Vipassana, which means to see things as they really are, is one of India’s most ancient techniques of meditation. It was taught in India more than 2500 years ago as a universal remedy for universal ills, i.e., an Art of Living.

Courses

The technique of Vipassana Meditation is taught at ten-day residential courses during which participants learn the basics of the method, and practice sufficiently to experience its beneficial results. There are no charges for the courses – not even to cover the cost of food and accommodation. All expenses are met by donations from people who, having completed a course and experienced the benefits of Vipassana, wish to give others the opportunity to also benefit.

Vipassana is one of India’s most ancient meditation techniques. Long lost to humanity, it was rediscovered by Gotama the Buddha more than 2500 years ago. The word Vipassana means seeing things as they really are. It is the process of self-purification by self-observation. One begins by observing the natural breath to concentrate the mind. With a sharpened awareness, one proceeds to observe the changing nature of body and mind and experiences the universal truths of impermanence, suffering, and egolessness. This truth-realization by direct experience is the process of purification. The entire path (Dhamma) is a universal remedy for universal problems and has nothing to do with any organized religion or sectarianism. For this reason, it can be freely practiced by everyone, at any time, in any place, without conflict due to race, community, or religion, and will prove equally beneficial to one and all.

What Vipassana is not:

• It is not a rite or ritual based on blind faith.
• It is neither intellectual nor philosophical entertainment.
• It is not a rest cure, a holiday, or an opportunity for socializing.
• It is not an escape from the trials and tribulations of everyday life.

What Vipassana is:

• It is a technique that will eradicate suffering.
• It is a method of mental purification which allows one to face life’s tensions and problems in a calm, balanced way.
• It is an art of living that one can use to make positive contributions to society.

Vipassana meditation aims at the highest spiritual goals of total liberation and full enlightenment. Its purpose is never simply to cure physical disease. However, as a by-product of mental purification, many psychosomatic diseases are eradicated. In fact, Vipassana eliminates the three causes of all unhappiness: craving, aversion, and ignorance. With continued practice, the meditation releases the tensions developed in everyday life, opening the knots tied by the old habit of reacting in an unbalanced way to pleasant and unpleasant situations.

Although Vipassana was developed as a technique by the Buddha, its practice is not limited to Buddhists. There is absolutely no question of conversion. The technique works on the simple basis that all human beings share the same problems and a technique which can eradicate these problems will have a universal application. People from many religious denominations have experienced the benefits of Vipassana meditation, and have found no conflict with their profession of faith.

Thanks to Archana our Teacher for providing a wonderful Vipassana course. And to all my team members for this support and thanks to Sanjeev and Sanjay for creating an environment like this.

Reflection on Vipassana :

Vasantharaj 

I understood dhamma, the universal law of nature applicable to all irrespective of religion, beliefs, caste, etc

I learned the three important parts of Vipasana Sheela, Samadhi, and Panya. Sheela means living a life of morality. Samadhi is the mastery of the mind, which pays attention to reality as it is without getting distracted. Panya, the removal of cravings and aversions and remaining equanimous to all things we experience

I experienced anicca (impermanence) during Vipasana , legs become barely painful and dead after sometimes it has changed. Now I am exploring it in day-to-day life.

After completing Vipassana I saw change in myself in rigor in learning and concentration at work

Now I am started living with the present moment and noticing self-awareness.

Kayal vizhi

The vipassana course was really useful. I had time to explore myself and to know who I am, actually. It increased my determination power as well as concentration. I learned not to expect things but to accept things as it is, and also I  will give love without any expectation, and it should be like a one-way path. If someone does anything wrong, Instead of punishing them, I will transform them by giving them, love. And I also understood the law of impermanence.

Pratap

The first’s day when I sat down and began to meditate, I thought it will be easy because I am just going to sit and meditate. I thought I will complete these 10 days. But I couldn’t manage to focus my attention for even a few breaths and my mind started wandering.  My mind was very excited and started to capture irrelevant actions that I did in the past, but I made myself that I need to focus on my breath, which lasted only a few minutes. At some point, I started counting the number so that I could predict how many minutes are left before the end of the meditation.  I couldn’t sit for a long time, so I came out for a walk for 10 minutes and went back and started to meditate. Again after 5 minutes, my mind wandered, and the rest of the day went like this. In the evening discourse, S.N Goenka explained how hard the day was and gave clarity on how to meditate, which motivated me to practice. I couldn’t sleep properly that night.

