The context of this reflection is my appeal to help a person in her medical need. I wrote to a few to send help and in response one person wrote the following suggestion. And for that I gave the following response. I removed one word which he used for the church and replaced it with a common word.
“Who will help the Brahmins who became bhaktas of Jesus but do not want to join any church. I want to know if your ashram has any plans to help them. We need a set up or organization that would raise funds to help such people. In the west, when a need is discovered somebody will do something to meet that need. I know of several Hindus who became Christians and their suffering. They are rejected by their biological family and not fully accepted by the church family consisting of people from other backgrounds. Such people need a spiritual family that would give moral and financial support. You do your best to help such families. I appreciate that very much. But we need a spiritual family (Hindu Church of Jesus of Nazareth) . What I can do personally could be little only. I can contact all your Hindu bhaktas and do something if I have their phone numbers and email addresses. Think about this.’
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3-12-2021
We all need some kind of organized life. Even nomad communities whom we think are roaming freely have their kind of organized life. But to create an ‘Organization’ to help fellow human beings is an alien concept in the Indian worldview. Reaching out to a fellow human being who is in need is part of dharma done in the name of ‘Manushya yajna’ [a normal Hindu is expected to perform five great yajnas in her/his everyday life about which I mentioned in Understanding Hinduism]. In that the eternal mantra is ‘charity begins at home’. When a person is in need it is the responsibility of her family first, next relatives, neighbours, community and finally society. The concept of creating an Organization to help others has its own merits and disadvantages about which we need not discuss much here.
So based on this principle of dharma and manushya yajna we as Hindu bhaktas of the Lord try to help our best to reach out those who are in need by distributing that responsibility [dharma] to each individual bhakta than pulling all the resources in one trust and then try to help others. But when there comes a need to form a Trust we do that but in principle we expect each bhakta to take the responsibility individually and independently based on their own natural resource than expecting others to do that and we do the administration.
This I have done in the past and will continue to do in future also. Regarding the concept of the so-called ‘Spiritual Family’, is, again according to me, an artificial concept. Anywhere in the world rarely such a family existed. Even the Monastic communities among Christians though lived under one roof to live out their celibate life through prayers and service could be hardly called as a ‘Spiritual Family’. My understanding of ‘Family’ is an organic relationship. Blood is thicker than water is a human reality. Even among the Hindus many sects tried to create such artificial ‘spiritual family’ and ended up in creating some organized community which couldn’t sustain for a long time. Even those few such spiritual communities which managed initially disintegrated after a generation or two when the founder had gone and their immediate followers also disappeared.
So the best scenario for me is to carry on what our Indian civilization taught us—do your dharma. But this dharma is not independent but always worked in relationship with others and other dharmas [manava dharma, samanya dharma, apat dharma etc see Understanding Hinduism under ‘Dharma’] and always remain part of ‘Purusharta’ [meaning or purpose of life] artha,kama and moksha] . There might be some contradiction in this my thought. But I am always scared of any Organization and it is better to have an organized life with organic inheritance than organizing artificially and get entangled in more administration work and expenditure.
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4-12-2021
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