| WALTER AND ELIZA HALL INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL RESEARCH |
The findings can also help researchers discover new ways in which the progenitor cells can be controlled.
Image: BlackJack3D/iStockphoto
A study of the cells that respond to crises in the blood system has yielded a few surprises, redrawing the ‘map’ of how blood cells are made in the body.
The finding, by researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, could have wide-ranging implications for understanding blood diseases such as myeloproliferative disorders (that cause excess production of blood cells) as well as used to develop new ways of controlling how blood and clotting cells are produced. The research team, led by Drs Ashley Ng and Maria Kauppi from the institute’s Cancer and Haematology division, investigated subsets of blood ‘progenitor’ cells and the signals that cause them to expand and develop into mature blood cells. Their results were published in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Dr Ng describes blood progenitor cells as the ‘heavy lifters’ of the blood system. “They are the targets for blood cell hormones, called cytokines, which Professor Don Metcalf and colleagues have shown to be critical for regulating blood cell production,” Dr Ng said. “In times of stress, such as bleeding, during infection or after chemotherapy, it is really the progenitor cells that respond by replacing lost or damaged blood cells.” Dr Kauppi said the research team was particularly interested in myeloid progenitor cells, which produce megakaryocytes, a type of bone marrow cell that gives rise to blood-clotting platelets. “We used a suite of cell surface markers specific to these progenitor cells that allowed us to isolate and characterise the cells,” she said. The researchers were surprised to find that progenitor cells believed only to be able to produce megakaryocytes were also able to develop into red blood cells. “We were able to clearly demonstrate that these mouse megakaryocyte progenitor cells have the potential to develop into either megakaryocytes or red blood cells in response to cytokines such as thrombopoietin and erythropoietin, which was quite unexpected,” Dr Ng said. “In addition, we discovered that other progenitor populations thought to really only make neutrophils and monocytes [other immune cells], were capable of making red blood cell and platelets really well. In effect, we will have to redraw the map as to how red cells and platelets are made in the bone marrow.” Dr Kauppi said the researchers found they could regulate whether the progenitor cell became a megakaryocyte or a red blood cell by using different combinations of cytokines. “Now that we have properly identified the major cells and determined how they respond to cytokine signals involved in red blood cell and platelet production, the stage is set for understanding how these progenitors are affected in health and disease,” she said. “We can also better understand, for instance, how genetic changes may lead to the development of certain blood diseases. “ Dr Ng said the findings would also help researchers discover new ways in which the progenitor cells can be controlled. “This research is the first step in the future development of treatments for patients with blood diseases,” Dr Ng said. “This may occur either by limiting blood cell production when too many are being made, as with myeloproliferative disorders, or stimulating blood production when the blood system is compromised, such as during cancer treatment or infection.” Dr Ng said.
Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.
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Thursday, February 2, 2012
Study remaps how blood cells form
Mobile Phone Data Reveals Human Reproductive Strategies
The pattern of calls and texts between humans reveals how women invest more heavily in their main relationship than men; and how this changes as they age.
Various studies have shown that the frequency of contact between individuals is a reliable indicator of the emotional link between them. So it should come as no surprise that the data from mobile phone calls is a potential treasure trove of information about the social lives of humans.
But analyses of this data so far have been distinctly unspectacular. For example, the location data associated with phone calls has revealed various new intricacies in the movements of commuters. Interesting but hardly jaw-dropping.
That is set to change with the work of Vasyl Palchykov at the Aalto University School of Science in Finland and a few buddies including a couple of old hands in the form of Albert-László Barabási at Northeastern University and Robin Dunbar at the University of Oxford (of Dunbar's number fame).
These guys have got hold of a corpus of mobile phone data relating to calls between 1.4 million women and 1.8 million men in an unspecified European country. Between them, these phone subscribers made almost 2 billion calls and sent almost half a billion text messages. In addition to the gender of each subscriber, Palchykov and co also managed to get their age as well.
That's significant because it allows them to study not allow the pattern of calls between genders but the way this changes with age.
They began by taking each subscriber and determining the age and gender of the person they werein contact with most frequently, second most frequently and so on. These, they assume, are the 'best' friend, second best friend and so on.
Then, they looked at how the 'best friends' changed as subscribers age. It turns out in general that between the ages of 18 and 40 or so, men and women have best friends of the opposite sex. Palchykov and co assume this reflects the general pattern of mating in society. Second best friends are generally of the same sex at this age.
