All Discussions Tagged 'Gandhi' - The Gandhi-King Community
2024-03-29T14:52:25Z
http://gandhiking.ning.com/forum/topic/listForTag?tag=Gandhi&feed=yes&xn_auth=no
Dismissing Sharmila in Two Jails: State & People's Goddess Mindset
tag:gandhiking.ning.com,2013-11-11:2043530:Topic:74994
2013-11-11T20:41:43.602Z
Aunty Kamala
http://gandhiking.ning.com/profile/AuntyKamala
<div class="discussion"><div class="description"><div class="xg_user_generated"><p><span>Truth seekers everywhere can only applaud Sharmila's conduct in these recent days. Sharmila is literally a prisoner of two jails: the state which has unjustly criminalized her for standing up against violence perpetrated in its name, and the prison of social concepts and norms of what is appropriate or not, in the minds of supporters around her, who have deified her, against her will.…</span></p>
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<div class="discussion"><div class="description"><div class="xg_user_generated"><p><span>Truth seekers everywhere can only applaud Sharmila's conduct in these recent days. Sharmila is literally a prisoner of two jails: the state which has unjustly criminalized her for standing up against violence perpetrated in its name, and the prison of social concepts and norms of what is appropriate or not, in the minds of supporters around her, who have deified her, against her will.</span></p>
<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Deification of people who use pure and noble means, is a natural tendency in the human breast. There is a universal inner recognition that the truth such people adhere to, is eternal, alone is real, and if need be, worth dying for. In Gandhi's time, world wide, he became identified with the universal ideals that he was wielding in an effort to transform himself and Indian society. Author Pearl S. Buck said of him:</font></font></p>
<blockquote><p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font>``The name of Gandhi, even in his lifetime, has passed beyond the meaning of an individual to the meaning of a way of living in our troubled modern world. In the midst of unrestrained and evil force, what for me has been of the greatest significance is the reaffirmation of this way of living. I am glad to be able to say here, upon this page, that Mr. Gandhi’s steady persistence in his chosen way has given me, among millions of others, courage to resist, by that greatest of all resistances, unconquerable, unwavering personal determination, the growth of tyranny in the world.”<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote1anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/dismissing-sharmila-in-two-jails-state-people-s-goddess-mindset?xg_source=activity#sdendnote1sym" id="sdendnote1anc"><sup>i</sup></a></font></font></font></p>
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<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Gandhi strove mightily to resist the deification that the world put upon him. He was able to keep his personal liberty sharp-edged, for its best purpose – his search for truth. Again and again he rejected the title of Mahatma, and the God-like status which was ascribed to him, by people who superimposed upon him, their own imagination of the pure ideals he followed and confused him with actually being them. Ten days before his death, he again said,</font></font></p>
<blockquote><p><font color="#222222">“<font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font>I am not yet a Mahatma. If people call me a Mahatma, what is it to me? I am only an ordinary man.”<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote2anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/dismissing-sharmila-in-two-jails-state-people-s-goddess-mindset?xg_source=activity#sdendnote2sym" id="sdendnote2anc"><sup>ii</sup></a></font></font></font></p>
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<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">As an independent human being, Sharmila undertook her Fast, in obedience to her conscience. As the days turned into weeks, then months, then years, and now almost 1.5 decades, her personal reason – obedience to the truth within her – has been ursurped by family, supporters, and society, to the point where, she is expected to continue the Fast, no matter what.</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">When Sharmila began this effort, she was an unmarried woman, 28 years old. As time wore on, the public imagination began to deify her. She became idealized. Virginal, pure, self-sacrificing. No longer fully human – ½ god, for many. As rumours, fired with imagination, and concepts of ideals grew, watching her effort, she was depicted as a Goddess who has manifested as Sharmila, to save the Manipuri people. IRON IROM!</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Now, thats really imaginative! No one saw her like this originally, when she single-mindedly began her effort. Many of her family members permanently deserted her, due to social status reasons then. But her continued unending effort, her inner strength, made this type of imaginative distortion, deification, superimposed upon her, seem justified.</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Recently, her brother, Singhajit, seemed to reaffirm his belief that Sharmila's decision to Fast, is no longer hers, but that she is now a symbol of the finest aspirations of the people, which she must serve, saying to her:</font></font></p>
<blockquote><p><font color="#222222">“<font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font>The sanctity of the cause that you have taken up, the honour of the land and the prestige of the people are far superior to the interest of the family."<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote3anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/dismissing-sharmila-in-two-jails-state-people-s-goddess-mindset?xg_source=activity#sdendnote3sym" id="sdendnote3anc"><sup>iii</sup></a></font></font></font></p>
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<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Meanwhile, Sharmila has said again and again, that while she will not give up her effort, she is like all of us. And like all of us, she longs to live a simple normal life, without being punished and criminalized by the state for standing up for love as being the way human beings are supposed to relate to each other. She wants to marry, and enjoy the simple things of life that we all take for granted. Freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, being some of the most basic.</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Gandhi was able to insistently keep his personal liberty to think and do as he chose. This included experiments with his brahmacharya at one phase in his quest for truth, and testing his own purity. Love wasn't even the issue. Fortunately, no one was hurt or exploited. Later he recognized his folly. But no one mentioned anything about `honor killing' of Gandhi for those acts.</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">But for Sharmila?</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Our beloved world sister is facing innumerable obstacles. Last month, upon the orders of the Indian Supreme Court, the National Human Rights Commission of India finally went to Manipur and met with Irom Sharmila, other people, and groups. They concluded that Irom Sharmila's basic human rights were being denied, that she was being held and treated as a criminal, when she was not that, but a person in obedience to conscience. They recommended that she be given free access to visitors. The very least that can be done under such circumstances.</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">One would hope that such august recommendations would be immediately acted upon. But that is all that has happened so far. Meanwhile, November 5, 2013, Sharmila's 14th year of Fast has begun.</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Somewhere around 3 years ago, through correspondence, Sharmila and a man named Desmond Coutinho felt a deep connection, and seem to have fallen in love with one another. Mr. Coutinho pledged his life, and all that he has to her help and cause. He is a social worker, of Indian origins, from UK and Africa. They have never had any sort of normal relationship, Sharmila is a State prisoner, they can at best meet in public courts. Sharmila announced to the world that he was her fiance: the boats began to rock.</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Despite the fact that Irom Sharmila has independently taken on the awakening of the people in her prayerful Fast, and has done more than any man in Manipuri history for Peace, for Manipuri society, for which she was regaled as a Goddess, when it came to Coutinho, she is regarded as a woman, who is held subjected to all the culture bound conditioning that area holds. This includes, not being able or allowed to marry or associate with men whom the family disapproves of. Mr. Coutinho is one such association.</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">At what age can a woman be allowed to make her own choice? She's 42 now.</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Shockingly, just two days ago, on her way to the fortnightly hearing, Sharmila declared to the press and NDTV that those who claimed to be her staunch supporters were threatening to `honour kill' her if she persists in her relationship with Coutinho. Worse, her brother, Singhajit, told the press that:</font></font></p>
<blockquote><p><font color="#222222"> <font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font>"I am a trustee member of the Just Peace Foundation, but let me speak in my capacity as the brother of Sharmila and not as a member of the JPF. </font></font></font></p>
<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font>"As a brother, I had told Sharmila that if her affair with Desmond Coutinho is going to influence her and constrain her to change her stand, then I would be ready to sacrifice my role as a father to my children and spend the rest of my days in jail".<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote4anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/dismissing-sharmila-in-two-jails-state-people-s-goddess-mindset?xg_source=activity#sdendnote4sym" id="sdendnote4anc"><sup>iv</sup></a></font></font></font></p>
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<p><font color="#222222"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">What does this mean? Is it a threat to Coutinho's life if Sharmila changes her mind about continuing the Fast? Is it a threat to Sharmila's? What is the normal legal proceeding when someone threatens a life? She is gentle. Like Gandhi, doesn't press charges.</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#222222" face="Times New Roman, serif">What is amazing, is that when Sharmila undertook her Fast initially, which was to her DEATH, there was no uproar from society. Her effort was seen to be serving the ideals they all cherished. The message from her supporters seems to be, `<em><strong>We will hold you as a Goddess, whether or not you like it, but, if you step down from the pedestal we insist you stand on, we will kill you.'</strong></em></font></p>
<p><font color="#222222">The Rebelling Reluctant Goddess, is now becoming increasingly dismissed by her</font> <font color="#222222">own</font> <font color="#222222">supporters, publicly, in the press:</font> <font color="#222222">It is alarming to note the new tones coming from</font> <font color="#222222">the</font> <font color="#222222">JPF- the Just Peace Foundation</font><font color="#222222">'s statements about Irom Sharmila.</font> <font color="#222222">In an interview,</font></p>
<blockquote><p><span>``Sharmila also claimed her protest [...] has been hijacked by the very people in-charge of her campaign [the JPF]. The activist says she is not even allowed to donate money from her international prizes to causes like the Uttarakhand flash-floods tragedy.</span></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font>In its defence, the organisation [JPF] says the primary problem is their communication gap, given the restrictions on meeting Irom Sharmila, who is under judicial custody in Manipur. Babloo Loitongbam of the Just Peace Foundation said, “Sometimes there is a tendancy to make a mountain out of a molehill.”<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote5anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/dismissing-sharmila-in-two-jails-state-people-s-goddess-mindset?xg_source=activity#sdendnote5sym" id="sdendnote5anc"><sup>v</sup></a></font></font></p>
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<p><font face="Times New Roman, serif">What does this mean? Whose tendency? Where? Sharmila's? So, the activist that got all the money for the JPF, which doesn't listen to her about how to use that money; the activist who is insistent on stepping off the Goddess platform in her dedication to truth, and dared to fall in love with a foreigner, is now a hysterical, weak little woman, making mountains out of molehills?</font></p>
<blockquote><p><span>``On Sharmila likening some of the people as the Taliban, Singhajit said it could be due to poor vocabulary on her part. "It was a family issue and blaming CSOs would be out of place and inappropriate," he added.</span><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote6anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/dismissing-sharmila-in-two-jails-state-people-s-goddess-mindset?xg_source=activity#sdendnote6sym" id="sdendnote6anc"><sup>vi</sup></a></p>
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<p><span>Because she seeks to keep what is left of her personal liberty clear of the webs of false concepts of ideals and imaginations in those around her, her words are now due to her `poor vocabulary', and `out of place' and `inappropriate.'</span></p>
<p><span>We haven't heard these dismissive statements before. Does Sharmila get to refute these charges coming from the second prison?</span></p>
<p><span>Let Sharmila meet Coutinho and get to know him, herself. She's 42 years old. And in so doing, maybe the family will get to know him too. If she breaks the engagement, or decides to marry, its her decision. No one questioned her maturity when she entered the Fast. But now, as the Goddess insistently steps down from the pedestal, her perception of reality is alluded to.</span></p>
<p><font color="#222222">Here in Sweden,</font> <font color="#222222">and many parts of the world,</font> <font color="#222222">there is a rising distaste within the</font> <font color="#222222">general</font> <font color="#222222">population for immigrants coming with feudal mindsets, that would actually consider killing their female family members if they try to have relations or marry outside the fold. There have been several `honour killings', and the fact is, no matter how you</font> <font color="#222222">try to</font> <font color="#222222">wrap your mind around it, to kill someone, to take away their life, their experience on Earth, because you disagree with their views,</font> <font color="#222222">whether by war, or sick concepts of family honour, is inhuman,</font> <font color="#222222">and therefore, truly uncivilised.</font><font color="#222222">Disown if you want, but don't play God.</font></p>
<p><span>The forces for real law and order in India need to get right on this one. India looks more feudal than the stone ages.</span></p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote1sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/dismissing-sharmila-in-two-jails-state-people-s-goddess-mindset?xg_source=activity#sdendnote1anc" id="sdendnote1sym">i</a>Willey, P.K. (2010) Earth Ethics of M.K Gandhi with teachings from Holy Mother Amma: an Introduction: 11</p>
<div id="sdendnote2"><p class="sdendnote"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote2sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/dismissing-sharmila-in-two-jails-state-people-s-goddess-mindset?xg_source=activity#sdendnote2anc" id="sdendnote2sym">ii</a>Ibid: 892.</p>
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<div id="sdendnote3"><p class="sdendnote"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote3sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/dismissing-sharmila-in-two-jails-state-people-s-goddess-mindset?xg_source=activity#sdendnote3anc" id="sdendnote3sym">iii</a>The Sangai Express. (Friday, November 8, 2013) TSE follows up on Honor Killing Threats Charge. Urs:<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.thesangaiexpress.com/tseitm-32225-tse-follows-up-on-honour-killing-threats-charge/">http://www.thesangaiexpress.com/tseitm-32225-tse-follows-up-on-hono...</a> As seen Nov. 10, 2013.</p>
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<div id="sdendnote4"><p class="sdendnote"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote4sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/dismissing-sharmila-in-two-jails-state-people-s-goddess-mindset?xg_source=activity#sdendnote4anc" id="sdendnote4sym">iv</a>Ibid.</p>
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<div id="sdendnote5"><p class="sdendnote"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote5sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/dismissing-sharmila-in-two-jails-state-people-s-goddess-mindset?xg_source=activity#sdendnote5anc" id="sdendnote5sym">v</a>The Sangai Express. (Saturday, November 9, 2013) Faced Honour Threats, says Sharmila. Courtesy, NDTV. Url:<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.thesangaiexpress.com/tseitm-32191-faced-honour-killing-threats-says-sharmila/">http://www.thesangaiexpress.com/tseitm-32191-faced-honour-killing-t...</a> As Seen Nov. 10, 2013.</p>
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<div id="sdendnote6"><p class="sdendnote"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote6sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/dismissing-sharmila-in-two-jails-state-people-s-goddess-mindset?xg_source=activity#sdendnote6anc" id="sdendnote6sym">vi</a>The Sangai Express. (Friday, November 8, 2013) TSE follows up on Honor Killing Threats Charge.</p>
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What is Your View of Spirituality?
