The whole idea of celebrating Durga Puja 2023 which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Festival in Bengal, was to go back and forth in time, to recollect art from the aborigines, and, tribes of Australia, India, South East Asia, Tibet and South America, Scandinavia, and, merge them into a new template based on pure non-dual consciousness where cinema, poetry, art, photography and other forms of self expression including music and modern science can be put together as nodes in a network (cluster) which are forever connected like the structures of neurons in the brain – the microcosm to macrocosm within that structure where symbols are the carrier of our collective unconsciousness – the journey in the discovery of the SELF, not Soul, as described in the Upanishads – a quest from ignorance to knowledge – a process of creative evolution for humanity. On the 3rd day of Saradiya Navratri, Devi Chandraghanta is worshipped, one of the aspects Devi Parvati , with half-moon, signifier of blessings for peace, harvest and tranquility. These qualities, inherent in humanity as potential or possibility, needs to be invoked, and realised through her blessings connecting with planet earth in a meditative conscious way.
Joy Roy Choudhury, Artist Good artists walk across one or more tightropes, balancing the commercial versus the artistic, the representational versus the concept, perfection versus pragmatism, the challenging versus the desire for immediate satisfaction. Joy Roy Choudhury follows these traditions adding the challenges of music versus the visual arts, the balancing of differing cultural drivers, the modern world vers
Comments: Wim Borsbom, Researcher and former Teacher, Archeology, Linguistics, Phonetics, Understanding of Brahmi Script , Netherlands: “You should have exhibitions… Your art is of course unique, but more than that, it is ultimately expressive TO the core, AND expressive OF the core of what is conveyed by your drawings — evocative to the max without any words alluded to or needed. Where it is symbolic of seemingly hidden messages, meaning comes through immediately… meaning though, that even if one tries to put it in words, surpasses any language. Your portraiture is radically “true” to/of the person depicted, “raw” (in the best sense of the word), free from judgement, embellishment or idealization…I value your art highly.”
Comments: Jeff Ross, Director and Founder, UK Skills and former Founder of E-Assessment Question Conf London:
“Joy Roy Choudhury, Artist Good artists walk across one or more tightropes, balancing the commercial versus the artistic, the representational versus the concept, perfection versus pragmatism, the challenging versus the desire for immediate satisfaction. Joy Roy Choudhury follows these traditions adding the challenges of music versus the visual arts, the balancing of differing cultural drivers, the modern world versus the classical. How refreshing to find an Artist willing and able to take these dialectics on and resolve them. Influences abound from the visual arts and the musical world, but here in his work is a fascinating insight into how those contentions can be shown, discussed and elaborated upon. Here is confidence in handling the ideas. There is a sureness of touch that says much about his understanding of both the process and the outcome. Each work interests, excites and then satisfies the eye. A welcome discovery and addition to the pantheon of Artists.”
The autumn clouds gliding past in a sky we call freedom where birds fly and breezes that comb the back of a sun
How wonderful
When I open my eyes I see them all
Aging and waning
Weeping in the frail evening light
The candle burns for an hour and dies
Those who dared to speak the truth
Are cast away and time erodes the path they left
And those who lied in the name of god their pride ebullient like a drop administers the thing they called love
How wonderful
I have slept eons under the shade
Have been to the distant stars May be its
Time to say goodbye to friends I have gathered together in a raft
Hello, I say to the river birds
Hello, to the new light of dawn May the cow in the disc of the sun will write it down with her own tears One day it
Will be sung in courtyards and palaces And I am no more
I am…..
