Sri Sri's New Year Message

2012 is passing rather very fast. Let us recapture!

When this year began, there was a lot of talk about 21 December 2012. There were rumors that the world is going to end. And there are many people who believe rumors; at least some people believe in rumors very strongly.
So people started hoarding food in their basements, waiting for the doomsday to fall.
I have always been saying that no such thing is going to happen.
Of course, this year we have seen many catastrophes, like almost every year. Maybe little more. US had a big catastrophe, Japan had problems, and there were problems in many other parts of the world as well; Nature’s fury.
At the same time the economic gloom, which people thought is going to really make the situation worse, was also managed. Still everything is working well. People are surviving. Of course things have to become better and it has started becoming better already.
This coming year, 2013, will be much better.

 

 

Time poses challenges, it
is for you to see how you
can benefit from these
challenges. Every time a
challenge is in front of
you, see how you can
make this challenge, an
opportunity for your own
growth. This is what you
need to do.

 

 

There is a big awareness in people today, towards the environment, towards the safety of women and children.
What we have been saying for so many years, today many people are waking up and saying, 'We need more human values, we want violence to go down.’
This year, let us all resolve to act for making a better society - a society free from violence, society free from crime and corruption, a society which is safe and just, and a world which is sustainable.
Most of all, we need to work towards spiritual elevation and spiritual awakening. And it will happen. In fact, it is already happening. More and more people are interested in spiritual awakening.

The Art of Living is going to make a big leap. This year we will be teaching two newKriyas, which will make people's lives much more joyful. People will feel so much more joyful, so much more dynamic, so much more committed, compassionate and creative.

Time poses challenges, it is for you to see how you can benefit from these challenges. Every time a challenge is in front of you, see how you can make this challenge, an opportunity for your own growth. How you can turn it and utilize it for your own growth. This is what you need to do.

As you are coming to the end of this year, think of all those challenges you had, and how they have contributed to your growth. Think of how you handled these challenges, and while handling them, what mistakes you made, and from those mistakes, what lessons did you infer. This is the first step.

Second, think of gifts that the past year has given to you; has brought to your life, and how you are going to utilize these gifts for the betterment of life on the planet.

See, everyone is bestowed with some or other talents, some or other gifts. You need to see how are you utilizing these talents.
Are you utilizing them at all? This is what you need to point out.
Plan for this year; in the next 12 months, what are you going to do every day?!
Everyday, do meditation. Once in every three to four months take some time off and go deeper into meditation and go into silence. At least once a year, you must meditate in silence (Advanced Course), and spend some time doing some good work for the society and for everybody on the planet.
Don't think only about yourself, but do some service activity. Then you will see that whatever you want for yourself, you ask and it will come to you.
You have to do something first, then when you ask, you will get.
If you say, ‘I want only for myself, I don't want to do anything’, no, that will not work. You should do some good work in society, bring smiles on the faces of people and gain some merit. If you bring smiles on the faces of others then you have a right to demand something for yourself. Do you see what I’m saying? This is real currency.

See, if you have money then you can go shopping. If you have no money, no credit card and you go shopping, who will give you anything? You need to have some bank balance first, isn't it? So, when you do seva, your bank balance goes up. Then when you ask for whatever it is that you want, you will get it.
You can buy the whole supermarket if you have enough points.
So let us resolve to do something good in society, and let us have the confidence that whatever we need will come to us; will be given to us.
Our wish will definitely be granted. When we wish something, it will be granted.

 

 

Time has come, voices
of the good people
will become stronger
now. Waves of
spirituality will start
transforming people.
Good times are there
in front of us.

 

 

Next, you need to be ready to learn new lessons in life.
Keep the cheer, the joy and smile throughout the journey of life. Got it?
See, everyone is walking. Some are yelling, crying and walking and some are smiling and walking.
Everybody is on a conveyor belt and the belt is moving. Some are crying, some are laughing, but the conveyor belt is anyway moving.
So, it is your choice, how do you want to move on this conveyor belt of time.

