A talk to students

Sri sri : How do you feel when the week begins? How you feel on Monday and how you feel on Friday shows how much you have grown, how much you are relating yourself at the school. Some of you are waiting for the weekend to come and some of you are waiting for a Monday to come to get back to school. How many of you are in the first category and how many of you are in the second category? See when school is not fun, then you wait for the weekend. You are eagerly waiting for the weekend to have some fun, isn't it? How many of you feel that school is not fun? Raise you hand. What makes you feel school is not fun? You feel there is no freedom for you in school. See, when you force something on your mind that becomes boredom. A little while later you stop liking what had wanted to do. Change can stop the boredom. Do you ever look into some other book at the library on a subject that you are not studying, just leaf through the pages of some medical book? Reading at random, you will not feel the time pass. Making a new friend a day, you can make your school life fun. You see that? You are in classroom of 20 or 30. Are you in friendly terms, are you close friends with everybody in the classroom? No, see out of 17 people you are not on friendly terms with everyone. How can you be friendly with the whole world when you come out of school? Your ability to make friendships becomes very limited. School is a place where you can include this ability, meet many, many students, be friends with them. If you can take this step I will make one new friend a day, or this week I will have a new friend, then something in you blossoms. That is real education. Real education is how strong your personality develops, how much you can relate yourself to people around you. Do you see that?

What stops you being friendly with everyone? We keep thinking in our mind, what are other people thinking about us? What is their opinion about you? If you have fear, to whomever you have feat, go over and shake hands with them and talk with them and see how you can get over these barriers. These barriers are our own creation. We have limited the very beginning of it. As this starts growing bigger and bigger and we grow older, it becomes very hard to break it. So right here is a wonderful opportunity for you to get over this barrier.

Anything that you feel you can't handle by our self, go to your teacher, sit with your teacher. Talk to your teacher about your problems. Speak intimately with your teacher. Do you feel close to your teacher? Do you feel you can share anything about your feelings or what you feel are you weaknesses or strengths with you teacher? Response. Some yes. Some give off an air of superiority and don't fee comfortable treating a student as an equal.

Sri sri : Have you tried this? Have you tried being open with a teacher who is not close, who you think is feeling some fear? Did you ever go and talk with them, sit with them? You will see they will open it in a two way. A teacher waits for you to shake their hand. Do you see that? A teacher has a limitation, he puts his hand but and you don't put yours out to shake it, then he feels embarrassed. So to save his embarrassment, he is just waiting for you to come up to him. You see that I mean? Just for a moment, move from your standpoint and watch from the standpoint of a teacher. Pretend you are teacher and you have 20 students in your class. How would you handle that class? Then you will find the teacher is not cold. He is very warm. Even if he is not warm, you can warm him up if you have enough warmth in you. Do you see what I mean? You just go and talk with the teacher. Feel the closeness. Feel a sense of belongingness with the teacher. It things a big change in the whole air.

Do you know that we used to do? We were so much attached to our class teacher, even from a lower grade. Any gift that we would get we would give to our teacher every day, a flower or something, and feel very close to our teacher. We used to wait to see our teacher after a vacation. many times on vacation we would go to our teacher's home, find out where he is greet them at their home, chit chat, gossip a while. A teacher is there to just share your personality, make it blossom fully. There is the place where you can drop all the restrictions, all the walls that get built up around you, consciously or unconsciously. Do you see what I mean?

And have this idea in the mind that I should make a new friend today. Someone, whether in the school or outside the school, talk to someone. This will develop the friendliness in you. We know how to make friendships but we are not friendly. If we are not friendly in our very nature, then we cannot be successful anywhere in the world, in anything you do. So friendliness is a basic quality that should blossom through education, living in a community, in a school. See, how many hours do you spend at school? How long do you go? And out ability to make friends is very limited. Seventeen students. As you study for 4 years, and in 4 years we can't be friendly with 17 people, then how can we be friendly with anybody else? So we can develop that ability right here. That is a wonderful thing. Come out of your embarrassment. Don't think what the other person will say. Will they greet me or not, acknowledge me or not, whether I will get hurt and lose my self esteem? Put aside all these considerations and greet someone, make a new friend, can make your personality blossom. Don't you think so?

