Soul’s Code

My life-long dream was to meet the greatest yoga teacher in the world. I’m living it this month at the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune, India

BY RENEE TAVARES — I guess you could say that B.K.S. Iyengar is my “personal god,” not that I believe in a god as an individual. But in my world, he’s about as close as you get.

I started doing yoga in my twenties, and taught my daughter, now an instructor in her own right, when she was a young child.

I continued to practice and study through the next decades, and B.K.S. Iyengar was a guiding light. The single figure who made hatha yoga accessible to the West, he even gets profiled in this day and age, at 89, in Vanity Fair magazine.

I saved up weeks of vacation, and some life-savings, to spend the month of October at his school in Pune, India. I dish from my journal . . .

The diminutive Indian-born designer of buildings, furniture and landscape also happens to be a pioneer of green-building at the high-end of the luxury market

BY PAUL KAIHLA — Narendra Patel is an architect who was born in the Indian province of Gujarat, did his post-grad in Canada — and made his name in Rancho Mirage, CA, the better-half of Palm Springs. He radiates an out-sized aura in proportion to his bantam-physique, and walks around with a stillness and slight smile that makes you wonder if he knows something that the rest of us haven’t quite figured out.

One thing we know Patel *has* figured out is design — homes like the one above (photographed by Arthur Coleman), commercial buildings, furniture, materials, whatever. Patel weaves together classical geometry and undulating forms that call to mind sand dunes or ocean waves.

Felicia Teske, a resident of Delaware, was eating dinner when she noticed that the slice of eggplant she was about to eat spelled out the name of the Creator.

She set it aside and did what any reasonable person would do: Called Action News to get her story on air — before launching an eBay auction for the slice of divinity.

This isn’t the first time that the Almighty has chosen eggplant as a means of making itself known. A woman in Mendhasalis, India, sliced into an eggplant and found seeds spelling out “Allah” in Urdu script in 2003 . . .

Ancient Aryans’ “Amor fati” is the grandparent for Hinduism’s “karma”, Mormonism’s emotive dark-side, and evolving blogs on ever-trendy atheism.

 FriskoDude has this great picture of a Muslim man selling icons of Hindu gods. A toast to the Indian Muslims blog for pointing it out.

Jason Pitzl-Waters, a practicing vegan,  describes a Hindu leading the prayer of the Nevada Senate: “…while it may seem innocuous to some, there is something inherently radical about a public prayer that welcomes such a broad variety of belief and worship.“

A self-proclaimed evolutionist writes about worldwide atheism trends, synopsizing work by Phil Zuckerman. Sweden, Vietnam and Denmark have the greatest number of atheists, the blogger writes.

Sailing to Byzantium writes about his personal journey out of Mormonism. The author started questioning his faith after working with his brother through a crisis, he writes.

Oh no, here come the Bloggers | Originally uploaded by Brett L..

Blogger gets jail for insulting Islam [The Scotsman]

Farrakhan preps “final addess” [Chicago Trib]

“Bogus” India spiritualists slammed [Economic Times]

Quiz: spirituality of Britney Spears [BeliefNet]

Anna Nicole to Brit: lets “hang out” [This Is London]

Mass blasted by porn [AP]