Swadharma has only recently come to my attention, but thanks to Saketh, I’ll be posting fairly regularly from now on. I’m a first-year at Wellesley College, and after coming to college, I’ve found that religion has begun to play a more prominent role in my life that it did in high school. At home, religion was always so mixed with culture, and the two were never really independent for me. However, it seems like religious identity and cultural identity are more separated for college students, and I’ve found that I’m thinking more about what Hinduism means to me than I have before. One of Swadharma’s goals is to generate discussion about how we can integrate religion into our daily lives as students, and for me that is very personally relevant.
Yesterday, I was in Wellesley’s chapel and I saw that there was a big sheet of paper left up on a board from another religious group’s meeting. There was lots of writing on it, and after looking at it I realized that each member of the group had written something that they would do to make time for God in their lives. There were (understandably) a lot of promises to spend less time on Facebook and instead reserve that time for prayer, and there were others that ranged from not listening to music in between classes and using that time to talk to God to treating Sunday as a Sabbath and devoting the day to strengthening relationships with friends and God.
Reading the poster made me think — if I had to choose one thing to do, what would it be? I feel like prayer is an easy thing to say because it’s an obvious answer, but I don’t know if that would honestly be the best way for me to think about God. I still haven’t really come up with something definitive, but I think that by being more thoughtful in everything I do and say, I can act in a way that is more in accordance with Hindu principles and ideals.
Do you have any thoughts on this? Ideas or ways that you’ve found you can integrate God into your daily life?
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I find that being thankful before eating food makes me more grateful about life in general — one small but significant way that I am able to improve my perspective.
The other day I was really frustrated about my academic life in general, because I felt like I was working myself crazy but not getting anywhere. That’s when my mom reminded me that I was forgetting the very basis of Hinduism – I was caring more for the results of my hard work than the actual act of hard work.
For the past week, that has been my way of making space for religion. Every time I begin to worry about grades, I take a step back and put everything into a Hindu perspective. It has worked every time so far!
It is so easy to forget about God. We can speed through hectic days filled with homework, friends, and family and somehow get through the ups and downs of life. We always seem to get through it. But I have found that taking just a couple minutes to reflect on God or find a sense of peace within myself goes a long way. Finding a sense of calmness and peace is like an unbreakable shield. It stops life from pushing and shoving us around so that “getting through it” is so much easier.
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