As the world reverberated with the chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ on Jan 22, 2024, I was taken back to my childhood Sundays. For most of us millennials, Sundays back in the eighties meant entire family sitting down to watch Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana and subsequently B.L. Chopra’s Mahabharatha. And these were beyond just being TV shows. For most grown ups it almost felt like taking a dip into the holy river of spirituality and for the younger lot like us it was a great and subtle way of imparting powerful spiritual lessons without making huge claims about it. The pin drop silence on the roads just proved how these shows anchored and embraced communities of people, holding and binding everyone together.
And that is why I feel community based learning is so powerful..because it embraces everyone ..the youngest through the oldest, across families and nations, living the same experience and emotion. These are the lessons that get embedded into one’s mindset..and stay for life!
Children who lived through the experience of Jan 22, 2024, hearing and chanting out aloud the sacred mantra ‘Jai Shri Ram’, have seeds of spirituality sown and etched into their tiny minds which will stay with them forever. Now it is upto us as parents, guardians, community at large on how we nurture that.
Spirituality is not religion dependent. Spirituality is faith and belief in a supreme power and is beyond any religion.
So whatever be your faith, start embedding the seeds of spirituality into your kids and start nurturing it early on as it builds:
Spirituality is not something you can force upon someone but it is something that is imbibed inherently. Some easy ways to sow these seeds for our children are:
- Watching epic based TV shows or movies together as a family – For me nothing quite came close to the two epic shows I mentioned above but the one we really started to enjoy watching alongwith our son is ‘The Legend of Hanuman’ on Disney+Hotstar. Definitely worth checking out and creating some memories.
- Celebrating festivals and explaining their meaning and also the overarching purpose..reinforcing the positive values and message in each
- Respecting and celebrating festivals across other religions and cultures and reinforcing how they all share a common message of love, peace and kindness
- Following a daily family ritual
- Offering daily gratitude prayer…it could be before meals, before sleeping, first thing in the morning or anytime during the day
As I conclude, the timeless ‘Main Samay Hoon’ prologue from Mahabharatha plays into my mind and I am tempted to end with the same beautiful verse from the eternal Bhagwad Gita:
“यदा यदा हि धर्मस्य ग्लानिः भवति भारत, अभ्युत्थानमधर्मस्य तदा आत्मानं सृजामि अहम् | परित्राणाय साधूनां विनाशाय च दुस्-कृताम्, धर्म-संस्थापन-अर्थाय सम्भवामि युगे युगे”