Satyakam's Test

Back in April, we kicked off the Small Hands, Big Hearts Project with Shaluk and the tussle his mind faced with the melon, and tomorrow, we will revisit Satyakam's test and how he earned brahmvidya.

With tomorrow's sabha ghosti, let's use the 15 minutes in a targeted way to reinvigorate others to this elusive seva. Here are some ways to focus the discussion and keep the momentum going.

Know your audience: Survey your audience to see exactly what individuals are doing and frame questions accordingly.

• If commitment is an issue, the discussion should focus on identifying opportunities using the example prasang as a guide.
• Chaturmas just concluded, and if an individual gave up something for four months, there's a good chance s/he can solidify it as their sacrifice to this project
• If commitment has been made, the discussion should focus on how to keep motivation afloat.
• If Satyakam could give you 1 piece of advice, what would he say?
• Imagine Satyakam participating in this project alongside us. From the prasang, how would he go about staying consistent with his sacrifice?

Do sampark: Let's not forget about those who may not be attending sabha tomorrow. Identifying ways they can sacrifice can serve as an opportunity to spark a conversation and do sampark.

Leverage your karyakars: Ask parents coordinators to communicate with parents of kishores/kishoris who cannot identify a niyam or may feel shy approaching their parents. 

Create a rally point: Graphically display your mandal's contribution in an area where they can see, like the sabha hall.

Gearing Up as Group Lead: Ghosti 101

With another shibir soon approaching, perhaps one of the most rewarding yet challenging opportunities is the group lead seva. Pit with a group of sometimes complete strangers and tasked with making the interaction friendly in a matter of days, it's not a job for the faint of heart.

Thus, let's deconstruct one of the most basic responsibilities of a group lead: moderating a ghosti. Below are some tips coupled with examples in italics to better illustrate the point.

#1: Know your audience. Simply calling your group members before meeting them at the shibir can help ignite the interaction. Not only will it help in learning names, but it can help get a feel for where they stand in their samjan thus allowing for a ghosti guided more to something relevant.

"What do you like to do for fun?"
"What do you find most enjoyable about mandir?"
"What are you hoping to get out of the shibir?" 

#2: Priming the participants. This strategy requires the ghosti has been planned out in advance, but giving a heads up to the ghosti participants, especially if sensitive topics like niyam-dharma are to be discussed.

"We're going to be talking about our struggles with other haribhakto, so think of a situation where you had a conflict with another haribhakt and how you maneuvered it."

#3: Crafting the question. Open-ended questions are easy to generate, especially on the spot.

"What is agna?"

Unfortunately, they are the often met with an awkward silence. With so many possibilities, nobody wants to be wrong, especially in front of strangers.

Instead, try binary questions where the answer is either a yes or no. While the questions appear straightforward, they can generate ample discussion when wielded well.

"Can you follow agna without realizing it?"

Alternatively, try using questions with more than two choices, but tread carefully. More choices can create more confusion and the greater chance someone abstains from voting altogether. Allow for time to think out the choices.

#4: Respond to the response. Sometimes, moderators ask questions, but don't use the responses to build a point. Open-ended questions are frequent offenders for this problem, and doing so implies a failure to acknowledge someone's input.

Moderator: "What is agna?"

Group: "Things we follow. What Swamishri tells us to do. Something that will help us get moksh."

Moderator: "Great. Today we are going to talk about agna."

With a binary question, take turns asking each side of their opinion.

Moderator: "Can you follow agna without realizing it?" 

(2 voted yes; 3 voted no.)

Moderator: "Hasmukhbhai, why did you say yes?"

Hasmukhbhai: "Let's say someone becomes vegetarian. That's also Swamishri's agna, but they don't realize it."

Moderator: "Does anyone disagree?"

Lalubhai: "But how can you call it agna if you don't do it with understanding? You can randomly do something that happens to be in line with the Satpurush's wishes, but it's the understanding that defines agna."

#5: Acknowledge responses right/wrong. Not everyone will get the right answer nor should they. Ghosti is a shared learning experience, so don't forget to recognize contributors. Their input pushed the discussion further then where it was before.

