Building the Foundation of Dharm
Kalpana Gautam
Dubai (U.A.E)
Hari Aum and Pranaams to Maa ji.
My 17-year old daughter Mihika has been part of the Yuvasatya student circle for more than three years now. Through Maa ji’s benevolent grace, with Chaitanya ji’s (Manish ji) patient steering and under the loving guidance of sevaks and sevikas of Balsatya & Yuvasatya of SISS (Dubai), Mihika is growing to be a confident, self-assured person with increasing self-awareness. She is starting to steadily frame her personal set of ethics in alignment with Vedantic principles. She is now more mindful of her actions, its impact on others, and understands her responsibility to society.
Her school teachers admirably speak of her as confident and conscientious, demonstrating high ethical standards of behaviour and participating enthusiastically in all manner of school activities. She has also taken a keen interest in Vedanta philosophy. There is this instance where at a friends’ get together (majority non-believers of Sanatan Dharm), Mihika confidently articulated why she prefers following Sanatan Dharm. She spoke about it as a way of life where she has the freedom to make conscious choices, choose her own path to self-growth and expand her intellect, compared to other western religions, which are more restrictive and do not encourage independent freedom of thought and expression. The audience was dumb founded by her talk and surprised by the clarity in her understanding.
Like any other teenager, Mihika too likes to assert herself and has trouble in accepting ideas that do not satisfy her logical reasoning mind. But Maa ji, with Her infinite love and wisdom, teaches in a way that has connected to Mihika, has appealed to her logic and has thus captured her interest in the subject. In the Yuvasatya class, Mihika along with her fellow students engage in group discussions and explore the teachings of Sreemad Bhagawad Geeta as relevant to their teenage life. They try to grasp/understand the essence of the Shlokas and discuss ways in which they can practically implement these teachings in their daily life and use it to deal with their life challenges. In class, each student expresses her/his thoughts about a specific concept/topic and how they understand the idea in their own unique way. This allows each student to slowly and steadily firm up her/his own personal code of conduct, and strengthen her/his own unique individuality and sense of self, in alignment with Dharm. The students are reminded and guided to use their discriminative faculty to manage their emotion driven thoughts and desires, thus building their inner strength and stability.
In this way, through the grace of Her Holiness and the shelter of SISS, foundations of Mihika’s character are being laid, where I see her slowly growing into a responsible and positively contributing citizen of the future, leading a life the way Lord Vishnu ji would like her to lead.
Thank you for this opportunity,
Hari Aum,
Pranaams to Maa ji!