See, in a car, you have a rearview mirror, isn't it?!
You have a big windshield, and there is a small rearview mirror.
Just imagine if your car’s rearview mirror is as big as the windshield and windshield is as small as the rearview mirror, what will happen to you? Can you drive? No!

Your car can teach you a lesson. What is the lesson? You need to look back only a little bit, just like that little mirror.
The rearview mirror represents the past, and the present is the windshield. The future is like the side view mirrors. So, when you drive, you will have to look to the side and to the back as well, but most of the time, you have to look in the front.
If you only keep looking at the side mirrors while driving, you will meet with an accident. So you should look front, but sometimes look at the side mirrors, and sometimes at the rearview mirror. Look a little at the past and the future, but most of the time be in the present.
What do you say?

Time has come, voices of the good people will become stronger now.
All those people who are doing bad things will come to light and their minds will change. Waves of spirituality will start transforming people. This is going to happen in the coming years. This wave will become much more predominant.
Those people who are cheating others, they will all come down from their seats of power, and then they will be exposed. People who are cheating others will be exposed, this will happen.
So, good times are there in front of us.

A saint is like a newspaper

Celebrating life with silence: A saint is like a newspaper

Guruji's Knowledge Sheet: Religion & Politics

AOL fan blog: Guruji's Knowledge Sheet: Religion & Politics

Certain questions should be made as a path

Wisdom from Sri Sri: "Certain questions should be made as a path"

European Business Group, Venue: Imperial Hotel, New Delhi, August 10, 2010.

Understanding the spirituality of politics

DNA, 9th May, 2010

H.H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Since ancient times rajgurus have counselled rulers and rulers have supported spiritual leaders

Both spirituality and politics deal with human beings. The goal of politics is to bring good governance and increase material and emotional comfort of people. The aim of spirituality is to boost morality and human values. For a country to prosper, both politics and spirituality need to go hand-in-hand.

For good governance, spirituality is very necessary. Only spirituality can invoke commitment, care and confidence. Politics devoid of spirituality creates an unethical atmosphere of situations, leads to corruption and crime, and eventually to chaos.

For example, many sikh gurus were persecuted by the state. This affected the morale of society and resulted in bad governance. And elsewhere, didn't millions suffer in Russia, China and Cambodia in the name of freeing society of religious beliefs?

Indian spirituality has given a secular ethos to the world. In fact, spirituality is ingrained in the Indian politics. 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. Mahatma Gandhi appealed to people across the board because of his spiritual approach. Spirituality brought freedom to India.

When spirituality and politics don't co-exist, then you have corrupt politicians. Spiritual people live the values, which are absolutely essential for those in governance. If leaders do not recognise the individual or universal spirit, they cannot be ethical. A leader has to live out the spiritual values. He has to be 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.

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. If a society has no spiritual values, it is chaotic and difficult to govern. Spirituality makes people honest and committed and this is necessary to create a crime-free society. When there is no official patronage, it is difficult for spirituality to survive. State patronage makes spirituality spread faster to all sections of society.

Today, both religion and politics need reform. While religion creates conflict, non spiritual societies create chaos and corruption. Religion is the banana skin, spirituality is the banana and the reason for conflict, religious and otherwise, is that people have thrown away the banana and are just holding on to the skin.

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. 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.

Politics is ALL 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. When spirituality is meshed and weaved into the polity, the country prospers.

Emulate Gandhi’s non-violence, Sri Sri to Palestinians

Emulate Gandhi’s non-violence, Sri Sri to Palestinians

Afghanistan : Bhagvad Gita & Business Schools

Afghanistan : Bhagvad Gita & Business Schools

University Felicitates Sri Sri, Budapest, Hungary

Dalai Lama says 'companies need hearts and brains'

http://www.welt.de/international/article4056461/Dalai-Lama-says-companies-need-hearts-and-brains.html

Sri Sri: Wharton Leadership Lecture, December 2008

His Holiness SriSri Ravi Shankar, Founder of the Art of Living Foundation, leads a group of students in meditation, and answers questions about the meditation process and stress relief. Shankar spoke to MBA and undergraduate students at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, as part of the Wharton Leadership Lecture series, founded by Management Professor Michael Useem.

