DEEPAN MUKHERJEE

THE SPEAKING TREE
Make The World A Safe Place For All Of Us
Discourse: Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Seeing life from a perspective of space and time will deepen your vision about your life. The corrupt amass a lot of money, but cannot spend all of it. Then one day they die. Children might inherit the wealth — maybe they fight over it. Seeing life in the context of the universe and unfathomable time can broaden your vision, your mind and enrich your heart. Corruption can be countered by five Cs. The first is a sense of connectedness. Lack of a sense of belonging breeds corruption in society. That is why corruption is lowest at the village level. But in urban areas, it’s high because there is little or no sense of community. The second C is courage. Lack of self-esteem or confidence in one’s own ability is one of the causes of corruption. Fear or insecurity makes one corrupt. When you try to find security only through money, it doesn’t work. Even after acquiring more money, the insecurity doesn’t disappear. In fact, you become more fearful because the money might not have been earned in the right manner. So you need to have courage and confidence in your ability and in the laws of nature.

The third C is an understanding of cosmology: looking at one’s own life in the context of extended space and time. What is the human lifespan, just 80 or 100 years? See life in the context of the huge dimension of time. Billions of years have passed since creation. And everything in this creation is recycled. The air we breathe is old, every cell in our body, every atom is old, and the oxygen and hydrogen is old! The fourth C is care and compassion, important since they bring dedication. Its lack causes corruption. The Kumbha Mela was attended by 30 million people — nearly three million people each day — without violent incidents, theft or robbery! The fifth one is commitment. When a person has a goal, a commitment to a higher cause in life, it brings a shift from taking to giving. If you only think ‘What can i gain?’ rather than ‘What can i contribute?’, corruption cannot be rooted out. We need to shift our attitude to commit ourselves to give. All this is not possible without individual spiritual uplift. A sense of belonging with the whole world. Today, we have globalized everything other than wisdom. And that is one of the causes of terrorism and unrest in the world today. We accept food from every part of the world, we accept music from every part of the world, but when it comes to wisdom, people seem to shy away. If every child in the world learns a little about all cultures, about each other’s values, the whole scenario will be different. Then one will not think, ‘Only i will go to heaven. Everyone else will go to hell’. Lack of knowledge of this truth has caused so many problems. Even if one part of the world remains ignorant of these shared values, the world will not be a safe place. It is not something we can do overnight, but it can be done through education and creating that sense of community, through inspiration and example. Religion is like the banana skin and spirituality is the banana. Spirituality, the values, are the same in every religion. The differences are superficial. It is good to have differences. Nurture the differences but also enliven spiritual values. Then together we can make the world joyous and safe