The path of commitment &Strenghth of commitment......

The Path of Commitment & Strength of commitment will lead one to live with Divine.

Commitment is a big word and a very scary word to many people nowadays. The word commitment means responsibility. The word commitment brings up our willpower. Many people think the word commitment is too limiting. We can sum up commitment in one word, dharma. The path of dharma is the path of one commitment after another commitment. In between the commitments is fulfilment of the commitment, which is another word for duty. We are here to realise God within our self. We are here to resolve all the karmas we put in motion in past lives. We are here to manage our affairs so properly that eventually we do not have to come back into a physical body anymore. This takes tremendous commitment, and our great Hindu religion gives us the knowledge of how to be committed.

If your religion is not manifesting daily in your life, then basically you don't have a religion. You just have some sort of culture which will eventually go away and be replaced with another kind of a culture, because it doesn't really matter to you. A question was raised.........

"How do I know what to be committed to?"

The answer: "What do you believe in?" Belief is a magical thing.

It's like a vitamin; it permeates your whole system. A belief can be taken away and another belief can replace it, or the belief can be strengthened through commitment. Be committed to your beliefs, or find beliefs that you can be committed to, then build on them. Then you will leave your footprints on the San Marga of time. Otherwise, you are just sitting in one place, making no progress. Nothing is happening in your life. The karmas aren't working right, and you are not able to face life in the right perspective and concept.

If you feel, day after day, that you are in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing, then , you are a being who is fully committed to the spiritual path. If, day after day, you feel you don't know whether you are in the right place or not, and things are always "happening to you," that you are like a little boat on the great ocean of life being tossed around, here and there, then you should look within yourself and find out where you stand on the scale of life itself. What are your basic beliefs? What are your basic commitments? Ask for yourself.

There are many things to be committed to. Youths should be committed to an education that prepares them for what they plan to do in the future. Mothers should be committed to raising their children, making them good citizens. Husbands should be committed to raising up their family, taking care of their wife and children. That is a commitment that they have to fulfil. If they don't fulfil it, they are making an unworthy karma.

Commitment and dharma are just about the same. Dharma brings law and order into life, gives us rules to follow and guides us along. Where does commitment come from? Commitment comes from the soul. The intellectual mind is going this way and that way all the time, controlled or antagonised by other people's opinions most of the time and by how society is thinking. Commitment comes from the soul. It is a quality of the soul which you can teach to the next generation. Another quality of the soul is observation. Still another intuitive quality of the soul is creativity, which should be encouraged in every child. Through commitment, the soul dominates the intellect and the intellect dominates the instinctive mind. This is religion in action. This is living with Divine.


Strength of Commitment

What is our strength? One Supreme God and many Gods. First we have to decide who is the Supreme God. Having made that decision, you will have hope and peace of mind. You will have solace when you need it, and something to pass on to your children." Knowledge is strength". "Commitment is strength". Knowing where you stand and what you are, that is strength. Worshipping many Gods is our way, but they are not all the Supreme God. They are His helpers, His creations. There is only one Supreme God, though we call Him by various names.

Hinduism is a religion of today and tomorrow. It is not just a religion of history books and yesterday. Our religion gives us strength today. It is a religion which worships one Supreme God, with vast scriptures that prescribe the worship and illumine our minds with knowledge about the one Supreme God. Never forget this. Never forsake your Vedic Hindu Dharma, but fulfil it, and you will be rewarded, generation after generation.

There is a movement from within Hinduism itself which poses yet another threat to our religion, a threat to all the sects. I call it "liberal Hinduism." Liberal Hinduism is a confused mixture of many things thrown into one bowl. This movement was started by our forefathers, and it has to be corrected by us through being good human beings in this life.

What does liberal Hinduism teach? It teaches that it is not necessary to go to the temple, that yoga is not necessary, that all religions are one, that we need not listen to the swamis, and that sectarianism is wrong. What the followers of liberal Hinduism don't seem to realise is that if they destroy the temples, the sects and the swamis, they will be destroying Hinduism itself.

Liberal Hindus hold an idea that all religions are one. They must not have studied the various religions, or they would have to conclude, after years of comparative research, that all religions are not one, not at all alike. It was told that all religions are fundamentally one and all religions are good insofar as they teach devotion and good conduct, but they are not one. Other religions are totally different from Hinduism. They live under no illusions, because they know that the very foundations of Hinduism-namely, karma, reincarnation, yoga, God's existence in all things and the soul's ultimate merger in God-these beliefs are not their beliefs. There is very little beyond a belief in a Supreme God and some good moral laws that is common to nearly all religions, but there are many, many differences.

As Hindus, we love everyone. We appreciate and encourage all religious paths. That is our way. But that does not mean that we should abandon our beliefs and practices to embrace other religions.. That does not mean that we should put Jesus on the altar in our shrine room, which is exactly what the liberal Hindus do. That complacent syncretism is the result of faulty, liberal Hindu thinking.