Sri Sri's message for 2009, on December 31, 2008

Pakistan: Now or Never?

http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/2009/06/01/iran-presses-pakistan-to-curb-militant-groups/

Love Moves the World

Sri Sri at Scottish Parliament, June 2004

President Obama's foreign policy

May 28, 2009

India-US: Hazardous days ahead

T P Sreenivasan

A strange polarisation is taking place in India. Whenever President Obama says or does something prejudicial to India’s interests, the anti-US lobby attacks the UPA government for misreading the Americans.

Instead of giving Prime Minister Manmohan Singh credit for gaining ground for India by skillful diplomacy during the Bush administration, they blame him for not anticipating the reversal of trends during the next presidency.

This happened when a State Department official restated the position that India should sign the NPT and when President Obama opposed outsourcing. Why did India reach agreements with the US when it was possible that a future government in the US would disown them?

If this is indeed the case, no agreements should be reached with any country. In the case of the US, the new administration is now constrained to work around the existing agreements even if it has to distance itself from the commitments made by President Bush.

The fact is that President Obama himself was taken by surprise by the kind of issues he faced in his first hundred days. ’Keep your hands washed; cover your mouth when you cough!’ President Obama would never have thought that he would have to utter these words at his press conference to mark his first hundred days in office.

Nothing would surprise him any more as he has seen many issues he had not thought of coming to him all at once. He has also learnt not only that change in Washington comes slowly, but also that posturing is par for the course there. He has not taken long to know that the state is an ocean liner and not a speed boat and it cannot change course in a desperate hurry. His responses in this bewildering situation has to be necessarily tentative and subject to adjustments in the future.

The world misunderstood President Obama when he promised change. He has begun to say since his inauguration that many things that he wants to change cannot be done in a single term, a single presidency or in a single lifetime.

The time horizon he has in mind is much longer than the rest of the world had imagined. He can only start the journey and it may end only with a different president or a different generation. Continuity is part of the change.

The global economic crisis played a role in Obama’s election, but he had not anticipated it when he initially offered his candidature. Iraq was the issue then and the economy had appeared robust. But he found that the economy was built on shifting sand. He lost no time in taking the bull by the horns, but the surprise was that he did not get bipartisan support, which was expected at a time of national and global crisis.

The world was aghast that business was as usual on the Hill when the stimulus package was being piloted there. President Obama is proud of his accomplishments in the economy, but not content.

In foreign policy, the shift from Iraq to Afghanistan and then to Pakistan was warranted by the threat from Taliban , which diminished even the importance of capturing Osama bin Laden . The war on terror returned to the theatre of terror, but a weakened and resource starved civilian government in Pakistan did not seem willing even to provide a front line for the war.

President Zardari had no qualms about signing an agreement with the Taliban to introduce Shariat law in Swat. Though the Taliban was nothing but a foreign force, the Pakistan army had to be forced into action by the United States. The very creation of an Afpak region for special attention and the designation of Richard Holbrooke as the special representative signaled the importance in US policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The likelihood of a takeover by the Taliban and fall of Pakistan nuclear weapons in the hands of the militants was used as a cover to enhance assistance to Pakistan.

President Obama has, at the same time, allayed fears about Pakistan’s nuclear assets by saying that the military to military cooperation between the two countries will guarantee the protection of nuclear command and control mechanism. He has indirectly confirmed that the United States has a say in the management of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

This was instituted when the A Q Khan scandal broke out and it came to be known that Khan had hurt non-proliferation more than Saddam Hussein had done. If A Q Khan and Pakistan had to be let off, they had to pay a price.

President Obama has not been very innovative in his Afpak policy. The three way summit in Washington was an instant success in the sense that Prime Minister Gilani declared an all out war on the Taliban even before the summit ended. President Zardari was handsomely rewarded with an aid package, which should convey a message that he still has the support of the Americans.

