The Emerging New World
By Anandagiri / Senior Faculty Teacher at One World Academy
Has the world really become a better place, or is it only an exaggerated point of view of the optimist. I do believe that the new information revolution has caused a radical change in the way we think and act. I saw a clear transformation in my own ways of thinking since the advancement of the information age, and I know I’m not the only one. With such proximity to the world around you, it is almost impossible not to develop new bonds and friendships. One’s will has to and must be influenced. Humans are social beings, it is by way of influencing and being influenced that we advance ourselves as a species. Trying not to be influenced in a world that is developing and enhancing together is a near impossibility. However, in living a life of awareness one can choose one’s influences at least for the most part and be more constructive than destructive.
When I traveled out of my homeland for the first time it was on a three month visit to the Americas. The trip was centered on the US for doing a series of short lectures and weekend seminars. I eventually ended up traveling for almost two years starting in May ‘96 thru June ‘98. I met a diverse group of people on these trips and returned home with a wealth of new experiences. A community development project under the guidance of the founder of One World Academy kept me from furthering my travels. The project was popularly known amongst our friends as the 100 villages project. The idea of the project was to help create a happy individual. My teacher believed that happiness is the true index for development. I spent most of my next six years with the people of these villages: eating, playing cricket, watching movies, and meditating with them. Living amidst the rural people of India for this long a period caused considerable perceptual and emotional shifts in me.
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From suffering to service
By Anandagiri / Senior Faculty Teacher at One World Academy
I am certain most of us would concur with the view that ‘suffering’ has been one of humanities biggest challenges. By ‘suffering’ we are referring to the psychological pain we experience in its varied forms; as fear, hurt, disappointment, anxiety, shame, regret, etc. It is this psychological discomfort, we fear more than anything else. Of course no one likes physical pain either and we do our best to prevent it from happening, but it is the disturbed state of mind that scares us the most.
How do we habitually respond to this challenge called suffering?
Not knowing how to deal with suffering we are constantly finding newer and newer ways of distracting ourselves from this pain. We have even invented ideas like ‘suffering is good for us’, ‘life is not a bed of roses’, ‘it is meant to be’, ‘It is a divine plan’, ‘God wants us to suffer’, ‘suffering is God’s way of showing how much He loves us’. How do we even know that suffering is good for us or that it is a divine plan and yet we take refuge in these baseless beliefs.
We are prepared to engage ourselves in any activity, physical or mental, that can provide us a distraction from our psychological discomfort. We are ever so ready to embrace any view no matter how irrational or baseless it is, if it promises to provide us some solace. Some of us have even made ‘suffering’ a sacred thing, believing suffering to be the only path to salvation or enlightenment. Although deep in our hearts we know these ideas to be utterly baseless, we are still scared of questioning them because we are afraid that we might loose the little comfort they keep providing us. We refuse to enquire because we are terrified of facing this monster called ‘suffering’. If we realized the falseness of these beliefs, it would then become impossible for us to take refuge in them any longer and we may not want that to happen.
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GODS OF THE NEW WORLD
By Anandagiri / Senior Faculty Teacher at One World Academy
I am certainly not the kind that believes in an omnipotent God but if God were to be perceived as an act of help, then I must say that the conscious children of this generation are the gods of our new era.
Some of us refer to these gifted kids as ‘indigo children’, while others believe them to be ‘sparks of God’ or ‘reincarnated masters’. I see them as conscious individuals with a new way of thinking and a whole new way of being. They seem to live in awareness of the world of which they are a part, while at the same time experiencing a deep connection with it. The relationship they share with themselves, with the other and with the world around, permits them to feel very little sadness or loneliness.
COULD THIS NEW WAY OF BEING BE A RESULT OF THEIR INCLUSIVE THINKING?
I do agree that our rapidly changing times, with its exponentially growing technologies have certainly influenced our way of thinking. Most children of today are more world centric in their thinking compared to our yesteryear generations. The information driven world that we live in today has given birth to new friendships: inter-religious friendships, inter-racial friendships, inter-cultural friendships and international friendships.
While this is all true, I am still of the opinion that the biggest influence on the child is its immediate environment and particularly the parents. The child not only observes and learns from its parent’s actions but is equally perceptive to its parents thinking as well.
The conviction I experience in regards to the views I share is the result of my interactions with a gifted child. Although I am a monk myself living with a community of dedicated teachers, I have had the fortune of being friends with a little one. My interactions with her over the last several years have influenced my own views of the world. I feel compelled to share with you what I see in this child and may be in children like her that live amongst us.
