Bhakti: The Yoga of Love

by Syamananda Das

Can you hear it? Its everywhere. On the streets, on the buses, in the meetings, in the cinema and even in your bedroom - ring ring, ring ring.

With its endless variety of ringtones, the ubiquitous sound of the mobile phone, has become a part of our lives, as seemingly indispensable as light and air (the state of panic that overcomes us, as we vainly slap each pocket, realizing we have left the phone down somewhere has become a common site).

We can all now be connected to each other at every moment of the day, no matter where we are or what we are doing. (Do you know there is more text messages received and sent every day than the population of the planet!). We like been connected.

And of course then there is also the internet, e-mails and our growing number of social network sites (another do you know is that with over 200 million users on My Space, if it was a country it would be the fifth biggest country in the world). So we are connected like never before. Or are we?

With the deluge of ways we can now connect, are we seeing drops in numbers of depression, addictions (generally always a result of loneliness) and social difficulties in general? Are we reporting an increase in security both personal and social?

Without laboring this little article with reams of statistics, the general impression we get from life around us is sadly - no we are not. So has my connection timed out or is it too slow? Do we simply need to top-up more and faster? Or could it be that we need to possibly consider what it is we are trying to increase our connection too?