It’s easy for our minds, hearts, souls and bodies to be overwhelmed by the whirlwind of happenings brought about by the holidays. So as the New Year approaches, it’s good to take time and enjoy a moment or two of quiet, making sure we have a positive and calm state of mind as we welcome a fresh New Year.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar — humanitarian, spiritual leader and ambassador of peace — gives us valuable pieces of advice to help us achieve this.
By DENISE ROCO
In April 2015, a 58-year-old man stood on the stage of the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) and addressed hundreds of people.
If the pressure to say the right words is directly proportional to the audience’s number in an event, how did Sri Sri Ravi Shankar handle the multitude of people he was surrounded with when he, together with then US Vice President Joseph Biden, announced the Universal Declaration of Human Values at the Kennedy Center in 2007? Or when 150,000 Argentinians meditated for peace with him in 2013, and when 70,000 people celebrated at the World Culture Festival tOlympiastadon in Berlin in 2011 along with Germany’s then prime minister and diplomats?
(Sri Sri Ravi Shankar)
Come hell or high water
The thing about this charismatic man from Tamil Nadu, India is that there is no pressure on him at all. It’s obvious that when he steps into a room, like when he did during the intimate press conference held right before his talk at the PICC, Sri Sri is always as cool as a cucumber, despite carrying long locks of hair coupled with a long beard and a lengthy white garb. When asked about how he balances his personal and professional life, he responds, “My work is my life, and my life is my work.”
A scholar in Vedic literature with a degree in Modern Science, he astonished his teachers by reciting the sacred Bhagavad Gita at the age of four. After a 10-day period of silence in the banks of the Bhadra River in Shimoga, the state of Karnataka, he discovered a powerful breathing technique (Sudarshan Kriya), which now is the centerpiece of the Art of Living courses.
The talk, entitled “Secrets of Inner Strength and Happiness,” was delivered by Sri Sri with a voice as gentle as his soul. Succinct, suave and straight to the point, Sri Sri kept everyone glued as he threw in his sense of humor every now and then. “Our mind tricks us so much. If your mind listens to a talk for 10 minutes, every three minutes, your mind takes a cappuccino break. You are sitting here physically, but your mind goes out,” he says with a wide smile.
Words also mean little to him. “Someone can talk on love for two hours, but all it takes is a child to look up and glance at you, and you will feel the love.
“I want to keep my vibes clean, my vibes positive (because it affects everyone),” he says with utmost sincerity and points out frankly how nobody teaches us how to handle our mind — how to get rid of frustration, how to get rid of anger, and all these negative emotions of the mind. After all, it’s of prime importance to know what’s going on in our mind. What our mind thinks, our body follows, thus the term, “psychosomatic.”
Experience is the best teacher
Sri Sri questions, “If your wife is unhappy, your brother is unhappy, your neighbor is unhappy. Can you say that you’re happy? Our happiness is connected to people all around us. It is possible for us to have such positive vibrations that it can actually wash away all the unhappiness of people around us. This is possible.”
He then asks the audience nicely if we can all do meditation, and quickly breaks common misconceptions about meditation. “How many of you think meditation is concentration? No it is not. You’ll be disappointed. How many of you think meditation is not concentration? There are some people not raising their hands for both. What’s the matter you don’t understand English?” People laugh heartily.
He told us to do nothing for the next 10 minutes, but to sit still and tall as we were made to think the unthinkable. Sri Sri said, “I want you to think these: ‘I want nothing. I am nothing.’ If you think you’re the smartest person in the world, meditation will not work. If you think you’re the dumbest person in the world, it will not work. For 10 minutes, just think, ‘I’m going to be a nobody,’ and we will have a wonderful experience.”
And a wonderful experience we all had as we were made to pay attention to our bodies. Our breathing gradually slowed down to a nice rhythmic pace. We were all programmed to keep doing, that we forgot about being. The silence emptied the clutter of our minds, and made us feel light. When we opened our eyes, we felt as though we had just risen out of bed on a bright morning.
Was it just this writer pondering what Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was saying in a nutshell? Is it so crazy that world peace could easily boil down to, as The Beach Boys sing it, having everyone “picking up good vibrations?”
This article was originally published in PeopleAsia‘s June-July 2015 Men Who Matter issue.
