Guiding Light: Wisdom Is Not Imbibed By Birth

I was in the UK for the World Yoga Festival which was a well organised four-day event. It included enthusiastic, expert teachers from around the world and participants from the UK and Europe. Knowing that a sizeable chunk of Indian population is there in the UK, I was disappointed by the low turnout of Indians, perhaps less than 5% of the 1500 people who attended. Surely it would be realistic to expect more Indians to attend. I spoke with the organisers who had an interesting view.

World Yoga Festival

Most Indians who they had reached out to, through associations, organisations and the social media said that ‘Yoga is from India. Why should we go to the Yoga Festival to learn it’?. If indeed a lot of these Indians were practising asana, pranayama and gaining the benefits of Yoga, they don’t need to attend the festival. But in my other meetings with them, the Indian living there struggle with stress and unhealthy lifestyles. Aren’t they the right candidates to incorporate Yoga in their lifestyle?

Cultural heritage does not guarantee mastery over particular subject

Be it Yoga or our spiritual wisdom or Science or Mathematics, no wisdom or knowledge can come to a person just because he/she is born in the culture/tradition. Some cultural aspects with distortions might be picked up if one is born there but Knowledge and wisdom can come to one only if one studies and commits to the learning with love and respect. This is what one has to discover for oneself or else one will soon find that one’s own knowledge and wisdom is studied by others.

Eventually our children and grandchildren will have to go to Western teachers to study our own knowledge because we did not invest in learning. That would be an unfortunate situation to be in. I have noticed this in other disciplines. There are many Japanese who do not know Karate, Chinese who do not know Wu Shu. All of us take our heritage and traditions for granted. I appeal to the readers to learn and imbibe the wisdom that is available from one’s own heritage.

The writer is the founder of Aarsha Vidya Foundation. You can write to him at aarshavidyaf@gmail.com