Sri Sri Ravishankar interviewed on Tehelka

Sri Sri Ravishankar, the founder of Art of Living foundation and a humanitarian of the highest order. Recently he was interviewed by Tehelka, a leading independent weekly news magazine in connection with the on going stir in India against corruption.

The interview is worth a read for the balanced and wise answers he has given to the journalist asking questions. My favorite is the last one, “Will you ever join active politics?”,

 

Here is a link for the interview.   

Love, Laugh, Learn and Let go..

If you want a quickie of what last-week's AOL Yesplus workshop was about, the title says it all.

Here is the longer version ...
I took the course because, couple of folks, who I highly respect have been recommending this for a while and boy, am I glad that I did?? I had the most awesome time with some of the coolest people I've ever met.

This would probably be the only "spiritual" course, where you run around trees in the parking lot, dance crazy steps and do impromptu skits. I still wonder how it was possible, to make such a serious course, so much fun. It was a good blend of great breathing techniques, the famed SudarshanKriya and some freakish games.

What I liked most is the philosophy of simplicity itself. I tend to clutter myself with a lot of stale stuff. The forgotten saying - 'forgive and forget' restated:: Life is so short to carry around all the emotional baggage. Shed the weight. Travel light. Simplify life! - good concept, I should try.

The course was pretty deep with pranayamas, kriyas and meditation. But, if you just wanna nibble at the surface, you can takeaway a simple view:: Be happy - no matter what! Keep your mind at peace, at any cost! (Does this seem selfish? May be ..)

The homeworks were eye opening too: Make 3 new friends a day, do a nice thing to your parents. I was kinda surprised to see, how friendly strangers are and how even small actions can make someone's day.

On the whole, I got to reflect on myself and the workshop was hugely helpful in calming me down and I learnt some cool breathing techniques.

Until nexttime, be intensely happy
-Vinodh
 

Care for Children – My experience

   

         Last summer, I visited my home town Chidambaram, India and came to know about a school run by Art of Living Foundation in a nearby village. With the help of a local volunteer I went to the Sri Sri Vidya Mandir School in Anaikoil village. The village was badly affected by 2004 Tsunami. Agriculture is the major source of income for the people in the village and the lands were devastated by Tsunami, making it not feasible for agriculture. As part of the rehabilitation, Art of Living foundation started a school and built houses for victims in that village.

      

The school is well maintained and has the best infrastructure. It provides the students with academic materials, food and clothing. Kids start the day at school with yoga, pranayama and followed by meditation. I told myself what a way to start the day. I visited the kindergarten class rooms and found that the kids are taught by following Montessori methods. The school provides the students with balanced nutritious lunch every day. The kids have their lunch together and the teachers make sure they finish it. Most of the kid’s parents are not even literate. The school also has an Industrial education center for adults.

All of this is possible because of Care for Children; a service project of Art of Living foundation started in 1981 to provide school education for under privileged kids. Its main goal is to reach out to areas where there is no school or transportation facility. All of us can be part of this transformation, to know more about Care for Children, you can visit the website or contact Raj @ rajr@artoflivingaustin.org for more details.

Here are some more pictures I took during my visit to the school.

Weekend Update

Lot of things happened over the weekend. On Friday (May 13) was the birthday of Sri Sri Ravishankar (fondly known as Guruji), so we had a satsang at the Art of Living Center. The satsang had a few firsts, this was one of the few birthday satsang that started off with a Guru Pooja, we did a different meditation than we usually do during satsangs. As usual for any Art of Living activity we ended the session with a lots of food. After the birthday celebration I reached home and saw Guruji’s birthday message in 3 different languages Kannada, Hindi and English.

On Saturday we had organized a volunteering activity at Capital Area Food bank. 11 of us showed up and helped the food bank sort out the donated food (mostly cans and boxes, no fresh produce). There was a lot of learning from the food bank activity.

• To volunteer at the food bank, you need to be wearing closed toe shoes (no sandals allowed)
• Canned foods were kept even after 2 years of expiry date
• Peanut butter, Mayo and Tomato Sauce unless sealed inside the bottle with the aluminum foil, were not kept.
• Mayonnaise was kept if it was within 10 months or so of expiry
• If the can had a dent and it was expired, and the first 3 ingredients are tomato, those were thrown away
• Baby food were only kept if they had at a minimum of 3 months of shelf life
• All food came through donations and I was amazed to see people had donated things that were 5 or 6 years beyond expiry
• The 11 people who showed up had good fun, we plan to go back again in the near future to do it again

And on Sunday I went for my session of Meru Chikitsa, I have already written about it.