But they tease the most interesting phenomena out of the fine detail in their dataset. They conclude for example that women are more focused on opposite-sex relationships than men are during the period of their lives when they are reproductively active. That indicates that women invest more heavily in creating and maintaining their relationships than men.
As women age, their attention shifts from their spouse to younger females some 25 years or so younger. That's about equal to a generation gap and Palchykov and co assume these younger females are daughters. This attention shift also seems to equate to the arrival of grandchildren, when the older female again once again begins to invest more heavily.
While older women focus more heavily on younger females, older men maintain an even gender balance in the second best friends, presumably this reflects an equal attention between children of opposite sexes.
What's striking about this is how strongly female relationships are determined by their reproductive cycle. “Women’s gender-biases thus tend to be stronger than men’s, seemingly because their patterns of social contact are strongly driven by the changes in the patterns of reproductive investment across the lifespan,” say Palchykov and co.
Clearly, female reproductive strategies change more explicitly as they age, switching from mate choice to personal reproduction to parental investment and finally grandparental investment, particularly after they reach 40.
However, the most dramatic conclusion from this work is about the pattern of social relationships that play the most important role in society. Palchykov and co say the tendency in the past has been to assume that father-son relationships dominate.
By contrast, “our results tend to support the claim that mother-daughter relationships play a particularly seminal role in structuring human social relationships,” they say.
This difference on the way the sexes invest in relationships is exactly what evolutionary biologists expect. But although previously suspected, it has proved particularly difficult to test. That's why this work is something of a landmark.
Clearly, the ability to study human relationships on such a vast scale opens up a host of new avenues for research in social and reproductive strategies.
In particular, this study looks only at the existence of links between people, not the the directional asymmetries in relationships or who initiates contact. Palchykov and co leave that for another day.
There's a mountain of data ready to be mined on this. And clearly, there's gold in them thar hills.
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1201.5722: Sex differences in intimate relationships
Seeing really is believing
(Medical Xpress) -- Want to know why sports fans get so worked up when they think the referee has wrongly called their team's pass forward, their player offside, or their serve as a fault?
Research from The University of Queensland's School of Psychology and the Queensland Brain Institute found people actually see their team's actions in a different way than they see those of other teams.
The study, which was published in the journal Human Brain Mapping, randomly divided volunteers into blue and red teams and let them judge the relative speeds of hand actions performed by the team they support, and their opponents, in a competitive situation.
Lead researcher Dr Pascal Molenberghs said results showed the brain responded differently when people saw actions of their team members compared to the opposing side, but that this was not as simple as a bias in opinion.
“Our study found that people quickly identified with their group and that they consistently judged their own team's actions as being a fraction of a second faster than those of non-team members, when in reality the actions were identical,” Dr Molenberghs said.
The research team, which also included PhD candidate Veronika Halász, Professor Jason Mattingley, Dr Eric Vanman and Associate Professor Ross Cunnington, then used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to assess each participant's brain activity during the experiments.
“We explored two possible explanations for the bias: either people actually see their team's actions differently, or people see the actions as the same but make a conscious decision that their own team was faster,” he said.
“We found that the people who showed a bias in favour of their own team had a different brain response when they were watching the actions of team members compared to the actions of non-team members.
“But crucially, we found no difference in brain response during the conscious decision making part of the experiments.
“What this suggests is that we unconsciously perceive the actions of teams we are affiliated with differently than those performed by other teams.
“So contrary to common belief, people seem to be unaware that they are biased towards their own team.
“It's not simply that we decide to favour the actions of our team because we think they are the best. Rather, because we feel an affiliation with the team, our brain processes the actions of own team members more favourably.
“So next time you think an umpire has made an unfair call against your team, bear in mind that your team allegiance could be affecting the way your brain is processing what you saw.”
Dr Molenberghs said the results had broader implications.
Dr Molenberghs said the results had broader implications.
“Our findings could help explain discrimination between all kinds of groups - including those of race, gender and nationality - because our study suggests that we see the actions of non-group members differently and what we see is what we believe.”
Dr Molenberghs plans to build on the findings by conducting similar experiments with members of real teams to see how this affects the outcomes.
More information on the study is available here
Provided by University of Queensland
"Seeing really is believing." February 1st, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-believing.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
Just another pretty face: Professor investigates neural basis of prosopagnosia
These are examples of famous faces and non-famous faces used in Bradley Duchaine’s prosopagnosia experiment. Paired famous and non-famous faces are shown in corresponding positions. Credit: Bradley Duchaine
For Bradley Duchaine, there is definitely more than meets the eye where faces are concerned.
