Govinda is a name of Krishna, referring to his youthful occupation as a cowherder. The ancient text Sri Brahma Samhita describes him as the source of all that is and the original cause of all causes.

The sages call Krishna “Govind” as he pervades all the worlds, giving them power. The Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata states that Vishnu restored the earth that had sunk into the netherword, so all the devas praised him as Govind, protector of the land.

In the Harivamsa, Indra praised Krishna for having attained loving leadership by saying, “So men too shall praise him as Govinda.” Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in his commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita, states that Govinda means “master of the senses”.

A famous prayer called the Bhaja Govindam states; “If one simply worships Govinda, one can easily cross this great ocean of birth and death.” This refers to the belief that worshipful adoration of Krishna can lead believers out of the cycle of reincarnation, or samsara, and into an eternal blissful life.

Biosemiotics investigates the role that sign use plays in life processes. All processes in organisms obey physical laws, the difference from inanimate processes lying in their organisation and being subject to control by coded information.

It uses concepts from semiotics and the study of dynamic sign action in humans as well as elsewhere in nature to answer questions about the biological emergence of meaning, intentionality and a psychic world; questions that are hard to answer within a purely mechanist and physicalist framework.

To define biosemiotics as biology interpreted as sign systems study is to emphasize not only the close relation between biology as we know it and the study of signs, but primarily the profound change of perspective implied when life is considered not just from the perspectives of molecules and chemistry, but as signs conveyed and interpreted by other living signs in a variety of ways, including by means of molecules.

In this sense, biosemiotics takes for granted and respects the complexity of living processes as revealed by the existing fields of biology – from molecular biology to brain science and behavioural studies – however, biosemiotics attempts to bring together separate findings of the various disciplines of biology, including evolutionary biology, into a new and more unified perspective on the central phenomena of the living world, including the generation of function and signification in living systems, from the ribosome to the ecosystem and from the beginnings of life to its ultimate meanings.

Terror management theory is a theory within psychology that focuses on the implicit emotional reactions of people that occur when confronted with the psychological terror of knowing we will eventually die. Empirical support for terror management theory has originated from more than 175 published experiments which have been conducted cross-culturally both nationally and internationally.

The theory builds from the assumption that the capability of self-reflection and the consciousness of one’s own mortality can be regarded as a continuous source for existential anguish. This irresolvable paradox is created from the desire to preserve life and the realization of that impossibility because life is finite.

Humans are aware of the inevitability of their own death. Culture diminishes this psychological terror by providing meaning, organization and continuity to people’s lives. Compliance with cultural values enhances one’s feeling of security and self-esteem, provided that the individual is capable of living in accordance with whatever particular cultural standards apply to him or her.

The belief in the rightness of the cultural values and standards creates the conviction necessary to live a reasonable and meaningful life. This cultural worldview provides a base of making sense of the world as stable and orderly, a place where one rests their hopes on symbolic immortality such as having children, fame, or legacies of wealth, or literal immortality such as the promise of a life in an afterworld.

Binary opposition is a pair of terms or concepts that are theoretical opposites. In structuralism, a binary opposition is seen as a fundamental organizer of human philosophy, culture, and language. It is one of several influential characteristics or tendencies of Western thought. Typically, one of two opposites assumes a role of dominance over the other. The categorization of binary oppositions is often value-laden and ethnocentric with an illusory order and superficial meaning.

An example of a binary opposition is the presence-absence dichotomy. In much of Western thought, distinguishing between presence and absence is a fundamental element of thought in many cultures. In addition, according to post-structuralist criticisms, presence occupies a position of dominance in Western thought over absence, because absence is traditionally seen as what you get when you take away presence. Had absence been dominant, presence might have been seen as what you get when you take away an absence.

Deconstruction is the event or moment at which a binary opposition is thought to contradict itself and undermine its own authority. Although deconstruction can not explain how a rational basis for defending itself can then be maintained, it has removed any objective basis in structuralism it may have had.

The correspondence between each of the dominant Western concepts such as rational vs. emotional, mind vs. body, thought vs. writing, are claimed to show a tendency of Western thought called logocentrism. The critique of binary oppositions is an important part of post-feminism, post-colonialism, post-anarchism, and critical race theory, which argue that the perceived binary dichotomy between man/woman, civilized/savage, and caucasian/non-caucasian have perpetuated and legitimized Western power structures favoring “civilized” white men.

Duende is a difficult to define phrase used in the Spanish arts, including performing arts. The artistic and especially musical term was derived from the original meaning of a fairy or goblin-like creature in Spanish and Latin American mythology.

