Twin Treat!

I had heard about Bhanu Didi getting the 8th national Sadguru Gnanananda Award a few days back. Yesterday I received a snail mail from Dr. Prakash Vinjamuri of Life-HRG and I was delighted to read that he too was the receipient of this award. This was like a double treat for me. An award being shared by two people that I personally know. Ved Vigyan Maha Vidya Peeth belongs to the Art of Living Family and Didi is Guruji’s sister.

I had written about Life-HRG earlier. I know the dedication, hard work and personal sacrifice that Dr Prakash and his wife Kameswari have put in towards uplifting the poor and underprivileged through their outreach clinics. This was a much deserving award for LIFE-HRG. The money from the award, as Dr. Prakash, wrote in a email earlier today, helped them clear one of the loans they had taken to make Life HRG work.

I wish more power to the Dr. couple! If anyone wishes to know more about Life-HRG, feel free to drop in a note to Dr. Prakash at lifehrg [at] gmail dot com

Guidelines for Daily Living

The spring issue of The Blue Mountain journal is available here. The journal focuses on Guidelines for Daily Living. Sri Eknath Easwaran offers some simple but effective ways to transform our thinking process and create a brighter future for ourselves and those around us.

He writes:

India has a great festival called Dipavali, from dipa, light, and avali, rows. Homes all over India will be lit by rows of lights. It’s a beautiful sight, but in every religion the real festival of lights is the display within: patience, sympathy, good will, security, selflessness, love, wisdom. What a long row! We can go in the midst of people and they will receive the benefit of this light. One person being patient brightens everything around. Being patient with those who differ from us, with those who oppose us, with those who aren’t patient with us – this is the real meaning of spiritual growth.

We can start doing this from today onward. We may not have much to offer at the outset: two cents’ worth of patience, three cents’ of goodwill, and when it comes to the capacity to return love for hatred, all we may have is an empty piggybank we hope to add to later. It doesn’t matter. Next year, instead of two pennies, we will have five. The year after, we may have a dime. A year or two later, the dime has become a dollar. It takes a lot of hard work, but over a long, long period these capacities grow.

The important thing is to keep trying, day in and day out, in every relationship, doing your very best. Be regular and systematic in your meditation, and sustain your enthusiasm whatever happens. It may not appear that you are making progress. Sometimes you may even feel that you are going backwards. But as long as you keep doing your best, the Gita promises, you will get where you are going: “On this path effort never goes to waste, and there is no failure. Even a little effort toward spiritual awareness will yield protection from the greatest fear.”