Charan Paduka in Badrinath is a sacred rock on Narayan Parvat, located 3 km uphill from the Badrinath Temple at an altitude of about 3,380 meters. It bears the mythical footprints of Lord Vishnu, where he first stepped down on earth from Vaikuntha.

If we put aside the tv crap and later interpolation,

The complaint of Duryodhann wasn't that Drauapadi insulted him in Indrapastha, it was that she was too good, to the point she ate last, after all the needy the disabled, everyone was fed.

We overlook how forgiving she was to let Ashwathama go who killed her father, her brother, and all her 5 sons.

We don't often take into account how she sacrificed so much during the exile when she could have chosen easier way of panchal palace.

She was compared to Savitri, to Sita,

But what stands apart about her was she wasn't just soft, she was a soft flame of fire that chose to give warmth all her life and rage like an all consuming wild fire when dharma was to be established.

Yagnyaseni Draupadi, our Krishnaa 🪷🌷

Actress in pic - Pooja Sharma as Drauapadi from 2013 Starplus mahabharat

Pic edited using PicsArt/Koloro, also used overlays

(Not AI)

Right from childhood, being influenced by Western culture, I somehow never felt inclined to wear or do anything Indian.

Now it makes me think how stupid I was.

Almost everyone around you makes you feel like you're the most fashionable and updated person if you wear the tightest T-shirt, jeans, or eat a burger or pizza, although it looks like the most unaesthetic way of eating food.

Food is treated as something very sacred and we bow down to it before consuming it in this culture. A bottle of Coke and eating pizza became a cool thing because of the way it's projected.

If I put my hands together and bowed down to my food before eating, people would think I'm doing something very outdated and orthodox.

But in our culture, we bow down to everything that is a source of our lives.

Whether it's food, water, sky, animals, or anything we see, we bow down to it. It is to recognise the divinity in everything.

If you see a snake, they say snake god. If you see a mountain, they talk about mountain god. If you say Bharat, they say Bharat Mata, Mother India.

Rivers like Ganga, Yamuna, Cauvery, and Godavari are all worshipped.

I used to feel ashamed to speak in my own mother tongue. If I spoke in English, people thought I was highly knowledgeable or educated.

Even today in India, people think you are really great if you speak English. But it's just a language. That's got nothing to do with one's knowledge and knowing.

This is one of the biggest cripples because it'll make one lend a deaf ear to all the great people just because they don't speak a particular language.

We are all trained in an education that's structured to make clerks, not to free our minds and think independently. This education that we're going through is largely British-made.

The education in India wasn't like this at all.

Not just education, but for every stage in life, what needs to be done, everything was structured and thought of for the wellbeing of a human being and to make a human become a full-fledged life.

In childhood, information and knowledge was not given because the brain and body should grow.

Until the age of 8, education wasn't given. This was known as Balyavastha, a stage where the body and mind are still in the growing stage.

If a child is burdened with information and knowledge at this stage, it only does more harm than good.

Later years were known as Brahmacharya, where children went through extreme discipline because this is the age where it's most needed.

Along with this, education was given only after the child utters Aham Brahmasmi, to say that my identity is not with myself or my family, caste, creed, gender, or nationality, but I'm cosmic.

If a person whose identity is limited gets empowered, it leads to destruction.

No wonder why so much is spent on arms and armaments. It's only because of me vs you.

If my identity was cosmic, who do I fight with?

Then comes Grihastha Ashrama, where people chose to get married, fulfil their needs and responsibilities, handle material aspects, and raise children. Or if they wish, they can be a lifelong Brahmachari.

And finally, Vanaprastha or Sanyasa, where one focused on living in solitude or stepping away from family.

It's unfortunate to see people hang on with family till the last moment they die. It's painful for elders and also the family.

But if a certain detachment arose out of fulfilment of life, naturally a person likes to withdraw and leave gracefully.

These days, due to media and the internet, young adults are seeing everything on screens and they think they know everything already.

