Vedanta, Teens, and Young Adults
Namaste. Continuing on from my last blog about Teaching Children Vedanta, I want to share about the teens and young adults at SRV’s summer retreat. As mentioned before, we strive to bring current the legendary days of the forest ashram experience where the young students live a simple life saturated with the teachings in the company of Guru, Dharma and Sangha. Vedanta, being the revelation of timeless Truth, naturally inspires and rings true. Young people who have not yet bought into “mundane human convention,” as Lex Hixon interpreted Sri Ramakrishna’s use of “kamini kanchan” (lust and greed), hear and respond to Vedanta’s radical call to Freedom.
This year’s retreat featured a special class for the young adults led by our youngest “senior” sangha member who is up (or is it “down”?) with all the modern technology and social culture our emerging adults take for granted. The class was called “Chela Dharma,” the path or duty of the student, and used Swami Vivekananda’s first chapter of Karma Yoga as its foundation. The lessons focused on Knowledge as the Goal of Humankind, the Cycle of Karma and Character, and We are Responsible for What we are. Laced throughout these lessons are the assertions of our ever free, never bound nature as Atman. As Swami Vivekananda states: “Karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom. If we can bring ourselves down by our Karma, surely it is in our power to raise ourselves by it.”
Building character is the duty of young people, and as they approach the challenges of SAT tests, college applications, career options, relationships and jobs, such statements are galvanizing. Not only galvanizing, but alongside essential teachings/methods like the yamas and niyamas, and the example of older sangha, they see the connection between family, character, society, contentment, and ultimate Freedom. I know from speaking with some of these kids that there is a growing awareness that earthly knowledge must serve a higher end than pleasure and accumulation. The spirit of self-sacrifice in the service of God in others and in service to one’s Self-realization is starting to dawn.
A Few Anecdotes:
Just as I started to write this entry, I received a call from one of the parents about her 14 year old daughter, one of the graduates of the children’s classes, who confided that this summer retreat had changed her life. At least one piece of this is the acceptance and deeper awareness of the continuity of Consciousness. Just like the adults, and also the 5 other youth, she rose to the morning bell at 4:30 am and engaged in an hour’s meditation – 50 minutes longer than she had ever done before. Then she and the others attended Babaji’s classes on Vedanta and Yoga philosophy, and teachings on the yamas and niyamas that lasted for three hours.
Babaji presented the teachings via categories that started with Negligence (of remaining aware of Brahman-Atman) and its results, and continued through the week with teachings on Obstacles, Perspective, the Goal, Methods, Progress, Aids, and Obstacles. The youngsters were riveted during these classes. Their inspired attention was an eye opener for the adults. As one person later described the retreat, “One thing sticks in my mind, and that is the young people at the retreat. They were the “awe” in awesome. Their honesty, diligence and attentiveness (most of the time!), while absorbing many in-depth, lofty teachings was a joy to behold and a story to be told!”
The afternoons are generally spent at the American River swimming, but one afternoon Babaji kept everyone in order to provide an extra two-hour class. That was the day he gave the teachings on Perspective, in which he presented a chart comparing the views of Advaita Vedanta, Science, and fundamentalist Theology regarding the origin of Consciousness, the origin of human beings and the origin of nature, worlds, and objects. Afterwards, the “kids” descended on him en masse and kept him another hour and a half answering more questions. According to Babaji, this just proves that many of our youth intrinsically know that something is terribly wrong with the way we are expected to lead our lives. Revelatory Truth, so well-articulated in Vedanta, cannot be ignored. But how rare it is for them to hear it.
One 19 year old young man who had never attended one of our retreats told how he had been exposed to a little religion in his family but had accepted only what made sense and otherwise had come up with his own ideas about the nature of God, the soul and the world that he was generally happy with. I thought he was getting ready to tell me that Vedanta was just “okay.” Instead, he continued on to say, “But Vedanta trumps it all. The things I had come up with, Vedanta covers and goes much further, and then it answers everything else.” He had come to this retreat partly because of the influence of his siblings, but also because he is an athlete on the pro baseball track and wanted to learn meditation to help his concentration on the pitching mound.
Using Swami Vivekananda’s first chapter of Karma Yoga as a foundation, the Chela Dharma class scrutinized contemporary culture via movies, music, technology and education for their capacity to inspire one to Self-Realization or lead one into the bhoga marga. I asked Mahesh, who led this class, to share some of the poignant moments of this retreat. I will close with selections from his response:
Some of the best parts were when the kids “got it.” These came usually out of stories that I told and they latched onto, or stories they told from their own lives.
- Getting closer to the fire – increasing the intensity of your practice will help untie the knots in your mind. This is also felt physically – sitting next to the meditating Guru helps you also to clear your mind (this was recognized by the students when they sat near Babaji during the penultimate morning meditation). Student athletes brought up the concept of coaches that “ride me hard” – the coach recognizes the full potential of the athlete and cares enough about them to push them to their limits. The coach told the athlete, “It is good that you feel I am pushing you. You should start to worry when I stop doing that because it means I have given up on you.” We also discussed a quote from Lady Gaga in the same vein: “If you have no shadows, you aren’t standing in the light.” So get closer to the fire so that your shadows are evident, and you can then concentrate on eliminating them.
- All the kids have heard the popular rap lyric, “Keep your mind on your money, and your money on your mind.” We deconstructed that phrase and discussed how the Bhoga Marga is not a useful path to be on. Meditating on things that are impermanent will only bring grief when those things are lost. We transformed this phrase into “Keep your mind on your Atman, cuz your Atman is the Brahman.” Meditating on the Atman allows you to build a solid foundation.
