So Beautiful: So Simple
1. Every face aglow with a divine smile:
Our ancient values in personal life: buddham, dharmam and sangham saranam gachchami lead us to personal paradise. Matru, pitru, acharya, and atidhi devo bhava expresses divinity in each one of us. The divine spirit of sarve janah sukhino bhavantu through vasudhaika kutumbam must permeate our society and all its institutions into creating an ideal paradise for all. Not only when every tear is wiped from every eye, but when every face is aglow with a divine smile, can we really have a heaven on earth, a community paradise. The more brilliant the vision, the more powerful is its inspiration. Inspiration makes things simple, easy and enjoyable.
2. Everyone can be happy:
Everyone yearns to be happy. To be happy is the aim and essence, the purpose and foundation, the process and crown of human life. It is proper and possible for everybody to be happy. Everyone is endowed with all that is needed to be genuinely happy.
3. Happiness is a positive and enthusiastic living:
Happiness is a quality of thought, a state of mind and an attitude of soul. It is the abiding joy that glows with genuine goodness and love. ‘Happiness can grow in any soil, live under any circumstances. It defies environment. It comes from within. It is the revelation of the depths of inner life as light and heat proclaim the sun from which they radiate. Happiness consists of being and enjoying. It is the warm glow of a heart at peace with itself.
A martyr at the stake may have happiness that a king on his throne may envy. Man is the creator of his own happiness; it is the aroma of a life lived in harmony with high ideals. For what a man has he; may be dependent on others; what he is, rests with him alone. What he obtains in life is but acquisition; what he attains is growth.
Happiness is the soul’s joy in the possession of the intangible. It is the gladness of the heart rising superior to all conditions. Man might possess everything tangible in the world and yet not be happy, for happiness is the satisfying of the soul, not of the mind or the body’.
Real happiness promotes higher values of wisdom, freedom, order, harmony, joy and bliss among all: it multiplies when shared with others; it is the greatest and best service.
4. Use the brain to be happy:
The human brain is the secret key of all happiness. In it we consider, analyze, decide, dream, remember, aspire, conceive, believe and achieve. Through it the human person discovers the secrets of life, and empowers herself to perform incredible feats of science and technology. With mind man has made tremendous progress in harnessing time and space, in inventing energy and enhancing health. By mind humans have created wealth and culture, wisdom and values, and institutions of social, economic, political and spiritual research and development.
Every one of us has a brain and a mind. They are the storehouses of power, wealth, wisdom and all happiness. We can use them the way we want and choose. While all our hearts yearn and hunger for happiness, while we have all the sources and resources needed to create and enjoy happiness, we can, must and will find a way to build our global paradise for all.
5. Knowledge+character is wisdom:
The following spine-chilling words convey a very heart-warming and liberating message. Right attitude, an attitude of positive spirit and values, survives and thrives triumphantly amidst horrendous and excruciating and demeaning machinations of murderous tormentors. Viktor Frankl was crushed, cursed and cast out as a despicable animal into a dungeon of human cadavers. How he survived three 365 days and nights in the rot and filth, in the stench and vermin! Just go on feeding the mind with bright vision of faith and hope and love: success, peace and joy result.
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude on any given circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
And there are always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.
…Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him –mentally and spiritually.”
6. Reach within to catch the divine:
The best foundation of personal character consists of cultivating the seeds of genuine joy, honest integrity, generous contribution, human dignity, firm faith, regular discipline, persistent humility, commitment to quality, highest excellence, smart effort and loving service. “To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower, to hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour: that is the power and wisdom that comes from the cultivation of observation.”
“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours. He will pass an invisible boundary; new universal and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; and he will live with the licenses of a higher order of being.” (Thoreau)
7. Loving is living and giving happiness:
Positive attitude with enthusiastic energy is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, talents or skills. Great attitude will build up everybody, every institution, every organization. Whatever happens to us, we can always choose to respond positively, in the best and highest manner we want. We are in charge of our attitudes. The higher the values, the greater the purpose, the more heroic and admirable will our choices be and the more exhilarating and liberating and wonderful will be the decisions we take. We can do all things good because the source of all goodness is God who strengthens us. And God cannot want us to fail and be unhappy.
