World trade center bombing

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

[Subject changed to something more descriptive.  I never heard from anyone
else with mail problems.  Shall I conclude it was a false alarm?]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2001 sridhar.mfc at SOFTHOME.NET wrote:

> Yes, the question indeed referred to the disaster. The timing of the
> silence was not funny. The list usually hums with activity during weekdays.
> Is the silence simply because some of Manhattan is closed down?! Are the
> active members limited to that region?
>

My wife was on the 78th floor of WTC 2.  She made it out safely but It was
another 24 hours before she was able to come home because of the military
curfew.  On Tuesday I was on the Internet all day because it was the only
open channel of communication but since then I've been too distracted.
In retrospect that is a bad thing, what the terrorists want more than
anything is for us to change our lives and give up our freedom.  By
continuing as normally as possible, we are denying them victory.

> In retrospect, it was He who
> took you down from building no 7, was it not? And in equal measure, left
> thousands of others under the rubble of the WTC buildings? Or, going back,
> made the hijackers do what they did? Do we dare fathom that?
>

Bhagawan in not a puppetmaster.  He has endowed His creations with free
will hopefully to do good, but, alas, sometimes to do evil.  The
terrorists will reap the fruits of their own actions.

> Oh, but am I straying from Advaita? (By the way, how do we do away with the
> reference to His gender when discussing Advaita?)
>

English lacks a formal neuter gender like some Indian languages.  His can
apply to neuter as well as masculine nouns.  Nowadays some people object
to that but the alternatives "his or her" or "it" do not sound right.
Language should be beautiful as well as functional.  Perhaps one should
just alternate between "his" and "her"?

This only applies to God in the abstract.  Our various Devas and Devis do
have a definite gender so the choice is clear cut in those cases.

--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>