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Sunday, August 8, 2010

The Art of Leaving

I believe that for any person or organization, it takes a very very long time to build trust and reputation in the society, and being a spiritual organization it is all the more difficult. It takes an immense amount of time and social work, before even people know about the organization, forget recognition. The Art of Living has succeeded in many ways to convince people about the work it has been doing.

Though I agree that there could be a little flaws within the organization, the kind of work that they have been doing overshadows any minor glitches. There are not many other non profit social organizations that I know of, spread across a hundred and more countries, irrespective of religion and caste. They should be doing something brilliant to spread at this rate in a little more than 25 years. I am still surprised and taken aback to see a few people maligning the name of an organization recently, which otherwise did not gather a lot of criticism all these 30 years.

I personally know that the Art of Living is indeed the Art of Leaving. I have seen the transformation in a small group of people I met a few months back. They have totally given up drugs after attending just one of the Art of 'Leaving' workshops. The joy that could be seen on the faces of their close ones and friends cannot be expressed. Recently there have been media reports of a few naxals (a group of rebels in India) who gave up violence and came to the path of peace after talks with Sri Sri. I have also heard a story (story because I have not seen the person for real) which says a lady is taking the Art of Living course for a naxalite leader who murdered her husband. I am sure there would be countless other stories that you and I have not heard of and probably never will. When such reports come in popular electronic and print media, which is otherwise very critical about anything spiritual, there should indeed be a lot of good things they are doing. If the Art of Living was really looking to make money and was purely looking for profits, they wouldn’t be bothered to have workshops and courses happening in slums and prisons. They wouldn’t be bothered to take up social initiatives and community projects in disaster struck regions, but would be focussing mainly just on corporate courses and funding from government agencies.

From what I have observed, it is right to call the organization - Art of Leaving - the art of leaving violence, drugs and things that destroy the harmony in our society. Like I have said in my earlier posts, I request the critics to do some basic research before making blank statements and injecting poison in the minds of people

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