I happened to go for the weekly Aarthi organized by the Hindu Students Organization (HSO) at USC. Swami Sarvadevananda had come to lead the discussion for today. The topic was "How do we incorporate Hinduism in our daily life". It was a very interesting discussion and I relished every minute of it. Here are some of the extracts from the dicussion.
"What is our final goal of life?" was the first question asked by Swamiji and everybody was silent. I then told "Mukti". This started off a very interesting reply from him. Eventhough what I told was a good answer, it wasnt the simple answer. The simple answer was that our goal of life is to live peacefully. That is something which we are all searching for.
An example: If we go to a person who takes drugs or drinks heavily and ask him why hes drinking/taking drugs, his reply would be that hes going through a lot of struggles in his life and he wants to forget all those and be peaceful.
Yes. What he does is right i.e. searches for peace, but the means of going about it is different. When his intoxication comes down, he goes further depressed. This is because he is already quite unhappy, and he gets more depressed because he has come back from so much joy to the unhappy situation. Hence, this isnt permenant peace.
And so on, the discussion progressed.
Then came the question, what is actually a Hindu way of living? The way we are on track with our final goal i.e. peace, is the Hindu way of living. When we compare with the other cultures, they have short term goals and they achieve it. Then they go in search of the next goal. But what happens here is that, when they reach close to the end of their life, they have no clue about what they were trying achieve overall. Hence its always important that we focus on short term goals that will go in the path of our final goal. So, in the way we are grown up, we are trained to live a life where we set peace and happiness as our top priority and the actions which we do revolve around it.
Then propped the question of whats the use of living a life like that? Every person is respected around for his character whether its Christ, Buddha, Krisha or Rama etc. When you are able to do actions which would not just serve you, but a group of people, it brings in happiness and satisfaction. It makes you realize the positives in everything and will make you more focussed. It helps you learn more things and admire them. And so on..
Finally, we ended up in the last question talking about Reincarnation. At that time, Swamiji explained to us, how rebirth of any soul is in search of the higher truth from the lower truth. He told us that no one is a sinner and whatever actions we do, its an experience for us to proceed in the path towards the infinite truth.
And there ended a lively and wonderful discussion today. I thought it was something which I should share with all of you. Hence I m posting it right away.
"What is our final goal of life?" was the first question asked by Swamiji and everybody was silent. I then told "Mukti". This started off a very interesting reply from him. Eventhough what I told was a good answer, it wasnt the simple answer. The simple answer was that our goal of life is to live peacefully. That is something which we are all searching for.
An example: If we go to a person who takes drugs or drinks heavily and ask him why hes drinking/taking drugs, his reply would be that hes going through a lot of struggles in his life and he wants to forget all those and be peaceful.
Yes. What he does is right i.e. searches for peace, but the means of going about it is different. When his intoxication comes down, he goes further depressed. This is because he is already quite unhappy, and he gets more depressed because he has come back from so much joy to the unhappy situation. Hence, this isnt permenant peace.
And so on, the discussion progressed.
Then came the question, what is actually a Hindu way of living? The way we are on track with our final goal i.e. peace, is the Hindu way of living. When we compare with the other cultures, they have short term goals and they achieve it. Then they go in search of the next goal. But what happens here is that, when they reach close to the end of their life, they have no clue about what they were trying achieve overall. Hence its always important that we focus on short term goals that will go in the path of our final goal. So, in the way we are grown up, we are trained to live a life where we set peace and happiness as our top priority and the actions which we do revolve around it.
Then propped the question of whats the use of living a life like that? Every person is respected around for his character whether its Christ, Buddha, Krisha or Rama etc. When you are able to do actions which would not just serve you, but a group of people, it brings in happiness and satisfaction. It makes you realize the positives in everything and will make you more focussed. It helps you learn more things and admire them. And so on..
Finally, we ended up in the last question talking about Reincarnation. At that time, Swamiji explained to us, how rebirth of any soul is in search of the higher truth from the lower truth. He told us that no one is a sinner and whatever actions we do, its an experience for us to proceed in the path towards the infinite truth.
And there ended a lively and wonderful discussion today. I thought it was something which I should share with all of you. Hence I m posting it right away.
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