On the second day, at 10 o clock in the morning, I thought of leaving the course. I felt heavy, and I felt my head was 10 times big and heavier with a lot of thoughts and background conversations. I couldn’t sit and I couldn’t meditate. A lot of bad thoughts came into my mind regarding my family which made me cry and felt crazy. I went to the teacher and said my experience and I wanted to leave, she gave her own example and her experience and asked me to sit for one more day. She also told me to focus on my breath. I started to meditate this time, I was able to focus on my breath and sat for a little longer.

On the third day, I was feeling less heavy and calm and wanted to meditate for a long time. I was able to notice the change in myself. I could still myself and stopped having background conversations. S.N Goenka said in one of the discourses, “This will also change “. This sentence helped me to get rid of my family attachments and learn that the world will move on even I am not there. Nothing is permanent, everything is impermeant (Aniccha).

On day four, I learned the technique of Vipassana. I was able to focus on the sensations in my body. After doing the two hours when I didn’t move, I was able to notice the “Sankara and dukkha” coming out from the deeper level to the gross level and disappeared. I started practicing Vipassana I felt lighter and lighter, and I felt equanimity. I started seeing things as they are and to be self-aware of myself and for my actions? After 10 days, I started meditating with strong determination. I need to practice practice practice ….

Poovizhi

I was doing Seva part timely. It was a new experience for me to do my daily work in the morning and practice vipassana while doing seva in the evenings. It helped me to get into my practice again. I learned and got motivated by the stories Archana tells us after the metta with the Sevas. I feel grateful.

Siva Raman

I have learned and recalled a lot of things from the Vippasana course. And to be aware of the sensation when I get emotional has to be consciously observed and has to be let go. So when assertive responses are to be made, action with compassion and love for myself and others. Learned to maintain my equanimity and awareness.

Bakya Lakshmi

My reflection is I realized that I should give time for everything for myself and others instead of reacting.

Prabaharan

My name is Prabaharan. I stand for courage and compassion for myself and for others. Vipassana is different from mindfulness meditation, which focuses on awareness, or to transcendental meditation, which uses a mantra. Instead, it dictates a blanket command of non-reaction. No matter the pain as you sit, or the fact that your hands and legs fall asleep and that your brain is crying for release. You are instructed to refocus attention on the objective sensations in your body, arising and falling, as you do a scan of your limbs in a specific order. By doing so, over 10 days, you train yourself to stop reacting to the vicissitudes of life.

Santhosh

My name is Santhosh, I stand for kindness and equity for myself and for others. I learned to meditation and noticed myself. I also noticed that I was not addicted to my phone, and it changed my food system.

Narmada

My name is Narmadha and  I stand for equality, happiness for myself and others. by attending the Vipassana meditation, I came to know it is the mental purification that allows me to face problems and tension in a calm and positive way.

By observing my breath, I can control my mind from the distraction.

Before this Vipassana, I can’t sit in place for a long time, but now I can sit and control my anger with the understanding of impermanence.

Sribhavani

My name is Sribhavani, I stand for Love and Equality for myself and others. I learned about seelam, samadhi and pragnya. From these three, I learned how to make my mind concentrated, the law of impermanence of every moment in my life, how to be more determined while practicing pragnya. Learned two wheels of dhammam, self-aware and equanimous. Learned metta bavana. How to share my peace, love,  and happiness with all beings from the bottom of my heart. What did I learn about myself is I started to experience every moment in my life from the law of aniksha. How my emotions are connected to my sensations. I am more self-aware of my emotions after this course. How to handle good and hard situations without much attached to it, while practicing bavanamaya panya.

Choudery

My name is Choudery I stand for justice and equality for myself and others while practicing vipassana I realized who I am, And for me, vipassana meditation is a new experience, I can feel sensation in each and every part of my body from head to toe and enjoy it, Vipassana makes me feel peaceful, It is totally new kind of experience for 10 days.

Arun

My name is Arun, I stand for happiness for myself and others. My insight about the vipassana is that I should not crave thinking to happen and also avoid keeping on thinking about the past and the future.

Live in the present moment to concentrate on what I’m doing.

Sandhiya

The 10 days vipassana course was really useful. I had time to explore myself and to know who I am, actually. It increased my determination power as well as concentration. I learned not to expect things but to accept things as it is, and also I  will give love without any expectation, and it should be like a one-way path. If someone does anything wrong, Instead of punishing them, I will transform them by giving them, love. And I also understood the law of impermanence.

