(KadambaKanana, University Programme, Sep 2010)Happiness should not just be our happiness, when a human being becomes a little bit more mature:
“My happiness should include the happiness of everyone else.”
What if I’m here in this room and just thinking of my happiness:
Put an elbow in his face!
Kick here!
And I grab the camera!
That’s a good start and there’s a lot that I could do!
I mean after a little while of me behaving like that…after a little while you would all together,You would all grab me, open the window and give me a quick exit! ...
…because we are not going to tolerate it if somebody is totally obnoxious. If I start to call everybody names. How long can I do it before some guy says:
“Ok let’s talk about that!”
So that’s the way it is…
…One time I was here in South Africa in a programme with kids, not quite kids but boys who were about ten and I was talking about being a vegetarian. So I said being a vegetarian is a good thing, I said:
’Because the animals don’t like to be killed - they won’t like it if you eat them and that’s why we should be vegetarian.’
I said: ‘Imagine what would you do if I were to eat one of you.”
They all said:
“Then we would kill You!!!!”
I was a little shocked! They were only twelve or ten, they were heavy Kids!
“Then we would kill you!”
Yeah but that’s how it is in this world, we will not tolerate such kind of anti social behaviour. So there is something like group dynamics. And we are as a group and some outsider would give trouble to the group, then we are together, we would go together:
“Hey who are you?! Get out of here, this is our group!”
So this is good, this natural but why say:
“This is the BYS, our room, and next door is the SYB”
‘We don’t talk to those guys, forget it, backward guys, the SYB. These guys are backward. It’s all about the BYS, when will they ever get it right!”
Like this we are very judgemental about other groups. Other groups are judgemental about us and we can all become judgmental;
“Those guys from the other side of the corridor, you know. They’re nice guys but they are from the wrong side of the corridor!”
It this way we can think of so many things, we can make parties, so many parties. Oh, the blue party, the green party and so on, different colours , different shades, the communist, the pacifist party, the animal party, the vampire party, you name it, every party will go!
In the end we can all look at each other and condemn each other but that is crazy, because the real thing is we are one group, one big group. Why make these partitions. Why say only people from this room are ok and people from this city are ok.
We just saw the world cup, my God, the flags all over the place, you know! And everyone gets into it:
“South Africaaaa!!”
They were finished in the first round! Still got cars driving around with south African flags and all over the world like that …nationalism.
Nationalism is just foney! Borders.:
“Excuse me sir passport, passport yes?’
bribe as well, some country.
“What for?”
“No, No you can’t go any further. Sorry you can’t go any further here”
“Who’s he!” “Who are you” “What have you got to do with this land?”
Stars and stripe and guns.
That means we are excluding people…
…Vasudaivakutumbhakam
The whole world is our family.
“The whole world is my family”
VasudaivaKutumbhakam
Isn’t that a nice concept: the whole world is my family, if we could only get there.
It’s difficult, the mind does not want to coopperate because the mind does tend to go:
“Oh, I’m not sure about that one”
The mind tends to do that, but if we could overcome the mind….
(KadambaKanana, University Programme, Sep 2010)