Another aspect of the program is to laugh, come that may. You fail an examination; first thing what I will do is laugh. Win or lose, I will laugh. Could you do this? See, then you become de-conditioned. I made a program for children in India. I made them take seven oaths. The first oath is to laugh. For one month, I made all of them take these oaths. I may come crashing down the stairs, but the first thing I will do is laugh everything may fall apart, but the first thing I will give is a big laugh. Students enjoy this so much.

When can you solve a problem? When you can take it as a challenge. What is the difference between a problem and a challenge, how? When you take something as a problem, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution. When you take something as a challenge, then you are part of the solution, rather then being part of the problem. Do you see that? A challenge or an adventure. What is an adventure? Is an adventure not a problem? Do you go on adventure trips? Do you go mountaineering or some such thing? This is the time to be adventurous, to go on my adventures. You have to be very naughty. Being naughty is good. You have been told so much not to be naughty, I tell you to be naughty. Play with you time. See, you personality will bloom. Not at the cost of someone else, but you should have more fun.

The thing is, to laugh at whatever may happen to you. Then you have achieved something in your life very profound. There is nothing great in laughing when every thing is small. Everybody does it anyway. But someone who is educated, who is strong, who is flowering in his personality, should be able to laugh when everything falls apart. Because laughter will give you strength to mange any situation. So take this step. For one month. If someone hurls an insult at me, I will first give a laugh. Everyone is like a machine. Someone presses a bottom in you and you flare up. Another person pushes another button and you react. Do you see that? We are just like machines, put a coin, press a button, get coca cola. We become predictable machines. You can be unpredictable. Then you will have a lot of fun in life. There is a lot of fun to be hand in life. Every day, whether in school or outside of school. So when you feel right in your mind, fresh and light and happy, you will go very good in your studies. You only have to go through it once, the pages, and you will see you comprehend it.

One more goal that I give for children to take is to support the weakest in the group. Whoever is weakest in doing anything, perhaps ink the games or in studies, suppose you are weak in a particular subject and everyone is coming to help you out in that subject, how could you feel? You would no more feel the weakness. Do you see that? Say you are on a tem, a soccer team, and one of you is very weak, and you have all others who are very strong and who are supporting you, they are coming to be friendly to you, you will find that you have forgotten your weakness, you will feel the strength, though you are not strong you will feel the strength, you start looking to support someone else who has failed and if others have the same attitude, you will all get support whenever you need it. Why others don't want your compassion. They just want your friendliness. Nobody wants pity and compassion. All they want is friendliness. See, even if you give some support, which should be given in such a way, that support is not felt by the other person.

There is a story abut a wise man, a very wise and funny man from Persia. This man was once drowning in a river and was saved by one of his friends. So after that day, this man would reach him in the marketplace or anywhere in the shopping complex or at a party, he would always remind the man how he saved his life. He would say, now don't forget. I saved your life that day when you were drowning. He would always say that at every party the wise man got frustrated. So the next day he said, okay, let us go. You saved me from the point, is not it? How I am going back. Now don't tell me again that you saved my life. I am saving myself back. Every time you tell me that you saved my life.

Don't try to cash in on your support of your friends. That is why they don't come near you for your support, because they are afraid you might cash in on the support that is given. Just be very friendly with them. If someone is shy, go with them. It will be a very good way to open up with your friends.

In the school we have several games that we introduce. One of the games is we change the names. You exchange names with your friends for three weeks. People have a lot of fun with that. You should feel one with everyone in the school, lots of love and oneness. You'll have the capacity for that.

Put your mind on these points and see how it can enrich your lives. Feel closeness with even one teacher in the school. Feel that I belong to the teacher, the teacher belongs to me. Also, in the school, not feeling it as public property. Feel a personal connection with the school. And making as many new friends as possible, you can keep a diary and mark in the diary how many friends you have made this year. How many friends did you make this past year? Can you recall? Several billion people live on this planet. And in our whole lifetime we meet or come cross a few hundred people, or may be a few thousand. And among all these people that we meet, we talk with very few, and among those few that we talk, we ask friends with very, very few. Feeling at home in all groups, all age groups of people. Do you feel at home with all groups of people? No, isn't it? Feel at home with all age groups, with all cultures. That would make your heart grow, blossom. Mind, intellect, heart will grow into a complete personality. So think about this.

(End)