 

Session 1 of RTL Leadership was conducted by Dr.Monica Sharma on (Sept 18th -20th) 2021, As Part of the Shifu(Master) program the 7 Shifuians attended the 3 days session and sharing the reflection.

 

My name is Santhosh, I stand for kindness and equity for myself and for others. I learned many useful tools for my life and this is my third RTL so I’m able to notice whether I’m using my tools or not and I was really inspired by Monica explanations , and I learned how to mingle with new people and also ,this session helped me to be stronger in my universal value.

 

My name is Choudhry, I stand for equality and justice for myself and others, I learned my stand and fear, when I doing this tool  I realize my fear is the default, And I lean how to use the “i” statement, with the help of CFSR  sheet I can describe my project and I can check where I am, also I can check am I respond and realize my project, then background conversation with me and others, and how I listening to others, the background conversation with an example of COVID-19, how to distinguish courage and bravery, this is the tools I learned from the RTL session.

 

My name is Arun, I stand for happiness for myself and others from the three days of the session. I learned that how I can look back at my stand and it brings me an idea of powerful conversation. On background connection, I have seen things differently and also learned new this for myself. From powerful communication I have understood about the way of my communication and what are all things I should add to it. Deep listening makes me how to overcome background conversation and connect with people. From filling the CFSR sheet I had an idea about my project and the issue I’m facing and how to overcome it with analysis. from  12 angry man movie, it gives me an idea that there will be two sides to a story and the story which I’m seeing won’t be seen by others but the way I have examine it gives way back to me to stand on my universal value.

 

My Name is Sri Bhavani, I stand for Love and equality for myself and others. I learned about myself is, Who I am! Identified my universal values within me. Whenever I make an effective conversation, I noticed my fear and background conversation. Noticing my background conversation, make me fully present through deep listening. I learned to, commit an action to let my fear go. How to make an effective conversation with the committed request. How to make the feedback statements, for the growth of others Subsystems are interconnected to the system. How to design my project using the CFSR sheet. Choose to be responsible whenever I get a complaint about my action. I learned to ground on my stand.

 

My name is NARMADHA, I stand for equality, happiness for myself and others. By attending the session I learned my 4 profiles and how to overcome my fear and commit action to let it go. From the movie 12 angry men, I learned that whatever the situation I chose to be in action not to react. I learned to create a design structure for my plan using CFSR. Learned system principles and learned how to make a committed request for my project and give feedback to others.

 

My name is Sandhiya and I stand for progress and love for myself and others, I learned to strengthen my stands and to overcome my fear. If I am expecting something from others I should check whether am good at it. I also learned to think from others’ points of view and to take every difficult situation as an adventure.

 

My name is Sivaraman and I stand for perseverance, courage, full potential, and equality for myself and others. I have learned to be aware and conscious about my values and add more values as I grow positive. CFSR has progressively tuned my project. I have revisited a lot of my rule and role according to build myself and others up.

~Ganesh

C3STREAMLand conducted a course on Machine Learning for learners. The course was divided into six 2-hours sessions. The motive behind the course was to make learners familiar with the most widely used machine learning concepts and algorithms, being adopted rapidly by many tech companies.

The course was offered by Alex, Sanjeev, and Ganesh, as a part of sharing our learning with the machine learning enthusiasts. Sanjeev and I (Ganesh) did the course on Coursera offered by Stanford University and taught by Andrew Ng, the co-founder of Coursera and Google Brain. Alexander Sokolov (Alex) converted the assignments from Octave to Python to make them accessible to everyone.

The course provided a broad introduction to machine learning, data mining, and statistical pattern recognition. Main topics include:

1. i) Supervised learning (parametric/non-parametric algorithms, support vector machines, kernels, neural networks).

(ii) Unsupervised learning (clustering, dimensionality reduction, recommender systems, deep learning).

(iii) Best practices in machine learning (bias/variance theory; innovation process in machine learning and AI).

