How do we know infrastructure of a society is healthy?

Dr Krishna Bhatta

(Cont'd from last week)

All this change is not easy. Sometimes we have to pay a great price for all this. We can make small contributions on our parts. J Krishnamurti has a neat concept, "Consciousness Pool." Every time you are angry and shout at somebody, you are throwing your garbage in this Consciousness Pool. You are in fact throwing your garbage in the house you live in.

Krishnamurti will say that there is no need to create this garbage. He would say that garbage production is in your control and therefore you can close this factory completely.
We can all contribute to a healthy development atmosphere. There is no need to give lectures or start a club. It all has to start from you and me. You can start becoming a nucleus of such change. You love your child, provide it the freedom it needs, give the discipline that helps its growth. You respect your fellow beings and the elders. You nourish the plants in your garden and respect the waterways in your area.

You become source for inspiration for others. And you will start noticing a change in and around you. You are now contributing to Dharma.

D for Divine

The divine factor has to be accounted for. We are important and we can make a lot of changes. I do not want to undermine the effect of an individual. An individual can achieve a lot. Arjuna had great achievements. Karna also had tremendous achievements. Bill Gates has also got to a point of peak achievements.

Once you achieve you can contribute as well. You can contribute better from a point of achievement. A President or a Prime minister can make changes happen faster than a person on the street. There is no question about that. Yet remembrance and working with divine gives a different aura around such a person. The divine is always important and gives that extra which is not available without the divine grace.

Then you are not working just for yourself or just for your society. Your contributions go out to the whole existence and the whole existence supports you. The relationship is reciprocal.

Development can happen without a healthy surrounding. Children born in today's Iraq and Afghanistan also are going to grow up. Children born in a dysfunctional in India and USA also grow up. But, they do not grow up in a healthy atmosphere.

We can to try to make every home a healthy home. The development may happen without remembering the unseen. The benevolent unseen forces are what I call divine. These forces are important as well. Let us all pay attention to this for our generation is the one that needs to work on it so that we form a solid ground for future generations to come and thrive.

We all understand what indicators mean. Dow as an index comprises only 30 stock prices. Yet Dow has become an indicator of well being of the economy of this country. We all can relate to this.

Dharma is an indicator of general well being of a society in a similar fashion. We may need to develop a Dharma index to denote this well being in a numerical form. We know the contents of the Dow. We will today explore further what the contents of Dharma indicator could be.

How do we know if the infrastructure of a society is healthy? What are those indicators? Happiness and harmony are such indicators. Is there happiness around? Are we living in harmony with each other? (To be continued)

- Dr Krishna Bhatta