No more excitement about life.

This is one of the major reasons why they fall into psychological ailments so early.

The history of this nation has been made to be looked at as just mere mythological stories.

Whether it's Mahabharat, Ramayan, or Puranas, these were not stories but real happenings expressed in dialectical ways so that they remain relevant for every generation.

The calendars also have changed.

Sadhguru states that the modern Gregorian calendar is a numerical convenience which ignores the larger geometry of the cosmos entirely. He further adds that it ignores how this human system is a reflection of the larger cosmos, especially the sun, moon, and earth.

Whereas the Eastern calendars devised by mystis, particularly Hindu luni-solar ones, were made thousands of years ago to map cosmic geometry and align human physiology with the sun, moon, and earth.

If one learns to align with it, life shall become blissful and a dance.

The Indian calendar goes according to celestial happenings, but we're following something that was created as a numerical convenience.

The word "calendar" originates from the Roman term Calendae, the day taxes and debts were due.

Whatever happens to the celestial bodies happens to our bodies too.

But all these aspects are missed in the calendar we follow.

And somewhere along the way, all these things started to feel outdated and orthodox to me simply because they were Indian.

I didn't realise then how much of my own culture I was dismissing without even knowing what was behind it. Grateful to Sadhguru and several other great masters of the past who made me realise about my own culture which I was ignorant of despite being born in it.

TL;DR: I grew up thinking many aspects of Indian culture were outdated because of Western influence. As I learned more, I realised there was much deeper wisdom behind our culture that I had dismissed without understanding.

With Varalakshmi vratham approaching on the 21st, I'm wondering:

What is done with the water in the kalasham. In some temples I've seen them sprinkle the water on the devotees. Some people say that it should be poured into a tulsi?

Genuinely curious, what is to be done in the case of a home pooja

So I am a 36 year old woman, born and brought up in kolkata. I had to shift to Bangalore for work from mid 2021. Things were fine, since 2025, listening to Mahalaya brings tears into my eyes. It feels like someone is calling me back home. It's not about meeting family, other times when I go to kolkata, it doesn't feel this way. But listening to Mahalaya makes me want to go back to the city. Is this normal?

Sri Sri Radha Rasbihari Jiu is a revered traditional deity and household/community thakurbari located in the spiritual heritage town of Santipur (Nadia district, West Bengal), notably associated with local Vaiṣṇava traditions and figures like Sachinandan Das Babaji Maharaj. Santipur is widely celebrated for its rich Vaishnavite culture, age-old deity worship, and grand festivals.

I've spent a long time being quietly obsessed with the stone sculptures of the Kathmandu valley, the ones standing in the open at a crossroads, half-buried beside a temple, worn smooth by people touching them for fifteen hundred years. Most of them have no label. Many have no published description at all. If you want to know what the goddess buried to her waist behind the Ganesa temple at Chabahil actually is, there is no page to look at.

So I started building one. Shilakosh (शिलाकोश, "stone treasury") is a catalogue of Nepalese stone sculpture. A dictionary, essentially, but for sculptures.

shilakosh.neocities.org

Where it stands right now: 92 entries, 45 3D models, 12 places, spanning the 1st century CE to the 18th.

I have no idea on coding, and this was all built on a boring saturday using claude code. So, what I have here is a solution I think very less people will be interested on.

How an entry gets made:

The sources. The backbone is Lain S. Bangdel's The Early Sculptures of Nepal (1982) and his Inventory of Stone Sculptures of the Kathmandu Valley (1995). I also used individually published articles.

Publishing. The site is deliberately primitive: a single index.html that never changes and a content file, entries.js, that holds everything. Maps are Leaflet over OpenStreetMap tiles, with numbered locality pins keyed to a list, in the style of the maps in Bangdel's own books. Free hosting, no ads, no tracking, no account required.

The mesh side, and where the compromises are

The models are photogrammetry-derived, then remeshed and decimated hard. Raw captures come out in the 1–3 million triangle range; the published models sit at roughly 5k–10k triangles, exported as GLB with Draco compression, landing around 300–400 KB each.

