by His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar...
Both spirituality or religion and politics deal with human beings. A politics devoid of spirituality is infested with corruption and creates an unethical atmosphere of manoeuvred situations, circumstances and people. If you do not recognise the individual or universal spirit, there is no reason for you to be ethical. Politics without ethics and human values would result in chaos, crime and corruption.
The goal of politics is to bring good governance and increase material, emotional and physical comfort of people. The aim of spirituality is to boost morality and human values. Both politics and spirituality need to go hand in hand.
For good governance, spirituality is necessary. Only spirituality can invoke commitment, care and confidence. Spiritual people live the values, which are absolutely essential for those in governance. A leader has to be a samadarshi , one who sees everyone as being equal; satyadarshi , who moves with the Truth; paradarshi, who is transparent in action; doordarshi, being broad-minded and a visionary; and priyadarshi, embodying love and compassion.
On the one hand, religion has been the cause of many wars on this planet. On the other hand, religion and spirituality have thrived only because of the patronage of the state. If a society is chaotic and has no spiritual values it is difficult to govern and if there is no official patronage, it is difficult for spirituality to survive.
Spirituality makes people honest and committed and this is necessary to create a crime-free society. State patronage makes spirituality spread faster to all sections of society. While many wars are fought in the name of religion, spirituality has given courage, confidence and commitment to people even in the toughest of times. Many saints, prophets, Sufis and sanyasis have been victimised due to lack of political patronage. For example, many Sikh gurus were persecuted by the state. This affected the morale of society and resulted in bad governance.
Religion has created conflict, but irreligious societies have created chaos and corruption. Did not millions suffer in Russia, China and Cambodia in the name of freeing society of religious beliefs? Today, both religion and politics need reform. Religion has to become more spiritual to allow freedom of worship and broader to encompass all the wisdom in the world and politicians have to become more righteous and spiritual.
When spirituality and politics don't coexist, then you have corrupt politicians and pseudo-religious leaders. Spirituality is ingrained in the Indian polity. Since ancient times rajgurus have guided and counselled rulers and in turn rulers have supported religious and spiritual leaders. Rama's guru was Vasishta and Krishna's guru was Sandipani. Jainism and Buddhism flourished under the patronage of the rulers of their time. Shivaji gave patronage to Samarth Ramdass.
M K Gandhi appealed to people across the board because of his spiritual approach. Spirituality brought freedom to India. Indian spirituality has given a secular ethos to the world.
The need of the hour is a prejudice-free political system. Consensus can emerge only when politicians learn to drop prejudices of religion, caste and gender. To be able to drop prejudices, politicians need to widen their sense of belongingness. This can happen only when they are free from stress and gain a spiritual perspective.
Politics is mainly about caring for people, providing for their welfare. Spirituality gives you a broader vision of life, teaching all to share, care and nurture each other selflessly and with equanimity.
The writer is founder, the Art of Living and the International Association for Human Values.
Source: TOI-6 Apr2009
Showing posts with label spirituality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spirituality. Show all posts
Commitment to Life
By His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on Creating a Stress-Free Mind and a Violence-Free World.
Every living creature wants to be happy. Whether it is money, power or sex, you get into it for the sake of happiness. Some people even enjoy misery because it gives them happiness!
To be happy, we seek something. But, despite getting it, we are not happy. All of one’s life is spent in preparing to be happy someday in the future. It’s like making a bed all night, but having no time to sleep. How many minutes, hours and days have we spent our life being happy from within? Those are the only moments you have really lived life.
There are two ways of looking at life. One is thinking that, “I’ll be happy after achiev- ing a certain objective.” The second is saying that “I am happy come what may!” Which one do you want to live?
Our life is like a river. A river needs two banks to flow. The difference between floods and a flowing river is that in a river, water flows regulated in one direction. During floods, the water is muddled and has no direction. Similarly, the energy in our life needs some direction to flow. If you don’t give direction, it is all confusion. Today most of the people are in confusion because there is no direction in life. When you are happy, there is so much of life energy in you; but when this life energy doesn’t know where to go, it gets stuck. When it stagnates, it rots! Just like how the water has to keep flowing, in the same way, life has to keep moving.
For life energy to move in a direction, commitment is essential. Life runs on commit- ment. If you observe every small thing or big thing in life, it goes with certain com- mitment. A student takes admission in a school or college with a commitment. You go to a doctor with a commitment saying that you are going to take the medication or listen to whatever the doctor says. Banks work on commitment. The government works on commitment. Needless to say, a family runs on commitment: a mother is committed to the child, a child is committed to the parents, the husband is committed to his wife, and the wife is committed to her husband. Whether it is love, business, or friendship or at work or any area of life, you take, there is commitment.