Experience sharing from participants of Bhagavatam

I felt relieved from my burdens. I felt the love and comfort of my co-students. I became a better Christian. I felt such presence of god, of which I have been void in my life –Elaine Filion

I feel very grateful and blessed to welcome to this home and to receive these stories - Suzanne

Divine love in every word – Satish Kumar

Wonderful, amazing, when we made plans to visit Austin, TX, we never knew that Bhagavatam is going to happen, so fortunate to be part of this program. Thank you all, with great pleasure enjoyed the program and gained the knowledge. Thank you again Rajima – Vaidehi Raghunathan

I had the pleasure of hosting Rajima’s Bhagavatam. Listening to holy scriptures is one of the ways to increase spiritual knowledge, spread bhakti, and induce good character and moral values in the community. Sincere thanks to Rajima for being a catalyst to remind us of our duties and the purpose of our lives. – Chandrika Kaushik

I experienced bliss in all flavors, she herself is divine. It was a magical experience to see how each lesson kindled an emotion, experience and much more right away. Life couldn’t seem be any better than right now, it was a blessing - Anonymous  

It was a wonderful and amazing 5 days. Bhagavatam is interpreted as as if we are totally Bhagavatam ourselves and how each story has the effect on our day to day life and how we can separate the good from the bad.  – K Ramachandran

I thought I knew the story of Krishna from childhood. After this discourse, I realize what I knew was a speck in the whole vastness of knowledge, the Bhagavatam discourse Rajima offered. That god is egoless to help you and if you drop the same, you can reach him is the holy grain of this discourse. How beautiful the scriptures are, thank you Rajima – Geethapriya Raghavan

Knowledge snippets from Texas Ashram

Yesterday was Rama-Navami and guruji gave a beautiful perspective for Ramayana.

Rama stands for light/shine inside us (or as Rajima puts it that which is shining in us is Rama)

Dasharatha is Rama’s father, the name means lord of ten chariots. We with our 5 external senses of 5 senses of perception form the Dasharatha

Kausalya is Rama’s mother, the name means skill (which can be attained by purifying, I will get to this later)

Hanuman is the breath

Sita is the mind

Ravana means the one who does not listen to anybody, he comes up with 10 different types of logic to prove he is right (stands for his ten head). He stands for Ego

So, if we look at the story of Ramayana in a nut shell, we (Dasharatha) with the skill (Kausalya) can give rise to the light (Rama) in us and this light with the help of breath (Hanuman) will rescue the mind (Sita) from the ego (Ravana)

Now the skill, the skill can be attained by act of purification, here are things we can do to become pure.

Seva – Purifies the action, self less action

Satsang – Purifies the mind

Sadhana – Purifies the thought/memory, he mentioned pranayamas, Kriya and meditation

Knowledge – Purifies the intellect, Ashtavakra Gita, Bhakti Sutras, Bhagavatam, Yoga Vasishta and so on

Charity – Purifies the money, guruji said at a minimum 1% of our money should be donated to charity

Fasting – Purifies the body, guruji said to listen to the body and fast 1 or 2 days every six months.

He also spoke about calm with in and action outside and not the other way.

ps: I may have Satsang, Sadhana and Knowledge jumbled, it doesn’t matter just do it all.      

Bhagavatam with Rajima

The other day I was sitting in my office at ~5:30PM and I got a call from my buddy Sanjeev asking me to show up for Rajima’s Bhagavatam sessions. I had almost made up my mind not to go and looking for other excuses to completely make up. Then suddenly there was a shift in my mental state and I decided to show up to the session. After 14hrs (spread over 5 days) of intense sessions, I cannot thank Sanjeev enough for making that phone call.

Bhagavatam as Rajima said on the first day of the class is not just stories but about life, it is about me and you and it is about the lessons to be learnt to lead a righteous life.

Being born and brought up in India, most stories that Rajima talked about during the sessions were not new to me but the fact that it is also my story in the present life was completely new to me. The perspective Rajima presented to the stories were new, fresh and hit home. I had heard and read quite a few commentaries on the stories in Bhagavatam, but none came closer to what Rajima had to offer last week. In an essence she gave the right vision to the story.

If you are like me and had the questions like,

• Why was Sudhama being a friend of lord Krishna (the king and god) was so poor?
• What is the significance of Elephant Crocodile story?
• What is the significance of Amruta Manthana (churning of the milk ocean)?
• Was god fair in sending Bali to the underground?, even though he was such a good king and so on and so forth

My sincere suggestion is for to you attend a Bhagavatam session with Rajima. I will do a complete injustice if I even try and answer these questions, the answers coming from the right source makes all the difference. One thing I would like to share though, there is a big significance for all the avatars of the lord (it is not just the story of evolution) and the stories associated with it. Here are a couple of learning I would like to share, don’t get stuck in the physical level of the story or get attached to the form, do not treat the scriptures as cock and bull stories.  

The best part I still admire about her is her punctuality, she started on time, she ended on time. Her sense of humor, her impromptu songs (in multiple languages) and the motherly love I felt during the time is something all of us to experience. Not a single moment in the sessions I felt bored or the question “when will this end” arose in me, in fact when she used to say, “we will stop with this story for tonight/today”, I used to feel, “No Rajima, please keep going”. Of course I should be considerate to the vocal chords of the 60+ year old woman.

During the question and answer sessions she insisted that we should, ask things that matter to you, that is bothering you, that can help you make your life better and not hearsay and/or imaginary things and the answers were right on the money. 

This is the second time that Rajima has given commentaries on the Bhagavatam in Austin, first time was in 2009 and I didn’t attend. This time around in 2011, I almost missed it too. I definitely consider myself lucky for having completed this session.

There are DVDs of her earlier sessions available for sale but my friend it is secondary or even tertiary, her presence is what matters. If she is in your town and conducting these sessions, do not miss it, just show up. 

With my wife and baby daughter being gone to India for a trip, I sure was to get bored (I experienced that for the first couple of days in the week) but thanks to Rajima, the week went past like a breeze. I am sad the series have ended. 

I have collected the experience sharing from the Bhagavatam sessions and will post them on the blog in the next couple of days.