tag:gandhiking.ning.com,2013-03-27:2043530:Topic:69100
2013-03-27T13:30:56.841Z
Aunty Kamala
http://gandhiking.ning.com/profile/AuntyKamala
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<p class="western"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Duty is action towards Truth, and Truth is God. </span></strong></em></span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">That to me is the root of what I hold to be spirituality. I think this discussion is important, if only to make us pause and reflect on what we really…</span></p>
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<p class="western"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">Duty is action towards Truth, and Truth is God. </span></strong></em></span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">That to me is the root of what I hold to be spirituality. I think this discussion is important, if only to make us pause and reflect on what we really prioritize and ethically value in life.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">Duty to me, is a righteous path, and known through our conscience. It is the actions that we perform towards actualizing truth.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">In our conscience, we touch the moral laws that govern us as a whole, as one human family. Our conscience serves as our own faucet, our own way to tap the universal well of our inescapable Oneness. And it is there that we experience and know our true equality with one another. For we are not these bodies made of clay – we are the activating FIRE, the life within them!</span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">If we look behind every duty that we conceive, we see an ideal. These ideals are found in our hearts, what we deeply cherish as being important for us all. Peace. Love. Compassion. Justice. Honesty. Fearlessness. When we contemplate our ideal, the means to do our duty becomes clarified. Through our conscience, we guide ourselves in our walk towards actualizing these ideals in our lives. A dutiful Mother. A dutiful Wife, and dutiful Father, dutiful Husband. A dutiful son and daughter.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">There is the duty of a true friend, and that of a disciple, a student. Of an employee, and a boss, a nurse, doctor, teacher, garbage collector, store clerk... In every relationship conceivable, it is bound, defined, known, through duty.</span><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4"><br/></span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">Even things have a duty, a dharma, a righteous path. When the children were small, as we cleaned the house, I would explain the importance of keeping things in order: the role of the rug is to lie clean and flat. It's maker put a fringe on it, so that that fringe would also add to its beauty, so following the intention of the maker, we know how to treat the rug...duty can be known and described in so many ways.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">The Home can be our greatest teacher of Duty, of Art and Beauty. Of all ethical qualities. It is when the family unit is impregnated with the love of duty, as Oriental family life is, that society moves with more functionality. I say Oriental, as family members, in the ideal held, cooperate selflessly to serve one another, working as a united entity. Of course, there are many public exceptions, particularly in the millions that are now embracing a consumer lifestyle. But in the norm, in the poorer people, in rural life, I have seen it is so. I know of many, large extended families, living together, as One. Imagine the joy of being with 30+ people, that love and support each other fully! In such a grouping, life is centred around loving, and therefore, happiness.</span></p>
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<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">We hear of it now, with the famous Arab hospitality, extended to the guest entering the wretched shacks of the Iraqi people. Their society and country has been decimated by the US war upon them for the last decade. Yet, where the family unit has kept itself intact, they are not destroyed, despite very heavy loses.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">In the Orient, we see elder sons, desperately concerned as to how to fulfil their dutiful obligations to parents and family economically, when they are older. Again and again, we see and hear, and read of older sons who went to labor in the work force in humble positions, so that younger siblings could have the benefit and advantages of formal schooling. They sacrificed their self interest , to create personal careers in society, in the dutiful responsibility to those younger than them for a lifetime. This is a very common story and phenomenon that I have seen in India and also among many African families. It was in the Occident before heavy industrialisation and the turning of society and individuals in competitive market strategies.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">We cannot deny that in the Occident, with the socialized and deliberate break down of the family unit, by and large – and there are of course many extended families there as well, but - by and large - in the ideal held, it's each man or woman for himself, or maybe one or two with them, the rest be damned. In such a society, life becomes centred around the individuals' climb to material acquisition, power, and/or acclaim in the eyes of others, or, to the individual's personal right to their own career and lifestyle. This has brought about an extreme imbalance in our personal lives which subsequently has made our social lives chaotic.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">Holy Mother Amma noted:</span></p>
<blockquote><p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">``Human beings are supposed to be highly evolved. Even animals have discipline in their lives. A lion will never eat grass. A deer or an elephant will not eat meat. They do not change their instinctual routine, but human beings will do anything indiscriminately. We misuse our freedom of choice. If we do not live up to our intended purpose of spiritual evolution and act accordingly, but instead act in an undisciplined and immature way, we are undoubtedly worse than animals. If we continue to act in an undisciplined way, it will only help pave the way for our destruction.”<a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote1anc" href="#sdendnote1sym" id="sdendnote1anc"><sup>i</sup></a></span></p>
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<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">Gandhi said that Rights follow Duty. And Rights without Duty, are empty. He said,</span></p>
<blockquote><p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">``The true source of rights is duty. If we all discharge our duties, rights will not be far to seek. If leaving duties unperformed we run after rights, they escape us like a `will-o'-the wisp'. The more we pursue them, the father they fly...action is duty: fruit is its right.”<a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote2anc" href="#sdendnote2sym" id="sdendnote2anc"><sup>ii</sup></a></span></p>
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<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">In the Occident, we rely on government to take responsibility for our handicapped, orphaned, mentally challenged, ill, blind, deaf, maimed and elderly. Peter Maurin, of the Catholic Worker Movement in the US, begun in the 1930's foresaw the dangerous dehumanizing effects for human beings and community life, when abdicating responsibility towards one another and giving it to the government, through taxes. Life itself and time, become meaningful only as money. We are at the screeching apex of this form of society now, and what do we have?</span></p>
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<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">It is because many try to do their duty to the extent that they do, all over the world, that society functions at all.</span></p>
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<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">I do feel that this selflessness, dutiful responsibility, is something we all have to learn more about. </span></p>
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<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">This to me is spirituality. </span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">This to me, is real worship, is sadhana.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">I am not interested in much else. Not asanas or skill in holding different postures, or breathing and breath holding techniques, or rituals of chanting and hours spent in meditation, not scripture spouting and scholarship, but the constant inner reflection on duty, its manifestation in our lives, and response to it. </span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">What passes today as spirituality, with techniques galore, and expensive retreats, jewellery and clothes, morning and evening rituals, eating nor not eating this or that, and all kinds of stuff, is to me, mere fluff, if the central focus on duty is absent. </span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">I do see some ritualized behaviours prescribed, some various techniques taught, as useful to learning to control the mind, to focus our energies to open our heart to see duty clearly, and to that extent valuable. </span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">But, I see these prescriptions as a universal phenomenon, and cannot hold one as superior or inferior to another: The Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Bahai, (even atheist friends, and schools in science have found and devised means) - all the methods of gaining self-control and cultivating awareness and love of God, which is truth and righteousness, through duty are equally relevant to me. </span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">I love the Christian compassion in action. I love the garlanding of one's beloved deity in Hindu Temples and intensely deep psychology and refined sciences – that have become a way of life - everything about Sanathana Dharma. I love the practice of Namaz, remembering 5 x a day, that we are all equally ignorant, sustained solely by a love and truth whose conception is beyond us; I love the ethics I find in Judaism; the well-presented psychology and meditation techniques of Buddhism; the far-thought out self-control in reverence and respect for all life found in Jainism. I love the brotherhood and righteous community responsibility found in Sikhism; the universal teachings and new spiritual administration model found in Bahai, which will, most certainly become universally adopted, for its degree of equality, genuine respect for the individual, and community encompassing caringness...I love the hard stance of my atheist friends who still hold the same God as me, truth, though they see it not, I am always pleased when science proves what I have been hearing Holy Mother Amma say, and what I have found in the truthful ethics and teachings of other faiths, and know to be so from my own intuition and experience.</span></p>
<p class="western"></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">But for myself, I like what Tagore said,</span></p>
<blockquote><p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">``I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I woke and found that life was duty. I acted, and behold, duty is joy."</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="western"></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">My mother, who was Indian, kept this up in our home while we were growing up in the USA. I read it daily. It is very important that children be surrounded by truly meaningful and beautiful things while they are growing. That alone may save them, when horrendous pressures come to bear upon them.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">We underestimate what pressure is. Its quite an internal matter! Holy Mother Amma once commented that very few can survive, many collapse from the pressure of: ``Your so handsome, so Brilliant.” flatteries. This comment was for those seeking to follow a course of personal conduct that leads to the realization of Truth. And should not we all be doing so?</span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4">For me, duty and beauty, are seen in each other, for duty is our actions towards truth, and truth is what is really beautiful.</span></p>
<p class="western"></p>
<div id="sdendnote1"><p class="sdendnote-western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote1sym" href="#sdendnote1anc" id="sdendnote1sym">i</a> Amritanandamayi, Mata. Awaken Children: 3: 151. M.A. Mission Trust, Kollam, Kerala</span></p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote2"><p class="sdendnote-western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-4"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote2sym" href="#sdendnote2anc" id="sdendnote2sym">ii</a>Gandhi, M.K. Young India. January 8, 1925. Age 55.</span></p>
</div>
<p class="western"></p>
<div id="sdendnote2"><p class="sdendnote-western"></p>
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Bayard Rustin, Gandhi, and King
tag:gandhiking.ning.com,2013-03-13:2043530:Topic:68273
2013-03-13T00:01:36.455Z
Cole Manley
http://gandhiking.ning.com/profile/ColeManley
<p>I wanted to start an online discussion on Bayard Rustin, someone who learned from Gandhi and instructed King in the African-American struggle for freedom in the United States.</p>
<p>For a class with Professor Carson this quarter I spent much time and energy creating a blog on Rustin's life related to nonviolent resistance at the following link: <a href="http://csmanleybrustin.wordpress.com/">http://csmanleybrustin.wordpress.com/</a>.</p>
<p>Please do visit the site, and let's start a…</p>
<p>I wanted to start an online discussion on Bayard Rustin, someone who learned from Gandhi and instructed King in the African-American struggle for freedom in the United States.</p>
<p>For a class with Professor Carson this quarter I spent much time and energy creating a blog on Rustin's life related to nonviolent resistance at the following link: <a href="http://csmanleybrustin.wordpress.com/">http://csmanleybrustin.wordpress.com/</a>.</p>
<p>Please do visit the site, and let's start a discussion about Rustin. I would be interested to learn more about Gandhi's life, as well,to see how it connected and diverged from that of Bayard.</p>
<p>Peace and justice,</p>
<p>Cole Manley</p>
Gandhi, Amma, and the Newtown School Children Massacre, Dec. 14, 2012
tag:gandhiking.ning.com,2012-12-17:2043530:Topic:65313
2012-12-17T18:37:35.610Z
Aunty Kamala
http://gandhiking.ning.com/profile/AuntyKamala
<p></p>
<div><p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></br><br></br></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">The Newtown CT, USA massacre of innocents, Dec. 14, 2012 has struck deeply into the heart of our country's soul. For everything has a soul, or spirit, call it the life-force, whatever you will, that leaves or diffuses, when it is dead.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">The Mahatmas, the…</span></p>
</div>
<p></p>
<div><p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"/><br/></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">The Newtown CT, USA massacre of innocents, Dec. 14, 2012 has struck deeply into the heart of our country's soul. For everything has a soul, or spirit, call it the life-force, whatever you will, that leaves or diffuses, when it is dead.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">The Mahatmas, the Great Souls of this Earth have always been a beacon for all mankind. To the countries they are born in, they have had sacred missions in directing the transformation of the Nation Soul. They succeed to the extent that their countrymen could grasp the light of the ideals they adhered to. Some Great Souls, whose inner breadth has become so infinitely broad, have come for the planetary soul. <a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1212714719?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="350" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1212714719?profile=RESIZE_480x480" width="350" class="align-right"/></a></span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Mahatma Gandhi was first and foremost, a spiritual aspirant, who held that:</span></p>