You cannot stand someone who does not commit, but see how much commitment have you taken in your life? Of course, our commitment is proportional to what we have our power, our capacity or capability. If you are committed to taking care of your family, that much capacity or power you gain. If your commitment is for the community, you will get that much energy, joy, that much power. More will be given to you only if you utilise properly what you already have! This is a law in nature. Why should nature give you more when you are stuck with your little mind?
The tendency to seek more is there in you; you only have to give a twist to it. Instead of “What more can I have?”, just start asking yourself “What more can I do?” Then you will see that there is joy. The more responsibility you take, the more power will come on to you.
Greater the commitment you take, greater the power you gain to fulfil that commit-ment. Greater the commitment, easier things are. Smaller the commitment, suffocating it is for you. Smaller commitments suffocate you because you have more capacity, but you are stuck in a small hole!
If you just sit and think, “What about me, what will happen to me?” you will get thor- oughly depressed. The way to expand from individual to universal consciousness is to share the sorrows and joys of others. As you grow, your consciousness should also grow. When you expand in knowledge with time, then depression is not possible. The way to overcome personal misery is to share universal misery! The way to expand personal joy is to share universal joy. Instead of thinking “What can I gain from this world?”, think “What can I do for the world?”
Every living creature wants to be happy. Whether it is money, power or sex, you get into it for the sake of happiness. Some people even enjoy misery because it gives them happiness!
To be happy, we seek something. But, despite getting it, we are not happy. All of one’s life is spent in preparing to be happy someday in the future. It’s like making a bed all night, but having no time to sleep. How many minutes, hours and days have we spent our life being happy from within? Those are the only moments you have really lived life.
There are two ways of looking at life. One is thinking that, “I’ll be happy after achiev- ing a certain objective.” The second is saying that “I am happy come what may!” Which one do you want to live?
Our life is like a river. A river needs two banks to flow. The difference between floods and a flowing river is that in a river, water flows regulated in one direction. During floods, the water is muddled and has no direction. Similarly, the energy in our life needs some direction to flow. If you don’t give direction, it is all confusion. Today most of the people are in confusion because there is no direction in life. When you are happy, there is so much of life energy in you; but when this life energy doesn’t know where to go, it gets stuck. When it stagnates, it rots! Just like how the water has to keep flowing, in the same way, life has to keep moving.
For life energy to move in a direction, commitment is essential. Life runs on commit- ment. If you observe every small thing or big thing in life, it goes with certain com- mitment. A student takes admission in a school or college with a commitment. You go to a doctor with a commitment saying that you are going to take the medication or listen to whatever the doctor says. Banks work on commitment. The government works on commitment. Needless to say, a family runs on commitment: a mother is committed to the child, a child is committed to the parents, the husband is committed to his wife, and the wife is committed to her husband. Whether it is love, business, or friendship or at work or any area of life, you take, there is commitment.
You cannot stand someone who does not commit, but see how much commitment have you taken in your life? Of course, our commitment is proportional to what we have our power, our capacity or capability. If you are committed to taking care of your family, that much capacity or power you gain. If your commitment is for the community, you will get that much energy, joy, that much power. More will be given to you only if you utilise properly what you already have! This is a law in nature. Why should nature give you more when you are stuck with your little mind?
The tendency to seek more is there in you; you only have to give a twist to it. Instead of “What more can I have?”, just start asking yourself “What more can I do?” Then you will see that there is joy. The more responsibility you take, the more power will come on to you.
Greater the commitment you take, greater the power you gain to fulfil that commit-ment. Greater the commitment, easier things are. Smaller the commitment, suffocating it is for you. Smaller commitments suffocate you because you have more capacity, but you are stuck in a small hole!
If you just sit and think, “What about me, what will happen to me?” you will get thor- oughly depressed. The way to expand from individual to universal consciousness is to share the sorrows and joys of others. As you grow, your consciousness should also grow. When you expand in knowledge with time, then depression is not possible. The way to overcome personal misery is to share universal misery! The way to expand personal joy is to share universal joy. Instead of thinking “What can I gain from this world?”, think “What can I do for the world?”
The bottom up approach
In the last post I talked about the bottom up approach to clean up the system. Here I would like to go beyond just INDIA or any nation for that matter, to reach out the world as a whole.
We always say about stopping terrorism. But by this time every one have understand that its not an easy task as the root cause is not under control/territory. Even if the PAK Govt wants to stop supporting terrorism and the outfits that attempt to spread terrorism, they will not be able to stop this completely. The roots of terrorism have reached far deeper than we can think of. Children are being brain washed right from their childhood. Hence their way of thinking can not be stopped by force, it can only be suppressed for the time being. To eliminate this ideology completely, a gradual way which works on the core of the humanity is to be followed. This is a long term and slow process. You need a lot of patience but the fruits are definitely sweet.
