River Rejuvenation Project ..

Jai Gurudev !!

Volunteers involved in constructing recharge pits as part of Kuudvathi river rejuvenation project at Yentaganehalli village near Bangalore

Recent involvement in a River rejuvenation project in villages near Bangalore is keeping my spirit high and giving a more gratifying feeling within me !!

 

Inspired by Guruji , Art of Living volunteers are invloved in a River called Kumudvathi river rejuvenation project . The river which is dried at present totally is the focal point. The Bore water is not available even at 1200 ft underground in those villages near Bangalore around Nelamagala. 

 

Hence ,the volunteers have taken up about 6 villages , where this river was flowing to the brim once, and started constructing recharge pits and soak pits , to increase the water inflow into the ground , thereby replenishing the ground water level in over a period of 2/3 years.

 



Parallely , the villagers and the kids as well are also given life skills to manage stress and water replenishing  awareness programs . The kids are taught pranayama , yoga etc along with Drawing competions, Hair style making competitions etc. It's very nice to see the kids active participation  with full enthusiasm and interest .

 

 

 

Love & smiles...

 

Just two words !!

Jai Gurudev !!

Once the Guru addressed a group of devotees and asked them , " What is that you want in your life ? "
The group got quite excited and started probing themselves to tell what they wanted.

The Guru said, " Pls take a bit of paper and write it in just two words and hand it over to me !1"

Everyone got into action at once and presented the folded paper bit with their intials marked on top.

The Guru after a short discourse started seggregating  the chits .

He tore quite a good number of chits into pieces and threw them away. The reason being , the wants were written as a long list of wish , more than two words  . Here , the Guru's words were not followed at the first instant. So, Guru disregarded their demands totally.

Then he classified the next set as category No.1.
In this category , the chits were filled with only wants, which satisfied the Guru's instructions .
But here , all the wants were related to the individual needs like their health, their family health, wealth, kids studies , free from problems etc.

Next came the category No.2 :
Here the Guru selected the chits with the two letter wants , which are pertinent to the spiritual path as "serving the Lotus Feet of God "," Shradhha /Dedication" ," Saboori/patience" etc.
But yet this comes one step lower to the ideal category , Category  No.3 , because this also belongs to the self-centered wants/needs only though of spiritual nature.

And then top most category No.3 , which the Guru selected were only very few , only 3 chits !!
People were astonished at this and were very inquisitive on what  it would have been written in those selected 3 chits.
First thing is ,  these chits were strictly in line with the execution of Guru's instructions without any deviation.This is the prime requirement for one to be in teh spiritual path.
Secondly , the two letter wants or wish were not self centered and purely asked keeping in mind the welfare of the whole world as " All Happy" , 'Love all " ,"Help all " !!

In sanskrit , it is said as "Sarvena SukinoBhavanthu !!" meaning "All people be happy"!!


Hence the Guru concluded as " One who lives for the world , without any selfish nature ,comes under the top most class of people !!"


Which category of people do you come under ?
Can you grade yourself ?!


Love & smiles...

Why do you do the Charity ?

Jai Gurudev !!

With our age moving up , at one point of time , we feel like doing charity or do some service to the needy like Orphanages , Old Age homes or handicapped institutions , donating blood, educatig children , adopting the kids  etc. 
The service may also include other types which is spiritually based like spreading the knowledge of Truth or Self Knowledge  to people through  various spiritual techniques . The spiritual techniques may be Yoga, meditation, Breathing techniques , Prayers , Chanting etc...
Whatever may be the service , the service can be broadly classified into five types as

1. First type is :We do the service just to show off or gain recognition .
     We generally see this type of service in case of politicians or even some rich people to be in the limelight in their social circle.
     They do that because it would gain fame and popularity to them .

2.  Second type : We do the service expecting some merit in future.
It's like we do some charity or help someone because we believe that it's going to fetch some good merit to us in our future.We have the belief that if we do something good to someone , we might get back the same or in multifolds in our next birth or to our children etc.

3.Third Type is : We do the service because it gives us Joy !!
Like if we relieve someone from their troubles or problem , we feel happy . Some thing inside us becomes happy . We feel some unparalled joy sort.
Once that joy of giving joy to others is tasted , then one tends to do similar services more and more to get more joy again and again.

4. Fourth type of Service : We do the service because it is needed at that particular point of time.

Whenever the situation necessitates some immediate action to be taken either by cash or kind , then the service is offered by the individuals without any second thought. Probably , it's like ,we always wait for an opportunity to serve others and just do it , when and where the demand arises.

5. Then come the last type of service , that is , " We serve the people /world as part of our nature " .
We do not even recognise that we are doing some service to others. We just do it as though it's our part of our job or nature. We just cannot keep quiet without doing it .




So, out of the five types of service , the last type of service stands above the rest .
One can see oneself growing in the five levels of service gradually , if they consciously do it , observing their state of mind at each step.

We also can observe one interesting thing here that , the first type of service is simply exhausting , draining out all the energy  whereas the last type of service does not give any tiredness at all and gives more energy and enthusiasm rather!!

So, hope you are in one type of service ?
If so , where do you stand ?!

Love & smiles....