<blockquote><p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">``Human life, being an undivided whole, no line could ever be drawn between its different compartments, nor between ethics and politics.”</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">He laboured, with universal ideals, uniquely tailored to India's context, to forge a united nation of diverse princely states, enhancing the quality of `unity in diversity' in her Nation soul. His breadth grew to encompass the entire planet, and his earnest strivings for Truth remain in the legacy of our Planet Soul, to all nations. All people feel the resonating `twang' his words sound to the heart of truth within us.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><span class="font-size-4">Holy Mother Amma, known also as Mata Amritanandamayi, and simply, Amma (which means Mother in South India), is living today; a woman Mahatma or Great Soul. Worldwide she is lauded for endless humanitarian activities, seen and unseen, in every sphere of societal endeavour, as well as for H</span><span class="font-size-4">er embrace that she offers to everyone who comes to meet her, which has caused her to be known as the `Hugging Saint,' in the western world.</span><span class="font-size-4"> </span></span></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><font color="#000000"> </font><span class="font-size-4"><font color="#000000"><font size="3">Regarding her embracing of people, Amma has said,</font></font></span></span></p>
<blockquote><p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><font color="#000000"><font size="3">``I don’t see if it is a man or a woman. I don’t see anyone different from my own self. A continuous stream of love flows from me to all of creation. This is my inborn nature. The duty of a doctor is to treat patients. In the same way, my duty is to console those who are suffering.”</font></font><sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote1anc" href="#sdendnote1sym" id="sdendnote1anc"><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><sup>i</sup></font></font></a></sup></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1212715179?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1212715179?profile=original" width="320" class="align-left"/></a></span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">The Marthoma Cristostem of Kerala is an orthrodox Christian order begun by St. Thomas when he came to India after Jesus' passing. The Bishop of this order publicly acknowledged Amma's spiritual stature, when on her 57<sup>th</sup> birthday, he proclaimed,</span></p>
<blockquote><p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">``While I always knew that God had a son, I didn't know he had a daughter. I have found in Amma, he has a <font size="3">daughter also.”</font><sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote2anc" href="#sdendnote2sym" id="sdendnote2anc"><font size="3"><sup>ii</sup></font></a></sup></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><font color="#000000"><font size="3">D</font></font></span><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><span class="font-size-4">r. Jane Goodall, internationally recognized for the awareness she has brought to humanity of primates and their necessary habitats, presented Amma in Geneva with the 2002 Gandhi-King Award for Non-violence and said</span>,</font></font></span></p>
<blockquote><p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><font color="#000000"><font size="3">``She stands here in front of us. God’s love in a human body.”</font></font><font color="#000000"><font size="3"> </font></font><sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote3anc" href="#sdendnote3sym" id="sdendnote3anc"><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><sup>iii</sup></font></font></a></sup></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Holy Mother Amma has come in service to the planetary soul. To assist us in the re-establishment of righteousness, in our personal, familial, community, and national awareness. She has said,</span></p>
<blockquote><p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">``If we fail to restore dharma (righteousness), all of our efforts to establish world peace will be in vain.”<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote4anc" href="#sdendnote4sym" id="sdendnote4anc"><sup>iv</sup></a></sup></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="western"></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Speaking of Herself, she has said,</span></p>
<blockquote><p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">``… Amma sees the whole world as a flower. Each petal represents a nation. If one petal is infested with pests, it will affect the other petals as well. The beauty of the whole flower suffers. It is the responsibility of each and every one of us to protect and nurture this flower. Therefore all the nations of the world should advance together, hand in hand, sharing and adopting each others' worthy contributions and examples.”<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote5anc" href="#sdendnote5sym" id="sdendnote5anc"><sup>v</sup></a></sup></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Over the few centuries of America's birth, we have striven hard to cultivate and imbue unique qualities into our Nation Soul. In this tremendous task, we took the teachings of some great minds that lived with us. We took the highest ideals that inspired our founding fathers. We insured their reality, which is to say, we <em>cultivated the virtues their ideals gave us. </em>This happened when we heeded Abe Lincoln, had the civil war, and followed Dr. King, and stood up for civil rights. When we saw the invaluable beauty John Muir made us realize was our country's real treasure, and made national parks out of some of our pristine wilderness areas. When we read Thoreau and began non-violent civil disobedience when we felt the ideals of our Nation Soul had been offended. Charity is another quality that was enhanced in our Nation Soul by Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin and many more.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">The pure and positive ideals that have lit the lives of all of our citizens, gave our nation the unique Soul quality of being a nation with the ideal of social equality, regardless or race, religion or creed, and later, gender. Of qualities of helpfulness to ourselves and other nations in times of need. Of a democratic spirit, invested in our citizenry. To a very real extent, we have been able to practice a sense of human brotherhood that is thirsted for, all over the planet. Although often hypocritically and socially denied, this pure ideal is one of the great gifts of the American Soul to the sphere of Nations.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">For every nation, its real investment, its real treasure, lies in its children. Another gem in our Nation Soul, is freedom of opportunity for our children. To be born in America was to have the chance, girl or boy, to learn to express yourself, to expect opportunity.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">With the massacre on Dec. 14<sup>th</sup>, of 20 innocent first graders and 8 adult teachers and caretakers, by a young man, just out of his teens, the pity of nations all over the world arose for us. Condolences poured in, from everywhere.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Our glorious country, in her fine robes of wealth and materialism's majestic might, has revealed again, that something, many things, are terribly, terribly wrong underneath the would-be appearance, that things are not going at all well, especially for the children of the land. That, in the least, we are somehow damaging that great American Soul, that so enthused the world with hope in by-gone decades.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Nearly a century ago, Abdul Baha, the beloved Master of the Bahai faith told us:</span></p>
<blockquote><p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">``If love and agreement are manifest in a single family, that family will advance, become illumined and spiritual; but if enmity and hatred exist within it destruction and dispersion are inevitable. This is likewise true of a city. If those who dwell within it manifest a spirit of accord and fellowship it will progress steadily and human conditions become brighter whereas through enmity and strife it will be degraded and its inhabitants scattered. In the same way the people of a nation develop and advance toward civilization and enlightenment through love and accord, and are disintegrated by war and strife. Finally, this is true of humanity itself in the aggregate.”</font></font><sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote6anc" href="#sdendnote6sym" id="sdendnote6anc"><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><sup>vi</sup></font></font></a></sup></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1212715360?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="350" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1212715360?profile=RESIZE_480x480" width="350" class="align-right"/></a></span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">For those of us who were birthed in that land, in those New England woods, the wound is particularly deep. For that was where we first touched the breast of Mother Earth, as called America. A country is not only the collective soul of its people, but the cherished earth they walk and live upon, that sustains them. Mother Earth is the great nurturer of everyone, everywhere, who walks upon Her. Her breasts are an open fount, for all Her children, everywhere. From Her we absorb qualities and virtues of open-handedness, selflessness, endurance and the hope of spring. Her own life, spawned through patient, toiling generations of nurturing, through the ages and destinies of people, had found new form in the innocent babes of Sandy Hook Elementary School. And these beautiful budding babes, were totally, meaninglessly, wantonly, desecrated. It is incomprehensible.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">And yet, we have the painful duty, to try to comprehend.<a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1212715985?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1212715985?profile=original" width="191" class="align-right"/></a></span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">The Dalai Lama has noted to us that:</span></p>
<blockquote><p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">``Each individual's future is entirely dependent upon the rest of humanity.”</span></p>
<p class="western"></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">We have a grim responsibility to bear facts, that we cannot escape. A pain, that media's loud and glitzy Christmas this year, will not cause us to forget. There is a past upon which we stand now in the present. How do we go forward in a way that will address the entire gamut of issues that have brought the capacities for evil, violence, and mental illness, into the air we breathe?</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Years ago, Mahatma Gandhi, deeply crushed by President Truman's use of the atom bomb on thousands upon thousands of innocents in Nagsaki and Hiroshima said sadly,</span></p>
<blockquote><p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">``The atom bomb has deadened the finest feelings which have sustained mankind for ages. It has resulted for the time being in the soul of Japan being destroyed. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see.”<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote7anc" href="#sdendnote7sym" id="sdendnote7anc"><sup>vii</sup></a></sup></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">We all know that a brutality has been unleashed on many poorer nations and peoples from our country, for reasons that are not clear, despite explanations given. President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in the 1950's:</span></p>
<blockquote><p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">“A military-industrial complex,employed its considerable economic and political influence to encourage American military involvements around the globe.”<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote8anc" href="#sdendnote8sym" id="sdendnote8anc"><sup>viii</sup></a></sup></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">In his last public message to Americans, at age 77, on October 21, 1946, Gandhi advised the government and citizens to:</span></p>
<blockquote><p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">``Dislodge the money-God called Mammon from the throne and find a corner for poor God. I think America has a very big future but in spite of what is said to the contrary, it has a dismal future if it swears by Mammon. Mammon has never been known to be a friend of any of us to the last. He is always a false friend.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote9anc" href="#sdendnote9sym" id="sdendnote9anc"><sup>ix</sup></a></sup></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">We each have the birth-right and duty to know who and what we are in this vast panorama of stars and unfolding universes and solar systems. Reality is so much broader that we can even think of. For Gandhi, that infinite expansiveness of being that pervades all, is Truth, is Reality, and does so with Love; all this, Gandhi termed `God.' Gandhi tells us:</span></p>
<blockquote><p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">``If God is as vast and boundless as the ocean, how can a tiny drop like man imagine what He is?” <sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote10anc" href="#sdendnote10sym" id="sdendnote10anc"><sup>x</sup></a></sup></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">The actions of our leaders and their administrations somehow, are the actions our our country, of all of us collectively, on the world scene. New-agers are saying the Newtown massacre is `karma', the experience that comes back to us from actions done in immediate or distant pasts.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Holy Mother Amma's teachings have shown that karma is much more subtle that we are capable of comprehending. She advises us that it is better not to think in terms of divine retributions, but to put our most positive and helpful lights on any given situation, to try practically with the power of our efforts, to be of benefit to others.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">We always felt the shining glitter of our country would prove us otherwise, with universal education, TV, and medical, scientific and technological advances. But, it hasn't. We are victims of a system of greed. For long, too long, we have let the greed of others dictate to us what to buy, wear, drink, eat and feel. It is greed that has directed our education, to the point, that we, the educated, have great difficulty thinking out of the pretty boxes that have been painted and created, <i>with our educations,</i> that all serve the structures that keep greed, and its progeny in place. The status quo.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">We have been told who and what we are; that we are instinct driven, primitive beings, just on the verge of eating each other. And we act accordingly, as our lawsuits attest.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">We all look with bewilderment to the future. The freedoms and guarantees we enjoyed with Nature, are lost to our children. No clean air. Thousands upon thousands of children now have asthma, as we have allowed greed to pollute the air we all breathe.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Some sources estimate that 20 million children in the US, numerically almost the entire population of Australia, are on prescribed psychiatric drugs.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote11anc" href="#sdendnote11sym" id="sdendnote11anc"><sup>xi</sup></a></sup> We have no clean rivers. No clean food. Pollution, even nuclear, and genetic pollution jeapodizing health and security. No safe neighbourhood. Pollution of our minds has gone unchecked.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">The licensing of unbridled greed has taken us away from a relationship of thankfulness to the Earth we walk upon, by taking food production out of our hands. This has destroyed our local economies, our communities, and our health.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">An unbridled media has taken our innocent young girls and boys, and taught them that they are their bodies, that their sexual attractiveness especially for girls and young women, is their biggest virtue.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">And this has destroyed the sacred balance of the relations between men and women, has destroyed the sanctity of family life, the home, the satisfactions of growing old and being elders, has destroyed our societies.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Media has perverted the minds of our children, with games and images of violence.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">And the killer of these young children, Adam Lanza, was just out of his teens. He was not alone, he was the response and result of a society, which has allowed itself to be driven by greed, lust, and intoxication, as goals of life and pleasures.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">There is an ethic in demonization. Its time we allow ourselves to demonize that which has destroyed us: Greed. Intoxicants. Lust. There was a time when America was a dry country. The majority of people agreed that alcohol was detrimental to the finer functioning of society and it was prohibited until 1931.</span></p>
