One of the main focuses of the Living/Dying project is working with the individual’s fear of death, but there’s also our collective fear of death.
We look around in our society right now and there are a lot of things deeply out of balance: economically, socially, environmentally, politically, almost everywhere we look it seems to me that we’re at a critical juncture in our history. So that, yes, you can donate to the Democratic party or the Republican party, or Habitat for Humanity, or any number of charities that work with homelessness or hunger, or whatever you think is something you really support. But as long as society as a whole is busy denying death, you can put a bandaid on our society over here and stop the bleeding and the blood is going to start spurting out over there.
Until we directly address our collective fear of death, people will feel it’s ok to pollute, it’s ok to let that person die of hunger, or that person to be homeless, or me to have a million times more money than that person over there has, and that that’s completely ok.
When you know that you’re going to die, and you know that your child is going to die, and we don’t know when any of this is going to happen, then compassion begins to arise in a much more immediate, alive way. Much more immediate than if compassion or helping the planet is just some great idea.
Mother Theresa talked about being more than glorified social workers, we have to really see Christ in his distressing disguise wherever we look. So, can you see Christ in his distressing disguise when you see a homeless person on the street? Can you see Christ in his distressing disguise (maybe more difficult) when you see some of our politicians, or people who seem to be really greedy, or people who are power mad. It’s not just the downtrodden who are Christ in his distressing disguise, it’s all of us.
– RamDev
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[This is a transcription of a video originally published on YouTube. Watch more videos from RamDev and the Living/Dying project here.]
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