Dear friends, Hope you are all doing well. Sometimes in life everything seems to fall in place, and life itself becomes full of clarity just like the lake that inspired the famous romantic poet who sang “I walk lonely as a cloud.” Other times it seems that everything that can possibly go wrong is going wrong. That is the nature of life. So attaining a sense of clarity means not the absence of conflict – inner or outer – but rather an ability to know that there is sunshine beyond the clouds and the deep, calm sea beneath the waves. During the past few months I have had both kinds of experiences. While it is great to derive some clarity from good times one learns more and understands things better during bad times. In particular during the past few months I went through a medical rough ride that hopefully has now been resolved – I am feeling better than ever. You might want to read about it if you have ever taken statins for lowering cholesterol. Yours, Sankar PS: Please let me know if you would like to stop receiving these. If you are receiving this for the first time, this is an occasional letter that I send out to friends. 1. Experts can blather along about all the different ways to fix America’s economic problems. But the underlying problem is that we need to learn to consume less, or at least consume only what we can afford, and what the planet can afford to. Until people change their fundamental attitude and learn to live in a way that is sustainable to themselves and the planet, nothing will be fixed. Freedom has become an excuse for a feeling of entitlement and irresponsible ways of living. This country needs to return to the attitudes and ways of living that made it great – happiness through hard work, responsibility and caring for others. I have no doubt that the present generation can also rise to the challenge. 2. In Hinduism there is a common saying that we are either reaping the benefits of the penances done in the past or paying the price for the sins that were committed. In my own life I am feeling more and more convinced that I am reaping the benefits of the penances done by my two grandfathers. I can only hope they are not wasted. 3. (Thursday, 2/26) This low carb diet seems to be really working well. My body really seems to have a congenital problem with carbohydrates. Now that I am eating less of it, I feel more energetic, less sleepy, and the brain feels clearer and more alert – apparently the blood glucose levels are normalizing. I also found out Saturday that my cholesterol and triglyceride levels have dropped precipitously and meantime my pants keep getting looser and looser at the waist. How I wish I had figured this out early in my life! Regular eating and sleeping habits are also helping quite a bit. (see below for more about my medical rough ride). Now I have the reverse problem – sometimes I wake up too early, as I did this morning when I woke up at 4 and couldn’t go back to sleep. So I decided just to get to work. As soon as dawn broke through I went for a walk along the lake. It felt great to walk in the early light. I thought I spotted a great black-backed gull amongst the usual flocks of ring-billed gulls. Later in the day I went to the doctor for regular cholesterol check-up and then to the lab for the blood test. On the way I read Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s “Joy of living.” This is a book about the connections between science and Buddhist teachings but it is really much more than that. I had been putting off reading it but today was also the day the book club met. I had considered dropping out because I had barely started reading it but decided that just sitting in meditation and listening to others talk about it was worth staying. I managed to read a couple of chapters on the bus and it filled me with great peace and helped me to think beyond the ego and feel love and connection for others. Although it was almost noon by the time I had my first helping of food (had to fast for the blood test) and I had been running around all morning – walking, bus, biking – I felt energetic and peaceful. It really shows the power of the mind over the body. 4. (Saturday 2/28) This morning I woke up at 3 and couldn’t really go back to sleep. But I lay in bed until 7 resting the mind that seemed to be suddenly bursting with energy and activity. The past couple of days had been really warm and one could see signs of spring. I posted the following haiku for the Today’s poem section of nature lovers meetup (http://www.meetup.com/nature-lovers/messages/boards/ ): Winter loosening grip. Signs of spring. The fresh morning sun My mind is waking up. 5. (Sunday, 3/1) I was watching “This Week” on ABC in between making “adai”s (pancakes made with a paste of rice, mung beans and black gram or urad). George Stephanopoulos had Karl Rove and Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation sitting on opposite sides of the round table (others were George Will and Stan Greenberg) discussing Obama’s budget proposal. The tension between Mr. Rove and Ms. Heuvel was palpable. It was almost like watching the drama Macbeth in real life. In response to Rove’s criticism of the budget she started her comments by addressing him as Mr.Rove. Her brief glances at him were filled an icy contempt. It was clear she would rather have Mr. Rove behind bars rather than across the table. “Call me Karl,” Mr. Rove interjected, as Ms. Heuvel went on with gritted teeth about how unqualified Mr. Rove had to criticize the spending plans Obama had proposed. (which I think was good – liberals ought to be less defensive about spending on health care and unemployment insurance). The camera was focused on Ms. Heuvel, so I could not tell if Mr. Rove was being plaintive or sarcastic when he asked her to call him “Karl.” But Ms. Heuvel did not even seem to hear that. Mr. Stephanopoulos did not make any attempt to intercede. Clearly he had given up all hopes of civility or good humor happening between the two. But later as Mr. Rove spoke I could sense that he was rather shaken. Now I don’t want to psychoanalyze anybody. But I have read that Karl Rove has always had a chip on his shoulder about being rejected by certain women earlier in his life. There have been times when I had wished he would go away somewhere, but I try to not let a person’s actions influence my feelings towards them. I believe that fundamentally we are all capable of awakening and expressing the love within us towards all beings. Even when the actions of others cause us harm, we ought to ask whether it is due to misunderstanding and misguided intentions. So at this time I felt sympathy towards Mr. Rove and a bit of disappointment with Ms. Heuvel. I think every man is as capable of love and as much in need of love as any woman, no matter how “evil” we think some men are. Ironically, just a few minutes later while talking about Obama’s Iraq and Afghanistan policy, Mr. Rove was more on the side of Obama than was Ms. Heuvel. [You can watch the whole discussion at http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek ]. 6. During the same discussion George Will likened Obama’s spending plans to doing a heart transplant on a person who is running a marathon at the same time – or something to the same effect. I think it is a good example but wrong analogy. A better analogy would be say that the deficit part of it is like stopping the heart and using the heart and lung machine while cardiac surgery is going on. It may kill the patient but there is no choice. The spending part of it is like making the patient go through a whole series of lifestyle changes and therapy immediately following the surgery. We need to spend money on energy, infrastructure, health-care and education so that the patient does not come back for surgery in a few years. Raising spending on defense, cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, etc., are like letting the patient eat at McDonalds and watch TV all day after the surgery. What is a good question to ask, as the wise Mr. Gergen did on CNN, is whether or not these things can wait a year while we focus on recovering from the banking sector collapse. Looks like the surgery is going to be more time and energy consuming than anyone thought. I also have questions about the tax cuts for 95% of working people. Wonder if those tax cuts might have been restricted to the neediest and the rest provided to immediate spending needs of the states. But that is a done deal and we can only hope that people start spending those additional dollars. One thing I am really worried about is that while the administration has been talking a lot about lowering health care costs, it has been quiet about tort reform, in particular, getting a grip on the amount of money given out in damages for malpractice suits. 7. (Saturday, 3/7) Just last week it felt like the arctic and today it feels like we are in the tropics. This is a dancing with the daffodils kind of day, when all you can do is to stop and gaze and gaze at the beauty of it all… I decided to take it easy and just have a full day to spend by myself, doing things I enjoy. Went for an easy short hike in Rock Creek Park. Apart from enjoying the great spring-like weather I wanted to learn how to use the GPS device I had bought second hand to trace a hike on the map, get altitude and distance data. [As a hike leader for Sierra club and elsewhere one needs to be able to present this information while announcing hikes]. Though I saved atleast $150 by buying second-hand, I was having a lot of trouble making it work. I couldn’t get the buttons to respond as well as I wanted, it was losing signal now and then, the location was being shown in some obscure