Moderator: "Shivambhai, that's an interesting distinction and a very important point to note. Aksharbhai, thanks for sharing your insight as it's important to identify this common misconception when considering agna."

#6: Anonymize sensitive topics. Topics like niyam-dharma are newer easy to talk about let alone in the presence of those unfamiliar to us. Try using a method to remove names, like index cards.

"Think of a time where you did something you regretted later. Describe the situation on the index card in the few lines. When you are done, pass them up, and we'll review them together."

#7: Apply understanding. Simply having participants restate a point may not indicate complete understanding, so test with application.

"For Chaturmas, assume a kishore decides not to watch movies. Under what circumstances, would he NOT be following agna?"

#8: Schedule silence. When nobody responds, awkwardness joins the interaction, and it becomes irresistible for moderators to go into pravachan mode. Fight the urge by offering up periods of silence so that participants can ruminate freely without being pressured to offer up an answer.

"Let's take some time to think, and when you have an answer look up so we know you are ready to discuss."

Chalk Talk: Revisiting Ghosti

About a month ago, a fellow Sabhaologist shared with us an extensive list of strategies to mix up sabha, ghosti, or even meetings.

We decided to take him up on one of his recommendations, Chalk Talk, and apply it to kishore karyakar ghosti. Often times, we struggle with getting people to open up in ghosti, especially with larger groups, so this activity took advantage of silence by having participants respond on paper (as seen below).

Define how you think each aspect of Ekantik Dharma applies to your karyakar seva.

Which of the four pillars of Ekantik Dharma do you find easy? Hard? Explain.

To avoid repetition, tallies were noted next to comments that others also shared.

Overall, it was an interesting way to collect everyone's opinion and helped the moderator see the varying levels of understanding. As there were about 5-6 people present, a bigger writing space would have helped reduce wait time.

Nevertheless, we thank the Sabhaologist who shared with us a treasure trove of techniques. Want to try another one out? Check it out, and let us know what you think.

Getting a Ghosti Going

With the summer series on ghosti, we may have struggled to deal with a format that seems completely different from a traditional presentation.

Whereas in a presentation we have control, here we outsource it to our fellow audience in a ghosti. Hence, if we've put our audience to sleep, we'll know with the lack of responses garnered from them - maybe a reason why we fear a ghosti.

One tool though can put this fear to rest: curiosity. Curiosity is what gets a ghosti going naturally. People will speak up if they are genuinely interested in the topic at hand. In a ghosti, thus we need to compare each prasang to something our audience can relate. 

For example, let's say we want to depict the difference between paroksh gnan and aparoksh gnan to an audience full of gamers. Simply asking our audience about the difference will not make an impact especially since many of them won't know. Wet their appetites by contrasting a specific game, like Resident Evil, with perhaps reading a strategy guide (i.e. cheat manual). Just because we may know the full parameters of the game means nothing in the way of how our heart stopped at the sight of a bloody zombie.

To a crowd full of b-ballers, describe the crossover in the form of a step-by-step recipe. Compare that to what actual players feel when they pull off the move. Suddenly, the concept of paroksh & aparoksh becomes that much more concrete.

We can extend this idea to all of our prasangs as well, but it requires that we read over them and think about how our audience might relate to them. To butcher the prasang, read it out and ask, "What do you think?" To breathe life into the prasang, link it up to a concrete scenario, like we did with Resident Evil and the crossover.

Success or failure - let us know of other tricks of the trade to get a ghosti going.

Procrastinating... Helps?

Let's face it, we've all fought that battle against the beast known as procrastination, and we all know of its treachery oh so well. However, can it ever be helpful?

We had discussed what it meant to awaken curiosity, the hallmark of an engaging ghosti, so let's put this post to practice. Have your kishores/kishoris think of situations where procrastinating got the job done; generally, these roll right off the tongue.

Now throw the monkey wrench into their mental machinery: From the standpoint of the opposing party, what did they think of that effort?

