Sri Sri Ravi Shankar inspires peace in Calgary

He calls himself an ambassador of peace.
So when Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is asked what we can do in the face of such acts as the Boston Marathon bombings, he already has his answer.

Sri Sri, as he’s often known, in Calgary as part of his global campaign for a “one-world family” and for lives that are violence-free and stress-free. He believes meditation and yoga can help us reconnect to ourselves and our world in a calm and peace-inspiring way.

Born in southern India in 1956, he was meditating by the age of four. He studied with a teacher who’d long known Mahatma Gandhi, and he has degrees in both Vedic literature and physics. He founded the Art of Living Foundation, headquartered in Bangalore, with a mission for education and self-development, and then founded the International Association for Human Values to work on sustainable development projects, human values and conflict resolution.

His work has taken him to war-torn locations such as Kosovo and Iraq, and his foundations have created primarily volunteer-driven programs in 152 countries around the world. The Herald met with Sri Sri at the Fairmont Palliser this week, at the beginning of his stay in Calgary (see below for events). He cut a small and thoughtful figure, swathed in white robes, taking time to consider each question carefully.

His response to acts of violence?

“For every act of violence, we should replicate 100 acts of non-violence,” he said. When he speaks, you can’t help but believe that he and his followers will do exactly that, from their trauma relief programs in Boston to offering free meditation in Calgary.

Here’s the rest of the interview.

Q. You’re speaking to Calgarians on Saturday evening. What will your focus be?
A. You know, I go spontaneously, whatever comes to me at that moment, whatever the divine makes me speak or God gives me thought at that moment, I will speak. I usually keep the floor open to the public and whatever questions they have, the interest they have, it all flows from that. But mainly to be able to improve the quality of life, and creating a better society around us, a violence-free and stress-free society.

Q. How can we contribute to that violence-free, stress-free society?
A. Create an awareness about non-violence and take pride in non-violence. Today, you know, pride unfortunately got itself attached to violence, people say tit for tat, eye for eye, if they do something I’ll do even worse for them. That type of tendency and pride is not going to make a sane society.

There’s an increasing incidence of domestic violence and suicidal tendency and these need to be combatted. This is an urgent need. Suicide rates are increasing according to statistics alarmingly. Depression is taking a toll on the health of the society. For all this, we (the foundations) are creating workshops and helping people to help themselves from their own mood swings, from their own twists and inner turmoil.
Some big acts of violence happen because people don’t know how to handle their own mind, they don’t have a sense of belongingness with all the people, to society.

Q. Much of your work centres on empowering women. Why?
A. It’s very important – women are half the population of the world. They cannot be ignored, and they have been ignored for too long. I think when women dominate society, there will be less war and less crime. Helping women makes the family stronger. And women can influence more than men can, because women influence father, brother, son and husband, and friends as well.

Q. How do you begin to bring non-violence to a place such as Iraq?
A. As we are talking, we are having a trainers training program that’s happening in Iraq, about 50 youths. . . nearly 5,000 people have undergone our programs in Iraq and there is quite a bit of difference, you know, these youths, you should hear from their own experiences how their lives have been changed.

But the task is so humongous – and with our limited resources, I don’t know when we will be able to reach the whole population, but we are doing a small effort, we call the squirrel’s effort.

Q. The squirrel’s effort?
A. (chuckling) In India, we say the squirrel’s effort, that means the little bit of the work that we can do, we are doing with enthusiasm.

Q. What can mediation bring to our lives?
A. Meditation makes our behaviour friendly, it brings the inner calmness, the inner peace, it makes us healthy, and brings clarity to the mind. And another thing is prejudice, you know, people believe in so many types of prejudice, between generations, between classes, in the society between race and religion – all this prejudice will go away with meditation. You will start seeing the world from a different perspective, of belongingness.The Seed Event, with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar headlining, takes place from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on April 20 at the BMO Centre. General admission is $149; for info and tickets, visit seedevent.org.

Meditation Workshop
I Meditate Calgary is offering an intense meditation workshop with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (artofliving.org) April 21 from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the BMO Centre. Tickets ($65) are available through imeditatecalgary.org.

Source: Calgary Herald