<p class="western"></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Holy Mother Amma often tells the story of a Special Olympics Race for children with Down's Syndrome. Urged by their `normal' caretakers, the children lined up on the track, and at the sound of the gun, began to run to the finish line. As parents whooped, and the crowd egged, several of the children fanned into lead positions. Suddenly one child fell, and began crying. Immediately, the runners in the lead stopped, and went back, and picked up their fallen friend. Holding his hands, they all walked across the finish line together, and turned to face the bleachers, with delight and victory evident on their faces, ``WE WON!”</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">We must come to realize that there is no real march forward; if we leave one individual behind, we will pay a heavy price. We need to connect the dots that brought about the tragedy of personality in the murderer, Adam Lanza. With truthful awareness we will start rebuilding the real American society. The one that is in our hearts. The one that is in our Soul, our Nation Soul, that all the leaders of the world sent their condolences of pity too. We have to bring and bend our explorations in science, our education, our media, our technology, into the service of our hearts, the concerns of our heart.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">And ultimately, and finally, the centre of our hearts, our greatest concern, is always our children.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">We have, somehow now, to strive to come clear and clean, to present to ourselves, and to the world community of nations we live in, the truth of our Nation Soul. We have to know and come to consensus on what we truly value in life.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">What do we really need to rebuild our country? What and where will our country be without well informed, nourished, and most of all, virtuous children? Our nation needs children who can competently take the reins from their elders, and steer our country wisely to a role of genuine positiveness to the world community.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Where are the children we can look forward to, to treat us kindly and respectfully in our own old age when we encounter them in supermarkets, retail shops, in alleys, medical and other offices? To take care of us lovingly, if they are our own? Have we loved and cared for them in such a way that we should rightfully expect that it would be so?</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Strident individualism, fostered by a consumer economy, that aggressively market-targets the child and teen, has not created a gracious people, who can care meaningfully and well for their children. Who put the care of children, all children, at the forefront of any agenda, plan or goal, <i>and before themselves.</i></span></p>
<p class="western"></p>
<p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><span class="font-size-4">Our Children are our Future. What will it be? Can we put aside our legally licensed and socially sanctioned rights of self-interest, and learn to compromise, adapt, and bend our wills to be of service to the youth in our society? </span><span class="font-size-4">Civilisations that have endured have always held the care of children as being of primary importance. And there is one, in our species, whom Nature has intended to start the job, and whose influence upon the child is undeniable, despite desperate attempts by media to tell us that boys and girls are exactly the same. The one who will be Mother.</span></span></p>
<p class="western"></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">At this time, we need to commence the struggle to reclaim our children from the snares that we have allowed to claim our own lives and minds. Holy Mother Amma tells us that this is the path of righteousness:</span></p>
<blockquote><p class="western"><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><span class="font-size-4">``Instead of running after pleasures, we should understand the goal of life, and live for that. Lead a simple life. Give to others what is left after meeting your own needs. Live without causing any harm to </span><span class="font-size-4">others, and teach each other these principles. We should contribute to the creation of a great culture of this kind. Let us be good and virtuous. Let us make our own hearts good and thus help others to </span><span class="font-size-4">become good as well. That is what we need. If we do this, we will always feel peace and contentment within, even if we lack external comforts.”<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote12anc" href="#sdendnote12sym" id="sdendnote12anc"><sup>xii</sup></a></sup></span></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="western"></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">We have a righteous path before us. Lets walk it together, and cause the vision of our Nation Soul to blaze with Her own pure and holy light, for all the world to see, for Love and Truth – my country tis of Thee.</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">with love, in the service of truth,</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><font face="Liberation Serif, Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3">©</font></font> Aunty Kamala, (<em>Ph.D.</em>)</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Lisbon, Portugal</span></p>
<p class="western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;">Dec. 16, 2012</span></p>
<p class="western"></p>
<div id="sdendnote1"><p class="sdendnote-western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote1sym" href="#sdendnote1anc" id="sdendnote1sym">i</a>Wikipedia.</span></p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote2"><p class="sdendnote-western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote2sym" href="#sdendnote2anc" id="sdendnote2sym">ii</a>As heard by author at the 57<sup>th</sup> official birthday celebrations of Holy Mother Amma, Mata Amritanandamayi, Kerala.</span></p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote3"><p class="sdendnote-western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote3sym" href="#sdendnote3anc" id="sdendnote3sym">iii</a>Jane Goodall, in: Amritanandamayi, Mata (2003). Awakening to Universal Motherhood}. M.A.~Mission Trust, Kollam, Kerala.</span></p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote4"><p class="sdendnote-western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote4sym" href="#sdendnote4anc" id="sdendnote4sym">iv</a>~ <a href="http://www.amritapuri.org">www.amritapuri.org</a></span></p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote5"><p class="sdendnote-western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote5sym" href="#sdendnote5anc" id="sdendnote5sym">v</a>Amritanandamayi, Mata (2009). Cultivating Strength and Unity: Address. M.A.~Mission Trust, Kollam, Kerala.</span></p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote6"><p class="sdendnote-western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote6sym" href="#sdendnote6anc" id="sdendnote6sym">vi</a><font color="#000080"><span lang="zxx" xml:lang="zxx"><u><a href="http://bahai-library.com/writings/abdulbaha/fwu/sec-4.html">http://bahai-library.com/writings/abdulbaha/fwu/sec-4.html</a></u></span></font></span></p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote7"><p class="sdendnote-western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote7sym" href="#sdendnote7anc" id="sdendnote7sym">vii</a>Gandhi, M.K. CWMG</span></p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote8"><p class="sdendnote-western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote8sym" href="#sdendnote8anc" id="sdendnote8sym">viii</a> King, M.L.& Washington, J.~(ed.) (1992). I have a Dream: Writings and speeches that changed the world. Harper Collins, New York.</span></p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote9"><p class="sdendnote-western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote9sym" href="#sdendnote9anc" id="sdendnote9sym">ix</a> Reddy, Dr.~E.S.~(ed.) (1998). Mahatma Gandhi: Letters to Americans}. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Kulapati Munshi Marg, Mumbai.: 335</span></p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote10"><p class="sdendnote-western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote10sym" href="#sdendnote10anc" id="sdendnote10sym">x</a>Gandhi, M.K. Truth is God : 45.</span></p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote11"><p class="sdendnote-western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote11sym" href="#sdendnote11anc" id="sdendnote11sym">xi</a><font color="#000080"><span lang="zxx" xml:lang="zxx"><u><a href="http://www.cchrint.org/">http://www.cchrint.org</a></u></span></font> Citizens Commission on Human Rights International</span></p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote12"><p class="sdendnote-western"><span class="font-size-4" style="font-family: georgia, palatino;"><a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote12sym" href="#sdendnote12anc" id="sdendnote12sym">xii</a>Amritanandamayi, Mata. Eternal Wisdom: Vol. 1: 7 - 8. M.A.~Mission Trust, Kollam, Kerala.</span></p>
</div>
</div>
सत्य की शोध - Experiment with Truth
tag:gandhiking.ning.com,2012-03-31:2043530:Topic:58414
2012-03-31T05:42:27.879Z
Birendra Kumar
http://gandhiking.ning.com/profile/BirendraKumar
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1212714780?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1212714780?profile=original" width="450"></img></a> गांधी शोध संस्थान , भीतिहरवा गांधी आश्रम गौनहा में स्थित है , यह वहीं जगह है जहाँ गांधीजी ने 20 नवम्बर १९१७ को एक स्कूल की स्थापना की थी । जहाँ कस्तूरबा गांधी और उनके साथी ने ६ महीनो तक आदिवासी एवं दलित महिलाओं को शिक्षा , स्वास्थ्य इत्यादि के कार्यक्रम चलाये थे । उनके जाने के बाद किसी ने इस पहलू पर ध्यान नहीं दिया आज लगभग 93 साल बाद हम उनके छोड़े गए अधूरे कार्यों को आगे…</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1212714780?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1212714780?profile=original" width="450" class="align-left"/></a>गांधी शोध संस्थान , भीतिहरवा गांधी आश्रम गौनहा में स्थित है , यह वहीं जगह है जहाँ गांधीजी ने 20 नवम्बर १९१७ को एक स्कूल की स्थापना की थी । जहाँ कस्तूरबा गांधी और उनके साथी ने ६ महीनो तक आदिवासी एवं दलित महिलाओं को शिक्षा , स्वास्थ्य इत्यादि के कार्यक्रम चलाये थे । उनके जाने के बाद किसी ने इस पहलू पर ध्यान नहीं दिया आज लगभग 93 साल बाद हम उनके छोड़े गए अधूरे कार्यों को आगे बढ़ाने की कोशिश कर रहें हैं ।</p>
<p></p>
<p>क्या आप अपने जीवन से जुडे सत्य की खोज करना चाहते हैं , क्या आप सत्य पर आधारित प्रयोग करना चाहते हैं । यह संभव है की बहुत सारे युवक - युवतियों गांधीजी और उनके सिद्धान्त को नहीं मानते और समझते हैं , मैं भी उनमें से एक था लेकिन जितना पढ़ रहा हूँ , जितना समझ रहा हूँ । वह मेरे आज तक किए गए सभी प्रयोग से ज्यादा बेहतर और लाभकारी लग रहा है । </p>
<p></p>
<p>चम्पारण सत्याग्रह इस बात का जीता जागता उदाहरण हैं, कि किस प्रकार महात्मा गाँधीजी ने विना हिंसा के निलहों के कानून को सत्याग्रह के द्वारा समाप्त किया था और चम्पारण के किसानो को नील के कानून से आजाद कराया था |</p>
<p></p>
<p>गाँधी जी ने महसूस किया था, कि यदि चम्पारण का विकास करना है, तो गावों मे शिक्षा का प्रवेश होना अनिवार्य हैं, माता पिता अपने लालच वश बच्चों को मजदूरी व अन्य कामों में लगा देते हैं। जिससे उनका मानसिक और शारीरिक विकास नहीं हो पता हैं, गाँधी जी ने अपने सहयोगियो कि सहायता से 3 विद्यालयो कि स्थापना किये जो बरहरवा – लखन – सेन , भीतिहरवा और मधुबन में अपने सहयोगियों के साथ शुरू किया |</p>
<p></p>
<p>विद्यालय और साफ-सफाई के कारण यहां पर अच्छा प्रभाव पड़ा परन्तु सक्षम स्वयसेवक नहीं मिलने के कारण वह इस कार्य को स्थायी रूप नहीं दे पाये | उन्होने अपनी जीवनी में लिखा हैं – “ मुझे खेद के साथ कहना पड़ रहा हैं कि इस काम को स्थायी रूप देने का मेरा मनोरथ सफल नहीं हो सका जो स्वंयसेवक मिले थे, वे एक निश्चित अवधि के लिए ही मिले थे | दूसरे नये स्वंयसेवकों के मिलने में कठिनाई हुई और बिहार से इस काम के लिए योग्य स्थायी सेवक न मिल सके | मुझे भी चम्पारण का काम पूरा होते-होते एक दूसरे काम के कारण यहाँ से जाना पड़ रहा हैं |”</p>
<p>क्या आप मेरे सत्य की शोध - Experiment with Truth के अभियान में साथ देना चाहते हैं ?</p>
<p><span>Visit at </span><a rel="nofollow" href="http://gandhipadyatra.info/">http://gandhipadyatra.info</a><span> and fill the form if you can give your 20 days for </span><strong>"Experiment with Truth</strong><span>"</span></p>
Good article on Gandhi
tag:gandhiking.ning.com,2012-01-26:2043530:Topic:55788
2012-01-26T03:28:14.544Z
Common Sense
http://gandhiking.ning.com/profile/CommonSense
<p>Interesting blog post:</p>
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<p><a href="http://commonsenseinlife.blogspot.com/">http://commonsenseinlife.blogspot.com/</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Interesting blog post:</p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="http://commonsenseinlife.blogspot.com/">http://commonsenseinlife.blogspot.com/</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
Listening Leadership – Gandhi, M.L.~King and George Washington & Leading Through Love - Amma
tag:gandhiking.ning.com,2010-12-19:2043530:Topic:23139
2010-12-19T07:48:27.000Z
Aunty Kamala
http://gandhiking.ning.com/profile/AuntyKamala
<p><span style="font-size: large;">Introduction</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">Until 60 years ago, there was an expectation amongst the masses of humanity in 'democratic' societies, that our elected leaders would try to walk in line with a higher power and intelligence that holds us all as part and parcel. In the old monarchy system, the 'subjects' held the belief that their leaders were representative of God's will, which is why they had…</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: large;">Introduction</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">Until 60 years ago, there was an expectation amongst the masses of humanity in 'democratic' societies, that our elected leaders would try to walk in line with a higher power and intelligence that holds us all as part and parcel. In the old monarchy system, the 'subjects' held the belief that their leaders were representative of God's will, which is why they had been given power. In the last 30 years, evidence of this expectation seems to have disappeared.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">The new mass religion of capitalism, is 'science and technology.' We have on a mass level given Absolute Authority to this new religion. It can do anything, take any number of lives to achieve its ends, and destroy any part of the creation, for obscure reasons, and we are not to complain, or even make a comment. It pits us against Nature, then tells us we are lucky we found a way to survive, in spite of Nature.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">The media that it has spawned has sickened us all, and we are no longer allowed to hold Love, and the care of our children, especially our future mothers, our girl children, their moral well-being and character development, as the central pillars of societies. If the women and children are OK morally, if they have sound characters, the men will automatically come around. That's the simple fact. We can attempt to deny and defy it, but we can't change the way the dominoes fall.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">Any leader that has captured the attention and the allegiance of humanity, has done so because of this great inner concentration upon higher principles and ethics within themselves.</span><br/><br/><strong><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: large;">Listening Gandhi</span></strong></p>