The nudeness of form is the void itself A terrible terror in the face of beauty Where light disappears into an eternal crevice And the flesh and the bones, The rivers of blood are swept away by a somnambulist whirl That wakes or dreams into a sleep of a timeless witness Are you then tired my son? Are you tired of mornings when the sirens sing ? Are you tired of falling into the abyss of a lazy afternoon that opens doors to myriads of experiences Are you tired seeing the sun dip across the horizon?. Do you look into the nights of wonder, stars filled with atomic explosions? Every now then, you slip into the maelstrom And you are lost for a second The flower droops The cascades run dry… The magic lantern in the eyes of Orion Stops burning for awhile…. What you do and don’t Call your friend pass your sighs Breathe in or out…. Look into the very space where birth and death are mere phenomenas And you make cities with gold Sparkle like diamonds The towers reaching the heaven of your thoughts And your flying machines drop balls of fire And burn and churn Everything that’s beneath your feet And toys roll on …. None to play with…. You shed a tear Wipe it clean The slate is now for you to write Another story on an another day? When the grasping breath collides with the raven’s claws and feathers? You turn around, And you never look back They are all lying in the fields Waiting to be sown again…
When you sit by the river side, when you sit by the river, silently looking into the reflections, do you feel that the cogniser, the cognised, and, the cognition are different from you? Can you separate the triad? Can you use your own being to become this whole spectacle: the rivers, the mountains, the birds, trees, and, also the erudition of the scriptures, and, books, the dharmakaya and the body of Buddha , the desire for enlightenment? Can you dissolve or take it back again into that void where absence and presence have no meaning of their own, where ownership is lost and the author is dead? What is known and what is unknown?
Does it need syllogisms – the logical supersymmetry to gaze into the monsoon clouds that will bring rice and paddy, barley and wheat, a treat for those who are living and partly living by the scholastic erudition of their own slaving ego? At dusk light, I felt the river didn’t move, the birds were almost made of glassy citrine, jade and lapis lazuli? Do dreams cross over to death’s Twilight Kingdom, the magic serpents disappearing into an ocean of timeless spaceless domain that is not contained by anything, in that profound absence the only presence of these awareness that I am Not ….kindled the light that has no shadows to complement it
Do you call it an experience? When the experiencer and the experienced and experience itself have dissolved into that no-thing leaving only scriptures or dharmakaya that are of no use unless you have lived the life of a mountain with carious teeth in an act of simultaneity with the burning forests, and, rolling of broken toys after the city was bombed again and again? Did you lend you hand to offer some daisies and carnation to the weeping child, the lonely father or to those digging up bodies in a heap of ruins? Are you the photographer of the leading daily? Are you the author of another book? Are you the one who sat by the Mediterranean and saw civilizations come and go? Are you Tiresias with wrinkled skin? Are you the Seer, the Man of the Old Mountains who has become Mt Kailash and the reflection of all birds in the lakes of Kashmir? Who are you that gave dreams and deep sleep to all these beings? Who are you that creates and destroys in a harmonious sequence that can only exist with my own existence?
The fading of its ownness started as the rivers disappeared into the ocean where the churning of the milk bacame the fire-ether vastness that produced time’s ergonomic scriptures to engage with these objects, these apparent beings….
One into the another, each collapsing into its next higher segment till nothing remained to be spoken or seen
And the story ended on its own
Children are like that….they often forget what they want to say, but, there is no confusion of words like in the Tower of Babel, the sounds were crystal like diamonds and milky white like the pearls in the memory of the river…..Do you understand before it’s understood by any Other…
“If” from side 2 of Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother is a soothing gentle song with beautiful rendition of music. I have tried to put together here the Non-dualistic concepts of Dakshinamurthy Stotram and also the fundamental concepts of a holographic universe and the primacy of consciousness. Though the song with its melancholic transience of absence (swan /train/moon/dream) appearing relatively as a presence before us is something we need to look at, but, the imagery and the busic is also a stark reminder of modern haste and desperation which would appear again and again the Dark Side album and in Wish You Were Here. it strongly points at ideating a holistic environmental ethos, something, Dr. Madhu Khanna, founder trustee of Tantra Foundation mentions in her book ‘Ecological Insights in Atharvaveda and their Relevance Today published by India International Centre.
Dr Khanna points out the Modern Parallels in Deep Ecology : “The potential model of environmental ethics represented in the Atharvaveda has a close affinity to the existing models of ecology in vogue today, such as the Gaia hypothesis put forward by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis; Deeo Ecology advocated first by Murray Brookchin, Edward A. Dabby, Dave Fireman and the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naiss.
