CD – ROM
GANESHA
Worship and learn about Ganesha with the new CD-ROM, "Shri Ganesh" by Munsai Multimedia. The high-tech CD is more like a video than most. It is captivating and delightfully done. All the forms of Lord Ganesha are described as well as His accoutrements, stories, even the locations and descriptions of the famous Ashtavinayaka pilgrimage temples, maps and much more.
REFERENCE
COUNTING OUR FAITHS
Log on to www.adherents.com and find an excellent site on the demographics of the world's religions. The second-most visited general religion site on the internet, it contains over 37,100 statistics on people of the over 3,200 different religions, denominations, tribes, etc. If you ever need to know how many Hindus there are in the world, the US, the Ukraine or Uganda, this is the place. Statistics are given for Hindu denominations, but contrary to the site's stats, other reports list Vaishnavites and Saivites as about equal in numbers. Also included are statistical summaries of religions in the US and the worls with links to major religious websites.
FREEDIVING
DOWN INTO THE DEEP
Francisco "Pipin" Ferreras has pushed the limits of yoga and human survival by free diving 436 feet underwater on a single breath (www.freediving.net and his first hand account www.scubadiving.com/pipin). Using no breathing apparatus at all, he experiences pressure of 13 atmospheres–enough to crumple a WW II submarine. Holding heavy weights, he descends at nine miles per hour. His lungs fill with blood plasma, preventing the collapse of his lungs and chest–an instinctive response found in all deep diving marine mammals, such as whales. The tiny volume of air left in his body gets compressed into his nasal cavity and ears. His heart rate slows to ten beats per minute. It is, he says, as much an act of will as training. In the 1990s Ferreras demonstrated his impressive eight-minute breath-holding skill to a local yogi in Milan, Italy. The yogi decided to try it himself and clocked 14 minutes. Impressed, Pipin went to India to study yoga, sponsored by the Cuban government. He now lives in Florida and teaches people to tap into their innate diving ability, the "human aquatic potential."
MARRIAGE
WED-PAGE
Visit the matrimonial site www.vivaaha.org and get an entire course on Hindu marriage, from basic concepts of sanctity, to history, Vedic mantras, astrological analysis, and more. An especially good piece is the article, "The Hindu View of a Harmonious Family," http://www.hindubooks.org/bansi_pandit/hindu_dharma/ch09.htm. It takes the couple beyond the glitter of the wedding. There are thorough articles about arranged marriages, interfaith marriages, marriage customs, dowry, sati and child marriage. A service called "Smart Match" helps one find a mate–but wisely offers no guarantees of a perfect match.