Ritu Jha-
Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha believes the Gita has a solution to control gun violence in schools; however, the language should be suitable for children.
Speaking at the third Global Bhagavad Gita Convention held at San Jose State University in San Jose California, Swami Tirtha told indica, that “Elected government or any administrative agency or power can only enact laws and enforce them, and that is only to punish the criminal after committing the crime.”
“If the criminal tendency which springs in the mind has to be tackled, which is possible only through spiritual penetration in the minds and hearts of the people. So, there should be a great social revival here [in the US] and people who feel in gentleness should get started raising a collective voice.”
“When the voice becomes collective automatically people will be influenced,” said Swami Tirtha and added, “We have to penetrate it into the heart.”
In response to the fact that the school curriculum doesn’t teach the Gita he said, “Our education should be completely revamped; my idea is there are contemporary things in education. They will go on changing but there is an eternal coordinate in education which refers to the values and restrains the minds and intelligence they should practice.”
Adding further he said, “The human being has not changed […] ancient and modern man are the same. Ancient man had a body, senses, mind intelligence and ego, modern man have the same things.”
“So, the values that are applicable to the minds [like] intelligence are [the same now as they were then]. These eternal values become a definite coordinate in our school lessons.”
Speaking in the heart of Silicon Valley, Swami Tirtha giving envisioning insight said, “The Bhagavad Gita inspires the mind emotionally and inspires intelligence in terms of reason and rationality. In any activity whatsoever, it is the emotional persuasion that we have and rational compulsion that saves all our activity.”
“Gita tells you what is the power and potential and magnitude of the mind and what is the great grandeur the intelligence has and by virtue of Bhagavad Gita’s principles and insights, a person will become a magnifier performer,” he said.
Echoing Swami Tirtha’s sentiment, one of the keynote speakers at the conference, Gopi Kallayil, spoke about innovation in Silicon Valley and paralleled it with the Bhagavad Gita and why to believe in karma as opposed to result.
Giving an example of Google and its innovation and amazing success stories that started as only a search engine and today has eight major products used by billions of people every month.
“We don’t one know there were many products that failed and thousands of product Google worked on, said Kallayil, “We failed far more than we succeeded, and the failure is respected and valued.”
“People think it as a successful company but there was massive failure as well. One of the innovation’s principles is to fail well, fail often, and fail fast. We embrace failure.”
“The failure as is not a stigma, it is an honor and the team respects and values you more if you fail.”
He compared this idea with the famous Gita Shloka, ‘karmanye vadhika raste, Ma phaleshu kadachana’ saying one should not worry about the result and should perform his duty without considering the result of his righteous.
Kallayil, who works at Google as Chief Evangelist, Google Social for Brands also agrees technology today has become an integral part of everything and has a huge impact on human life, and the role that the Bhagavad Gita plays is most important as it helps pursue and manage ourselves and self-management is important because only then you can manage others.
“Bhagavad Gita provides tremendous number of tools for self-management,” said Kallayil.
Sharing his thoughts on the three points that beginners should learn from Gita he said, “One is the need of a sense of dedication and commitment; second is selfless duty, and third is to shift your framework.”
“You should challenge yourself,” said Kallayil, who also believes and agrees that today each company and competition is so high we are living in an era of modern Mahabharata.
Pointing to the geo political scenario he said, “The way it is trending, I don’t think it is a good and healthy and integrated global world, it seems we are getting locked into a more protectionist and authoritarian leadership.”
The two day convention touched on topics including “Moving forward during challenging times, “From Transaction to Transformation,” and “Eliminate Stress and become more efficient and productive.”
Welcoming the audience from across the globe, Pankaj Bhatia, President of The Center for Inner Resources Development–North America (CIRDNA) on hosting the convention in silicon valley said, “It is the perfect setting in a way that represents what is most modern in the world and Silicon Valley represents the technology potential of transformation of the world, [to] make the world a better place. But technology [also] means wisdom.”
“That is why we brought Bhagavad Gita here, because technology without wisdom can harm us and we can already see global problems like climate change,” Bhatia told indica, “We wanted to work and to be more effective in day to day life both professionally and personally.”
Bhatia also believes that the Gita has an impact on human thinking and could help design better machine. “It’s the human intelligence that designs artificial intelligence,” he said. “So what we want to put into artificial intelligence is our decision.”
