6th June: Shivir – Day 6

Morning session

·         Ved are the theory of life.  But God did all the practical things also by coming into this world.  So become a dev and not a rakshas. 

·         Told the Shiv/Sati story of Ramayan – enforced that woman should listen to her husband if he is saying something.

·         Prahalad story – enforces that one should have faith in God. 

·         One business man used to kept all the bad coins with him instead of putting them back out in the market.  So when he was dying he prayed to God that “Please keep this (pointing to self) khota sikka just like I kept the khotta sikka out of the market.” So become the person who keeps the bad out of the society.

Afternoon session

About having sadhbuddhi and doing satkarm

1.       Your God is like who you are for example, whatever you will shout into a deep well, the echo will come back to you.  So your God becomes however you think of him as. So if you want to please him with money as a corrupt God then that is what he will be and that is what you will be.

2.       Explanation of Ganesh’s elephant form:

a.       Large ears – to listen to everyone

b.       Large nose – to do work so well that there is no nose cut (insult) in life

c.       Eats sweets – so speaks sweetly only

d.       Large stomach – to keep anger and all other emotions in your stomach.

3.       Savitri – goddess of matter – the power of nature is all around us – has five elements (earth, fire, water, air and ether).

Gayatri – goddess of sanskriti and thought – is formless and gives power to our being.

Savitri gives physical body while Gayatri gives mind.

4.       In talking about our habits: we have three characteristics prakriti, vikrati and sanskriti.  To give an example of each in one thing we do – eating…
Prakrati is eating right                 

Vikrati is eating more  

Sanskriti is giving your food to someone hungry

So in general you can follow prakriti in your life, that is your God given nature, but you can develop sanskriti also in order to become a better person.

5.       Aaj ke raavan are – politicians, actors, media, priests, professors and scientists who don’t work for the benefit of the society are all part of the evil group of people.

6.       The different yugs and the characteristic that was/is prevalent

Satyug – satya

Tretayug – maryada (Ram)

Dwaparyug – leela (Krishna)

Kalyug – pragya (Kalki)

What should we do in this yug? Take the sword and take action against injustice.  Stop talking in past tense and start taking action now.

7.       Interesting phrase that the speaker said, “Guru ko maante hain lekin guru ki nahin maante”

Evening session    

A young speaker for a change.

1)     A lucky person is one who is

a.       Born as a human

b.       Meets a sadguru

c.       Does jap-tap

d.       Gets varaagya

       2)     Rishi are always happy because their needs are very less.

3)     Pillars of good life – sadhna, swaadhyaay, sanyam and seva.

4)     Pragyopnishad – another text that Sharma ji wrote.  The speaker read part of this but was not able to finish even one subsection of one chapter of larger part.

5)     One has to change himself to change the situation –not try to change the situation because that may not be possible. 

6)     There is a lot of negativity in this world, one has to keep themselves positive and happy.

The lecture could have been more productive if the speaker had stuck to the topic rather than telling so many stories all the time.  He lost his audience as he went on telling his stories, although it is not really hard to lose the Indian audience!

I had to read the Pragyopnishad on my own. I will write my understanding of it later.

Personal Thoughts

Did not even try to go to yagya today.  I will go only on the last day now.  It seems that the number of participants are dwindling.  Maybe they are getting tired of sharing bathrooms or lack of sleep or they are busy doing their jap - whatever.

Some of the thing that have impressed me about a number of these speakers are:

·         Their ability to speak well in English, Hindi and Sanskrit, though most times they are speaking in Hindi.

·         Remembering so many dohas and shlok from the appropriate texts

·         Their general/global knowledge

·         Scientific knowledge

I wish I had the ability to tune off the ladies around me with their kids and their cell phones.