My hypothesis on why vegetarian food is preferred over non-vegetarian food.

Since my parents are vegetarian, I am also vegetarian. Though it was not by choice that I adopted, but it is a conscious decision to continue it. Initially my decision was aligning with the opinion that many people have: that is not to induce any pain for any living beings.  Over a time, my rationale to the decision changed but the decision still holds good.

Long ago, I saw a movie Alive it is based on a real story about people who survive a plane crash.  They eventually resort to eat remains of dead people as that's the only thing left. This made me to interrogate my belief and was thinking would I resort to eating dead people if I were in their position. I can’t really say unless I would be in that position but logically yes, after all one has to live. I don’t know how would a herbivorous animal would do in that situation. 

So the question now is what makes one to choose Vegetarian over Non-Vegetarian? While thinking deeply on this and I did some research, I had formed my OWN hypothesis why one should resort to Vegetarianism instead of Non-Vegetarian.  

Couple of weeks back I happen to bump into Madhav's posting in his blog-site and interestingly he also had the same question (sure many have) and discusses on why he supported being vegetarian  over being non-vegetarian. In his childhood his reason was on the grounds of  morality towards other living beings and he explains further how his opinion changed over period of time.  He finally concludes that “ no living organism capable of feeling suffering, should be hurt for our own pleasure or for our nutrition”. 

Though his arguments are interesting his conclusion did not convince me. I responded to his post with my comment which I summarize below:  

The following are my understanding on why Vegetarian foods is preferred over Non-vegetarian. I would be happy if someone would either prove or disprove my hypothesis.

DISCLAIMER : I cannot quote anything/ anyone and I re-iterate this is my OWN hypothesis for having preferences on Vegetarian foods over Non-vegetarian foods

The whole thing about the pain / morality is absurd. Whether you eat plants or other animals its a life that is killed. If one cannot kill an animal so is a plant. My argument of preference to Vegetarian over non-vegetarian is based on the source of energy and its storage.

Vegetarian:

The definition is simple: Vegetarian is anything that originates from plants. Following are some of the characteristics of plant (please recollect what you learnt in Biology in school) 

• Plants receives and stores energy directly from five primary sources of energy viz., light, heat, air, water and soil. Plant does; neither animals nor eggs nor fish.
• It has a peculiar quality to keep life in muted mode  for example a seed has life in it even though they are not active i.e. it’s not dead yet. Plants, vegetables and leaves have live cells.
• The chloroplast cells in plant continuously get energy from light and oxygen and stores it even though they are uprooted and generally don’t die for sometime.

Non-Vegetarian:

Once again the definition is simple: anything that does not qualify as Vegetarian is Non-Vegetarian. Following are some of the characteristics of Non-Vegetarian.

• They acquire energy from secondary source or third source i.e. plants (secondary source) / animals (third source)
• The Animal is killed before it is cooked/ except egg where it has life until it is cooked. The cells die because there is no chloroplast in animal cell.

Note before: Plant Cell is different from animal cell

Vegetarian is  preferred because:

• The energy is sourced from from primary source
• And the plant cells have traces of active or muted life until cooked

The whole thing about pain does not fit into the logic as the plants can feel pain in spite of not having a nervous system. (For those who don’t recollect, search for works of Sir J C Bose and Sir C V Raman)

Therefore in my own way, the order of preference should be:

• Plants- Fruits, Veg, Greens leaves (less than a day old), other plant parts, Flowers, Honey, Dairy products
• Cereals, Seeds, Pulses, nuts
• Dried plant origin foods
• Treated plant origin foods
• Egg
• Products of Herbivores 
• Products of Omnivores 
• Products of Carnivores

Comments are most welcome :)

Investing in Share Markets

My colleague and I were discussing some investment options. He is just venturing into stock market and was asking some advice on ‘which’ stocks to invest. Incidentally, my brother and I were discussing on the technical analysis, and how they predict the support levels and resistance levels etc. In this blog, I am just mixing up both the conversation so that it might be helpful for the readers.

At the outset, I am not an expert in investment / share markets. However, I do frequently invest in the equity. And the first advice is not to get advice on ‘which’ one to invest, but to do a research and make an informed decision.

I started trading a decade ago and realized that whatever theory I learnt about fundamental and technical analysis could not be truly depended upon as the markets are not participated only by investment experts but by many who are normally carried away by sentiments.

So the support levels and resistance levels based on the F/T analysis do not hold good as many of the assumptions are either not correct or there some aspects which would never be thought about would have a serious impact. Also, there are some specific software and Big Data analytic tools to perform those Predictive Analytic. It’s pretty hard to do it manually as well.

Funny part is my research paper for my master degree was about predicting the reactive support and resistance levels using swing lows / highs, candlepatterns, volume analysis, and thereby analysing the volatility. At the hindsight, I can only smile at my findings in the research paper.

While I started trading initially I bet on the market sentiments. But it never took me long to realize that to get the intuitive skill to predict the sentiments it would rather need lot of trial and error with real money over a long period of time—neither of which I have. My speculation based on other people predictions resulted in losing most of my portfolio and it took more than a year of stress full trading to make up the loss.  I quit trading.