With colleagues at Birkbeck College in the University of London, he is investigating the process of facial recognition, seeking to understand the complexity of what is actually taking place in the brain when one person looks at another.
His studies target people who display an inability to recognize faces, a condition long known as prosopagnosia. Duchaine is trying to understand the neural basis of the condition while also make inferences about what is going wrong in terms of information processing—where in the stages that our brains go through to recognize a face is the system breaking down. A paper published in Brain details the most recent experimental results.
"We refer to prosopagnosia as a 'selective' deficit of face recognition, in that other cognitive process do not seem to be affected," explains Duchaine, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences. "[People with the condition] might be able to recognize voices perfectly, which demonstrates that it is really a visual problem. In what we call pure cases, people can recognize cars perfectly, and they can recognize houses perfectly. It is just faces that are a problem."
The condition may be acquired as the result of a stroke, for example. But in the recent study, Duchaine focused on developmental prosopagnosia, in which a person fails to develop facial recognition abilities.
"Other parts of the brain develop apparently normally," Duchaine says. "These are intelligent people who have good jobs and get along fine but they can't recognize faces."
The primary experimental tool in this experiment was the electroencephalogram (EEG), which has the advantage of providing excellent temporal resolution—pinpointing the timing of the brain's electrical response to a given stimulus.
Duchaine and his colleagues placed a series of electrodes around the scalps of prosopagnosics and showed them images of famous faces and non-famous faces, recording their responses. As expected, many of the famous faces were not recognized.
They found an electrical response at about 250 milliseconds (ms) after seeing the faces. Among the control group of non-prosopagnosics, a real difference was observed between their responses to famous and non-famous faces. In half the prosopagnosics there was not. Surprisingly, however, in the other half of the prosopagnosic test subjects they did find a difference.
"On the many trials where half failed to categorize a famous face as familiar, they nevertheless showed an EEG difference around 250ms after stimulus presentation between famous and non-famous faces like normal subjects do. Normal subjects also show a difference between famous and non-famous about 600ms after presentation, but the prosopagnosics did not show this difference," Duchaine observes.
This pattern of results suggests the prosopagnosics unconsciously recognized the famous faces at an early stage (250ms) but this information was lost by the later stage (600ms). Duchaine concludes that even though they are not consciously aware that this is a famous face, some part of their brain at this stage in the process is aware and is recognizing that face, a phenomenon termed covert face recognition.
He suggests that the other half of the prosopagnosics, who showed no difference between responses at 250ms, were experiencing a malfunction in their face processing system already at this early stage suggesting a different type of prosopagnosia.
"The temporal lobe contains a number of face processing areas, so you can imagine there are many different ways that this system can malfunction. Not only can an area not work, connections between areas might not work yielding probably dozens of these different variants of this condition," he surmises.
Covert recognition has been demonstrated in prosopagnosia acquired through brain damage, but Duchaine's work is the first convincing demonstration of covert recognition in developmental prosopagnosia, the much more common form.
Provided by Dartmouth College
"Just another pretty face: Professor investigates neural basis of prosopagnosia." February 1st, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-pretty-professor-neural-basis-prosopagnosia.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
Why the brain is more reluctant to function as we age
New findings, led by neuroscientists at the University of Bristol and published this week in the journal Neurobiology of Aging, reveal a novel mechanism through which the brain may become more reluctant to function as we grow older.
It is not fully understood why the brain's cognitive functions such as memory and speech decline as we age. Although work published this year suggests cognitive decline can be detectable before 50 years of age. The research, led by Professor Andy Randall and Dr Jon Brown from the University's School of Physiology and Pharmacology, identified a novel cellular mechanism underpinning changes to the activity of neurones which may underlie cognitive decline during normal healthy aging.
The brain largely uses electrical signals to encode and convey information. Modifications to this electrical activity are likely to underpin age-dependent changes to cognitive abilities.
The researchers examined the brain's electrical activity by making recordings of electrical signals in single cells of the hippocampus, a structure with a crucial role in cognitive function. In this way they characterised what is known as "neuronal excitability" — this is a descriptor of how easy it is to produce brief, but very large, electrical signals called action potentials; these occur in practically all nerve cells and are absolutely essential for communication within all the circuits of the nervous system.
Action potentials are triggered near the neurone's cell body and once produced travel rapidly through the massively branching structure of the nerve cell, along the way activating the synapses the nerve cell makes with the numerous other nerve cells to which it is connected.