8. A unique concept of excellent service:
More millionaires and prosperity are made by corporations than by anything else.
Better values and hospitality are established by ashrams than by anything else. What if both corporations and ashram combine, will they not make a local neighborhood a community paradise of prosperity and harmony? Everybody is happy in a community with a family spirit.
In an ashram, all eligible grandparents will be trained, equipped and empowered to develop and enjoy, educate and establish personal and community values. Joy and happiness, integrity and responsibility, transparency and accountability, respect and friendship, commitment and discipline, peace and harmony, creativity and progress are some of the themes of constant learning and practice among the inmates. Our grandparents are visionaries and missionaries of happiness: they are the coaches of corporate culture.
9. An ashram and a community corporation:
Corporation provides resources; ashram provides values. Corporation facilitates development of human person and human relationships professionally. Ashram inspires, mentors, inculcates purposeful life of dreams, vision, mission firmly founded on integral and integrating values. Leadership in service, prosperity and wealth made abundantly available, enable everyone to become one’s best in all positive dimensions and directions.
In a community corporation everyone in the neighborhood is automatically a shareholder. Thus ownership and prosperity are assured for everyone. Money and wealth are the subjects that all would constantly study and learn and master.
In an ashram, all eligible grandparents will be trained, equipped and empowered to develop and enjoy, educate and establish personal and community values. Joy and happiness, integrity and responsibility, transparency and accountability, respect and friendship, commitment and discipline, peace and harmony, creativity and progress are some of the themes of constant learning and practice among the inmates. Community ashram+ Community corporation=community paradise.
10. We can all be Happy Now: Prosperity& Harmony
An ashram of grandparents: they are totally dedicated, well-trained, adequately equipped and empowered to live as a model and modern community of paradise. The grandparents are full volunteers and completely committed to peace and harmony within themselves and with others; they surrender to ashram community all their rights to private property (no lending, no borrowing, nor having any bank account: they are free from personal financial concerns); they promise to take good care of their health; they practice happiness with integrity; they cultivate tender loving care for themselves and others. They always wear a smiling countenance, speak sweetly, and behave gently. They always encourage and edify others with peace, progress and harmony. They constantly learn, nourish, cherish, enjoy and share true happiness. Happiness is the only way to be happy: peace, cheerfulness, enthusiasm and harmony are its fruits.
A unique initiative: a replicable model
i- Total focus is on human resources and human relationships; every human person and every human community are the first priority. Only in a democratically organized community, can an individual really be a sovereign with dignity. Leadership is everyone’s destiny. Organized unity is strength. Scientific knowledge with values is wisdom. And wisdom is universally beneficial. A happy community takes good care of itself and all its members. How can we estimate the cost of the pain, loss and waste that is prevented by organizing a happy and prosperous local community! Are not most of the problems symptoms of a broken community and of broken hearts?
ii- making everyone in a ward/village a shareholder in a local community corporation;
iii- promoting an ashram for the healthy grandparents to become dedicated volunteers for creating, developing and establishing the great happiness values that build up every person and the whole community.
iv- To support the whole process with a well-planned course on building a local community paradise, let us start a Community corporate leadership and management institute. A grand Media Centre creatively promotes everything that is positively beneficial to all people. Audio-visual dramatic presentations of the best practices in human resource development and in human relations enhancement are the head and heart of the institute. We model our thoughts and actions on men and women who have been creative in their service for others. The seeds of greatness are attitudes and beliefs that begin in children as baby talk. They start as delicately transparent ideas and lovely simple values. They gradually grow into wonderful characters shaping the heroic leaders and angels. Each community expresses its own genius with its unique talents and characteristics.