The meaning of duende  has to do with emotion, expression and authenticity. In fact, duende can be loosely translated as “having soul”. It is the spirit of evocation. It comes from inside as a physical and emotional response to music. It is what gives you chills, makes you smile or cry as a bodily reaction to an artistic performance that is particularly expressive.

Folk music in general, especially flamenco, tends to embody an authenticity that comes from a people whose culture is enriched by diaspora and hardship; vox populi, the human condition of joys and sorrows. It is thus as universal in its meaning as it is immensely personal and culturally contextual by its nature.

To a higher degree than the muse or the angel, duende seizes not only the performer but also the audience, creating conditions where art can be understood spontaneously with little, if any, conscious effort. It is, in Lorca’s words, “a sort of corkscrew that can get art into the sensibility of an audience… the very dearest thing that life can offer the intellectual.”

Salvia hispanica, commonly known as Chia, is a species of flowering plant in the mint family, Lamiaceae, that is native to central and southern Mexico and Guatemala. It was cultivated by the Aztec in pre-Columbian times, and was so valued that it was given as an annual tribute by the people to the rulers. It is still widely used in Mexico and South America, with the seeds ground for nutritious drinks and as a food source.

The word Chia is derived from the Nahuatl word “chian”, meaning oily. Chia is grown commercially for its seed, a food that is very rich in omega-3 fatty acids, since the seeds yield 25-30% extractable oil, mostly alpha-linolenic acid. It is also a source of antioxidants and a variety of amino acids.

Chia seed may be eaten raw as a dietary fiber and omega-3 supplement. Ground chia seed is sometimes added to pinole, a coarse flour made from toasted maize kernels. Chia seeds soaked in water or fruit juice are also often consumed and are known in Mexico as chia fresca. The soaked seeds are gelatinous in texture and are used in gruels, porridges and puddings. Ground chia seed is used in baked goods including breads, cakes and biscuits.

Chia sprouts are sometimes grown on porous clay figurines which has led to the popular U.S. cultural icon of the Chia Pet. Chia Pets are grown by applying moistened seeds of chia to the grooved terra cotta figurine body. Several Chia Pet animals are available, including a turtle, pig, puppy, kitten, frog, and hippopotamus.

Semantic memory refers to the memory of meanings, understandings, and other concept-based knowledge unrelated to specific experience. It refers to general facts and meanings we share with others. The conscious recollection of factual information and general knowledge about the world is independent of context and personal relevance.

It includes generalized knowledge that does not involve memory of a specific event. For instance, you can answer a question like “Are wrenches pets or tools?” without remembering any specific event in which you learned that wrenches are tools. What is stored in semantic memory is the “gist” of experience, an abstract structure that applies to a wide variety of experiential objects and which may be said to delineate categorical and functional relationships between them.

Rather than any one brain region playing a dedicated and privileged role in the representation or retrieval of all semantic knowledge, semantic memory is a collection of functionally and anatomically distinct systems where each attribute-specific system is tied to a sensor modality (i.e. vision) and even more specifically to a property within that modality (i.e. color).

Neuroimaging studies suggest a distinction between semantic processing and sensor processing, and reveal a large distributed network of semantic representations that are organized minimally by attribute and additionally by category. These networks include extensive regions of form, color and motion knowledge that collectively interpret stimuli.

A lexigram is a symbol that represents a word but is not necessarily indicative of the object referenced by the word. Lexigrams were notably used by the Georgia State University Language Research Center to communicate with chimpanzees. Researchers and primates were able to communicate with one another using lexigram boards made by up to three panels of a total 384 keys.

Ernst von Glasersfeld coined the term lexigram in 1971, created the first 120 of them, and designed the grammar that regulated their combination. This artificial language was called Yerkish, in honor of Robert M. Yerkes, the founder of the laboratory within which the lexigrams were first used in 1973 by the chimpanzee Lana within the context of the LANA project.

The term lexigram has also been used to describe a mystical property of words. A lexigrammer is one who composes lexigrams, decodes hidden messages in words, titles, names, terms, phrases or succinctly stated problems by putting together full, meaningful sentences using only letters found in those expressions. These messages convey a deeper meaning related to the subject of the original name, statement or expression. The act of lexigramming is considered a spiritual process.

Associating the lexigram as a spiritual process was first done by Linda Goodman in her book Star Signs. She described several criteria which she believed were necessary for uncovering the spiritual meaning of a person’s name. While word-play lexigrams can reveal hidden codes or messages within a person’s name, the veracity of any spiritual value is subject to personal interpretation.