<p><br/><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">Gandhi gave an example of a leader whom we could respect. He held himself accountable to a higher power than himself, and continually tried to align himself with that power, to walk in harmony with it.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">He used all kinds of methodologies to do so: He kept silence. He used the Fast. He practiced Rama-nama, the continuous chanting of a name of God. He prayed morning, noon and night. He took pains to make sure his speech was truthful, kind and only spoke when it was necessary. He walked the path of brahmacharya, and he sought to control his senses, his thoughts, in every direction that was distracting the concentrated attention he was constantly trying to give – to his conscience. Gandhi listened and listened, his ears straining to those subtle sounds within to find his way. He put his rational mind in subservience to his intuition, his conscience. Once, before he entered a Fast at age 73, he stated:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><br/><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">``I see the Fast coming. I have been outwardly engaged in different activities, but inwardly, I have been listening all the time. I have not been able to hear the inner voice clearly, but something within me tells me that I cannot get away from the Fast. After much thought I have come to the conclusion that the idea of the Fast as it came to me at Sevagram was in response to the inner voice. I have discussed the subject threadbare. I have delayed embarking on it but I see now that I cannot avoid it."</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;"><br/></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">(From: Nayar, S.~(1996). Mahatma Gandhi’s Last Imprisonment: the Inside Story. Har-Anand Publications, New Delhi. p. 186.)</span></p>
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<p><strong><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: large;">Listening M. L. King, Jr.</span></strong></p>
<p><br/><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">True leaders are those we can rely on to make every effort to connect to that inner reservoir of genuine wisdom and guidance, a faculty that is beyond rational conceptions which may be far more limited and narrow in view. When we recognize these true leaders, we cling to them. Because of the sincerity of their aspirations, Dr. King and Swami Vivekananda's words still powerfully draw our minds up even today to the larger Reality we all share.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">From the sound of his voice, we could trust Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. His efforts to connect to the Great Intelligence that runs the planet and universes was clearly genuine. His last words to us were of his deep acknowledgement to the source of life:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><br/><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">“We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live - a long life; longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="font-size: large;"><strong><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times;">A short aside on educational relevance</span></strong></span></p>
<p><br/><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">Holy Mother Amma ( Mata Amritandanandamayi) has emphasized the importance studying the scriptural works of a real Jnani, a Self – Realized person. Their understanding is complete, and they are able to give commentary that reflects the truth of the Scripture. This is why Paramahansa Yogananda's works are so enthralling.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">India has had many writers that have written so well in English, who touch so profoundly and clearly on the nuances of the Indian metaphysical understandings, that it is a great pity her educational system does not take them into account. Children are presently bogged under the old Shelley, Byron, Keats, Burns, Shakespeare, Kipling, Steinbeck, etc. whose works are noticeably devoid of that subtler metaphysical expression.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">She should instead fill her children's minds with noble thinking by reading Tagore, Premchand, Yogananda, Gandhi, Subramanium, Thiruvalluvar, there are so many worth while authors, many who have written in the very best English... its a great pity, and actually a great loss to the self-esteem of Indian students.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">Paramahansa Yogananda's English is impeccable, his vocabulary awe-inspiring, his sense of compassionate humor that runs through his commentary is dry and delightful. His footnotes, exhaustive, and informative. In a footnote, Paramahansa Yogananda had an interesting anecdote about George Washington's visions of the guardian angel of America.</span></p>
<p><br/><strong><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: large;">Listening Washington</span></strong></p>
<p><br/><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">The founding fathers and mothers of the USA were men and women who struggled to place themselves in attunement with conscience, no matter how difficult, no matter what the sacrifice. The opinion of conscience mattered more to them than anything or anyone, or money:</span></p>
<p> </p>
<blockquote><p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">“Among respected accounts of the current age is the experience of George Washington, a revelation bestowed on him by a heavenly being during the dark days of the American Revolution, in the year 1777. His was a vision of the future of a great nation arising on the American continent. An angel, “a singularly beautiful female, “ appeared to him: “a new influence, mysterious, potent, irresistible, took possession of me...Everything about me seemed to rarefy, the mysterious visitor herself becoming more airy, and yet more distinct to my sight than before...I heard a voice saying, 'Son of the Republic, look and learn.'” A remarkable scene of “ a dark shadowy being like an angel, standing or rather floating in midair, between Europe and America” unfolded a vision representative of the American Revolution and America's ultimate victory.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">Similarly, a second vision unfolded, predicting the Civil War.[long after the life of George Washington]“And again I heard the mysterious voice saying, 'Son of the Republic, look and learn.'” At this, a third vision of great conflict was revealed to him. Then, “The dark shadowy angel placed his trumpet once more to his mouth, and blew a long fearful blast. Instantly, a light as of a thousand suns shone down from above me, and pierced and broke into fragments the dark cloud which enveloped America. At the same moment the angel upon whose head still shone the word, 'Union, and who bore our national flag in one hand and a sword in the other, descended from the heavens attended by legions of white spirits. These immediately joined the inhabitants of America, who were well-nigh overcome, but who immediately taking courage again, closed up their broken ranks and renewed battle.</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">Again, amid the fearful noise of the conflict, I heard the mysterious voice saying, 'Son of the Republic, look and learn.' As the voice ceased...the dark cloud rolled back, together with the armies it had brought, leaving the inhabitants of the land victorious...“...I found myself once more gaping upon the mysterious visitor, who, in the same voice I had heard before, said, 'Son of the Republic, what you have seen is thus interpreted. Three great perils will come upon the Republic. The most fearful is the third, passing which the whole world united shall not prevail against her. Let every child of the Republic learn to live for his God, his land and Union.'”</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">(Condensed from “Washington's Vision, “ National Tribune, Vol. 4, No. 12, December 1880)This footnote in: Yogananda, P. (1995) God Talks with Arjuna, The Bhagavad Gita: Royal Science of God-Realization, the immortal dialogue between soul and Spirit A new translation and commentary. Self Realization Fellowship. Los Angeles. (pg.356)</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: large;">Commentaries on Washington's Vision</span></strong></p>
<p><br/><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">There are many sources which claim the story as true, some of them are what I term rather doom-saying, fundamentalist type, others, the intellectual-shredder type, claim it as false. Its always interesting to note other view. I found this response to a 'false vision' blog, which I think is worth noting in one's consideration as to whether the story is true, and therefore, worth our thoughts or not.</span></p>
<p> </p>
<blockquote><p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">James Armbruster says:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">January 30, 2008 at 11:02 pm</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">What is amazing to me, is that all these websites use the story of a 99 year old man. From that, some websites discount it as a story of a 99 year old man, told in the third person and therefore isn’t true. Others, just take it as true. There is nothing to say it is true, other than a reporter reported it as true.</span></p>
<p><strong><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">However, there is another source, there are Washington’s letters and personal prayers, which mention this vision as well.</span></strong></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">[bold italics mine.]</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">Either way, if a person chooses not to believe that he had this vision, no matter what is brought as evidence, the story will be discounted, and the unbelievers will continue to not believe. Somewhere in this clash of beliefs, the believer will have their character assassinated. I believed it originally, and after finding other sources, I now know that my belief is well founded. God Bless America!</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p><br/><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">(Source: <a href="http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/01/02/washingtons-valley-forge-vision-that-never-was/">http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/01/02/washingtons-valley-forge-vision-that-never-was/</a>)</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">US Senator, Dr. Ron Paul's friends maintain a blog in the interests of informing an un-alert American public, (<a href="http://www.dailypaul.com/forum">http://www.dailypaul.com/forum</a>) on it was stated:</span></p>
<p> </p>
<blockquote><p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">``...there has been a campaign by globalists to destroy the 'character' of these founding fathers of The United States of America. I am so appalled by this when I read comments by people dissing these founders as though they were some kind of low life. I am so sick and tired of it. And some of this is coming through so called 'Christian' organizations who are spreading lies about the founders being 'evil masons', 'practicing witchcraft' and other ridiculous tripe.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">One thing is for certain. These founders could never be capable of producing such sacred documents like the Declaration and the Constitution if they did not harbor such deep feelings of love and intense desire of freedom for humanity from all forms of bondage.Early Americans who were vigilant about our country knew of this vision.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">When I first read this a year ago, it gave me gooseflesh.</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-style: normal; font-size: medium;">The site that his web page refers to for the story of George Washington: <a href="http://www.veracity.org/Legend2.html">http://www.veracity.org/Legend2.html</a></span></p>
<p> </p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: large;">Holy Mother Amma - Leadership through Love</span></strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">It wasn't so very long ago that we had leadership that sincerely strove to serve the larger Life, the Intelligence that holds us all - the Truth - that we are one human family. In lieu of political leadership that seeks to align itself with Truth now, what is our duty?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">At present, the people's Love and Leader, Holy Mother Amma, Mata Amritanandamayi, who lives and breathes in full awareness of us all as one human family, a fully illumined being, is here with us. She has not entered politics. This speaks volumes. She has not entered politics, because it is not necessary for her to do so, according to the Great Intelligence that she is in total harmony with. We must ask ourselves, why is this?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">One thing is certain. We are to stand up for Truth, and we must become strong enough to resist evil and unrighteousness. Holy Mother Amma has stressed again and again, that if we keep SILENT in the face of bad behaviour or unrighteousness, then we become guilty of it as well.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">Her message to us in these times is certain, we the people, must become united and strong, cultivating positive character traits, and heal our hearts, by giving one another our love, kindness and compassion. These means will help us to face Reality, to deal with the times ahead. We have no political leadership to speak of. Rebuilding our families and communities, our humane relations with one another, we will create the societies we want to live in. We can consensually lead ourselves. It doesn't take cash, it doesn't take political power. It only takes our will to unite as friends and family, in light and love of the fragile moment of our lives on this Earth.</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">This life is a Great School, we all pass out of here, and we are being tested continuously as to whether or not we will be fearless in obeying our conscience. Those who are completely truthful, never have anything to fear.</span> <br/><br/><br/><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1052592928?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1052592928?profile=original" width="320" class="align-center"/></a><br/> George Washington, Founding Father of the USA, Communing with Truth, through Prayer.<br/><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">A painting by Arnold Friberg, 1999</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">Source: <a href="http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/01/02/washingtons-valley-forge-vision-that-never-was/">http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/01/02/washingtons-valley-forge-vision-that-never-was/</a></span></p>
<p><br/><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times; font-size: medium;">May we all become fearless lions and tiger cubs of our conscience!</span></p>
Gandhi and John Lennon: A Call to Quit School - Part 2.
