Human Rights, Spiritual Rights, and Practical Life Skills
The Brahma Kumaris office for the Untied Nations facilitated a workshop at the American Telugu Association (ATA) 2008 Convention held at the Prudential Center, Newark, New Jersey, from July 3-5. The ATA’s main purpose is to assist and promote literary, cultural, educational, religious, social, economic, health and community activities of the people of Telugu origin as well as to promote exchange programs for students, scientists, and professionals of Telugu origin between the United States of America, Canada, and India and other countries. Its convention attracts over 10,000 people across the US.
Our workshop held on the Saturday, July 5, was called Human Rights, Spiritual Rights and Practical Life Skills. It highlighted the fact that Human rights gain a new dimension when we recognize that all human beings are fundamentally spiritual beings and that human rights and spiritual rights are closely related.
One of the stated aims of this years 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights it to give Human Rights life — to defend them, promote them, understand them, nourish them and enrich them. A way to do this is to explore their spiritual parallels and see how they show up in our lives practically. To facilitate this process the Brahma Kumaris created a booklet called “Upholding the Highest Aspirations of all People - Human Rights, Spiritual Rights”. In this booklet each of the 30 Articles of the declaration are shown opposite the corresponding spiritual right.
During this interactive session the participants where first shown a power point presentation of the booklet and then the facilitator, Julia Grindon-Welch, one of the Brahma Kumaris representatives at the UN, interviewed Sandhya Kanthan, originally from Hyderabad, who has an MS in Mathematics, works as a Project Manager in the IT world, and had been practicing Raj Yoga meditation for 18 years. With the intention of demonstrating how a human right is linked to a spiritual right and how together they show up as life skills in every day living the conversation commenced.
The article they chose to discuss was Article 26 on education. First the Human Right was read: Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” then the spiritual right was read ” Every soul is able to build capacity when provided with a learning process that facilitates it overall development and helps him/her to grow with respect, confidence, and enthusiasm.” and then Julia asked Sandhya two questions:
Question 1: Article 26 of the UDHR proclaims the rights parents have to choose the kind of education that is best for their children. Think back for a moment to your own education and to the efforts your parents and others made to assure that you were educated and prepared for the world you were to live in. Share a story about your own education.
Question 2: Now, I want to focus on spiritual education, the cultivation of our inner spirituality. What is possible when an individual is afforded an opportunity to develop his or her inner resources?
Sandhya answered question one, by sharing a story of her husband’s education: Her husband’s father had come from a large and relatively poor, uneducated family in India and had been the only child from the family who had had the opportunity to have a formal education. He grew up seeing how much difference this made in his life and he vowed that he would do anything to give his own children an education. He had ten children and by the time it came to educate the last of his children, (Sandhya’s husband) his resources were running out, so he made the choice to sell everything he possessed to fulfill his promise. All his children received an education and have become professionals with happy and productive lives. This not only benefited themselves and their immediate families, but using some of the resources they accumulted through their own education, they have established an educational foundation that educates many hundreds of children and which also flourishes financially. It is seen that the Fathers sacrifice and investment in his children brought its return, both to him and to the larger human family.
When addressing question 2 Sandhya shared that the first thing that came to her mind was how when she was a child, she had many questions about life; where did she come from; what was she meant to be doing with her life? . . . Questions that no one around her could answer. So she always felt that something was incomplete . . . . Regarding her personality she felt that there was little she could do to change this, she was born with this personality and she was basically stuck with it. It was only after she commenced her spiritual study that she realized that whom she seemed to be, personality wise, was not really who she was. She understood that it was possible to change something she didn’t like about her self, if she wanted to. So with this realization and putting into practice the spiritual education she has received there has been so much transformation in her life! If someone who knew her as a child met her now she doubted they would realize it was the same person. She felt a good education offered many opportunities in life such as a wide choice of profession and a satisfying career, it also brought financial and material rewards, but it was her spiritual education she found to be the most enriching, because one can actually transform every aspect of ones life. It made her feel that she had the capacity to offer help to others also, to help them find solutions. Before she had not known how to manage many issues in her life, even with her professional education, there were always larger issues which she didn’t know how to resolve. But by building her inner spiritual capacity she has seen that she has developed her inner resources that have helped not only her but have allowed her to help many others in her community.
After the interview, a short guided meditation was given on the theme. Participants were then guided to form groups of 2’s and 3’s to have their own conversations on various other article which had been printed on card with their respective questions on the back. Rich conversations took place and there was just enough time left at the end for a few participants to share with the larger group stories that they had heard that particularly touched them.
It was seen that to uphold the highest aspirations of a human being is to see that person with innate dignity and divinity. Policies do not give this to a person, but it allows for its unfettered expression.
For rights to be respected, they have to be integrated and assimilated into our lives at all levels, political, social, and spiritual.
Let us celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Human Rights Declaration by witnessing acts of human greatness and recommitting ourselves to appreciating all dimensions of human life and protecting each one’s right to full expression and contribution to the world’s families, communities, and societies.
Julia, NY