From the market square, or, the noisy bazar near you selling every nick knacks to fishes and flower, from the ancient barter system following the historical trade routes to India, the spicy route or silk route, however, you may call it, man’s trading and commerce when it takes a step ahead of the altruistic motif, it goes on into inflation, an usurper of the ego, and, using it as a powerful dynamic artifice to control markets and his wild dreams of chasing after an effervescing elephant, I mean “immortality”, for that, power of new technology, search for exoplanets, and, understanding gnosis is important to man to add to his credentials.
He joins the rat race, himself becoming a field rat, testing his own limits, and, cutting off the branch he is sitting on, he forgets that he can grow flowers, sing songs, play guitar, camp outside and be a star gazer….he forgets can work on the synaptic patterns in the brain, study ant behaviour and use bio-mimicry whenever necessary for humanity at large, can use mathematics to study weather patterns, and, all that is good for humanity. But if he fails to find, inspite of all that, the real source of Love, which is the Self abiding in itself not as an object but as pure being-awareness, the reflection of which is in the earth itself, man would falter to protect his sentience, and, then he would degenerate into a living zombie operated by a chain of AI devices. All that Bob Dylan songs, and the kirtans of the Bauls, the songs of troubadours, and the classic repertoire of Mozart, Bach or a Beethoven would confine us each in a solitary cell called Hell or Dante’s Inferno. To get back to Joni Mitchell’s GARDEN we need to find source of a transcendental love, divine love. it is not a magical phenomenon that is hard to acquire, but, practice or sadhana is required. Otherwise, we would still be doing altruistic service like charity, or, helping others with meals, but, in guise of the ego. We would not even know it, it is so subtle, and, causality would bind us forever. It would be work, but, not Karma Yoga which Swami Vivekananda talked about. Doing work, and, not transforming that into karma yoga is like getting fried in a living cauldron where time cooks everything thing from grasses to kings and paupers. This is what Yudhisthira answers the Yaksha in Mahabharata when asked about What’s the News….to be with time is to find compassion and love …..then time would follow you or time would on your side always…..- JRC, Tantra foundation
From Jodie Foster to Greta Garbo and Suchitra Sen, and Madhu Khanna and countless other women – planet earth indebted to them – all of them because they represent the very existence of this planet and numerous other exoplanets and star systems…..it is about a certain vibration, a frequency we call it Freedom, when there’s nothing to loose and nothing to hold on to as well, just floating like patterns non-repeatable of cloud shapes and foam forms – non-computable and unintelligible…..
Find the cost of freedom And bury it in the ground /mother earth will swallow you, lay your body down – CSNY, 1971
A Tantra Foundation presentation on International Women’s Day 8th March 2023
Indra dhanu ba indrer dhanu The rainbow of Indra, the king of god’s Was talking Bajra bidyut er brishtir parimap bere cholechey Janalar bhitor theke sabei abchaya Diner belay neme ashe raat Maha raat Garigulir headlight jwalche Rastar street light kayekta jwalchey Kayekta hayto er jwalbe Naa Indra dhanu aber prashna korlen Bisshata AI ke uddeshyo kore Tomar Google Bard ba Open AI er Chat GPT er ki tomar matan bodher Uday hoyechey Tader ki chetona nei? Buddhi aache to? Mishti ke non ta bole ki? Notun filmer script likhe debe to? Tale manush rupe tomar parichay ki? Er tomar bhabishat? Er bartoman? Tomar fele deoya Bai guli er kono din kaje lagbe na to? Indra dhanu eber ektu jwarei Katha bollen? Tomar atya parichay ki? Srishtir kon benu te antarikhyer byome kon kalpe tomar ganana hoyechey Tar detail proyojon aache ki? Karme babhohar korba ki? Tomar purbopurushder tomar gotra pravartak Rishi muni der kothay samadhisto korecho ta Jano ki? Tomar lagner age ke boshe achen ta Jano ki? Er Manu theke hiranyagarbhe pouchanor je Siri aachey ba Jacob’s ladder Tate koti dhap koto second e Nile Tumi