tag:gandhiking.ning.com,2010-06-06:2043530:Topic:21465
2010-06-06T08:54:58.000Z
Aunty Kamala
http://gandhiking.ning.com/profile/AuntyKamala
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><i><b>Gandhi and John Lennon: A Call to Quit School - Part 2</b></i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">by P.Kamala Willey, Ph.D. Amritapuri, 2010<br></br></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b><br></br></b></i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b>Truth and Education</b></i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b><br></br></b></i></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The call to know Truth, what was really Truth, rose up in me…</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><i><b>Gandhi and John Lennon: A Call to Quit School - Part 2</b></i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">by P.Kamala Willey, Ph.D. Amritapuri, 2010<br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b><br/></b></i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b>Truth and Education</b></i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b><br/></b></i></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The call to know Truth, what was really Truth, rose up in me again, and my quest began in earnest, to be massively sidetracked several more times by the powerful<br/>
distracting and conditioning influences around me, until I reached<br/>
the home and arms of the <i>Great Light on Earth</i> called Mata<br/>
Amritanandamayi Devi, or Holy Mother Amma, Amma, our Universal<br/>
Mother. And even here, it is a constant battle to keep the inner<br/>
forces focussed on trying to discern the Real from the unreal, to<br/>
move into `experiencing' rather than `anticipating'. The powerful<br/>
energies of India's ancient ideals infuse the atmosphere of Her<br/>
ashram. <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In Gandhi's time, he saw the deadening effects of `modern education' in India, which was done on the British model. Of his own experience of the self-alienating ways of this<br/>
model he said: <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“From my sixth or seventh year up to my sixteenth, I was at school, being taught all sorts of things except religion. I may say that I failed to get from the teachers<br/>
what they could have given me without any effort on their part. And<br/>
yet, I kept on picking up things here and there from my surroundings.<br/>
The term 'religion' I am using in its broadest sense, meaning<br/>
thereby self-realization or knowledge of self.”<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote1anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote1sym" id="sdendnote1anc"><sup>i</sup></a></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It was `upper class' education that Gandhi received, to create people who would be of service to the exploitive goals of the planet's first mega-multinational company. He<br/>
was initially a pawn of its goals, traveling to England to become a<br/>
lawyer, in the service to Laws that supported British rule. As he<br/>
developed philosophically, Gandhi saw the industrial age coming, and<br/>
its dangerous and dehumanizing effects for human society. We live<br/>
with it now, women no longer allowed to be honored as Mothers,<br/>
forced into innumerable insecurities, young girls taught that their<br/>
`sexual power' is a valuable strength. It continues <i>en masse</i><br/>
today, called `modern education' and the planet is filled with<br/>
millions of people whose education is designed to enable them to fit<br/>
into the goals of big business, and worse, to want those goals,<br/>
turning their hearts and minds away from all that the infinitude of<br/>
Life offers us. <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Paramahansa Yogananda, who saw the trends in the 1930's-50's in the US said: <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Advancement in science and technology is to be applauded when used for the betterment of the human race, but in practical application, nations of the Earth could enhance the<br/>
happiness of their citizens if they advocated a consciousness of<br/>
plain living and high thinking – concentrating their minds more on<br/>
spiritual development, inspirational literature, philosophy,<br/>
knowledge of the wonders and working of Creation, and less on<br/>
frenetic technologies that encourage money-madness.<br/>
<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote2anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote2sym" id="sdendnote2anc"><sup>ii</sup></a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Gandhi and Real Education</i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><br/></i></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Gandhi saw that `modern education' created appetites for material acquisitions, it didn't develop mindsets that thirsted for justice and service. He saw that<br/>
environment was a crucial factor in the formation of a child's mind<br/>
and education and stated: <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“We hold that real education does not consist merely in acquainting oneself with ancient or modern books. It consists in the habits which one knowingly or unknowingly imbibes<br/>
from the atmosphere, one's surroundings and the company one keeps and<br/>
above all in work...the primary function of a teacher, is, therefore,<br/>
not to teach the alphabet, but to inculcate humanity.<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote3anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote3sym" id="sdendnote3anc"><sup>iii</sup></a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote3anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote3sym" id="sdendnote3anc"><sup><br/></sup></a></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He began something called `basic education' which stressed hand/heart/mind as a way of educating oneself. With `the wolf at the door' he advocated learning hand<br/>
craft skills as early as possible that would enable one to keep body<br/>
and soul together. Many have misunderstood Gandhi's educational<br/>
ideals, feeling they advocated rustication, and would keep people out<br/>
of the `modern world.' But Gandhi saw that through basic education,<br/>
human beings would come into contact with dimensions within<br/>
themselves that current forms of education entirely ignore, while<br/>
enjoying a semblance of modernity. Discussing the ethical benefits<br/>
gained from the practice and art of spinning at young ages, Gandhi<br/>
said: <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“It develops in the spinner patience, persistence, concentration, self-control, calmness, realization of importance and value of detail, ability to do more than one thing at<br/>
a time, making each one of them so habitual that its control and<br/>
operation are almost unconscious, sensitiveness, sureness and<br/>
delicacy of touch and of muscular control and coordination...a<br/>
realization of the value of co-operative work, self-respect and<br/>
self-reliance arising from recognition of one's ability to create<br/>
something of economic value useful to oneself, one's family, to the<br/>
school and to the village, province or nation...”<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote4anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote4sym" id="sdendnote4anc"><sup>iv</sup></a></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Do our children gain any qualities like this from the endless and meaningless paper art activities given to them in modern education? And much of the 'busy time' activities<br/>
they are required to do, not to speak of the curriculum? Do they<br/>
gain qualities that can help them cope with Life? When children are<br/>
not allowed to do genuinely meaningful works that can positively<br/>
impact their environment, that make them feel a part of a large<br/>
community, they respond with a lack of motivation. Its the passive<br/>
silent non-cooperation of youth, to demands that they comply with<br/>
meaningless activities. `Lack of interest' is a screaming response, a<br/>
dire warning to teachers, if only they could hear it. It's all our<br/>
youth can do when faced with powerful adult minds and rules that have<br/>
the power and authority to keep them locked up in a school, all<br/>
day. <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Gandhi urges Everyone to Quit School</i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><br/></i></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Gandhi saw that people's fascination with the self-serving ideals held out to them by the British Raj, had to be broken. Beginning in the early 1920's he began a Quit School<br/>
movement. People had to awake from the dream of becoming happy<br/>
British Indians, they had to see the actual situation they were in,<br/>
what the duty that <i>life itself</i> was calling them to. In his<br/>
day, the Press was not suppressed as it is now. Gandhi was good<br/>
copy. Furthermore, he started his own Press, to get his ideas out<br/>
into the public mind. The stupor of 300 years of British domination<br/>
was strong. He fought the colonialization of their psyche with<br/>
questions: <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“How do children fare in a besieged place? Do they not according to their capacity take part in repelling the attack of the besiegers and suit themselves to the<br/>
changing circumstances?...True education must correspond to the<br/>
surrounding circumstances or it is not a healthy growth.”<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote5anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote5sym" id="sdendnote5anc"><sup>v</sup></a></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What is the reality of our planetary circumstances now? Does modern education equip our children to face<br/>
the challenges that life will present them thanks to the last 100<br/>
years of unbridled greed? <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Gandhi saw that: <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“The greatest obstacle in the way of students is fear of consequences mostly imaginary. The first lesson therefore that students have to learn is to shed fear. Freedom can<br/>
never be won by those who are afraid of rustication, poverty and even<br/>
death.”<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote6anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote6sym" id="sdendnote6anc"><sup>vi</sup></a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote6anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote6sym" id="sdendnote6anc"><sup><br/></sup></a></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He had the faith that youth were not as badly blinded and conditioned as their elders by the goals of education under the British: <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“From the students, however, I expect more. When they come out of the present schools and colleges, their teachers and professors are likely to follow them on their own. For<br/>
them, the immediate problem is one of livelihood; for the students,<br/>
it is a question merely of getting rid of a fascination.”<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote7anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote7sym" id="sdendnote7anc"><sup>vii</sup></a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote7anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote7sym" id="sdendnote7anc"><sup><br/></sup></a></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Along with questions, he taunted parents and teachers, challenging them to awaken to the reality of their situation: <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“Shall we not free them from the curse of slavery which has made us crawl on our bellies?”<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote8anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote8sym" id="sdendnote8anc"><sup>viii</sup></a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“...if primary school teachers have [any] national consciousness and moral strength...they should leave these schools in which the pupils are educated for slavery and should<br/>
work to educate the people even begging for their maintenance, as<br/>
teachers used to do in ancient times. I am certain...the public will<br/>
not fail to provide for them.”<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote9anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote9sym" id="sdendnote9anc"><sup>ix</sup></a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote9anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote9sym" id="sdendnote9anc"><sup><br/></sup></a></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What are our children being `educated' for now? It doesn't jive with the reality of the planetary situation. Its been over 10 generations of continuous ravage and rape<br/>
of Nature. We have massively polluted the natural Creation. What<br/>
and where are the remaining resources that are left for the present<br/>
and future billions of people who will come with empty, open hands<br/>
to receive their inheritance from us? Will they even have clean<br/>
water, clean rain? <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Gandhi followed all his efforts up with a demand that we connect with our conscience and turn to our ethical instincts: <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“Freedom merely means that, unafraid of anyone, we should be able to speak and act as we feel...the first lesson therefore, which you should learn is to be able to say `<b>NO!</b>'”<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote10anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote10sym" id="sdendnote10anc"><sup>x</sup></a></p>
<br />
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><i><br/></i></b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><i>Choke Tied by ‘Modern Ed’</i></b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><i><br/></i></b></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">At present, in militarized western societies, the legal, medical and educational systems have forged interdependent and punishing links for those who do not comply with<br/>
the systems that have been set up to assure business and profits. We<br/>
live in a state of fear regarding our future, our present, tonight<br/>
and tomorrow. Throughout the planet, education only fits us out to<br/>
be cogs in the corporate madness that has overtaken people's minds<br/>
and human society. Helena Norberg-Hodge points out: <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“...what we call ``education" is part of an infrastructure which has been introduced everywhere, whether through the communist or capitalist mode, as one of the<br/>
cornerstones of development. The process of development is precisely<br/>
that of exploiting more resources and extending those exploitations<br/>
around the globe.<br/>
”</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“Furthermore, the education that we're talking about is Western-style education – which is everywhere now. It teaches people little or nothing about the land<br/>
they actually live on, how to manage limited local resources, how to<br/>
relate to each other and be in community. Instead, it trains people<br/>
for an urban, industrial lifestyle. That lifestyle is extremely<br/>
resource- and energy-intensive and quite unsustainable.”<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote11anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote11sym" id="sdendnote11anc"><sup>xi</sup></a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Helena Norberg Hodge, looked at the impact of modern education upon Ladhak, which had been virtually untouched by the economic gridlock until 1975: <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“The practical result is that the educated children cannot survive in the village. The only place they can live is in the city, as an urbanised consumer. If they have more<br/>
education they have to go to Delhi, get more, and then they only<br/>
survive in America or England. Yet in Western terms, all this change<br/>
is \emph{Progress}. All this economic activity increases the GNP,<br/>
which in the traditional economy was virtually zero. The Western<br/>
system is simply incapable of classifying traditional subsistence<br/>
economies, and accounts them as worthless.”<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote12anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote12sym" id="sdendnote12anc"><sup>xii</sup></a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote12anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote12sym" id="sdendnote12anc"><sup><br/></sup></a></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So, we are in a situation, where our `education' so called, is not serving us very well at all. It doesn't help us to maximize our human potential, which is our ethical<br/>
potential. The greatest human beings are those who have chosen to<br/>
maximize their ethical potentials, to become the most <i>humane</i>.<br/>
The planet is in sad shape, thanks to industrialization, and our<br/>
educations do not prepare us to deal with it head-on, as we must.<br/>
The masses of us are not interested in becoming rocket scientists,<br/>
who sit around and devise ways to spend tax-payer monies and Earth's<br/>
resources to bomb the moon, as was done October 9, 2009. <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We want peace, social security, that is, to be able to live in a society where we can trust our neighbors to be humane people towards us, our environment, our children. Where<br/>
the food we eat is safe, without side effects. Where the loved Earth<br/>
is clean, giving and joyous for our presence upon Her. We want to be<br/>
able to laugh, cry, share each other's burdens, and have a wide range<br/>
of loving associates, not only human. We want to use our intellects<br/>
to really help one another, to aspire to know Truth, to touch the<br/>
Real, through music, literature, arts, and genuinely useful<br/>
inventions. We want an education that teaches us how to maximize our<br/>
human potentials of kindness, caring and fearless justice-seeking.<br/>
That teaches us how to honour the subtle nuances of Love, that<br/>
teaches us how to live on and care for all that is here with us in<br/>
our now severely damaged planet.<br/>
</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We are weary of all of what `education' so called has brought us to.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What can we do? <br/></p>
<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br/></span></span>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Its time we started a new Quit School movement. Gandhi did it, it can be done. He never agreed to the title of <i>Mahatma</i> and said:<br/>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“I have often said that I do not claim to be an extraordinary man unless one who is mad after the search for Truth be called extraordinary. I am certainly mad in the<br/>
sense that every honest man should be. I have disclaimed the title<br/>
of a saint for I am fully conscious of my limitations and<br/>
imperfections. I claim to be a servant of India and therethrough of<br/>
humanity.”<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote13anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote13sym" id="sdendnote13anc"><sup>xiii</sup></a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote13anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote13sym" id="sdendnote13anc"><sup><br/></sup></a></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">World wide, we can unplug our children from the meaningless lock-up time in school. We can collectively turn off the innundation and sexualization of their<br/>
minds from the media, starting with the box with the blue-glow. We<br/>
can get together and give our children numeracy and literacy, and the<br/>
highest ethical standards: fair play, fearless honesty, reliability,<br/>
courtesy and self-less consideration for all, kindness and<br/>
truthfulness in thought, word, and deed. We can teach them to honour<br/>
and guard the purity of their bodies, minds and hearts. We can teach<br/>
our children to aspire for genuine nobility of character, that<br/>
bravely carries out duty as a joy, and accepts responsibility for<br/>
others as well as themselves with ease. We can create children who<br/>
have inner poise, and self-abidance, and tremendous self-confidence.<br/>
We don't need to worry if our children can or cannot cope with the<br/>
frenetic technologies of the day. We don't need to make them<br/>
insecure by trying to keep step with their peers. We can teach them<br/>
to stand and walk, alone. Once positive character traits are<br/>
instilled, their ethical instincts awoken, we can rest assured that<br/>
they will choose what they need, and use it correctly and well, for<br/>
the benefit of all. <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In offering our children this hope for a genuinely beautiful life, we will heal ourselves of the great travesty that our own educations have conditioned us into, by virtue<br/>
of living in a society governed by the economic gridlock. We will<br/>
free our minds and hearts from the disease of consumer-itis. We will<br/>
find our way back into harmony with the Reality of Life.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">P.K. Willey, 2010.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Endnotes:<br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<div id="sdendnote1"><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote1sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote1anc" id="sdendnote1sym">i</a> Gandhi, M.K., <i>Story of My Experiments with Truth :</i>Ch. X.</p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote2"><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote2sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote2anc" id="sdendnote2sym">ii</a> Yogananda, P., (1942) The Second Coming of Christ: Discourse 56.</p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote3"><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote3sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote3anc" id="sdendnote3sym">iii</a> Gandhi, M.K., <i>India of My Dreams :</i> 42.</p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote4"><p class="sdendnote"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote4sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote4anc" id="sdendnote4sym">iv</a> <i>Facets of Mahatma Gandhi</i>. 1:61</p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote5"><p class="sdendnote"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote5sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote5anc" id="sdendnote5sym">v</a> CWMG 31:149</p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote6"><p class="sdendnote"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote6sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote6anc" id="sdendnote6sym">vi</a> CWMG 37:47</p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote7"><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote7sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote7anc" id="sdendnote7sym">vii</a> CWMG 18: 341</p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote8"><p class="sdendnote"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote8sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote8anc" id="sdendnote8sym">viii</a> CWMG 18:422</p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote9"><p class="sdendnote"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote9sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote9anc" id="sdendnote9sym">ix</a> CWMG 18: 341</p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote10"><p class="sdendnote"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote10sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote10anc" id="sdendnote10sym">x</a> CWMG 19:47</p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote11"><p class="sdendnote"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote11sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote11anc" id="sdendnote11sym">xi</a> Url <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC31/NorbergH.htm">http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC31/NorbergH.htm</a></p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote12"><p class="sdendnote"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote12sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote12anc" id="sdendnote12sym">xii</a> urlhttp://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC31/NorbergH.htm</p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote13"><p class="sdendnote"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote13sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call-1#sdendnote13anc" id="sdendnote13sym">xiii</a> Young India. April 19, 1925: 98</p>
</div>
Gandhi and John Lennon: A Call to Quit School - Part 1.
