| Subject: NEWS: Guru of joy |
Author:
Eric Chen
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Date Posted: 04:13:34 07/22/04 Thu
From: The Straits Times
http://www.straitstimes.com.sg
JULY 18, 2004
Guru of joy
Indian mystic Ravi Shankar has built up a global following by teaching his own spiritual brand of stress management
By Cheong Suk-Wai
SLIM-BUILT, mild-mannered and with a voice barely above a whisper, Indian mystic Sri Sri Ravi Shankar could find himself crowded out only too easily in the hustle and bustle of today.
Yet the hippie-tressed, bearded 48-year-old draws swarms of people to his meditation workshops, including Singaporeans like Senior Counsel K.S. Rajah, businessman Rafiq Jumabhoy and Clerk of Parliament P.O. Ram.
In India, audiences averaging 300,000 mob him. To date, more than four million people around the world have learnt his breathing and stress management techniques.
Indeed, about 700 people had to be turned away from the Ritz-Carlton hotel on March 29, while at least 3,000 of his followers swamped the hotel to attend one of his talks.
Just who is this man whom followers have likened to Lord Krishna and even Jesus Christ, but who himself insists is 'just a child who has refused to grow up'?
Indeed, ask him the really big questions like 'What is the purpose of life?' and he throws them back at you.
'Anybody who gives you an answer to that question doesn't know what he is talking about,' he says. 'Those who do know won't give the answer to you. The question is a vehicle for moving deep within yourself.'
Fair enough, but this is hardly the stuff that inspires awe, surely.
Still, in early May, US President George W. Bush, no less, engulfed Sri Sri in a bear hug at the White House and said: 'Please keep America in your prayers.'
So is Sri Sri a poser or poseur? Charlatan or clairvoyant? Fake or fakir?
In answer, his followers need only cite his Art of Living Foundation (AOL), which he set up in India in 1982. Now in 142 countries, including Singapore, AOL is the world's fastest-growing humanitarian and educational non-governmental organisation, with special consultative status to the UN Economic and Social Council.
That has AOL volunteers doing such things as building homes and schools for the poor, counselling prisoners, buying poor children shoes or sending them for much-needed surgery.
So he is not just about meditative mumbo-jumbo. In fact, the World Economic Forum considers him on par with Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, and he is a co-founder of the Geneva-based International Association for Human Values, which is trying to re-instil human values in societies everywhere.
Why do doors, and hearts, open everywhere to welcome him?
To begin with, he may be ostensibly Hindu in his outlook and practices but, as a rule, he doesn't do religion. So, in their workshops, he and his teachers talk about simple and appealing things, like trust and caring for others, while steering clear of the 'complications' of religion.
As he puts it in a bleating lilt: 'Whatever is your belief, that's okay, you can keep your belief. We don't interfere with anybody's belief system.'
One of his ashrams in India drew 25,000 visitors in 2002, up from 5,000 in 1997. And while Sri Sri is known to give free talks, an AOL course participant can expect to pay about US$250 (S$429) each.
As he told some 200 participants at his talk at the Grand Hyatt hotel here earlier this month: 'You know, religion is like a banana skin and spirituality the banana. Most of us have eaten or thrown away the banana, but are still holding on to the dry skin and fighting our way through life.'
So, he tries to teach his followers how to grow their own supply of bananas, as it were, by 'preparing them to solve any problem, how to rise to any occasion and how to communicate better with others'.
It begins by slowing down, he says. Breathing deeply. Living in the moment. Then, focus on others. Treat the whole world as your home. And last but not least, remember that nobody lives forever, so start helping others while you can.
Doubtless, he has his detractors. The one time he winces during this interview is when he is asked about his challenges in life. 'Challenge happens at every step, you know. The people have all their little mindsets. '
He adds cryptically: 'They usually accept things if things come from a psychiatrist, who may not know much about consciousness. They more readily accept someone with a university degree in psychiatry than one who has studied the mind.'
Ah, so.
Yet, while it may be easy to dismiss him as nothing more than an anthropological aberration, it would be hard to deny the good he has done globally.
Last September, for example, he sent a seven-man team to war-torn Iraq to treat post-traumatic stress disorders by teaching breathing techniques.