India was an unseen presence at the summit as Pakistan’s world view could not be divorced from its paranoia with India.

Depending on Pakistani rulers and the army and pandering to their military and financial needs is an old American habit. If Pakistan has to fight the Taliban, it needs training in guerrilla warfare, not F-16s and warships. But the US Congress is again on the old track of handing over cash to Pakistan.

President Obama has thrown in an assertion that Pakistans obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan is misguided. But there is no insistence that no assistance that could be used against India would be supplied to Pakistan.

Even excluding India from Holbrooke’s mandate was only to accommodate Indian sensitivity. Holbrooke routinely halts in Delhi and gives gentle hints to India. India was conspicuously absent from Hillary Clinton’s Asian itinerary. President Obama thinks that India can be satisfied by pious warm words about India and its prime minister.

The Prague speech outlined President Obama’s new vision on nuclear disarmament, but there was hardly any change there. The commitment to move towards nuclear disarmament is nothing but a reaffirmation of the grand bargain in the NPT and the further steps he has suggested are old wine in new bottle.

He has no quarrel with the India-US nuclear deal, but he is in no mood to make it a part of the new dispensation. By treating the deal as a one time exception will not guarantee its faithful implementation. The appointment of the new czar of nonproliferation in the State Department does not augur well for the deal.

As far as India is concerned, the nuclear deal has already had its benefits in terms of the NSG exemption, leading to the agreements with France and Russia .

China, rather than India is President Obama’s focus in Asia. The old Bush view of India as a balancing factor in Asia is a thing of the past. The talk of a G-2 to run the world is getting more frequent in the light of the economic crisis. This is a gigantic mistake the US is making.

The US and China cannot partition the world between themselves as the victors of the World War II did in 1945. President Obama appears oblivious of Chinese perfidy and ambition to dominate the world. Walking into a Chinese embrace will endanger the US itself in the long term.

Say no to Bangalore, yes to Buffalo is the new slogan President Obama has coined in the context of outsourcing. He must know that business will go wherever there is profit and there is little that the government can do except in terms of denying tax benefits.

The president has to create jobs in Buffalo, but to suggest that Bangalore is taboo is to hurt globalisation, which has brought immense benefits to the United States.

President Obama has reappointed veteran negotiator, George Mitchell, for the Middle East, but he is yet to make his agenda clear. If he allows domestic politics and Israeli influence determine his Middle East policy, justice will be denied to Palestine again.

Getting close to Turkey may be a great idea, but the key to winning the hearts of the Muslim world lies in establishing the Palestine state and insisting that Israel should abide by international law.

In the rest of his foreign policy postures and pronouncements, President Obama has demonstrated candour and vision. Gestures to Iran and Cuba, new signals to Russia and Europe and a smile and hand shake for Venezuelas Hugo Chavez mark a change in style, if not substance.

He has neither overreacted nor made concessions to DPRK’s nuclear and missile antics. It may be true that he has not yet moved from campaign mode to governing mode, but the directions are clear and consistent with his promise of change.

India has much to be apprehensive about President Obama’s Afpak policy, nuclear agenda and outsourcing. Part of the reason for this could be the feeling in the new Administration that India got away with too many diplomatic victories during the Bush era.

India’s diplomatic efforts should be directed towards getting those victories consolidated in the days to come. We should build on our accomplishments rather than undermine the gains of the last five years. The hazards ahead are formidable, but not insurmountable.

Ambassador T P Sreenivasan served as deputy chief of mission at the Indian embassy in Washington, DC, during his distinguished career in the Indian Foreign Service.

Sri Sri on CNN: Message of Peace to Iraq

Sri Sri on peace mission in Sri Lanka

You will soon return to your homes in peace

Sri Sri on peace mission in Sri Lanka

Sri Sri on a peace mission in Sri Lanka

Sri Sri Q&A at Vishalakshi Mantap Hall (Please see both links)

Nature is a dance of Divinity
Intelligent people celebrate diversity

Sri Sri's message on Vishu (New Year)

'The remote control of your life is in your hands'