I attended my first ever Jeevan Vidhya Shivir (Workshop) between 28th August to 4th September at Anahad, Telangana. It was facilitated by Shri Ashok Gopala Ji in English and attended by around 15 people.
I decided to join the workshop after looking its details in a WhatsApp Group. It took me just one minute to decide that I should be there and thankfully I could make it. We had participants from different background and age-group (18-72), which made it very interesting and lively. It was not just learning but we had great fun too with board games, badminton, volleyball, nature walks, music and much more.
During the first two days of the workshop, we came to know each other very well as we listened to each other answering following questions :-
- What is your life journey so far?
- What motivates and demotivates you?
- What is Education according to you and what role it has played so far?
- Importance of Money and what role it plays?
- What is Society and what role it plays?
- How do you want to be identified? What does identity mean to you?
- And few more ….
After that it became very easy to interact with fellow participants.
Rest of the days we learned about Jeevan Vidya, which is a proposal for living in harmony within human-human and human-nature relationships and thus realising happiness and peace. It is based on Madhyasth Darshan which is a new philosophy whose original propounder is Shri A. Nagraj (1920-2016) of Amarkantak (M. P.).
As this was my first session and have beginner level knowledge, I’ll not try to dive into details here. In a nutshell I could say it is about human-human and human-nature relationship. What are we doing now and what’s need to be done to attain harmony? It all starts from the self and then we can take it forward.
In nature everything co-exist together, which driven by collaboration as a system. A system is where multiple units (components) fulfilling a common purpose by functioning in harmony with each other over a sustained duration. For example our Earth resolves around the Sun, but at the same time the Sun revolves around the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. Look at the pattern it creates
Another example is human body. All the organs work together is every human being in the same way, be it any region, religion. When such a complex system can co-exist together in harmony, then why we humans can not live in harmony with fellow human beings and the nature ?
One can find more details about Jeevan Vidya and Madhyasth Darshan on its website. Information about future workshops are also published there. I would be continuing my learning journey as Jeevan Vidya seems to have the Truth with logic, which I am seeking for. I plan to share my understandings here further.
One other major take away for me from the workshop was how board games can be used as a learning tools for both children and adults. I am definitely going to start playing it more often !!
Namaste.
