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		Volume 65

Volume 41, 21 June 2018

“Every person is worthy of an infinite wealth of love - the beauty of the soul knows no limit”

Give us Your Tired, Your Poor: Combinations for Compassion

In a world gone upside down, let us remind ourselves of the higher octaves of human beings and celebrate compassion.

What might be the markers for a compassionate individual in a chart? Though I may only touch on one or two, please remember not everyone who is compassionate has these indicators. The usual rule is if a particular indicator is in the chart, there is a good chance it will show up in the life but if it is in the life, you can’t count on a person having that specific indicator in the chart. The compassion might be due to other chart patterns.

The top of my list would be a beautiful placed Jupiter. If such a chart has Revati nakshatra prominent, it might well be someone who literally helps the wayfarers along the road and takes in the homeless.

Here are a couple of charts illustrating this very combination:

This inspiring chart belongs to Pearl S. Buck, the first female recipient of a Pulitzer Prize back in 1932 for “The Good Earth” and a Nobel Prize for literature. Her prolific output was mainly centered on issues of women’s rights, immigration, adoption, sexual discrimination and war. This was against a backdrop of a world where this was neither politically correct nor safe. She established the first international and interracial adoption agency, Welcome House Inc., in response to her outrage that children who were Asian or mixed-race were unacceptable for adoption in the US. This agency placed over 5000 children. Opportunity House was the name of an orphanage she opened with the purpose of publicizing and eliminating injustices suffered by children due to their parentage. Branches opened up in several Asian countries.

Note the beautiful swa Jupiter, the lagna lord in the lagna with the additional strength of dig bala. Both Jupiter and the ascendant degree are in the nakshatra of Revati. The deity of Revati is Pushan, renown for nurture and support. Jupiter itself is the significator for dharma, compassion and kindness.

Rabindranath Tagore is synonymous with literature, music and poetry that is inspirational and magical. Less known is the fact that he was a founder of ashrams and a university where the paradigm was to nourish the students emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. He was a visionary who embraced all humanity with the beauty of his spirit. Here is a more extended piece of his writing:

“Who are you, reader, reading my poems a hundred hears hence? I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds. Open your doors and look abroad. From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of a hundred years before. In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across a hundred years.”

His chart too has Revati nakshatra prominent. This time it is the Moon and the ascendant degree in Revati. Exalted Jupiter is in the 5th bhava not only aspecting back into its own lagna but in a Parivartana Yoga with the Moon. This particular exchange of the first and fifth lord is a Maharaja Yoga of the highest order and appearing in such a chart it is the indicator of an extraordinary incarnation.

Empowered Mars and Stressed out Venus

That about sums up the transits over the next few months. Mars is in a very long retrograde cycle which keeps it in Capricorn for quite some time. Normally it moves through a rashi in 45 days but this transit will go from May 3rd to November 6th. The good news is that Mars is exalted in the rashi of Capricorn but the bad news is it is with Ketu which makes Mars even more explosive.

Venus, on the other hand, is besieged. Right now it is in Cancer afflicted by Mars, Rahu and Ketu. It moves to Leo early July but is still aspected by that powerful Mars and is living in the rashi of an enemy. But then it gets messier. August 2nd Venus goes into Virgo, it’s debilitation rashi. Finally in September it heaves a sigh of relief and reaches its own home of Libra. Time to shop.

Media Corner: the Aruna Sanskrit Language Course

A.K. Aruna developed a very unique approach to learning sanskrit through study of the Bhagavad Gita. His byline to the title is “Unlock the Bhagavad Gita in Its Sacred Tongue”. He put together a five book series to facilitate a beautiful marriage between learning Gita and learning Sanskrit.

Book One and Two focus on grammar - a concise presentation in the first volume and then in Book 2, 63 grammar lessons based on Chapter 2 of the Gita. Book Three is a Gita Dictionary Reference. Book 4 is the complete text of the Gita and serves as a way to practice sight reading enhanced by the large print text in beautiful devanagari script.

Book Five is a remarkable volume that has a complete grammatical analysis of all the verses. Each parsed word references where in the earlier books that grammatical construction is explained.

This series is available at Arsha Vidya Gurukulam bookstore.