For example, let's say Jayesh's teacher curves the highest grade to an A in his AP Chemistry class, and Jayesh easily beats his class by scoring in the 80's. Thus, he never studies until the night before. He's very intelligent but rarely pays attention in class as he realizes that he doesn't have to bust his butt in this class to make a legitimate A (>93). Jayesh is also a senior applying to college and decides to ask this teacher for a recommendation letter. 

What do we think Jayesh's teacher will write about him?

A question of this nature will stimulate our ghosti members to think outside themselves and perhaps catalyze a purpose for trying to deal with this issue.

Topics like laziness and procrastination follow a basic pattern in the head of the seasoned kishore/kishori; they know they will learn of their deficiencies and weakness and thus be less likely to engage and pay attention. After all, we don't like to be told we're broken.  

However, when we awaken awareness to the externalities of our imperfections, we may have a stronger motivation to curb them - a 'why' for the 'what.' 

Hence, to add some seasoning to this selection on self-improvement, try opening up the ghosti in this way BEFORE addressing how to deal with our procrastination. 

Kantihi & Ojaha: KO

Knockout, commonly abbreviated as KO, can refer to many things, as noted by the all-encompassing reference, Wikipedia.

In boxing, it is the criteria for winning and entails one participant being "unable to rise from the canvas within a specified period of time, typically because of fatigue, injury... loss of balance, or unconsciousness." These cats seem to get it real well.

In basketball, it refers to a mini-game where two people try to make a basket first. If the first person to make the shot began shooting after the other player, then the other player is "knocked out."

And of course, who could forget, video games where it just means somebody (Pikachu in this case) took you out?

But did we know that there's one item missing on the list on Wikipedia - that exists beyond the authors' realm of knowledge? Yep, we're talking about on the spiritual level (as we generally do in sabha).

In this context, KO refers to kaantihi (God's divine beauty and splendor) & ojaha (the resulting divine glow and radiance), and for the perfect example, we look no further than our guru, Pramukh Swami Maharaj, as we continue this series of ghostis on Eternal Virtues. 

Wait a second - Swamishri is all about non-violence, so how can we even compare him to a violent term like knockout? Well, a knockout is a case-closed situation - either you're up and awake or you're out of the ring. Similarly, Swamishri's KO induces a novel spiritual experience upon any newcomer - his divinity knocks out the mayik traces from our senses... WAY out of the ring. 

Let's take Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam's quote at the beginning of the syllabus. 

“I feel a very strong and divine aura in his presence. I feel at peace in his presence. I forget about all my worries and difficulties. He truly loves people unconditionally.”

Just in his presence, Dr. Kalam felt such a relief. Clearly, Swamishri's KO clues us in on the fact that he's no ordinary individual. In fact, the effect is far greater than we could imagine as stated by Sadguru Sant Swami.

"Shastriji Maharaj's personality and aura reminded one of Bhagwan Swaminarayan. There wasn't the slightest difference. As I look at Pramukh Swami Maharaj, I notice that his persona and aura are identical to that of Shastriji Maharaj. Shastriji Maharaj's eyes were powerful. No one could look into his eyes with confidence. They would always lower their eyes. Even his opponents would praise his work. Pramukh Swami Maharaj is exactly the same."

Even enemies felt the shear power of Swamishri's KO at work. The feelings of anger and hate borne by maya found no refuge in those who directed their thoughts towards the Satpurush.

This chapter in Eternal Virtues reflects this power through the words of a diverse cast of observers - from the "Multimedia Man" of Europe to an American airport worker to even a Chinese Christian! And while these words may wet the audience's appetite, their own words will make the greatest impact. Be sure to engage them in the discussion outlined in the syllabus.

1. How have we felt Swamishri's divine aura - be it in his presence, in doing his darshan, or even doing his smruti? Prasangs are the best way to illustrate these observations, and make the ghosti solid.
2. While we have experienced this KO once or many times over, we cannot seem to duplicate this experience or even feel it regularly. Why? How can we overcome it? (HINT: Think about what Swamishri's KO does to our senses and what we can do to enhance the effect.)

For the second question, let the audience discuss and brainstorm. There's no fun in the obvious!

In short, let's remember. Swamishri's beauty knows no words; it's just a simple KO, giving new meaning to the phrase, "drop dead gorgeous."