system called Military Geographic Reference System (MGRS) (perhaps the previous owner was in the military) and also the battery was dying. So I first changed the battery, and luckily none of the existing data was lost. Managed to change from MGRS to latitude-longitude co-ordinates. Then went around the block and figured out how to record the track properly and it showed total ascent / total descent etc., Then I biked to rock creek park and once I got there found that it had recorded the bike route clearly. Showed that it could be in the backpack and still work properly. The trails were not too muddy and I managed to trace the route that I had planned without ever making a wrong turn. I even found that the problems with the buttons were caused by my not using them properly. I also ran into some old friends at Pierce Mill when I returned. It gave me such a kick to know the precise geographic location down to the 4th decimal place as well as the bearing, pressure, elevation, speed, etc., Later I got home and it was a pleasure to see everything on the computer, with a nice altitude profile, route map, etc., Some days, everything works out perfectly. My inner nerd as well as inner woodsman were in heaven. When properly used, technology can be such a boon, though I don’t think I am close to even considering a cell-phone yet. 8. (Sunday, 3/8) Another dancing with daffodils kind of day. I was at the newly constructed Georgetwon harbor park reading by the river when a girl and her friends started feeding the gulls. Soon a flock of gulls surrounded her, circling in the air and catching the crumbs in mid-air. The gulls also had a system of waiting in line. They took turns going after the crumbs. Though the girl was pretty and she was certainly doing it out of the goodness of her heart it really made me cringe to see that people were making these birds into some sort of pets. I later heard that besides making them dependent this food was also very unhealthy for them. Sometimes good intentions do harm, though I do also believe that if you do something with love in your heart it will eventually do good. 9. Watched a bit of testimony by the Treasury secretary Tim Geithner before Congress about the proposed budget. It was riveting drama and historic. I was quite impressed by Mr. Geithner. He seems to be an amazing guy, not just in terms of his intellectual sharpness. He has the weight of the world on him and seems to be doing a good job. 10. Found out that Hitler has Bacon number of 3: Hitler was in “Rio Rita” with Tom Conway who was in “Prince Valiant” with Robert Wagner who was in “Wild things” with Kevin Bacon. I also found that Hindi film idol Amitabh Bachchan has a Bacon number of 2! Http://oracleofbacon.org tells me that he was in “Kabhi alvida naa kehna” with Joel Ney who was in “Taking chance” with Kevin Bacon. 11. (Wednesday, 3/18/09) Today was a warm, sunny spring day. I took my parents out on a little tour in VA (they have been cooped up inside all winter), visiting the Rajdhani mandir (temple) and the Merrifield garden center in Chantilly. Being out in the sun and away from the city brought a sense of peace and restfulness. I thought of this poem while at the temple. I was wondering about all the different people who might have gone through the very spot I was standing on, all the different events that took place at that very spot. Though life is ephemeral, and we are but small flashes of light in the universe, the fact will remain that such and such event took place at such and such time at such and such place. Or will it? In the history of time, is a particular event indelibly affixed to a particular location and time for all eternity? I guess that is a philosophical question. As far as us ordinary mortals are concerned, that is indeed the case. Today in History At this very place, by the stream that runs from the mountain, between the oak trees, in a clearing near the third pebble, on the tenth sunrise of his life, just after the shadow of the sun had crossed the second pebble, the ant from the mound near the first oak tree from the stream met the most beautiful ant he had ever seen and fell in love. 12. Homesteading in Pasadena, CA: A family of educated, well-to-do people decided to prove that they could live a completely self-sustaining life in the city, that too on one-fifth of an acre. Read their amazing story on http://www.pathtofreedom.com They produce ALL their food and energy in this little plot of land where their house is located! 