Lesson learnt on the predictions is: it’s like Astrology. While astrology can be true, astrologer can be a fake or subject to their limitation.  For any stock predictions there are always 3 types of predictions positive, negative and neutral. For example take gold’s prediction few months back (around Sep 2012) there were predictions that a gram of gold would cost Rs.5000 by this year-end while some predicted it to go as low as Rs.2000 and some said it would stay put in the same Rs.3000 levels. The fact is it is now tanking. So, one can't really believe the predictors except for some movers and shakers in the market  such as George Soros. 

After a brief sabbatical, I returned to share market but this time as investor and not as a trader. I do the fundamental and technical analysis to a limited extent of common sense. For any company you want to invest, the summarized results of these technical analyses are given by ICICI Direct in their Do your research page.  It’s simple and easy to comprehend.

I have read many tips/ rules/ principles but never really practised during my previous stint. But every time I lost, I ended learning the real meaning of some those principles which I currently follow. At least now, if I make loss or profit, I can be either proud of my own decision or learn a costly lesson.

1. I Target a company and start with small and over a period of time build a portfolio.
2. Age old adage- do not put all your eggs in one basket- so I do not invest all my money in single stock
3. In the same way I do not keep more than 6 Industry. I normally keep only in 3 Industry occasionally grow to 6 -Bank, IT, Oil & Energy, Telecom, Retail and Metals. I start with one industry and slowly grow into others. These are some industries which I can comprehend the business.
4. In each Industry I invest only in the top 1 or 2 companies. This will help me to keep track of market movements closely
5. I spread my investments so that I don't invest more than 20% in any one industry
6. I do not get sentimentally attached to the stock. I fix an expected return and stop loss trigger and exit when it hits either of it. I normally keep 20% and 8% stop loss. If I intend to hold for long, then these percentages may vary.
7. Out of my total investments, I keep the equities max of 60%. So remaining 40% I may invest in other investments like FDs, Savings, land.
8. I watch out the news for these companies regularly and watch out for the alternative better investments.
9. I don't panic or excited on the seasonal fluctuations. If I trust the company, I may keep some liquid cash ready to use the opportunity to buy more or sell.

These are some things I follow religiously--I neither loose much nor earn much-- I end up net of 10-15% return-- slightly higher than the FD rates.

Sharing this hoping it would benefit someone. Please share your experience as well as an opportunity for me and the readers to learn. Thanks.

Knowledge, Compassion and Wisdom

What a start today, suddenly few dots got connected; I start to appreciate the link between knowledge, compassion and wisdom:

Dot 1.   My friend posted a quote from Calvin Coolidge 30th president of US (1872 - 1933), in his face book status "I have never been hurt by anything I didn't say ".

Immediately I said to myself: No, to me, this is not true for all circumstances.  Silence has many meaning according to different circumstances - it may mean I concur to a situation, I subscribe, or I am coward to raise voice, or I am indifferent to the situation, or I am being helpless. Many a times when I ought to say something and have not said, I have been hurt because my silence has either been detrimental to me or to others whom I care.

Dot 2.   I was watching a review commentary by Prashanth about a debate in Neeya-Naana, a Tamil debate show in Vijay TV, about a topic of youth not having adequate knowledge. In which he was criticizing the way the show was conducted and asked one pertinent question. What is difference in outcome between a person who has NO knowledge about an issue and a person who has knowledge about the issue but DO NOTHING about it?

The outcome from both is same: former being ignorant or no wisdom so inaction and the latter being indifferent attitude or no compassion hence inaction. Unless one were to be indifferent, for which one ought to say but keeps silence, it will hurt.

Dot 3.   His Holiness the Dalai Lama said, "According to Buddhism, compassion is an aspiration, a state of mind, wanting others to be free from suffering. It's not passive -- it's not empathy alone -- but rather an empathetic altruism that actively strives to free others from suffering. Genuine compassion must have both wisdom and loving-kindness. That is to say, one must understand the nature of the suffering from which we wish to free others (this is wisdom), and one must experience deep intimacy and empathy with other sentient beings (this is loving-kindness)."

Dot 4.   Thiruvalluvar in verse 430 says “those who possess wisdom possess everything and whatever others possess, without wisdom they have nothing”; and in verse 571, he further adds that "it is compassion, the most gracious of virtues, which moves the world"; and in verse 39 he sums up that "virtue alone is happiness; all else—is else, and without praise."

Dot 5.   Jeff Weiner, CEO at LinkedIn, in one of his posts wrote that his friend / guide Fred Kofman told him that “Wisdom without compassion is ruthlessness; compassion without wisdom is folly” which made him to change the vision of his company. I commented to his post where I congratulated and thanked Jeff for his great post but I also asked a question, but did not get answer. So, I was searching on wisdom and compassion. That’s when I bumped into Dot 3 and Dot 4 but could not appreciate more by then.

However today it dawned to me that the Dot 1 and 2 coupled with Dot 3 and 4, Dot 5 makes more sense:

Being compassionate is to alleviate one from suffering.  There are two knowledge areas: Knowledge of the suffering and knowledge of ‘means’ that alleviates from suffering. But having these both the knowledge is useless unless one has the compassion which bridges these two knowledge areas. Someone who is compassion but has no knowledge can do nothing. Someone who has knowledge but no compassion can do nothing. Someone who has both compassion and knowledge can do something and such knowledge is wisdom.