Earlier, his teams helped in the post-war Balkans and post-9/11 New York. In April, AOL signed a contract with Kosovo's Ministry of Health to continue its good work there.
Still, why endanger his life and the lives of his disciples just to make a point?
He eyeballs this reporter and says: 'When you see the whole world as your family and something goes wrong in your house, you won't simply sit quietly. If there's a fire in the kitchen, you will run to put it out.'
But his workshops have done more than just help folks sort their lives out. Thus far, about 120,000 prisoners - most of them hardcore criminals - in countries like the US, Britain, South Africa, Slovenia and Singapore have learnt his breathing and stress management techniques, done in partnership with the global PrisonSmart (Stress Management And Rehabilitation Training) programme.
To him, 'inside every culprit is a victim crying for help', and so incarceration is not the solution. Education is.
In Sri Sri's biography, The Guru Of Joy, written by former Le Figaro journalist Francois Gautier - who, with his Indian wife Namrita, are now the guru's firm followers - Sri Sri recalls how among PrisonSmart's hardest nuts to crack was an alleged Al-Qaeda agent named Mohammed Afroze. Afroze was to have blown up Britain's House of Commons but was caught in time and ended up in a Mumbai jail instead.
After lessons from Sri Sri, the once-aloof Afroze actually refused bail as he had enrolled in the advanced PrisonSmart course. Mr Gautier records him as saying: 'I was promised to go to heaven after death, but I found heaven right here.'
Of Afroze and his ilk, Sri Sri says: 'We need to do like what is in Singapore, whose people accept each other's differences. We have to learn a little bit from all religions. We can't say I belong to this religion, I won't learn from that religion.'
Sri Sri is most chuffed that most of his PrisonSmart graduates take on agriculture, social work and other community jobs. They include a group of ex-convicts in Hyderabad who recently set up medical camps in the city's slums. Sri Sri says such efforts are ultimately his greatest reward.
'When you see people so grateful and there is joy in their life, what more motivation can there be?'
What's so special about him then? Pat comes the reply, with another endearing chuckle: 'I don't think there's anything special about me.
'You know, when you're happy, you want to share that with everybody. It's not that you want to do something with a certain motivation.'
Come now, you persist. Might it be that piercing look in his eyes? That warm, fuzzy feeling he gives off by his joyous presence?
He listens patiently and then says evenly: 'If you ask a poet how did he write the poem, what will he say? 'I just wrote'.
'So it is.'
Well, having taught the world, as it were, what has the world taught him then?
'World's taught me patience!' he whoops, his face crinkling like a cheeky child.
The eldest child of an academic researcher and housewife in Papasam in India's Tamil Nadu state, he showed himself to be a prodigy at age four by reciting the sacred Sanskrit text Bhagavad Gita - despite not having been taught it. At nine, he mastered the Rig Veda.
He graduated in science from an Indian university in 1975, when he was 19. Turning down a bank job, he studied transcendental meditation under the guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. But infighting with other Maharishi disciples led to his going out on his own in 1982.
After 10 days in silence, he was inspired to teach Sundarshan Kriya, or alternating breathing rhythms to bring about a calm mind and body.
He sure needs it. Rising as early as 5am daily, he does his breathing and yoga exercises until about 9am, when he begins receiving visitors from all walks of life.
The strict vegetarian has lunch at noon and then it's back to listening to others talk.
Then, from 7pm to 9pm, he has his 'everyday holiday' by singing Indian, Chinese and English songs with his followers.
After that come discussions deep into the night of issues like society's lack of human values.
Most of the time, though, he is up in the clouds, jetting hither and thither to spread his 'All You Need Is Love' messages (Singapore is the 78th stop on his itinerary this year).
When all is said and done, how would he like to be remembered?
His beatific smile fades as he says: 'I'm not keen on people remembering me. If everyone starts thinking that way, I want to say, 'I've given you a gift, so why not pass it on to others instead of making it a shambles?'
Knowing how fickle human nature can be, why then take on the impossible task of trying to make everyone happy?
'You know, these things are to be wondered,' he intones, and then points to a vase of deep pink peonies blossoming on a hotel table.
'It's like asking these flowers, 'How are you so beautiful?'
'You just wonder, you don't answer. No explanation is needed.'
Sometimes, the simple things in life are anything but simple.
( E-mail: suk@sph.com.sg )
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