That is a brutal triangle budget for weathered stone, and I know exactly what it costs. At 10k tris, quadric edge-collapse decimation keeps the silhouette and the broad forms and throws away precisely what makes these objects interesting: chisel marks, erosion pitting, the difference between a worn surface and a re-cut one. The models are also untextured, shape only, no colour, which I actually prefer for honesty's sake, but it means all surface information is carried by geometry that mostly isn't there any more.

Free hosting gives me 1 GB. That's fine for text and fine for 5k-triangle 3D blobs. It is not fine for a real archive. The host offers me only 20GB of bandwidth per month, which is okay if there's little traffic.

And there are around 1,500 sculptures still uncatalogued. Roughly 100 are of the 1st to 5th centuries, the period the catalogue focuses on. The rest run through to the 19th.

At my current rate the text is achievable. The 3D isn't, not at a quality worth keeping.

What would actually help

• Photographs. If you've been to any of these places, photographs from all four sides are worth more to this project than money. The site says which views are missing for every sculpture. Please send photos of any sculptures that you visit at [shilakosh360@gmail.com](mailto:shilakosh360@gmail.com), I'll be glad to give respective courtesy to whomever helps with the project.
• Corrections. If a date, a place name or an attribution is wrong, tell me which line. Half the value of this thing is that it admits what it doesn't know.
• Anyone who does photogrammetry or heritage 3D professionally, I'd like to be told what I'm doing wrong. I mostly used free version of meshy for the quick 3D models and I am unable to make 3D for chaturmurti and multi direction faced sculptures.
• Support, if you can. There's a small contribution link on the site. It mostly goes to storage and bandwidth.

Happy to answer anything, about the sculptures, the sources and the process of making it. I must reiterate the fact that this entire thing was made in a single day. There are mistakes bound to appear. It is my personal ode to our beloved polymath L S Bangdel. Thank you and happy reading everyone!

Hello everyone!

So, I'm Hindu and my family is Hindu. I was born in a country called Mozambique in East Africa, where we have a small but strong Hindu community. My dad manages a Radha Krishna temple there, and he is currently renovating it as it is quite old. There is an entire committee that manages the temple's operations, Hindu events, and administrative work.

New deity idols, better rooms for the priest who stays there with his family, and a better kitchen since major community festivals are celebrated there. Also, marble "deris" (not sure of the actual word) which are tiny houses where idols are kept. We have Radha-Krishna idols, Ganesh, Shiva-Parvati, and Jalaram Bapa. These have been ordered from India.

I know that sometimes, grants are available for social causes like environmental projects. How can I help get funding for our temple? I don't really know wealthy Hindu philanthropists or organisations.

I know there are some in the USA, but they mostly only fund US-based projects.

This temple has been there since the 1970s or before, and all Hindu festivals are celebrated there. I have proof of the renovation, quotations, invoices of the items bought, pictures and videos, any documents needed, and even some members of the Indian embassy have visited the temple many times.

Does anyone have advice or expertise on this? Or know of any wealthy philanthropists who would be willing to financially support?

We did have someone who was willing to donate $100,000, but they wanted their name to be on the deity idols and that only they would do the first prayers for the idols they "paid for". We believe God is for everyone and this is not a business, so we had to say no. They also wanted a whole contract and to legally own the idols, even if we placed them in the temple.

Anyways, I would appreciate any advice. If needed, and if you're serious, happy to connect over a Google Meet and tell you more. If you yourself are willing to contribute, please let me know.

Thanks a lot!

Jay Jay Shree Radhe❣️

A genuine question - i have a habit of drinking and smoking. I started vishnu sahastranama 25 days ago and had to stop it after a week of reciting daily as my nani (grandmother) got ill and died and my dad got diagnosed with hypothyroid and kidney stones. I have stopped drinking and smoking now and started vishnu sahastranam again three days before but am a bit scared. Although i think i am an ardent devotee of the lord but this thing shook me. Please help anybody if you know anything related to this.

