• Ideas to revive Sanatana Dharma includes the need for Formative Spiritual Guides. We must reach out to followers in poverty, teach them English and share our earnings with those who cannot give anything back to us.  

Whose fault is it that our holy Dharma is not known to even those who say they follow our Faith? Perhaps the time is now ripe that instead of looking outward, we take a hard look at ourselves. What are we doing wrong and what are the areas that we can improve that our children are established in the Laws Eternal?

1. We need to have human resources at our disposal who will teach our children to experience the best that our Dharma can offer.

For this we need holy women and men to study psychology and use established techniques of formative spirituality to help monitor the psycho-spiritual growth of our children. If they are suffering from some or the other mental disorder, then these trained women and men can help our kids to recover and be lights unto other children.

Formative spirituality is not satsang or mere counselling. Formators are women and men who while fully aware of recent developments within the behavioural sciences factor in the profound insights about the human person found in our Faith. They know counselling, cognitive behaviour therapies and positive psychology and other talk - therapies but being convinced of the Truth revealed in our Upanishads, Agamas, and Tantras, they integrate the idea of the holy within the empirical sciences. 

The need of the hour is that we have facilities to train formative spiritual guides.

These guides are not Gurus; they help to quantitively and qualitatively measure the progress of their clients in the spiritual path on a periodic basis. The faster that we have a pool of formators, the better it is for our Dharma. It is foolhardy to not accept the findings of empirical behavioural sciences as it is equally foolhardy to ignore the Yoga Sutras.

2. The time has come when we must introspect why we are unable to reach out to the poorest and most marginalised within our own Faith. 

May be we are too busy being intellectuals and boasting about our successes as individuals. May be we lack love for the downtrodden. We treat our poor, those who work in our houses with a smugness which shows how far we are from our Dharma. Perhaps all of us reading this need to go out to our localities and serve the children of those who are poor.

Instead of travelling abroad or watching the news endlessly, or posting pictures on social media, we should go teach the alphabet to our kids. Both in English and in the vernacular and then Sanskrit.

Without English our kids will remain poor.

There is no credit in having achieved a lot for ourselves or our families when even one child who is born to our Faith goes hungry even for one night. You are not doing the kids a favour by helping them. It is your duty to be preferentially with the poor. If you are a man, go teach, not merely give money for tax exemptions, the boys in your mohallah instead of making merry at home because winter is here. If you are a woman, please go teach the local girls mathematics and English grammar instead of escaping into long bouts of meditation. Remember, Shiva equals jiva. How can one think of mukti when even one child is suffering? None deserves to suffer.

3. In this blighted world of ours we have only two categories of people: those who love themselves and those who love others.

Love is something which has to be practised. To love others means to listen to others. Someone may not agree with you, nonetheless our Faith teaches us to listen respectfully to the views of others. Silence and respectful deep listening do not mean assent to the views of others. But listening in silence to others, to be open to others, to be ready for dialogue is love in action. Now this love must be concrete. Love does not boast. Love serves silently. There are no hierarchies in love. All are equal.

If you follow Sanatana Dharma, then you will be open to others. There can be no place for hate.

Come let us adapt our religion to the signs of the times.

Let us not be afraid to embrace that which is good everywhere without diluting our traditions. Let us be servants to others and not leaders. We must be servant-leaders since in spirituality it is not pride and arrogance which wins but humility borne out of lives firmly established in love for others.

Let us follow the examples of Swami Vivekananda and Sri Narayana Guru. Let us be flames of love and then certainly we will have mukti. Selfishness is never good.

Share yourself with those who cannot give back anything in return to you.

Then you are worshipping the Holy Mother of the Universe. She is there for you in the form of a little child who has been abandoned. Go and be servant-leaders.

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Author Subhasis Chattopadhyay has a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Calcutta. His reviews from 2010 to 2021 in Prabuddha Bharata have been showcased by Ivy League Presses. He has qualifications in Christian Theology and Hindu Studies and currently teaches English Literature in the PG and UG Department of a College affiliated to the University of Calcutta. He also has qualifications in Behavioural Sciences.