13. (Monday, 3/16)) Today was (hopefully) the end of a three month long medical rough ride. You might remember reading about the strange symptoms I was having, starting sometime in December. Sometimes I would feel like I was going to black out and / or run out of breath. As mentioned above in # 3 (as well as earlier rt’s) I thought it was due to low blood glucose caused by hypoglycemia. A high-protein, low carb diet definitely helped but did not relieve all the symptoms. At the insistence of my mother I told my Doctor about these symptoms when I went for a regular checkup two weeks ago. She (Yeay! I have a female doctor now, my previous Doc having retired) made me take an EKG and the EKG came out abnormal. She said it might be an enlarged heart and sent me to a cardiologist right away. The cardiologist said there is definitely something abnormal and scheduled me for a stress test, echocardiogram etc. That evening (3/5) I went home and did some research on the internet. The prospect of living life as a heart patient did not appeal to me. I stumbled upon some information about the side effects of statin drugs (the kind I was taking for lowering cholesterol). It then dawned on me that all these symptoms had started just a few weeks after my new Doctor prescribed a new medicine Crestor (that apparently was the reason for the precipitous drop in cholesterol levels mentioned in #3 above). So I stopped taking the cholesterol and triglyceride medicines that night. On Tuesday 3/10 I had my stress test, echo, nuclear tomography etc., and everything came out normal, except for a possibility of a pin-hole defect (I heard that is nothing too serious). I told the cardiologist about stopping statins and he just smiled. He told me everything should be fine and asked me to just go away and come back only after six months. If the symptoms are still there they will take a bubble echocardiogram to see if there is indeed a pin-hole defect. My theory is this: The statins work by inhibiting one step of the chemical pathway by which the body produces cholesterol. But in doing so it also inhibits the production of something called coenzyme Q10 which is supposed to be vital in the production and transport of energy to the cells in the body. Apparently in my case the drug seems to have had an adverse effect and affected the energy distribution through blood glucose. The heart muscles, needing a lot of energy, were the first to feel this, and were pumping blood inefficiently thus causing blood to back up in the lungs and creating a sense of running out of breath. While the high protein diet increased the amount of energy and prevented the hypoglycemia related drop in blood sugar, it did not change the fact that coenzyme Q10 was not being produced adequately. In the two weeks since stopping statins my energy levels have increased and the symptoms have decreased to a large extent. In fact I am feeling much better than I was even before starting on Crestor in December. I suspect that much of the sluggishness that I have had in the past several years were due to the statins, though the previous statin (Pravachol) didn’t have as drastic an effect as Crestor. Statins have been known to cause muscle weakness by inhibiting coenzyme Q10. They have also been said to interfere with cognitive functions such as memory, though this has not been substantiated by large-scale studies. It is disappointing that something that is supposed to prevent illness actually causes more problems. I have always been wary of drugs, because of side-effects. They deal with the body as if it were a machine, working with specific molecules or organs. But the body, even if it were just a machine, is a machine all of whose functioning is yet to be understood in an integrated manner. Tackling one problem without knowing the full scope of consequences only creates more problems. 14. (Sunday, 3/22) This morning I woke up around 3.30 and decided to watch a bit of TV just because it was Saturday night and also because TV makes me fall asleep sometimes. Ended up watching “Elizabethtown” for two hours and I have to confess it brought a few tears. Afterwards I read the reviews and they were almost all brutal. Problem is that the uncertainty principle is terribly valid when it comes to film criticism. The very nature of criticism eliminates suspension of disbelief which is what makes a movie enjoyable. I have thoroughly enjoyed many a mediocre film and I always enjoy reading the reviews afterward, too. But only afterward. 15. I have heard many very smart and successful people say that in spite of their success and intelligence they feel like they don’t know how to tell what is right. It is not just about having a moral compass. It is more like the need for an anchor in the turbulent waters of life. When faced with stormy situations I try to surrender myself to God or the inner spirit or whatever you want to call it. Freed from ego and worries about the past or the future, there is a tremendous sense of clarity resulting in joy and a feeling of love for all beings, at least for the moment. Like the good monk Yongey Mingur says in his book, it is as if you just wiped the dust off the window and the sunshine starts pouring in.