Session-wise topics covered are as follows:

Session 1: Introduction and Linear Regression

• Introduction – Machine Learning
• Basic concepts of statistics and linear algebra
• Examples and classifications of Machine Learning
• Univariate and multivariate Linear Regression
• Cost function
• Gradient descent
• Polynomial regression
• Feature scaling and mean normalization
• Bias-Variance Trade-off

 

Session 2: Logistic Regression (Classification)

• Decision Boundary
• One-vs-all classification
• Overfitting and Regularization

Session 3: Neural Networks

• History and use cases
• Architecture
• Forward propagation
• Backpropagation
• Handwritten digit recognition system demo

Session 4: Anomaly Detection and Recommender Systems

• Density estimation
• Gaussian distribution
• Anomaly detection algorithm
• Recommender Systems
• Predicting movie ratings
• Collaborative filtering

Session 5: k-means clustering and Dimensionality Reduction

• Clustering applications
• K-means clustering algorithm
• Data Visualization/compression using dimensionality reduction
• Principal component analysis (PCA)

Session 6: Large Scale Machine Learning

• Batch gradient descent
• Stochastic gradient descent
• Mini-batch gradient descent
• Online learning

The course helped learners to get the idea about widely used machine learning algorithms and maths behind those algorithms.

The session-wise presentation PDFs can be accessed here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1O-kTcAGFvEdX7_jJ0fn-6rKaLtEGxFmh?usp=sharing

 

~Sandhiya and Kayalvizhi

We learned “An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python (Part-1 and Part-2) Online course in Coursera.

CodeSkulptor is an interactive, web-based Python programming environment that allows Python code to be run in a web browser.

These are the game we learnt in the coursera course,

• Rock Paper Scissors
• Guess the number
• Ping pong
• Stop watch
• Blackjack
• Memory game
• Spaceship/Asteriod

We are trying to run the Codeskulptor python in our local system (Create executable file). In codeskulptor we have a save options to download our code.

We used following steps to converting the python files into exe.file in local system.

These are the API tried for Simplegui to run the code for local system.

• SimpleGUITk

SimpleGUITk is a wrapper for the CodeSkulptor SimpleGUI API using TkInter. CodeSkulptor is a browser-based Python interpreter used in the online course “An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python”.

• Create Pyinstaller using to EXE: https://datatofish.com/executable-pyinstaller/
• Install pip install SimpleGUITk
• Change the import simplegui to import simpleguitk
• Able to run the codeskulptor file in our local and create the .exe file also, but not able to run and create exe file for the images having file like blackjack and spaceship game.
• Simplequi

Same thing we did for simplequi also, not able to create the blackjack and spaceship game.

• Download the images and set a path to the image in the spaceship python code. Not able to get the image file.

Solution-1(Windows)

• Install SimpleGUICS2Pygame

https://pypi.org/project/SimpleGUICS2Pygame/

• Replace the import simplegui to

try:

import simplegui

except ImportError:

import SimpleGUICS2Pygame.simpleguics2pygame as simplegui

• Convert .py files to .exe file

Install pysimplegui-exemaker

https://pypi.org/project/pysimplegui-exemaker/

• Run the Pysimplegui-exemaker– open the command prompt and paste

python -m pysimplegui-exemaker.pysimplegui-exemaker

The pop up showed liked that, browse your code in source python file and click Make EXE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As part of the ‘Becoming and Being a Shifu (Master)’ program a program to develop skills (programming and VLSI), competencies (using skills to create healthy workplaces and environment) and inner capacity (universal values) the participants are exploring some activities of Auroville. This short report is about the visit to Evergeen where we went for a ‘weed walk’ with Dr. Nina Sengupta who is an ecologist and an Aurovilian.

At C3STREAM Land Designs we learn, grow, work and teach and 5 of us went along with 7 Shifians to learn and grow.

Our visit started with the introduction of the book written by Dr. Nina – ‘Edible Weeds and Naturally Growing Plants in Auroville’. It was interesting to see that the book cover was hand-made, made from eco-friendly material. The treasure started unfolding with every plant she included in the book. Every book has two copies – one with precisely scaled plants in color and the other one with outlines which can be used as hands-on, color it to get closer to these plants.

We walked through the book one plant at a time and learned about the properties of edible weeds like Antigonan Leptopus. The first myth that was demystified while having this walk is not all weeds are non-edible, and many of them can be used not only for medicinal purposes but are a good source of nutrients for humans too. Generally, we ignore these weeds considering everything as another type of grass but they are all around us and we only have to recognize them and learn which parts of that particular weed are edible.

Once we recognize which parts are edible, then comes the next important thing – the appropriate quantity and frequency of weed to eat, the process of cooking if required. For example, some weeds can be used well after blanching them, while other weeds can be eaten raw.