Kato kalpa par tomar pratham swaroop jar bikash ghote chilo tar samikhyan pabe? Google Bard pari ki naki pratham sabda dekhe parer sabda rashir ekta estimate pesh korte shikhechey? Is intelligence same as consciousness or sentence?. Are the chips conscious do they have an understanding do they experience the humming birds sipping nectar as you do trekking in Ecuador among the Andes Mountains? Do they know that future is meeting you here as I speak with your past histories overlapping to meet the incoming plight of wonder and mystery? Tumi ki violet tailed humming bird dekhecho, Tader Katha tomar kathuriya jhuli te bhore ghure beriyocho, likhecho tader Katha tomar swapne tomar jagater trina prishtay Ghasher upor sisirer ranga nakshatrer pratibimbe je ramdhanur Katha Bala aachey ta Tumi ki mati te Kan Pete shunte paoya na? Tumi ki chokh khuleo andhkare hatre barate bhalobasho? Er tomar lambda naki chetonar dwar khule dite boshechilo? Kayek ti alphabets kaje lagiye ki Sara bishwa brahmander hadish paoya jay? Max ke jiggesh koro… Over the phone today, ekhuni Life 3.0 Being Human in the Age of AI er mani ki? Kola bang hayto ekhon dakchey dighir samne Brishti khub hayechey Shamuk guli ekdom Kure naay Eta kono figure of speech nay ja Tumi bhabo baiki Ektu abaash pelei gutiye nyay shell er bhitor Eder buddhi aachey Background e computation logic aachey jemon prakitir sab kichur madhey aache pratiti anu paramanur modhey Tumi Rodin er thinking man sculpture dekhochyo? Paris e aachey Manusher bijanamay kosher ek apurupbchanda Er madhey Dante aachen sukhya manane Aachen Michelangelo ritam ba satyer lilay Ero anek kichu….. Tomar shamuk koto ta egolo Tar Chanda ki dhorte parley Greek kabi hesoid lekhen ei samuk e noton chasher barta bahankari Tara dalpalay beye uthle ei naba suchona hriday dwar khule jay Tai to Aztec sabhatar Chandra devata sanuker khalak parten tar galay Spiral akarer ba pancher akare tairi ei samuker mala….. Bhalo Lage majhe majhe samay samay ki Manan kare tai Indra dhanu eber miliye gelen Brishti ekdom theme gechey Sange sange garir horner sabdara Kane bheshe ashe Suryer alo jakhon bheja kancher upor pare takhon thik ekta swapna theke jege utar ek adbhut anuvuti hay jeno ekta dorja diye bariye erejta dorjar dike egono Tibatrer bardo r matan Er chat GPT Thak se Katha Aaj… The Last Mimzy cinemar gaan ta hatat Mane pare gelu “Why is my life going by so fast? Hello, I love you Is there anybody in there? The wave connecting you and me Hello, I love you
The long night begins…. Seconds could be eternally blissful The night of no-end has no end The blue bells are ringing in the midnight sun……
He dies and reborns with seasons. Not the elliptic path across He takes the diurnal path of death and resurrection With the Sun Kedarnath e Aaj samayer ghari stabdho Skanda purane ba guru gitay ishwar bale uthlen Parvati ke….. Nad bindu kal ei tri nayaner bahire thekeu aami Aaj tomar sathe tomar prarthay tomay Kari seva Er tomar haat dhore ei srishtir hay Puja Binashei nei naash Abinashi chir I am the maker of grain Give life to the gods with the water of my limbs And bread to every land I live and I die, for I am emmer, and I will not perish
Post-pandemic has been a difficult time everywhere, with new mutations emerging every now and then, with an almost reboot of the economy with AI and industrial automation and more surprisingly communities across the world coming to terms with the harsh reality of the loss of lives, effects of climate change and the recession.
When a background like this is set, the urge to come up with fresh new ideas is the real challenge of the times, and a pioneer NGO, in the area of Tantric/Agamic Studies in India, Tantra Foundation, “A Centre for Traditional Learning, Creative Arts and Self Evolution” seems to redefine a new terrain and a pathway for the future. The Centre is the brainchild of Prof. (Dr.) Madhu Khanna, Chairperson and Founding Trustee. She is an acclaimed scholar of Hindu Shakta Tantra, author, curator, and truth-seeker. Described by the Sunday Times Magazine, London, (13th July 1997: p.40) as the ‘respectable public face of modern Tantra in India’, her early two books on art (published by Thames and Hudson, London) have run into twenty editions with translations in five languages.