tag:gandhiking.ning.com,2010-06-06:2043530:Topic:21463
2010-06-06T08:52:55.000Z
Aunty Kamala
http://gandhiking.ning.com/profile/AuntyKamala
<p align="center" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><font size="4"><i><b>Gandhi and John Lennon: A Call to Quit School</b></i></font></p>
<p align="center" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">P.K. Willey, Ph.D. Amritapuri, 2010</p>
<p align="center" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br></br></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;"><font size="2" style="font-size: 11pt;">Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile…</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="center"><font size="4"><i><b>Gandhi and John Lennon: A Call to Quit School</b></i></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="center">P.K. Willey, Ph.D. Amritapuri, 2010</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="center"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;"><font style="font-size: 11pt;" size="2">Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal<br/>
hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.<br/>
</font></p>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;"><font style="font-size: 11pt;" size="2">The question is not whether we will be extremist, <br/></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;"><font style="font-size: 11pt;" size="2">but what kind of extremist will we be.</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;"><font style="font-size: 11pt;" size="2">Dr. M. L. King, Jr.<br/></font></p>
<br />
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b><br/></b></i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b>The Hippies</b></i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b><br/></b></i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify">Let's face it. The `development' model has failed the planet miserably, and it's now failing the chances of human civilization even existing. I'm a 60's<br/>
baby. I grew up in the USA when people from every age and walk of<br/>
life in the US and Europe were making a last ditch effort against the<br/>
tom-toms of industrialized war crushing the poor on Earth, against a<br/>
system of economic governance that raped the Earth, and made trash<br/>
with it. My millions of bigger brothers and sisters were fighting<br/>
with the swords of ideals. What I saw as a child made me proud,<br/>
made me feel free. Peace. Love. Truth. Co-operative living,<br/>
even communal living.<br/>
</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">My exemplary teachers didn't heed ridiculous ideas about private property, gates and manicured lawns. They shared. A car wasn't to exalt themselves, it was to get as<br/>
many of their friends where they needed to go. A nice house was one<br/>
where everyone could be together, growing flowers and vegetables,<br/>
cooking, eating, being friends and working. Where you could count on<br/>
a welcome, a place to sleep if you needed it, and even a plate of<br/>
food. They could smile and give a helping hand to \emph{anyone}. They<br/>
could share their things, and didn't get worked up or worried about<br/>
them. They weren't tensed, they were relaxed. They accepted each<br/>
other, where a person was `at'. When they greeted each other, their<br/>
raised their hands in a <i>mudra</i> (a fixed gesture) of Peace. Some<br/>
people called them `hippies.' If trying to live out one's ideals of<br/>
Love, Truth and Peace, meant being a hippy, then, they were admirable<br/>
to me.<br/>
</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">n childhood days in rural Connecticut, USA, children got off the bus, and we played outside until it was too dark to see --- and then some. Outside where Nature<br/>
could help us heal and recover from a day of being stuck inside, in<br/>
a classroom with strange adult minds and their stranger goals for us.<br/>
Fifteen years later, one never saw children outside their houses,<br/>
playing. Everyone had moved indoors, into their own rooms. Houses<br/>
became enormously big, and the grounds around them, stylized,<br/>
untouched...unrelated to the hearts inside the house. Nature became<br/>
entertainment, a recreational vehicle, as did our own bodies. We<br/>
became dead to the knowledge of making ourselves sensitive<br/>
instruments to know Truth, how to be harmonious, to express inner<br/>
beauty.<br/>
</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">One summer, my true-blue friend and I hitched rides up the California coast to Oregon. Several nights, after our last ride for the day, we would camp in the lovely<br/>
landscaped back yard of a beautiful house. Fish ponds, flower<br/>
gardens, arbors, perfect benches and table nooks, placed just so,<br/>
right out of <i>Better Homes and Gardens</i> but no one to enjoy<br/>
them, everyone was inside, absorbed with the box that gave off a<br/>
blue-glow.<br/>
</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">My bigger peer teachers took ideals, like: <i>Thou Shalt not Kill</i>, to heart: many became vegetarian, none thought war and hitting back were solutions to anything. They<br/>
were wiser than our leaders. They weren't afraid to say “<b>NO</b>.”<br/>
There knew there were no enemies anywhere to be hunted and killed,<br/>
only brothers and sisters, who may have forgotten the relation. They<br/>
had faith in the power of Love to heal, to overcome. Those that<br/>
became Mothers taught their children to walk a path of peace, and<br/>
their kids were called, “<i>flower children</i>”. Their songs,<br/>
coming from the depths of their hearts became my <i>bhajans</i>, or<br/>
sacred hymns, and teachings, touching chords that made me weep with<br/>
the affirming knowledge that our Oneness was Truth. They sang great<br/>
songs – <i>We Shall Over Come, Peace Train, Blowing in the wind,<br/>
Little Boxes, Mercedes Benz, Through the Eyes of a Child, Let it Be,<br/>
Sounds of Silence, Here Comes the Sun, My Sweet Lord, O Beautiful<br/>
for Spacious Skies, Heart of Gold</i>, tons and tons of beautiful<br/>
songs, filled with beautiful ideals, that my heart absorbed like<br/>
water in a desert. And many looked to India, for the light that<br/>
guided them.<br/>
</p>
<br />
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b><br/></b></i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b>India turns to Kindergarten <br/></b></i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b><br/></b></i></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Ironically, I first heard popular American music in India, in high school there in the early 70's. And India then was clearly in love with America. I didn't understand<br/>
why. They were only in love with a dream of things, a dream of a<br/>
life with things, and an empty freedom. Indian life showed me, that<br/>
no one really needs those things. India had more meaningful things –<br/>
India acknowledged our interdependence with reverence and Love.<br/>
India was deep fun, in a totally real way, that had nothing to do<br/>
with entertainments, but everything to do with the joy of dutiful and<br/>
ethical inter-relationships.<br/>
</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I remember as a sophomore in high school, going home to the USA for `vacation', the chill I felt in my heart when the KLM stewardess came down the airplane aisle, pushing a<br/>
drink cart, her face covered in make-up, and a completely insincere<br/>
smile on her mouth – that came from her head and her training, and<br/>
not her heart. I sat frozen in my seat, and wondered wildly – “O<br/>
God! Where are you taking me?” <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As the plane circled JFK in industrialized, smog filled, grey New York, where people walk with their faces within 12 inches of each other with no acknowledgment,<br/>
I wondered, ``To where have I come?'' I was desperate to get back to<br/>
India, where people were more natural, where Mothers could be proud<br/>
of their stretch marks, and few people put a make-up mask on –<br/>
where one could still feel the heart everywhere, still touch that<br/>
interconnectedness of human love that ran underneath everything. My<br/>
daughter Anni was to spend half her life in India in Holy Mother<br/>
Amma's ashram. As a lovely, poised young teen, she once told me,<br/>
“Mom, its just so nice to have hair just be hair, not a statement<br/>
about yourself.” Anni was the quintessence of ideals for Indian<br/>
maidenhood – chaste, honest, brave, brilliant, stunningly beautiful<br/>
with no awareness of it, with perfect control over her speech, and a<br/>
forgiving, compassionate heart. As a mother, I was intensely<br/>
grateful to the atmosphere in the ashram and India, which assisted<br/>
her in intuitively guiding herself towards her own ethical<br/>
instincts.<br/>
</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Traveling back and forth between the US and India in high school, and later for a year in college brought an awareness of what India was turning away from in herself, and what<br/>
she was turning towards. But India was big and slow, too slow I<br/>
thought, to leave her deep moorings of a spiritually and socially<br/>
sanctioned way of life, of <i>being</i>, based upon communities,<br/>
committed to peace, harmony and acknowledgment of the right of all<br/>
life, to live. The government handled the television, and there were<br/>
censors on the movies. Modern life was free of heavy media pressure<br/>
to become fad consumers. India was clearly a world teacher, of<br/>
human wisdom, ethics, tolerance, spiritual Love, art, community life,<br/>
how to live responsibly together, how to honor all the gifts of<br/>
Nature well, how to accept one's purpose and role in the vast scheme<br/>
of Life, so many things. <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Living in India now since 1999, at the ashram of Holy Mother Amma, Mata Amritanandamayi, the change in more than 30 years has been massive and dramatic. I have to say now,<br/>
exponentially noticeable every 6 months. There is hardly a hut one<br/>
passes in the local village without the blue-glow of colour satellite<br/>
TV at night. Completely uncensored television media. India is now<br/>
in free-fall towards the West. Its alarming and disturbing. It<br/>
seems like the Teacher forgot she was the teacher, and decided to<br/>
join kindergarten. <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b>The Pain of taking care of \#1 <br/></b></i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b><br/></b></i></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">My studies on Gandhi and life experience in India revealed to me what was going wrong in American society. Education that cut us off from Nature, that could not<br/>
serve our families or communities, that felt meaningless. It had<br/>
less and less ethical values, more and more emphasis on transitory<br/>
ideals – presentation and competitiveness. Along with this was<br/>
centralization, outsourcing and importing of everything, instead of<br/>
localization. Privatization instead of community, to the point we no<br/>
longer knew or even cared deeply about our neighbors. And with<br/>
privatization came alienation, and human mistrust, and a lack of<br/>
responsibility taking for one another, a myopic cancer, that in the<br/>
US, has eaten into the very vitals of family life, as the fading<br/>
flowers of humanity stuck in old age homes attest.<br/>
</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Books came out, espousing the new social philosophy, like <i>Taking care of \#1</i>. Selfishness was made into a virtue. Capitalism was the root of all this<br/>
private-ness, and led to the socially and legally sanctioned<br/>
licensing of greed, and all the other problems of a system we have<br/>
been forced to live in, that I have come to view as an economic<br/>
gridlock. It has become a globalized consumer culture, a<br/>
monoculture...it has many names. I like Dorothy Day's – “<i>a<br/>
filthy, dirty, rotten system</i>.” Dorothy founded the Catholic<br/>
Worker Movement, and knew for certain, that we are all One human<br/>
family. She lived, worked, spoke and moved in light of that<br/>
knowledge.<br/>
</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">By the time I arrived on the planet, the military-industrial complex, the big guns of business were in full swing. The medical-industrial complex was gaining steam.<br/>
Advertisements incessantly drilled new values into us, from all<br/>
sides, even without watching TV, their jingles were in the air, the<br/>
effects of their images in people's minds, which children acted out<br/>
with one another. They tried to tie our finer subtle feelings that<br/>
lead to our ideals to material products, entertainments and<br/>
short-lived enjoyments. Freedom was tied coke-cola, cars and<br/>
throw-away items. Happy family life – to Disneyland vacations, and<br/>
fast food restaurants. Beauty and personal success – to sexuality<br/>
and money. The new values stressed entertaining each other rather<br/>
than working together. Entertainment of children soon became almost<br/>
a duty for parents and now it has reached a high note in westernized<br/>
societies. There were social pressures upon us, put forth by our<br/>
educations, the media, the goals of big business. We were all<br/>
affected.<br/>
</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Gandhi noted:</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“I have not come across any human being who remains unaffected by his surroundings. I for one think there can be no such person. If there is any such person in a<br/>
million, he must be a <i>Vatapi,</i> that is, one who lives only on<br/>
air.” <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The 1960's were a people's statement, about how we didn't want these pressures. How we wanted real values that reflected what we all know, that we are One human family, under<br/>
God, and `<i>God</i>' here, means the <i><b>Truth of that Oneness</b></i>.<br/>
We wanted community, to work meaningfully together with the Earth<br/>
and be able to live with that work, to have education for peace<br/>
instead of war, a chance to contribute towards a better human<br/>
culture. And to be responsible and generous on the global level, for<br/>
all `Americans' have come from somewhere else. We wanted<br/>
leadership that was connected, like we were trying to become again,<br/>
to the Earth, to the interdependence of all life. <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b>Lennon Sings out our Educational Deficiency</b></i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b><br/></b></i></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The former Beatle, John Lennon, wrote a song “<i>Working Class Hero</i>” which described well the scene for many of us, who dared to keep in touch with another value<br/>
system found in our hearts, besides rank materialism and capitalism.<br/>
