Sri Bharatamata

                                                                                                      Ashtottaram 85

85) OṀ SUKHA VARḊHANA BHŨMYAINAMAH:                                                             

      OṀ (AUM) -SU-KHA-VAR-ḊHA-NA- BHOO- MYAI- NA-- MA- HA

(Sukha: means- happiness, contentment, pleasure, comfort; Vardhana: means-growth,

                                                                                                       increase, education).

The Yogasūtras of Patanjali (200 B.C.E) describes santosha (sukha) as part of the second step of yoga, i.e., niyama. It is defined as being contended with whatever one gets and not desiring more. The contentment comes with cognitive knowledge than from materialism and hence, understanding the underlying reality and truth of that subject matter. When we have all the negative emotions rising from discontentment, greed, selfishness and anger, the life is going to be miserable no matter of how much one has or from intolerance toward other faiths, beliefs, and religions, what is going on now in the world globally with terrorism, flag burnings, barbarism, brutality, and horrific killings. From the inception of those religions, hatred toward other religions, proselytization by any means is taught, and engraining the ideology of intolerance against other religions and the attitude of 'our way or highway' and 'all other religious people are going to hell' is further flaming the hatred. These teachings come from the top authorities and religious leaders of those religions and we see that in everyday of our lives. With those beliefs as the foundation, how can one have happiness or contentment?

From time immemorial, our ancient seers and sages taught us tolerance toward fellow religious people even if their doctrines differ from ours. Ṛishis taught us that 'there is only God and we can worship Him whatever form or method'. That's why we have millions of gods and goddesses and every one and every family has their own ishṭaḋevaṫa (desired deity). In our schools, in history classes and text books, they teach the Reality and Satyam (the ultimate truth). In our schools, students of different faiths sit next to each other and play together. I always had Christian and Muslim friends and they used to come to my house, ate with us and we played together. That's because of our teachings and we did not have hatred toward each other because we practice different religions. Same thing with the temples, churches, and mosques in India and they are all side by side and people go and worship peacefully in respective places. This comes from contentment and tolerance. We may have few quarrels, fights here and there from disagreements but not as a routine occurrence.

One observation about the ongoing dispute about Kashmir state border between India and Pakistan from the day of Indepence is purely political and constantly ignited by the politicians, and the religious leaders for their selfish reasons and they are the turmites to the human society everywhere on our planet among others crooks like lawyers, insurance and drug companies with limitless greed and selfishness.

Our spiritual teachings are toward tolerance, contentment and how to live without hatred, selfishness and jealousy. Ours is a land of 'Sukha Vardhana Bhūmi'.