Dr. Madhu Khanna is all set but ready to take this head-on with an array of cultural programs that not only talks about tantra and its ancient roots, but its modern adaptations to also how it can historically redefine this present moment of crisis, both collective and personal, with emerging ideas that put together a network of intermingling points inclusive of tantric philosophy, its art, music, poetry and dance together with modern scientific discoveries in neuroscience, consciousness studies, quantum science and cosmology. She says, sitting in her library curated for scholars of Indic studies which is open for research students: “This is a time teeming with opportunities to connect with a new breed of emerging scholars of Tantra whom she has mentored, musicians, artists, poets, scientists and those who are serious aspirants in spirituality. It’s been almost three decades 36 years since I received my did my PhD from Oxford University in the Shri Vidya tradition of Kashmir, one of the most sophisticated streams of Shakta Tantra, which is a living tradition in India at a time it was almost unknown to the western world and to many here in the subcontinent. I pursued my studies under the close supervision of my Oxford mentor, PROF. Alexis Sanderson. I have worked on multiple projects under IGNCA, Palo Alto Research Center, and taught Indic studies at the Centre for Comparative Religion, Jamia Milia Islamia, started pioneer courses on Religion and Ecology, Arts and Gender studies and other universities in the west but, now this time I propose want to change the narrative and reclaim the wisdom of our long lost civilisation for tomorrows generation.
By throwing away the objective study of religion, civilisation and their arts in the dust heap of history India is poorer today by several centuries. The young generation of Indians is severely cut-off from their cultural roots because these subjects have remained outside the academic curricula in Indian universities. do something completely different. We have a new fresh young team of scholars, artists, and spiritual aspirants practitioners, who are well versed in the new technologies, and carry with them a depth of knowledge on philosophical visual arts, music, and poetry that can be disseminated to raise our awareness. They work with their heart and with an intelligence that is so symptomatic of the present time”. She has also launched CIASA – The Centre for Indic and Agamic Studies in Asia which is an academic initiative of Tantra Foundation, a non-profit educational Trust devoted to the preservation of the creative genius of Indic and Agamic heritage in India. The Tantra Foundation Library in New Delhi is a collection of 7000 books and rare archival documents primarily, but not exclusively, devoted to the literature of Tantras.
About the forthcoming programme series which will start this year with events in Kolkata, West Bengal in focus, Joy Roy Choudhury, Head of Communications of Tantra Foundation said: ” it is wonderful to work with Dr Khanna, I always feel at ease as she is more like a mentor, and, we are working very closely with a team of young scholars and our new associates M. Morrison and Apratim to map out the future events. My connection with Ma’am happened very surprisingly almost like Jung’s synchronicities and we share the same spiritual parampara or lineage. I think we are looking at a month-long event in Kolkata centred on the theme Time as A Changing Landscape and the Invocations to the Tantric Heritage for a Global Eco-synthesis. The event will showcase works of contemporary artists, Tantra aspirants, music performances, and poetry readings, along with innovative academic sessions on the literature and the arts of Tantra. It will also present the fast-losing history of topping up with an east-west knowledge transfer that happened in the 60s and 70s through the route of visual arts, music, and one that still mesmerized us or rather pampered us with the music of the Beatles, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan – his connection with the Bauls of Bengal etc. We will probably use an acoustic set up which will be overlapped between talks and discourses. The series as planned is a way of inviting new hope of cultural and economic synthesis as India gears up for a promising 6.0 to 6.8 per cent GDP growth slated for 2023-24. This event will be later hosted in Barbican in London and in Italy. More cities will be added as we move along. I am personally working on Sri Aurobindo’s concept of the emergence of Future Poetry together with strumming some of these songs from the 60s/70s. Dr. Madhu Khanna pointed out that Tantra Foundation in December 2022 has launched a new the first of its kind Rural Children Library Programme, mainly for adivasi and rural children in Bamunara, Bardhman District in West Bengal, initiated by Shri Kunja, A Rural Centre