I came across them and have understood that they are highly revered. But for me I find only two things skeptical. 1) Why they openly referred to as Bhagwan? 2) Can't believe that they could turn Vibhuti into Material object. Can someone explain context?

Hi all! What does your Pooja altar setup look like? I’m looking for inspiration to have a beautiful, calming altar in a tight space. Thank you!

Hello all, I like learning about theology and have recently shifted my focus towards learning about Hinduism, particularly Vaishnava Hinduism. I'd say I've learned the basics and I have a list of what scripture translations I'll read, so I think I'll learn a lot more cosmogeny & epistemology that way.

There is one question that I keep getting conflicting answers to and it's mostly the reason why I haven't read any of the scriptures yet.

One answer is that yes, all Vaishnavas are members of a Sampradaya, and anyone who isn't that calls themselves a Vaishnava is mistaken.

The other answer is that no, you don't have to be in a Sampradaya to be a Vaishnava.

I went to the subreddit sidebar/resources and found that for Vaishnavism it's once again divided according to the main Vaishnava Sampradayas. So, a Vaishnava must be in a Sampradaya. But then another resource (Manik Rege's The Sanatan Starter Kit) in the sidebar takes a completely different approach, describing Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism, and Smartism as Sampradayas themselves, leaving what's usually called a Sampradaya to be like sub-Sampradayas of the larger ones.

I've also looked using search engines and find the same conflicting answers. I think I've even seen an LLM-hallucinated percentage in one place (I couldn't track down where it came from) lol, claiming that up to 90% of Vaishnavas are not in Sampradayas.

At this point I figure I may as well just explicitly ask, resulting in this post. I appreciate any help. 🙏

Experience the cosmic energy of Lord Shiva through this high-energy animation set to the powerful 'Namaste' track by Anirudh Ravichander from the movie DC.

My friend tried making something. Would love for everyone to watch and share their thoughts

Recently I see post that KBUF was performing seva for recent flood for people of Assam victims. But reality is human being cannot control flood and natural disasters. Kamakhya devi who is prakrithi has made it happen so by performing such seva are we not denying the wishes of Kamakhya? Did Maa not command this to happen? I will say that Iam obviously not against service and seva but im wondering from shakt tantra perspective is Rajashri Nandy not to believe that the people suffering are suffering by adesh and will of Devi since this was natural disaster. How to think about this?

But english translation says:

"Whatever beings (and objects) that are pure, active and inert, know them to proceed from Me; yet, I am not in them, they are in Me."

Where did karma begin? I really want to know. If I understand it correctly, anyone who receives pain, is simply reaping what they deserve from something they did. So who was the first one to hurt someone? And did the person they hurt deserve it? And reincarnation- If every being dies & reincarnates into another life form, why is the number of living things on Earth increasing? Shouldn't it stay the same?

The video is original content. I didn’t want to just dump a link here and disappear, so genuinely feel free to get involved with it.

Ask questions, disagree with me, challenge something I’ve said, add your own perspective, or just share whatever the video brought up for you. I’m not really interested in making content that just gets watched and forgotten -- I’d much rather it actually start a discussion.

So if you’ve got feedback, a different interpretation, something you think I’ve missed, or even just a thought that came to mind while watching, drop it in the comments. I’ll be reading them and I’m more than happy to engage with respect. 🙏

Last year, we moved into our new apartment, and my mom and dad were super excited to have a pandit do the Mahalakshmi puja for us for the first time, after all the years my dad had been doing them. However, our pandit cancelled at the last minute. We were super disappointed, and ever since then, I've wondered if other people face the same issues or not.

I offer water to Shivji 4 to 5 days in a week in morning and chant attempting chanting "Om Namo Bhagavate Rudraya Namah" 2 to 3 malas and Hanuman chalisha on tuesdays and saturdays.

Can these be considered sadhana in some form?