The Importance of Being Earnest !
  

Why should we be earnest ?
What has earnestly to do with Pushti Marg ?

Pushti Marg is totally about earnesty.

We have to be earnest about our faith.
Our faith in God has to be total and sincere.

Not half hearted and not blind – but sincere.

How many of do seva with all our heart ? 
How many of us rush through the seva and don't even concentrate on the words we mumble through ?
How many of us have sought proper guidance on how to do seva ?

Most of us stumble through it by watching our elders - no questions asked ! - or stringing together advise given at some pravachan or the other.  The latest trend is to copy the shringar from books / CDs and DVDs published on the subject.   How many of us actually understand what it means to do "seva"?  How many of us want to understand it ?  Are we even earnestly interested ?

We only have 16 stotras to teach us the basic philosophy of our sect.  
How many of us know even the names of all the 16th stotras ?  How many of us have even read them all ?  If not, why not ?
We have to get serious and sincere about our religion. 
If we are not serious, who will be ?

Often we forget how important it is for us to trust and love God.  In our daily lives, we have forgotten God.  We have become experts at making money, but, can we make community ?

As an example, though we have been in UK for over thirty years, we have only one pseudo Haveli to celebrate out festivals.   The other Haveli-to-be seems to be a perpetual building site.  We have no meeting / satsang / katha / community hall for our sect.  We have no schools, nurseries or education activities run by our community to speak of.

Compare this to the SwamiNarayan Sect.   Their community started with no particular advantage over ours.  Yet, they have big and small temples all over the place.  Even small, former scout halls have been converted to serve the community as a temple.  They have big and small education institutes to serve their community.  They have even converted a former office block into a free nursery for their youngsters. 

This is the reason why their community is increasing in size and ours is not. 

Let’s be honest, we have not invested much in building a community.  We talk about it a lot.  We mourn the loss of our culture amongst our children and complain when they display total lack of interest in our religion, but, what are we doing to reverse this ?

The community is not doing anything to congeal and come together.  We have a lot of loyalty to the leading personalities of the sect but no loyalty to "Pushti Marg" itself.

We implicitly follow the various leaders we feel close affinity to and contribute a lot of time, effort, energy and money to prop up their institutions back in India.  But, what are we doing to establish similar institutions here ?

There is so much ego in those who contribute and those who things are contributed to.  No unity exists between communities, leaders or heads of the sect.

Not just in England, this is the same story all over.  Even in India, how many Haveli run schools are there ?  Are they of any national standing ?  Compare this to the number of SwamiNarayan run schools that have thriving student population.  They have modern amenities and latest technology to support their children.  They have contributed so much to building their community everwhere in the world.

We are not earnest in building up a community.
If we want to grow, we have to do that.

We have a number of people doing a huge number of things, but none of it is coordinated.  We produce a mass of reading material.  But it’s all in languages the youngsters do not understand.  None of it matters to them, as they cannot relate to it.  The leaders of the community are talking a lot about doing something for the youngsters, yet, there are no concrete actions taken to achieve this. 

Check out the websites of the various Pushti groups / communities.  How many of them speak to the youngsters of today ?  How many relate to their youthful readership ?  How many use language that the youngsters would feel comfortable with ?  If Shri Vallabh and Shri Vitthal spoke in languages that were contemporary than, why we can’t we do that now ?  Why must we live in the 18^th century, so removed from Shri Vallabh’s time, or our own ? 

We must appeal to the youth of today.   If we want the community to grow, we have to grow our thinking.  Otherwise, we will remain a community typified by elderly ladies.

 

Bhagwat Shah �

Pushti > 2000

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bh[email protected]