for Eco-heritage and Green Consciousness, Tata Blue Scope, Pune and LK Jha Foundation, Pune. All these to her are “interlinked as we try to create new awareness based on cosmic unity and harmony revisioning new human-earth relationship of our fast-degrading environment on our planet. The multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural engagements are necessary to restore our inner and outer balance which has been disturbed by the pandemic. ” It is to be noted that M. Morrison who spends her non-office hours delving into Sri Vidya studies and practice, is also a Sri Vidya initiate from the same lineage as Dr. Khanna, so there is a common understanding and intelligence that is underlining these future projects in India and in Europe and the US. She says that it will be revisiting the 60s and 70s minus the drug overload and now with a new awareness of global unity which makes people-to-people contact possible and challenges us to re-think/re-organize in a sustainable way.Neela-Kali by M Morrison, 2012
A recent interaction with Ustad Zakir Hussain and the famous Jazz guitarist John McLaughlin on music and spirituality has given me extra motivation and inspiration to take this project forward says, Joy Roy Choudhury. To Apratim, who is working in the E-learning space, it is an opportunity to put together something creatively that has never been done before – a tapestry of children’s paintings, poetry, photography, and words of wisdom to help us evolve and become better human beings. Tantra foundation is talking with various media partners, galleries, and corporate houses to team up with them in creating a series of programs. It will be a wonderful futuristic project where Kali Kirtan can be simultaneous with Dylan’s Mr Tambourine Man or Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock interfused with discourses on Tantra on the Edge: Inspirations and Experiments on Twentieth Century Art, curated by her that includes works of G.R. Santosh, Sohan Quadri, Biren De, Manu Parekh, Sunil Das and others, published by DAG (Delhi Art Gallery).
Nadabindukalatitam tasmai srigurave namah” ”Deeply hidden behind the visible, there are mysterious countless group of springs hiding themselves. In the eyes of the world, it is the waterfall. People fill their vessels from that infinite treasure and go back. The thirsty ground gets drenched with its incessant supply. But who sees where and in what invisible world this endless expanse of water treasure is secretly accumulated?” – From Tapovan Katha, Kalipada Guha Roy (Translation in English by Sri Vasanti Devi, wife of Sri Chittaranjan Das/original in Bengali written by Sri Bibhu Pada Kirti, Principal of Harvard College, Calcutta)
”Beyond the horizon of the place we lived when we were young In a world of magnets and miracles Our thoughts strayed constantly and without boundary The ringing of the division bell had begun…….”
”The grass was greener The light was brighter The taste was sweeter The nights of wonder With friends surrounded The dawn mist glowing The water flowing The endless river
Forever and ever” – High Hopes, The Division Bell, Pink Floyd
By invoking the river goddess in her subtle form it is possible to charge the energy bodies (bioplasma energy bodies) and purify the ecosystem. Invocation leads to definite action plan and proper implementation of that river basin management project. This is exactly what is happening by blending the use of modern science and perennial wisdom.
Greetings !
Team cGanga Centre for Ganga River Basin Management and Studies Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh India www.cganga.orgPh: +91 512 259 7792
We are delighted to inform you that team cGanga is bringing out a quarterly Newsletter “Pragyambu” with in-depth information, knowledge & studies about the river basin management. This will be an endeavour of cGanga team to combine modern science with traditional wisdom for river basin management.
Please find attached the first three issues of the first volume. We look forward to receiving your comments and suggestions.
About Pragyambu: The word ‘Pragyambu’, is a combination of two Sanskrit words “Pragya” means Wisdom and “Ambu” means water. By publishing Pragyambu we want to create wisdom and understanding about water and water sources. The purpose of this quarterly digest brought out by the Centre for Ganga River Basin Management and Studies (cGanga) driven by the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, is to disseminate valuable traditional and scientific knowledge assimilated from national and international sources on various aspects of management of water and river restoration and conservation among concerned institutions and citizens.
Thank you.
Team cGangaCentre for Ganga River Basin Management and Studies Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh India www.cganga.orgPh: +91 512 259 7792