The Bristol group identified that in the aged brain it is more difficult to make hippocampal neurones generate action potentials. Furthermore they demonstrated that this relative reluctance to produce action potential arises from changes to the activation properties of membrane proteins called sodium channels, which mediate the rapid upstroke of the action potential by allowing a flow of sodium ions into neurones.
Professor Randall, Professor in Applied Neurophysiology said: "Much of our work is about understanding dysfunctional electrical signalling in the diseased brain, in particular Alzheimer's disease. We began to question, however, why even the healthy brain can slow down once you reach my age. Previous investigations elsewhere have described age-related changes in processes that are triggered by action potentials, but our findings are significant because they show that generating the action potential in the first place is harder work in aged brain cells.
"Also by identifying sodium channels as the likely culprit for this reluctance to produce action potentials, our work even points to ways in which we might be able modify age-related changes to neuronal excitability, and by inference cognitive ability."
More information: The research, entitled 'Age-related changes to Na+ channel gating contribute to modified intrinsic neuronal excitability' by Andrew D Randall, Clair Booth and Jon T Brown, is published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging and funded by Pfizer who are long-standing collaborators with Randall and Brown. The paper is available to download: http://www.science … 458011005756
Provided by University of Bristol
"Why the brain is more reluctant to function as we age." February 1st, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-brain-reluctant-function-age.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
New evidence touch-sensing nerve cells may fuel 'ringing in the ears'
U-M researcher Susan Shore and graduate student Seth Koehler discuss hearing data. Credit: University of Michigan Health System
We all know that it can take a little while for our hearing to bounce back after listening to our iPods too loud or attending a raucous concert. But new research at the University of Michigan Health System suggests over-exposure to noise can actually cause more lasting changes to our auditory circuitry – changes that may lead to tinnitus, commonly known as ringing in the ears.
U-M researchers previously demonstrated that after hearing damage, touch-sensing "somatosensory" nerves in the face and neck can become overactive, seeming to overcompensate for the loss of auditory input in a way the brain interprets – or "hears" – as noise that isn't really there.
The new study, which appears in the Feb. 1 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, found that somatosensory neurons maintain a high level of activity following exposure to loud noise, even after hearing itself returns to normal.
The findings were made in guinea pigs, but mark an important step toward potential relief for people plagued by tinnitus, says lead investigator Susan E. Shore, Ph.D., of U-M's Kresge Hearing Research Institute and a professor of otolaryngology and molecular and integrative physiology at the U-M Medical School.
"The animals that developed tinnitus after a temporary loss in their hearing after loud noise exposure were the ones who had sustained increases in activity in these neural pathways," Shore says. "In the future it may be possible to treat tinnitus patients by dampening the hyperactivity by reprogramming these auditory-touch circuits in the brain."
In normal hearing, a part of the brain called the dorsal cochlear nucleus is the first stop for signals arriving from the ear via the auditory nerve. But it's also a hub where "multitasking" neurons process other sensory signals, such as touch, together with hearing information.
During hearing loss, the other sensory signals entering the dorsal cochlear nucleus are amplified, Shore's earlier research found. This overcompensation by the somatosensory neurons, which carry information about touch, vibration, skin temperature and pain, is believed to fuel tinnitus in many cases.
Tinnitus affects up to 50 million people in the United States and millions more worldwide, according to the American Tinnitus Association. It can range from intermittent and mildly annoying to chronic, severe and debilitating. There is no cure.
It especially affects baby boomers, who, as they reach an age at which hearing tends to diminish, increasingly find that tinnitus moves in. The condition most commonly occurs with hearing loss, but can also follow head and neck trauma, such as after an auto accident, or dental work. Tinnitus is the number one disability afflicting members of the armed forces.
The involvement of touch sensing (or "somatosensory") nerves in the head and neck explains why many tinnitus sufferers can change the volume and pitch of the sound by clenching their jaw, or moving their head and neck, Shore explains.
While the new study builds on previous discoveries by Shore and her team, many aspects are new.
"This is the first research to show that, in the animals that developed tinnitus after hearing returned to normal, increased excitation from the somatosensory nerves in the head and neck continued. This dovetails with our previous research, which suggests this somatosensory excitation is a major component of tinnitus," says Shore, who serves on the scientific advisory committee of the American Tinnitus Association.
"The better we understand the underlying causes of tinnitus, the better we'll be able to develop new treatments," she adds.
