen9]

I think he did define it in the phrase just before the one you quoted - "when the person leaves the body we want to say RIP - why shouldn't he continue to live (in whatever way shape or form)??" ..

I still do not see where his definition of "to live" is in this sentence. Sorry for being dense.

I have a problem with all these discussions where people use the terms "soul", "live" and sometimes "God", etc. with widely divergent definitions. Given there does not seem to me that there is any consensus, unless, these terms are grounded, the discussions are rather meaningless (to me).

[Prashant]

My opinion - y'all should start a new thread in the general discussions section of the forum if you want to go further with this. I'm fairly uninterested in where this is going but want to keep up with genuine reminiscences about Dr. Sharma.

[prasen9]

My opinion - y'all should start a new thread in the general discussions section of the forum if you want to go further with this. I'm fairly uninterested in where this is going but want to keep up with genuine reminiscences about Dr. Sharma.

I concur. I would request the moderators to move these discussions. I have been unusually (for me) brief to keep the voice down.

[S_K_S]

Well we can move it elsewhere but I think the Doc would have loved the fact that a kind of "in your honour thread" has turned into a discussion about RIP-the soul-The Geeta vs Scientific thinking. Could only happen only happen on this forum and that's one of the reasons the Doc loved it so much!

[jai_in_canada]

To me the key word in "Rest in Peace" is the word "peace." Many of the above posts seem to have gotten over wrought over the word "rest." It is possible that there might not have been a discussion if the term used was "May his Soul Be in Peace."

But "BIP" does not come across as cool!

Anyway, the words do not matter. It is the prayerful intent of the people making the wish. Words cannot really accurately express many of those feelings of the heart, and often ends up triggering intellectual arguments.

I too still remember Dr. Sharma almost every time I visit the forum. His spirit remains with us.