8 Mar 2012 - QA 10

When will corruption and terrorism end? Will Sanātana Dharma (the eternal law) end?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: No, Sanātana Dharma will never end. It has been practiced since time immemorial and will continue to exist. It has been thirty years since The Art of Living was founded. Today, we can say that yoga, pranayama and Sudarshan Kriya is being practiced in 152 countries around the world.
If you go to the last city of the South Pole, Tierra del Fuego, you will find thousands of people doing pranayama, meditating and turning vegetarian. If you go to the last city of the North Pole, Tromso, where, for two months there is no sunlight, neither sun nor moon rises there. Even in that city I was shocked to find people waiting to meet me at the airport. They said, ‘We are doing sadhana in the university here’. It is everywhere around the world.
On 11th March, I am leaving for Pakistan as well. Last time when I went to Pakistan, it was seven and a half years back. I came to Indore and then went to Pakistan.
This time again, in Madhya Pradesh, I have come to Indore and Ratlam and will be going to Pakistan. Even there, thousands of people have been doing sadhana. They were making a lot of requests for me to come to their place. They really wanted me to come to Pakistan and so I will be leaving for Pakistan from here.
Every corner of this world requires our tradition of knowledge and meditation. We should present it in a meaningful way. When I went to Pakistan, people asked me this question, ‘In your country, people worship so many Gods, while in our country, we just worship one’.
I said, ‘No, we also worship just one God, but do you know how? Now, from the same wheat flour you make samosa, parantha, halwa and other dishes. It is all made from the same wheat flour. The Karachi halwa is made from wheat flour too.’
I asked them, ‘Why do you make so many things from the same wheat? Similarly, though there is just one God, we worship him in different ways. The same God has different qualities and for each quality we have given a form. In Islam, Allah is known by ninety nine other names.
In Sanatana Dharma, there are one hundred and eight names and we made as many forms as well. Not even one hundred and eight, I would say thousand names, ‘Sahasra Naam!’ But there is only one God, one ‘Noor’, one ‘Parmatma’ and it is only Him whom we revere by different names and forms. They felt very good after I shared it with them.
They said, ‘We have never heard it this way, we could never gain this knowledge. We always understood you (people belonging to other religions) to be different from us’.
What is Sanātana Dharma? From ancient times, it has been said, ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, i.e., this world is my own; this world is one family (one world family). If you possess such magnanimous sentiments, you can call yourself dharmic.