“Death as Teacher!”
“If there is one Upanishad that can be called favorite in all ages, it is the Kathopanishad. It is not hard to see why. Its theme broadly…
“Death as Teacher!”
“If there is one Upanishad that can be called favorite in all ages, it is the Kathopanishad. It is not hard to see why. Its theme broadly is the same as that of all the Upanishads: the deathless self, the need for and the way to its realization; but the Katha is more successful than other Upanishads in describing this, in several ways.
As the Upanishads illustrate, the right questions are half the battle in life. In the Katha, we have the right question in highly dramatic form; in fact we have a highly imaginative confrontation of the ideal teacher and the ideal student, and their identity is surprising: the latter is a teenager and his teacher is death.
We must consider why.
Nothing places the question “Who am I?” in such stark relief as the fact of death. What dies? What is left? Are we here merely to be torn away from everyone, and everyone from us? And what if anything can we do about death — -now while we are still alive?
Most social life seems a conspiracy to discourage us from thinking of these questions. But there is a rare type for whom death is present every moment, putting his grim question mark to every aspect of life and that person can not rest without some answers.
[…]
As for the student, we can only pause in admiration of this ancient civilization whose hero is a teenager who has not learned the rudimentary grace of civilized existence — — to hold his peace in the presence of hypocrisy. Nachiketa is an attractive character who can not go along with sham; but he is not an obstreperous rebel!
[…]
But by poking holes in society’s shroud of complacency he represents, again, what it would take us to awaken any and all of us. The text sums it up in the single trait it tells us about the lad. He has “shraddha”: a determined seriousness, a deep, abiding, confident faith.”
Easwaran, E. (2007). The Upanishads (2nd ed.). Nilgiri Press.
“She is happy… she is dead!”
Flashback: (April 29, 2021)
Flashforward: (March 10, 2026)
“The Supreme Court of India directed the Union government to formulate a “no-fault compensation” policy for individuals who suffered severe side-effects or died after receiving Covid-19 vaccines.
The Court observed that families of vaccine-injury victims should not be compelled to prove negligence in lengthy legal proceedings. Instead, the State must establish a structured compensation mechanism as part of its public health responsibility during the nationwide vaccination drive.
Petitioners’ Arguments
1. Lack of Adequate Informed Consent
Petitioners argued that vaccine recipients were not sufficiently informed about potential risks associated with Covid-19 vaccines. They claimed that the vaccination programme did not adequately highlight rare adverse events.
2. Vaccination Was Effectively Mandatory
Although vaccination was officially voluntary, several administrative restrictions — such as travel rules, workplace policies, and entry restrictions in public places — allegedly made vaccination practically compulsory.
According to the petitioners, this indirectly infringed fundamental rights and placed citizens in a position where they had little practical choice but to vaccinate.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10166438147220093&set=a.10165603065295093
Government’s Defence
The Union government defended the vaccination programme, highlighting the following points:
1. Rigorous Safety and Regulatory Approval
Authorities emphasised that vaccines were approved after scientific trials and regulatory scrutiny, following emergency use authorisation procedures during the pandemic.
2. Rare Incidence of Vaccine-Related Deaths
The government stated that serious adverse reactions were extremely rare. Data presented suggested a reporting rate of approximately 0.001 cases per one lakh doses for specific clotting disorders.
3. Existing Legal Remedies
The government argued that affected families could approach civil courts or consumer courts to seek compensation from vaccine manufacturers if negligence could be proven.
Supreme Court’s Observations
The Court rejected the suggestion that families should pursue individual civil lawsuits.
It noted that vaccine injury cases involve complex medical and scientific evidence, making it extremely difficult for ordinary citizens to establish negligence.
The Bench also warned that forcing families into multiple individual court battles could result in:
- Unequal access to justice
- Inconsistent legal outcomes
- Delays in relief
Such outcomes, the Court said, could undermine the principle of equality under Article 14 of the Constitution.”
Drink at the source:
(October 1, 2021)
ClassEffect
“The fact that COVID-19’s vaccines in healthy subjects could result in the development of unforeseeable inflammatory or autoimmune diseases is not new. It has been known for almost 20 years that adeno viral vector-based vaccines can in fact result in the formation of thrombosis with concomitant acute thrombocytopenia in animals (8, 9). Lozier et al. (9) almost 20 years ago determined that following in vivo intravenous injection of adenovirus vector AVC3FIX5, animals have developed antibodies against human factor IX. More importantly, it was shown that these animals have developed a dose-dependent thrombocytopenia accompanied by increase in concentrations of von Willebrand factor and fibrinogen both of which aid in blood clotting (9). . As can be shown above, these medical conditions were already documented previously; however, the earliest literature references related to observations of these conditions (5, 6) and the recent ones (4, 7) did not include any reference pertaining to the work of Lozier et al. (9) Accordingly, I think the general public should be properly informed regarding these important anomalies, and an addendum pertaining to the work of Lozier et al. (9) may be added to the earlier publications (5, 6) and the most recent ones (4, 7) as well. Hopefully, all future work related to this topic will cite the work of Lozier et al. (9). “
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2195/rr
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10165603065295093&type=3
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10165560004930093&set=a.10156026863310093
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10165508339465093&set=a.10156026863310093
“All that we see is all that we think about And all these thoughts are better left unsaid!”
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(March 26, 2026)
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