More information: "Noise over-exposure alters long-term somatosensory-auditory processing in the dorsal cochlear nucleus – possible basis for tinnitus-related hyperactivity?" Journal of Neuroscience, Feb. 1, 2012.
Provided by University of Michigan
"New evidence touch-sensing nerve cells may fuel 'ringing in the ears'." February 1st, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-evidence-touch-sensing-nerve-cells-fuel.html
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Why Should I Live
“There are many faults associated with ending my life, and if I remain alive I can find all-auspiciousness. Therefore, I will keep my life-breath, for by living success is assured.” (Hanuman, Valmiki Ramayana, Sundara Kand, 13.47)
vināśe bahavo doṣā jīvan prāpnoti bhadrakam ||
tasmāt prāṇān dhariṣyāmi dhruvo jīvati samgamaḥ |
tasmāt prāṇān dhariṣyāmi dhruvo jīvati samgamaḥ |
Here the valiant warrior, Shri Hanuman
What was Hanuman so down about? The completion of a seemingly impossible task rested in his hands. A beautiful princess had gone missing several months back and it was up to a band of warriors to find her. The person who took her obviously didn’t want to be found, and he didn’t really leave any clues as to his location. Through scouring the globe, one of the search parties eventually came upon some valuable intelligence. Sita Devi
One slight problem though. The members who came upon this information could not reach Lanka, as the island was so far away from the mainland. They could try to construct a boat, but that would take a long time, and time was of the essence. Hanuman, the most powerful of the members in the party, was the only one capable of leaping across the ocean. He took his perch on top of a mountain and then thrust himself into the air. Coursing through the skies, he looked so beautiful. The source of his beauty was not only his outward appearance but also the mission he was undertaking. The dastardly Ravana had a ghoulish figure which matched the nature of his activities. He had flown in an aerial car with Sita to Lanka, but now Hanuman was launching himself through the very same skies.
Hanuman was exhilarated upon reaching Lanka. He then found a way to infiltrate the city without being noticed. Yet after searching for so long, he still couldn’t find Sita. This is where dejection set in. The pressures applied to him were mounting more now that he was so close to victory. It is one thing to lose at the outset, knowing that you didn’t have a chance. It is more heartbreaking to fail just when you think you have overcome all the obstacles placed in front of you.
To make matters worse, Hanuman mentally reviewed what might happen should he return to his group a failure. The warriors in his group were forest-dwellers, or Vanaras. They lived in the Kishkindha forest, where ruled the king of Vanaras, Sugriva. Waiting with Sugriva were Rama and Lakshmana
Hanuman did not want to return to Kishkindha with bad news. He had settled in his mind that everyone would die if he told them that he had failed. Rama would quit His body, then Lakshmana, then the whole royal family living in Ayodhya. With Rama gone, Sugriva would soon follow, and then all the monkeys and their wives after that. In this way Hanuman ruled out returning home.
The next option was suicide. Not the kind where one jumps off of a ledge or overdoses on drugs, but rather the voluntary quitting of the body through yoga. The soul is the identifiable aspect within a particular life form, and since it is separate from the body, whenever the soul exits, the living being goes from being alive to being dead. The soul continues its existence, and where it ends up next is determined by the consciousness at the precise moment that the previous life ended.
In ancient times men could choose when they were going to die by sitting in meditation and liberating the self from the body. This was the method considered by Hanuman, for he had mastery over every siddhi of yoga. A siddhi is a perfection, so when practicing yoga properly, the fruit is an ability to do something amazing. A real yogi can become lighter than air, become large or small in stature, or quit his body whenever he chooses. These events took place in the Treta Yuga, the second time period of creation, so it was not out of the ordinary for people to practice yoga properly.
Hanuman figured he’d either sit in trance and end his life or just dive into the ocean. Living off nothing but the fruits falling off trees, he wouldn’t enjoy his remaining time on earth. He didn’t want to take the option of quitting to enjoy life instead, for how could he be happy knowing that others were waiting to hear from him? Ah, but this would be the key factor that would eventually keep him going. Not that he was worried about his own stature or what would bring him fame. No, Hanuman was always concerned with the welfare of Rama, Lakshmana, Sita and all of his other beloved friends and well-wishers.
In the above referenced verse from the Ramayana
In addition to the black mark of having abandoned the mission, Hanuman would have to face the fact that others would lose their hope of finding Sita and thus happiness in life. He would quit and give up his body, but what would happen to everyone else? They would just sit there and hope for no reason? They would wonder, “What has happened to Hanuman? Did he find Sita? Did he fail in his mission? How can Hanuman fail? No one is more powerful than him. What could be taking him so long?”