The weed-walk was getting more and more interesting as we got to see and taste the different weeds. While we were able to observe weeds, on the other hand, we got closer to nature, and that also allowed us to express our learning. There are two major varieties of weeds – wild and cultivated weeds. Some species originated late, which are not mentioned in the Ayurveda. We need to constantly keep learning to know more about these weeds and start looking at these weeds from different perspectives whenever we see them around us.

The walk ended with the tasty herbal tea made by Archana and with the interactive conversation about edible-weeds, experiences of Nina as an ecologist, and Auroville in general. Thanks to Nina, Archana, and the Evergreen team for this wonderful opportunity.

~Team Shifu with C3STREAMLand members

 

 

~Ganesh, Ranjith

Shell – also called as command interpreter

Interactive use: reads command lines from a terminal

Shell script: When we put command lines into a file, that file is called a shell script or shell program.

 

Broad types of shell – bash and csh

C shell (csh):

Especially good for working on a terminal

 

Bourne Shell (sh):

Probably used more often for shell programming.

Newer version “Bourne-again” shell (bash) combines handy interactive C shell−like features with Bourne shell syntax, and is preferred choice.

 

which :

It takes one or more arguments. For each of its arguments it prints to stdout the full path of the executables that would have been executed when this argument had been entered at the shell prompt. It does this by searching for an executable or script in the directories listed in the environment variable PATH

e.g.

which ls

/usr/bin/ls

 

To see which shell I am running…

echo $SHELL

/bin/bash  – tells which shell we are using (bash here).

 

env :

env is used to print environment variables.

Most environment variables are in capital

 

 

 

env

SHELL=/bin/bash

WSL_DISTRO_NAME=Ubuntu-20.04

NAME=DESKTOP-HABEOE2

PWD=/mnt/e/unix

LOGNAME=ganesh

MOTD_SHOWN=update-motd

HOME=/home/ganesh

LANG=C.UTF-8

…

 

HOME:

Gives our home directory

echo $HOME

/home/ganesh

 

PATH:

Tells all the directories in which binary files can be extracted

e.g.

echo $PATH

 

Find Command :

Used to find files and directories and perform subsequent operations on them. It supports searching by file, folder, name, creation date, modification date, owner and permissions

find -maxdepth 2 -iname “pledge.*” -type f

./pledge.txt

./pledge.txt.bak

-maxdepth <num> ; at most <num> searches files/directories in hierarchy.

-iname searches irrespective of the case.

-type f specifies the input type is a file.

-mindepth <num> ; at least <num> searches files/directories in hierarchy

-group <gname> ; find files/directories in which group have access permission

-user <uname> ; find files/directories in which user have access permission

-size ; find files/directoriesbased on size

-delete ; to delete the found files/directories

-atime -<min> | +<min> | <min> ; find the file which accessed in at given minutes <min> | less than given minutes (-<min>) | greater than given minutes (+<min>)

-atime ; similarly for days

-ctime, -cmin ; similarly for changed files

-mtime ; similarly for modified files

---

-exec ; to execute shell command on founded files/directories

find -maxdepth 2 -iname “pledge.*” -type f -exec cat {} \;

find -maxdepth 2 -iname “pledge.*” -type f | xargs cat

---

find -empty:

./cat

./empty_file.txt

finds all empty folders and files in the entered directory or sub-directories.

 

Grep:

grep searches for PATTERNS in each FILE.  PATTERNS is one or more patterns separated by newline characters, and grep prints each line that matches a pattern.  Typically, PATTERNS should be quoted when grep is used in a shell command.

A FILE of “-” stands for standard input.   If no FILE is given, recursive searches examine the working directory, and nonrecursive searches read standard input.

grep <Option> <SearchText/Reg Expression> <Target file/ Path > ; general form

options:

-E ; extended regular expression.

-i ; ignore case

-v ; invert

-l ; list files which has the text/pattern

-r ; recursive search on all files in given <path>

-R ; recursive dereference (open symbolic link).

-c ; count matched text/pattern

-n ; print output with line number

-e ; search for multiple pattern

Example: grep -e “-e” -e “[a-zA-Z]*nary” <target> ; search for “-e” and string end with “nary”

-B <number> ; print <number> lines before matched line

-A <number> ; print <number> lines after matched line

-C <number> ; print <number> lines before and after matched line

-f ; take each line in a file as pattern è Example : grep -f <pattern file> <Target file/ Path>