Sunday, February 12, 2006

Sprituality for everyone

Sprituality umh!!!!!!! a very contentious but a boring thing to talk about. How often i find people mostly those who are disappointed by the harsh vagaries of this life taking asylum with a spritual organisation or other. Currently number of organisations like Art of living, escon. rK mission etc are booming over their expertise in calming the restless minds of the workomaniac inhabitants of this hyper-modern world. You just do a google search for art of living and you will get the exent of the charismatic influenze of the highly adulated founders of these organisations.
In my case i also got numerous offers to join one of this group . Infact my reserved nature and traditional insticts do make me highly vulnerable to such an endeavour. Even many a times i have been coaxed by some of my friends to join such an organisation. Infact in a case one of them was so inspired to rope me in that he ended up wasting an entire afternoon just to explain me the positive effects of this so called spiritual organisations, At the end i had to show him the door to end our over exteded arguement which had gone to the extent of clamouring and fighting. Although the person here was a dear friend and a nice being but i can't just waste my 1000 bucks and a week time for some fraudesters promising to give me the calm and peace in such an eventful and enjoyable life. This can also be said to be an quintessential policy of such a organisation they leverage over the contacts of the follower to increase their base and influence. This followers publicise the vitues of this organisation and try to get as many freinds as possible into the cartel. Its a good publicity instict. Even u can find spritual soveniers, keyrings, calendars etc which are used as an publicity material for the organisatons.
So I should say till now i was unfazed by this sprituality boom. I had always maintained that sprituality is not my cup of tea. For a person like me getting his life governed by the instructions of some other person is almost impossible. Niether i have enough perseverance and nor required temprament to survive their long lectures and prayer session. But then i came to read a book which changed my entire perception about indian sprituality.
Book is tiltled "A monk who sold his farari" by Robin S. Sharma one of the most renowned spritual and leadership guru of North America. It is an inspiring tale of a famous lawyer who sets for a life changing odyssey inorder to get out of his unbalanced and over-demanding professional life. There in India he founds all the calm in life and promises his guru to spread his newly gained wisdom with as many people as possible. Here is what entire plot of the book is based upon the lawyer dictating his first hand spritual experience with one of the colleague and closest friend. It is a wonderful fable which do mock on us and tells us the worth of the forgotton spritual wisdom of ancient indian monks. Its a little bit ironic of me enjoying the praise and influenze of indian sprituality from a foreign book when i had outrageously rejected it as a farce back home.