I wanted to write a quick note about a couple of different things.  First, on happiness: I think that happiness and spirituality are largely interconnected.  Put simply, your relationship with God affects your outlook on life, and a generally positive outlook can be all that happiness means.  If there’s anything (relevant to this blogpost) that I’ve learned so far this summer, it’s that we are quite in control of our lives and our outlooks.   For some people, casting off the “the grass is always greener on the other side” comes naturally – for others, it takes work.  Either way, I personally think that appreciating the circumstances God has placed me in and believing that I have a future, a fate, a destiny – that “everything happens for a reason” – significantly improves my own outlook on life and in effect, my overall happiness and well-being. I think this is a useful thing to keep in mind as the school year approaches, where “making lemonade out of lemons” isn’t always the easiest thing to do.

Another thing I’ve come to believe is that God not only comes to different people in different ways, but seems to even reside or resonate within different people in different ways.  I’m thinking of some good friends who are extremely religious, and of others who are barely so, at all.   I’m starting to think that God works for everyone in such a way that reciprocates how they allow Him to enter their lives.  This borders on the abstract and non-sensical, but think of a time in your life when your spirituality was at a much different place than what it  is now (if it has ever changed at all):  chances are, when your approach to God was different, the way you approached every-day things in your life was different as well.

These insights are coming alongside a flurry of cleaning and organization,  a day of introspection and a newfound commitment to self-improvement.  I’m somewhat of a procrastinator and stress-ball – and call me weak-minded  - but for me, changing these habits seems like a much less daunting task when I think of the support I can sustain from spirituality.

Finally, I’ll end on a nice Swami Vivekananda quote I ran across the other day: “Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin – to say that you are weak, or others are weak.”

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The mother’s heart, the hero’s will,
The softest flower’s sweetest feel;
The charm and force that ever sway
The altar fire’s flaming play;
The strength that leads, in love obeys;
Far reaching dreams, and patient ways,
Eternal faith in Self, in all
The sight Divine in great in small;
All these, and more than I could see
Today may “Mother” grant to thee.

-Swami Vivekananda

The poem seems like the perfect expression of the Hindu view of the mother — a person who only wishes for the best for her children. It certainly encapsulates everything I’d hope to feel/be/achieve in my own life as well.

Happy Mother’s Day!

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Why did my mind immediately latch on to this petty justification of sorts? As much as my rational mind likes to try disprove karma, the truth is, I think about it pretty often — whether it’s by joking around or neatly observing that “what comes around goes back around” in daily situations. Belief in karma goes back to the fundamental idea that our actions make a difference… that there’s some inherent balance in the world and the cosmic energy that our actions regulate.  When we put out negative energy, we get negative consequences… when we grant positive energy to the world, we receive positive effects.  I don’t know if this is just our way of assigning some kind of false regularity to the arbitrariness of everything that happens in our lives, but it’s a pretty comforting principle, and an effective moral guide.

This isn’t to say that our positive actions — deeds of kindness and benevolence, or even self-discipline — should be led on by a fear of negative consequences.  The good things we do should be grounded in our own love and purity of heart — not any other ulterior, selfish motive.  Just as Krishna tells Arjuna in the second chapter of the Gita, we shouldn’t solely focus on the results when we execute our actions.  We should do them for the sake of doing them.  However, when things don’t seem to be going in our way, maybe we should step back and think of the less-than-good things we’ve done lately.  Even if there is no force of karma affecting our lives, at the very least, it will help us pinpoint and try to eliminate our negative thoughts and actions.

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Their questions are designed to make us think critically about our experience as Hindus in America (which, coincidentally, is one of the purposes of Swadharma!), so I thought I’d share them now, so we can ponder this food for thought:

I. What is your current relationship to Hinduism and current religious practice?
II.     To what extent has your relationship to Hinduism changed or stayed the same since coming to college/grad school?
III.    How does your practice and conception of Hinduism differ from your parents’?
IV.     How do you or do you not present yourself as a Hindu to your friends, colleagues, professors and the university community?

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Some sects of Hinduism declare that if one consumes alcohol, he or she is sent back to the beginning of the spiritual path that a soul must take to attain oneness with God. Personally, I feel like that belief is similar to the rules of the Snakes and Ladders board game in which the snakes bring the player almost back to the beginning of the game. This doesn’t mean that alcohol isn’t bad for us – practically speaking, I’m sure that spiritually, one’s soul may take a few steps backward upon the consumption of alcohol. But does this mean that one must not even go near alcohol so that he or she may attain oneness with God? Absolutely not! Nor does this condone excessive drinking of alcohol. My primary argument is that there is no absolute right or absolute wrong in Hinduism when it comes to alcohol. As long as one maintains the thought of ‘nothing in excess and everything in proportion’, there won’t be many problems within the Hindu religion.

I understand that many of you may not agree with me on this stance and I ask that you please state your thoughts on this matter, as it is so applicable to our lives as college students.

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