SHAGGY

SHAGGY: Grammy Award singer from Jamaica: Hi Guruji, how are you doing? Nice to see you again. It’s wonderful what you guys are doing here. Last time when we met at The Art of Living Ashram in North Carolina, we discussed the issue we are facing here in Jamaica. You advised that Art of Living should start their work with prisoners in the inner city institutions, right? Nishant from Art of living has started a program in the prison right here and the results have been heartwarming so far. My question to you is that The Art of Living is teaching Art of Living enough or is there something more that we can do to help them not to repeat the offenses?

GURUDEV SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR: Art of Living is not just some technique; it’s a whole attitude towards life, that’s what I would like to call as Art of Living - appreciating life as a whole; in that music is a very integral part. So through music you can unite people, make everyone start singing and dancing in the same place, stadium, which anyway you are doing at many places. So music, sports, awareness about food, service activity, environmental care, caring for the planet earth; all this put together I would say is Art of Living. Of course, the breathing techniques are a very integral part, which would help to find that inner peace, as you have seen that. No?

SHAGGY: Yes. This works really well in Jamaica especially, which is a very strong culture, a very musical culture within itself; you know obviously with reggae and everything. What can you advice the people of Jamaica and Caribbean on working towards a stress-free society and a more peaceful society? How can we make this dream a reality?

GURUDEV SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR: You need to teach someone how to ride a bicycle once and that’s it, they learn their whole life. Like you teach someone alphabets once; in the same way, we need to teach people how to manage their aggression, jealousies, anger, these negative emotions, which are natural anyway; they come up. How one should handle them, that one needs to know. If we teach them this, like cell phones have reached every home; we also need to bring them this technique that how through their own breath they can transform their negative emotion into positive ones. It would help people a lot, and it’s doing that anyway everywhere. Along with this, inspire them to do some social work together, (provide help) to the more needy and poor people; because serving opens their heart. It makes them realize that we have to come out of our little cocoons that we are in, and see the world from a larger perspective.

SHAGGY: (singing) ‘You make it so complicated, all we need is love. Hate is so overrated, all I wanna do is love.’ Blessings.