Bringing Innocence Back into our Lives
- Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
I wish we become more of a child than an adult. A child smiles 400 times a day, an adolescent smiles 17 times and an adult hardly smiles. There will be very less conflicts in the world if only people can smile more. We have been discussing the problem of violence and conflicts. What is the solution? Where are we heading to? We grew up with the ideology of Mahatma Gandhi. We used to attach pride in being non-violent. Unfortunately, today, the pride is associated with aggression and violence. Someone who is aggressive and loses temper easily is considered heroic in schools and colleges. We need to make the shift from attaching pride to violence to attaching pride to non-violence. We need to give our children a global vision of a violence-free and stress-free society.
Our breath is linked to our emotions. For every emotion, there is a particular rhythm in the breath. When you cannot directly harness your emotions, with the help of breath you can do it. If you are into theatre, you would know that a director asks you to breathe faster when you have to show anger. If you have to show a serene scene, the director would tell you to breathe softer and slower. If we understand the rhythm of our breath, we are able to have a say over our mind, we can win over any negative emotions like anger, jealousy, greed, and we are able to smile more from our heart. I think we need to bring the childlike beauty and innocence, that God has gifted every human being with, back into our lives.
Now, I want to tell you about an incident. Two years ago, we had a group of 200 youth from Arab countries that came to Bangalore. At the same time, we had about 35 youth from Israel. When the Arab youth came to know that there were youth from Israel also, they turned so violent, wild and angry that they were ready to pack their luggage and leave. But it took us less than a couple of hours to sit and talk to them, during which they learnt some breathing exercises, meditation and a little bit of yoga and they became such good friends by the end of the third day. At the end of the week, the two groups had tears in their eyes while departing from each other.
The child inside you is still alive. You are still that innocence. You just need to blossom it. And how do you do that? Just be in meditation. In the present moment, we’re all innocent. See the world through your heart. You will find that there’s so much beauty, so much love, and such good intentions in people.
