Tattva

“We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.”

-Herman Melville

“It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding.”

-Khalil Gibran

I have been attending Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh shakha since I was twelve years old. We’ve heard it said before, but it’s common knowledge that children just don’t understand the importance of going to shakha when they are little. I know I didn’t. In my imagination, it was simply a place to play with other children on a weekly basis. I was told that it would help me keep in touch with my Hindu culture. As I got older, however, I realized that it was a little bit more than these simplistic generalizations. According to the HSS website, the goal of having weekly meetings in the form of shakhas is to “organize the Hindu community in order to preserve, practice and promote Hindu ideals and values.” I understood that as I entered my teenage years. I understood that the point of going to shakha, family camps and Sangh Shiksha Vargs was to develop characteristics that would enable me to be proud of my Hindu culture and be a leader in society. Somehow, as I became a young woman, I found myself wanting to get involved more and more, and I no longer needed to go to shakha at anyone’s insistence. I wanted to make a difference.

But then I entered college, and the game plan unintentionally changed. I am now in my second year at UCLA, a neuroscience major, and I have not been regularly going to shakha for the past couple years. There are many explanations for this—I was living away from home, there was no shakha near by my campus, my classes are harder, but excuses are excuses. Sure, whenever I went home for a visit I would try to attend utsavs, but only if it fit my schedule. I knew that entering college was the beginning of a new chapter in my life, and shakha now had a diminished role. I didn’t even bother too much about this new development, because in my mind, there was nothing I could do about it anyways. But I should have known better, and attending the Southern California Yuva Sangam on April 11^th, 2009 at San Diego State University has rejuvenated me, transforming my passive apathy into passionate activism. Perhaps it may be useful to read my thoughts on the Yuva Sangam with the following picture in mind. I was not simply a college student who had just gotten out of touch with Sangh. Rather, I was a student, thrust in the chaotic, unpredictable, fast-paced environment of college, my beliefs challenged, trying to find out who I really was, what I really stood for and what path I should take in my life amidst people who all seemed sure that they held the right answers. I found myself lost, standing at a road with too many forks, unable to differentiate the right from wrong. I was desperate for answers, for some sort of sign that would lead me in the right direction. Little did I know that sign would come in the form of a Yuva Sangam.

Two years, ago, before the first week of college, some told me that the college years would be some of the best years in my life. Others said it would give me a chance to learn what it really felt like to be independent. But the advice that I hold most true today came from my mother, who told me that I would meet many different types of people in college, and that no matter who my friends were or what my major was, to always remain true to the beliefs I grew up with. At the time, it seemed along the lines of the parental advice I got on a daily basis, nothing I didn’t know already. It seemed like common sense to me.

So enter the college scene. It was amazing. UCLA was vibrant, it was fresh, and I felt like I belonged. I stayed away from the usual college vices we all hear about. I was lucky enough to find friends who I felt comfortable with. I loved my classes, and signed up for extracurricular activities that would keep me busy and ensure I got the best college experience possible. I had found my niche.

But one college vice crept up on me. I hadn’t even realized it had for a long time. It was the ego mentality. The “I have to study because I want to do well in school so I can be something important in life” mentality. I was surrounded by competitive, Type A students who were only making me stress out more. The petty drama—be it about friends, about grades, about boys—that is synonymous with crazy college students did not help either. So I found myself questioning whether I really knew what was right for me. Everyone seemed to know what they wanted to do with their lives, what they had to do to get there, and I began to believe that the goals I had been working towards to didn’t seem good enough to be on par with everyone else’s. I wasn’t enjoying the college experience as much as everyone else was anymore.

I had heard about Yuva Sangams for a long time, but I was never old enough to go to one. And because I felt on the outside looking in at the warm environment that is Sangh, I figured I should go to my first one with an open mind. I figured it would be the best opportunity I could get in order to reintroduce my mind to the Sangh philosophy that I seemed disconnected with for such a long time.

From the minute I entered through the door, the familiarity seeped into my system, making me feel comfortable even though I was in a room filled with individuals I had never met before. It was the fact that we were all part of Sangh, one organization I knew wouldn’t discriminate against anyone because they studied for x number of hours or took this many units. We were simply all Hindus. The easygoing atmosphere, the joking around, the friendly competition that came with the khel, instantly made me feel relaxed. It was the charcha session that made me realize how much I had been missing. The talk of how much we as Hindus had contributed to the world and what we can do using what we have learned from going to shakha to better the society we live in was the sign I had been looking for. I needed to do a better job implementing the Hindu philosophy of living life, something I had done so well as a child, but was struggling with as a college student. The fact is, in college, we are given many paths to take. For those who have a strong foundation with who they are and what they want to be, the right path immediately is clear. But I got overwhelmed with all the choices I had to make all on my own. The strong foundation that shakha had given me as a child was crumbling because I unknowingly had shifted my priorities and that left shakha nowhere near as important as it should have been.

What really made me realize how easy it should have been for me to choose the right path in college was the talk about Sewa. I was enraptured by the work that Sewa International had been doing in the past and what they are doing now. I was inspired by the service everyone involved with the Bhutanese refugees was doing—be it simply visiting them or donating clothes. It gave me a good feeling in my heart, knowing that I was part of an organization that prided itself with helping others. But even more so, I felt like I should be doing more to help others as well. That I needed to stop getting overwhelmed and hiding beneath the ego mentality and with an open heart and mind help others who needed it. I needed to implement the morals I had grown up hearing from my mom—that service to humanity is service to God. And all it took was going to one Yuva Sangam to reawaken a dormant optimist that was hidden deep underneath layers of stress and tension. This is why I am promising myself that one summer I will apply to the Yuva for Sewa program and dedicate a few months to going to India and serving any project that is given to me through this program. This is why I will be more active in doing activities that hold no other purpose other than to be a good Hindu and citizen in this society. The Hindu way of life was the way to live. As the generation of the future, it is up to us to never be apathetic, and to believe that our Hindu faith is a strong basis to positive changes in the society we live in. All it took was one Yuva Sangam for me to realize that.

Amanda is a student at University of California, Los Angeles. She is studying neuroscience.

 Email This Post

 

This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 7:13 am and is filed under Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.