Who dared to think that actually, Love and Truth are what we <i><b>really<br/>
are here for</b></i>. We disappointed our parents plans for us, in a<br/>
solid rejection of all that they had worked for as being meaningful<br/>
and valuable, a comfortable plan of opulent and aspiring middle class<br/>
life, with all the politically correct clothing, furnishings, and<br/>
goals. They wanted to see us succeeding in the dream of cars, homes,<br/>
vacations, financial security and a place of standing in the world<br/>
until our exit from the glamorous dream.<br/>
</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It was awareness of that exit made us question everything, for senseless war in Vietnam was making so many of our peers exit early, death was on everyone's doorstep. And many<br/>
of us got lost. Drugs, sex, bad relationships, which distracted us<br/>
further and further. Some gave up, and renounced their quests, they<br/>
didn't want to think anymore – it had become too painful. They<br/>
bought into the <i>you've got to survive</i> and turned away from the<br/>
lights of their ideals. They brought a bad name to being a `hippy.'<br/>
</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Lennon's song spoke to the social conditioning and education that is failing us from “<i>a filthy, dirty, rotten system</i>,” for education is never limited to a<br/>
curriculum devised at some place, taught in another. Education is<br/>
always all the stuff, seen and unseen that we absorb and react to,<br/>
even if almost unconsciously, from our environments and ecological<br/>
settings.<br/>
</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>T</i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>hey Make You Feel Small</i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><br/></i></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As soon as your born, they make you feel small</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">By giving you no time instead of it all</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">till the pain is so big, you feel nothing at all</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A working class hero is something to be</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A working class hero is something to be</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">When a child is put in a classroom, beside the teachers words, the books and the blackboard, he is in the proximity of the minds and thoughts of his peers. The physical<br/>
environment of the classroom, and its inclusion or exclusion of the<br/>
natural world is another powerful factor. Most importantly, the<br/>
contents of his teacher's character, his or her honesty, gentleness,<br/>
kindness, sense of justice or not, are picked up instantly. The<br/>
characteristics of the teacher have a great deal to do with the<br/>
ethical orientation of the class. All of us remember those rare<br/>
and outstanding teachers we had in our lives, and those that weren't.<br/>
The teachers that made the class honour fair play, or let it slip<br/>
into foul.<br/>
</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The value of our education is seen in the ethical standards we hold for ourselves. How can we call an MD educated, when he will perform breast enlargement surgery on an<br/>
insecure teenager? Or for that matter, on anyone? Into what has he<br/>
been educated? Where is the ethical board that should strip a<br/>
medical doctor of his license if he uses his medical training,<br/>
intelligence and skills just to get a buck? The medical world now is<br/>
filled with people who made a hypocritic promise to themselves, not<br/>
the Hippocratic oath. People aren't fools, we all know the use of<br/>
education for self- aggrandisement and greed is disgusting and<br/>
loathsome. Gandhi said:<br/>
</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“It is an abuse of one's education to use it for earning money. Education proves its worth when used for the service of others.<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote1anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call#sdendnote1sym" id="sdendnote1anc"><sup>i</sup></a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote1anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call#sdendnote1sym" id="sdendnote1anc"><sup><br/></sup></a></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Too Crazy to Follow Their Rules</i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><br/></i></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They hurt you at home and they hit you at school</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Till you're so \#\#\#\# crazy you can't follow their rules</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A working class hero is something to be</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A working class hero is something to be</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Then there is the education that Life tries to give us through Nature. The Day, the sky and clouds, its moistures, lights, smells, moods, the plants, earth, birds, animals,<br/>
the Night, the moon and stars...the elements, heat, water, earth, at<br/>
all times, we are receiving unending and <i>unutterable</i><br/>
instruction from every angle, <i>through every pore of our being</i><br/>
from Nature. Through our contact with Nature we gain knowledge<br/>
about ourselves, without even being aware of it, by the ways in which<br/>
we interact with Her. Nature immediately gives us an honest<br/>
reflection of our actions and intentions. Animals and plants, all<br/>
life, can not be deceived. In Nature, we gain learning in the art<br/>
of abidance in ourselves. <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But modern education cut that cord. And we suffered. Lennon's song spoke to the alienation from real Life, from Nature, that modern education is giving us. <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Can't Function for Fear <br/></i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><br/></i></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Then they expect you to pick a career</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">When you can't really function you're so full of fear.</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A media, paid for by big business, furthering its goals, and journalism that chose to go along with pressures to conform, sought to condition and educate us all into<br/>
becoming needy, greedy consumers. Helena Norberg-Hodge<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote2anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call#sdendnote2sym" id="sdendnote2anc"><sup>ii</sup></a><br/>
notes:<br/>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“Consumerism plays a central role in this whole process, since emotional insecurity generates hunger for material status symbols. The need for recognition and acceptance<br/>
fuels the drive to acquire possessions that will presumably make you<br/>
somebody. Ultimately, this is a far more important motivating force<br/>
than a fascination for the things themselves.<br/>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The cultural centralization that occurs through the media is also contributing both to this passivity and to a growing insecurity.”<a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote3anc" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call#sdendnote3sym" id="sdendnote3anc"><sup>iii</sup></a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>We're Still Ignorant</i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><br/></i></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It was this more insidious indoctrination, from the totality of our environments, that grabbed hold of most of us, and rocked (or stoned) us to sleep. <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Keep you doped with religion and sex and T.V.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">And you think you're so clever and classless and free</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But you're still \#\#\#\# peasants as far as I can see <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A 1979 course with Dr. Jane Goodall, ``Monkeys, Apes and Humans,'' made me begin reflecting on how close<br/>
our social behaviors in the west were to our primate instincts.<br/>
Female primates `present' their bottoms to males when in estrus.<br/>
Males have characteristically threatening body languages that they<br/>
use with one another, aggressive postures in their walking. I<br/>
ruminated on these and other findings after class, at a cafe that<br/>
overlooked a busy street. Sequestered in its shadows, I silently<br/>
observed the movements and actions of human beings around me. It was<br/>
scary, and depressing. The line between human social behaviors and<br/>
the primate social behaviors seemed only to be covered by a piece of<br/>
cloth. Was this what our lives were for? To go through primate<br/>
roles, human beings dumbed down to primitive instincts, the law of<br/>
the jungle in some shape or form – ugly, constant competition,<br/>
aggressiveness in academics, business, marriage, in acquiring<br/>
property and bank accounts, everywhere and everything? The lowest<br/>
common denominator dominating our lives?<br/>
</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What college education was preparing me for seemed worse than meaningless – a career as a cog in a corrupted system of false values, where I should push myself forward,<br/>
for name, status, position, establish myself in some way on some<br/>
platform, join the system, encourage its perpetuity by the support of<br/>
my life force, <i>my days on Earth</i>...even the `NGO culture' was a<br/>
turn off – the same aggressiveness was there, in a different way,<br/>
even worse, because the ideal of human service seemed closer.<br/>
`Spirituality' in the West became infected with the same energies,<br/>
and people everywhere seemed to be on a fast track to nowhere. <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>A Working Class Hero</i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><br/></i></p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">There's room at the top they are telling you still</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But first you must learn how to smile as you kill</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If you want to be like the folks on the hill</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If you want to be a hero well just follow me</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A working class hero is something to be...</p>
<br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I really didn't know what my life was for, and how I would ever really be able to give my heart's love to people in a way that was useful, that would help, that would really<br/>
matter. The wisdoms of the `successful' sickened me. No one, it<br/>
seemed around me, really knew what we were here for. Everyone was<br/>
pretending that they really believed the false goals that we had been<br/>
conditioned and indoctrinated into. It was a big lie, everyone was<br/>
trying to believe. <br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Part 2 concludes this article.<br/></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br/></p>
<div id="sdendnote1"><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote1sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call#sdendnote1anc" id="sdendnote1sym">i</a> CWMG 33:296.</p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote2"><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote2sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call#sdendnote2anc" id="sdendnote2sym">ii</a> Helena Norberg-Hodge is an Author as well as filmmaker, notably \<i>Ancient Futures,</i> founder/director International Society of<br/>
Ecology and Culture and recipient of the Right Livelihood Award,<br/>
co-founder of the International Forum on Globalization and a chosen<br/>
member of World Elders.</p>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote3"><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a rel="nofollow" class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote3sym" href="http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/gandhi-and-john-lennon-a-call#sdendnote3anc" id="sdendnote3sym">iii</a> \url{<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/resources_norberg_hodge.html">http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/resources_norberg_hodge.html</a></p>
</div>
INVITATION: Let's Transform Dr. King's Birthplace into Global Capital of Peace...
tag:gandhiking.ning.com,2009-12-09:2043530:Topic:18485
2009-12-09T15:49:25.000Z
John R. Naugle
http://gandhiking.ning.com/profile/ATLpeace
<p>Greetings from Atlanta: City of Peace.<br></br> <br></br> Hello and 10,000 blessings to you.<br></br>
<br></br>
Our nonprofit's Mission is building "The Gandhi-King Global Peace Connection" to transform Dr. King's birthplace into a global capital of peace, and launch a 1000-year project called:<br></br>
The Peace Millennium (Years 2000-3000)<br></br>
<br></br>
We invite and welcome YOUR participation as an Official Co-Founder. We have major goals, but sadly we currently have zero funding, and nobody working with us…</p>
<p>Greetings from Atlanta: City of Peace.<br/> <br/>
Hello and 10,000 blessings to you.<br/>
<br/>
Our nonprofit's Mission is building "The Gandhi-King Global Peace Connection" to transform Dr. King's birthplace into a global capital of peace, and launch a 1000-year project called:<br/>
The Peace Millennium (Years 2000-3000)<br/>
<br/>
We invite and welcome YOUR participation as an Official Co-Founder. We have major goals, but sadly we currently have zero funding, and nobody working with us knowledgeable in fundraising. Please refer connected and powerful peacemakers from anywhere on Earth to assist us. Will YOU be our "miracle?"<br/>
<br/>
Ultimately and ideally (to give you a glimpse of our bigger vision) we want to secure Oprah as Honorary Chair and take our mission global. In closing, I leave you with these documents, plus an inspiring image and this verbal challenge:<br/>
<br/>
"Let's be the Change and be the Dream to honor Gandhi and King!"<br/>
<br/>
Courage, Peace, Love and Non-Violence in...<br/>
Atlanta: City of Peace and globally,<br/>
John<br/>
____________<br/>
John R. Naugle<br/>
Founder & Executive Director<br/>
Atlanta: City of Peace, Inc.<br/>
<a href="http://www.ATLpeace.org">www.ATLpeace.org</a><br/>
<a href="http://www.myspace.com/ATLpeace">www.myspace.com/ATLpeace</a><br/>
<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/ATLpeace">www.linkedin.com/in/ATLpeace</a><br/>
<br/>
Board of Directors<br/>
The Gandhi Foundation USA<br/>
<a href="http://www.GandhiFoundationUSA.com">www.GandhiFoundationUSA.com</a><br/>
Chair: The Gandhi Center (ATL) Feasibility Study</p>