The way to go about is by spreading LOVE through the path of spirituality. Don't mix spirituality with religion, which is were many people go wrong. When asked to His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar about the difference between spirituality and religion, he replied "Spirituality is the banana pulp and religion is the banana peel". Under the name of religion some of the wrong activities are spread but remember the core is still intact. We only need to throw away the rotten outer cover and the inner core will start shinning and will spread the message of LOVE and COMPASSION. The very nature of human being is LOVE and COMPASSION. All the other are temporary and can be removed with an intend to do so. There are many spiritual organization which attempt to do that and I am proud to be associated with one such organization which thinks globally when it comes to spirituality and its benefits.
To give a few examples, two of the terrorists from Kashmir are now The Art of Living (AOL) teachers. They are spreading this message of LOVE and even conducting the course in bunkers where the terrorist hide. Two is a small number but remember this is a non-zero start which will improve over the time. In another example, during the Iraq war, when the whole world was moving out of Iraq, few Art of Living teachers were send to Iraq to conduct the trauma relief operations and the Art of Living courses. I know one of the teachers very well and have heard his experiences. During the war time, these people were in Iraq for 18 months and they helped so many people during their crisis time. Today few Iraqi citizens are AOL teachers and have started to spread the message of LOVE throughout Iraq.
A very high dose of LOVE needs to be given to hardcore people but remember we also need it. We too have so much of hatred inside us. We hate some of our friends, relatives for very very small incidents. Friendships/relationships are broken for really stupid reasons, many a times due to misunderstanding and we keep that in our heart till we die. There is no need to do so, just drop it. Looks simple to read/write and let me tell you, is equally simple to implement. You can just start NOW. Pick up your phone and call a friend/relative whom you have not talked with for some time, for what every bitter reasons. Call up and start talking. No sorry, no thank you. Just a clean new start as if nothing happened. And you will be surprised to see your face happy, like never before.
If every one is centered with LOVE and COMPASSION, the whole world is going to be a heaven. We all can be part of it with a bit of contribution from every one of us. Stop pointing fingers to others and start getting into action every now and then and in few years from now we will be living in a world FULL OF LOVE.
We always say about stopping terrorism. But by this time every one have understand that its not an easy task as the root cause is not under control/territory. Even if the PAK Govt wants to stop supporting terrorism and the outfits that attempt to spread terrorism, they will not be able to stop this completely. The roots of terrorism have reached far deeper than we can think of. Children are being brain washed right from their childhood. Hence their way of thinking can not be stopped by force, it can only be suppressed for the time being. To eliminate this ideology completely, a gradual way which works on the core of the humanity is to be followed. This is a long term and slow process. You need a lot of patience but the fruits are definitely sweet.
The way to go about is by spreading LOVE through the path of spirituality. Don't mix spirituality with religion, which is were many people go wrong. When asked to His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar about the difference between spirituality and religion, he replied "Spirituality is the banana pulp and religion is the banana peel". Under the name of religion some of the wrong activities are spread but remember the core is still intact. We only need to throw away the rotten outer cover and the inner core will start shinning and will spread the message of LOVE and COMPASSION. The very nature of human being is LOVE and COMPASSION. All the other are temporary and can be removed with an intend to do so. There are many spiritual organization which attempt to do that and I am proud to be associated with one such organization which thinks globally when it comes to spirituality and its benefits.
To give a few examples, two of the terrorists from Kashmir are now The Art of Living (AOL) teachers. They are spreading this message of LOVE and even conducting the course in bunkers where the terrorist hide. Two is a small number but remember this is a non-zero start which will improve over the time. In another example, during the Iraq war, when the whole world was moving out of Iraq, few Art of Living teachers were send to Iraq to conduct the trauma relief operations and the Art of Living courses. I know one of the teachers very well and have heard his experiences. During the war time, these people were in Iraq for 18 months and they helped so many people during their crisis time. Today few Iraqi citizens are AOL teachers and have started to spread the message of LOVE throughout Iraq.
A very high dose of LOVE needs to be given to hardcore people but remember we also need it. We too have so much of hatred inside us. We hate some of our friends, relatives for very very small incidents. Friendships/relationships are broken for really stupid reasons, many a times due to misunderstanding and we keep that in our heart till we die. There is no need to do so, just drop it. Looks simple to read/write and let me tell you, is equally simple to implement. You can just start NOW. Pick up your phone and call a friend/relative whom you have not talked with for some time, for what every bitter reasons. Call up and start talking. No sorry, no thank you. Just a clean new start as if nothing happened. And you will be surprised to see your face happy, like never before.
If every one is centered with LOVE and COMPASSION, the whole world is going to be a heaven. We all can be part of it with a bit of contribution from every one of us. Stop pointing fingers to others and start getting into action every now and then and in few years from now we will be living in a world FULL OF LOVE.
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