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The New World Citizen
by Anandagiri / OWA Senior Faculty
In the summer of 2009, I was visiting the city of Los Angeles to speak at a conference. A week prior to the event myself, along with Krishna (founder of One World Academy), his wife Preetha and their 6 year old daughter Lokaa, were visiting a store for some grocery shopping. The name of the store was Bristol farms and they sold mostly organic foods.
We had finished our shopping and were gently pushing our nearly full cart to the parking lot with Lokaa sitting on top. As we walked we saw three young children, two girls and a boy, running towards us.
They looked between 9 and 11 years old. The children ran up to us and volunteered to push our cart for us in exchange for a small donation. We were surprised at their boldness and also curious to find out why they needed this money so desperately that they were willing to chase people in the parking lots to get it. We were deeply moved with their courage and innocence.
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The Inseparability of All Existence
By Anandagiri / Senior Faculty Teacher at One World Academy
A simple question at dinner
After another fun day at the school, we gathered at the dining place for our evening meal. There were students from third grade all the way up to tenth grade waiting in the room; I myself was in my seventh grade then. Our principal too joined us for dinner like he did on most days; this was a special evening though. He had something interesting to tell us or may be I should say that he had a very special question to ask us. The question appeared a simple one, a very harmless question in fact. He pointed to the nice shirts we wore and asked; “Children, is this shirt your shirt?”
Initially we got a little scared and confused listening to the question. We wondered; ‘Why such a strange question all so sudden?’
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Is Freedom for All or is Freedom for the Virtuous Only?
Is Freedom for All or is Freedom for the Virtuous Only?
Ananda Giri, Senior Faculty Teacher at One World Academy
In the summer of 2006, I had visited Stockholm, Sweden for a spiritual
conference. Prior to the event, I was scheduled to meet with a
well-known author from Sweden. The meeting took place at a hotel lobby
by the beautiful Stockholm harbor. I was already in the lobby waiting
for the gentleman to arrive. As soon as he stepped into the lobby, he
walked right up to me and greeted me with a handshake. It was not
difficult for him to identify me, as I was the only Indian in the
room. The writer was a middle-aged gentleman full of enthusiasm and
his works were mostly contemporary in nature. We were keen to learn
from each other and our learning took place, primarily in the form of
exchanging views.
The most significant moment of the meeting to me however, was when he
asked me, “Ananda Giri, would you be interested in sharing with us
about love. What according to you is love?”
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Living Mind
The nature of life is unstable and unpredictable. We are all the time being impacted by what is happening around us. So how do we insulate ourselves from the bad effects of the world around us? We often find good people turning bad; happy people turning unhappy; visionaries loosing focus; good relationships breaking up in a way making one wonder whether love had ever existed between them. If situations are turning people “bad”, then where is the antidote?
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Competitiveness
Competitiveness could also express itself as the need to be right all the time; especially when you believe that being “right” all the time makes you significant within the group, draws everybody’s attention and creates a unique identity for yourself. That is when you become positional in your conversations during meetings and discussions.
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Live Life With Compassion
Compassion is not an attribute of any religion. It is a universal principle for happiness and peace. In today’s world that is torn by conflict and strife, where violence and not love dictates people’s actions, what every person, at every level, of every age needs to learn is the art of nurturing compassion within oneself. Be it, a housewife fulfilling the many needs of her family, an entrepreneur meeting people and clinching deals for his company, a politician passing bills in the legislature that can change the destiny of millions or a auto rickshaw driver bargaining for higher rates with his passenger whoever you may be, you need compassion. Compassion should no more lie in the ideologies of philosophers, or in the lucrative rewards of theologians (in the after-life). The voice of compassion needs to be heard in every household, educational institution, office, business unit, shop, mall and theatre.
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Internal motivation and passion
There are many people in the world who are successful, who have achieved great feats in their life. But all of them have not started out from the same place. Some have pursued success to prove to themselves their self worth; an aggression to achieve drives them. Some others are running a race against others on the tracks; the ambition to be on top of others drives them. There are also people who are not racing against themselves or the others, but are madly in love with what they are doing. They are the passionate ones, who do not need motivation from external sources. That which they do is in itself a motivation for them.
In one of his interviews for the CNN, Sachin Tendulkar says, “I think first of all when you play for India you don’t need any external factor to come and motivate you. Motivation is from within. I don’t think one should play for records. Records are mere reflection of what I have been able to do in my career so long, my contribution. While playing if the records get broken its great. But you play step by step to achieve your team’s target”.
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