Guest guest Posted February 12, 2006 Report Share Posted February 12, 2006 GURUDEVA <gurudeva-kural wrote: Chapter 34 -- Impermanence of All ThingsKURAL 331There is no baser folly than the infatuationthat looks upon the ephemeral as if it were everlasting.KURAL 332Amassing great wealth is gradual, like the gathering of a theater crowd. Its dispersal is sudden, like that same crowd departing.KURAL 333Wealth's nature is to be unenduring.Upon acquiring it, quickly do that which is enduring.KURAL 334Though it seems a harmless gauge of time, to those who fathom it,a day is a saw steadily cutting down the tree of life.KURAL 335Do good deeds with a sense of urgency,before death's approaching rattle strangles the tongue.KURAL 336What wondrous greatness this world possesses--that yesterday a man was, and today he is not.KURAL 337Men do not know if they will live another moment,yet their thoughts are ten million and more.KURAL 338The soul's attachment to the body is like that of a fledgling,which forsakes its empty shell and flies away.KURAL 339Death is like falling asleep,and birth is like waking from that sleep.KURAL 340Not yet settled in a permanent home,the soul takes temporary shelter in a body.~~~~~~~~~Forward the Kurals to a friend! To they may write togurudeva-kural-Everyone is welcome. ~~~~~~~~~ India Set To Release Database of Traditional Knowledge to Prevent Patent Claims www.csmonitor.com DELHI, INDIA, February 9, 2006: India's centuries-old traditional knowledge, preserved and orally passed down through generations of households, is now going digital. Over the coming months, India will unveil a first-of-its-kind encyclopedia of 30 million pages, containing thousands of herbal remedies and eventually everything from indigenous construction techniques to yoga exercises. The project represents a 21st-century approach to safeguarding intellectual property of the ancient variety. The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) aims to prevent foreign entrepreneurs from claiming Indian lore as novel, and thus patenting it. "We do not want anyone selling our own knowledge to us," says Ajay Dua, a top bureaucrat in the Department of Industrial Policy and Planning, which oversees intellectual-property rights. "Also, we would like anyone using our traditional knowledge to acknowledge that it is from India." These concerns are not unfounded. In the p ast decade, India has fought several costly legal battles to get patents revoked. The impetus for TKDL came in 1997, after India successfully managed to get a US patent on the wound-healing properties of turmeric revoked. "This patent claimed the wound-healing properties as a novel finding, whereas practically every Indian housewife knows and uses it to heal wounds," says R. A. Mashelkar, chief of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).The innovative idea to translate and digitize all the available information on traditional medicine was a collaborative effort of bureaucrats, scientists, and intellectual-property lawyers. "It was a way to prevent more patents from being granted. Also, it was a way of throwing the information open to the public because this traditional wealth is for the benefit of mankind," says Rajeshwari Hariharan, a partner at K & S Partners, the law firm that represented India in several high-profile patent cases, including its fight over basmati rice, turmeric, and the antibacterial properties of the neem [margosa] leaf.Of about 5,000 patents on plant-based formulations granted by the US in 2000, 80 percent were on plants of Indian origin, says Vinod Gupta, with the National Institute for Science Communication and Information Resources. Mr. Gupta heads a team of 150 doctors, scientists, and information- technology experts who have worked on the TKDL project since 2002. Poring over ancient medical texts and punching code into computers in Delhi, they have already documented more than 110,000 formulations culled from some 100 texts belonging to the three principal systems of traditional medicine - ayurveda, unani, and siddha. Patent officers call this information "prior art," or previously existing knowledge about the applications of a product. Normally, a patent application is rejected if there is prior art on the product. But in the patent offices of the US, Europe, and Japan, prior art is recognized only if it has been published in a journal or database. Traditional knowledge and folklore passed down orally - or contained in ancient, inaccessible texts - are not prior art. "We therefore revisited the past and modernized it," says Gupta. The TKDL uses complex computer software to translate formulations written in ancient and medieval Indian languages to English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. Yogacharya Dr.Ananda Balayogi Bhavanani Chairman : Yoganjali Natyalayam and ICYER 25,2nd Cross,Iyyanar Nagar, Pondicherry-605 013 Tel: 0413 - 2622902 / 0413 -2241561 Website: www.icyer.com www.geocities.com/yognat2001/ananda Autos. Looking for a sweet ride? Get pricing, reviews, more on new and used cars. 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