This very scenario went through Hanuman’s mind, thus leading him to the conclusion that the quitting option was fraught with peril. On the other hand, staying alive at least gave him a shot at success. He wasn’t guaranteed of victory by remaining alive, but ending his life ensured that there would be no chance. It is similar to how athletes playing in an important tournament will say that they can’t win the tournament in the first week, but they can lose it. This means that if they don’t take the early opponents seriously, they will have no chance for the prize at the end. As long as they can stay in the tournament, they have a chance to win.
While these points may seem obvious to the sober observer, to the person in the heat of battle fighting the mission the rules and principles to live by don’t always remain at the forefront of consciousness. With remaining alive and trying, Hanuman had a chance to find Sita and return the information of her location to the party back home in Kishkindha. This is exactly what he would do. His courage and bravery know no limits; he is the dearmost friend of Sita, Rama and Lakshmana. Hanuman’s feats are so legendary that they are still talked about to this day, and he is celebrated and honored by so many around the world.
If his mission were ordinary, Hanuman would still be worthy of praise based on his heroic feats. But since he was working to please the Supreme Lord, Shri Rama, and His pleasure potency, Sita Devi, Hanuman’s heroic acts were part of the discipline known as bhakti-yoga, or devotional service
The best way to create this link is through a bond of love, which is bhakti-yoga’s aim. In this sense, quiet meditation, chanting
As we saw with Hanuman, service to God can actually increase the pressure for finding success. Hanuman’s mission is the same one given to all living entities, though they may not necessarily have to follow the same course of action. Conditioned life, which is marked by the soul accepting a temporary body that it has nothing to do with, continues for only as long as permanent yoga is not established. Does this mean that Hanuman had periods in his life where he wasn’t attached to God in a mood of pure love? For the eternally liberated souls, there is never a chance for falling out of the mood of bhakti. But this doesn’t mean that they stay safely tucked away somewhere, hidden from society. The divine descents mark the beginning act of a wonderful drama to be played out in a carefully choreographed sequence of events. The Lord fills the roles with the most capable actors, people who are fully immersed in God consciousness.
Hanuman’s role in the Ramayana gives a real-life example of how to overcome obstacles and find success in life. Attaining perfect yoga in one lifetime is very difficult. Lord Krishna
Quitting life prematurely is not the answer because it removes the potential for success. There is no way to predict what type of body the soul will receive next, especially if a person is driven by lamentations over material failures. On the other hand, as long as the vital force is within the body, there is a chance to please the Supreme Lord. This can be the rallying cry that gets us out of bed each morning. “Let me get up so that I can at least try to please God today. This is not possible, as I am the most fallen person, but since I’m alive I might as well make the attempt. Let me chant the glorious names of my beloved Lord, sound vibrations which are equal to Him. No other person is as kind to give everyone the chance to love Him without fail. There is no way to smother God with too much love. He will accept whatever I offer Him, so why should I not take full advantage of that? We human beings are brimming with potential for the outpouring of so much affection that no one will believe that any person could love that much. In our material service we are checked by the beneficiary’s ability to accept our love and also by the effect that behavior will have on the relationship. With Shri Rama, however, the more love we offer, the more endeared to Him we become, like the mother cow
By thinking in this way, the devotees give themselves a chance at remaining vibrant, day after day. Surely there will be bumps along the road, but that comes with the territory, as there are many Ravanas in the world trying to bring unhappiness to the innocent. They don’t want to worship the Supreme Lord; they would rather everyone worship them. But while there are many evil creatures, there are also people who follow in Hanuman’s line, taking devotional service to be life’s mission. To them Hanuman is a teacher, an honorable personality, and a beloved figure who should be remembered every day. He is loved by Rama so much because of the great concern he takes into every action and his desire to remain alive to please God and His family. By harboring the same love for Hanuman, Shri Rama and His beautiful wife Sita Devi will bestow all fortune upon us, ensuring that success in bhakti will come.
In Closing:
A grave mistake I will commit,
If prematurely my body I quit.
My chances for success to ground to fall,
So the path of quitting riddled with faults.
If you remain alive there is still the chance,
To please God, stature of bhakti to enhance.
Thus Hanuman chose to continue to be,
Guaranteed that Sita he would finally see.
His example is the one for all to follow,
Practice bhakti, in misery don’t wallow.
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